Whistling a “Fine-tune”

It is often asserted that the Universe is “Fine-tuned” for life, that if this or that constant was altered even a little bit the Universe would have been completely lifeless. Now the arguments for and against this particular argument are many and varied, I personally don’t see the Universe as being particularly hospitable to life. I mean our proclaiming that everything is just right for our existence and isn’t that amazing is like a flea looking at the dog flesh all around him and saying the Universe is perfect for fleas. The same as the flea we are restricted to a small part of the surface of the Earth, if we venture further out it is almost like the Universe is actively trying to kill us. Most other places have drawbacks of wild extremes from the crushing pressure and gravity of gas giants to the asphyxiating vacuum of interstellar space. Everywhere we look there is either killing cold or killing heat, cosmic rays, tearing gravity or no gravity. So maybe the Universe isn’t perfect for us after all.

Japanese Space Elevator

 If I say Space Elevator what springs to mind? It should conjure images of a vast length of cable running from the Earth’s surface to geosynchronous orbit. An engineering feat that would see 36,000km of this cable disappearing into space that can carry people and equipment out of our massive gravity well and into the vastness of the universe. blah blah blah. This is the stuff of science fiction, right. Well apparently the Japanese don’t think so they have put together a consortium whose aim is to bring about the required technology and construct a working space elevator by 2018.

If you’re like a friend of mine that I told about this you’re thinking, “Why bother?”. It’s true that we currently have technology to boost material into space using chemical rockets, this is tried and true stuff and works fine so why have a space elevator? One big reason is cost. At the moment it can cost up to $10,000 to send one pound (500g for those of us in the civilized world) of material into orbit this means that an average person plus modest accompanying luggage, say 100kg, would run a $2,000,000 dollar ticket. Hhmm a little pricey. With space elevator technology this could drop by a factor of 100, down to a mere $20,000. OK, still somewhat out of my price range.

But tourism isn’t really the goal, if we can shuttle (so to speak) stuff into orbit cheaply then this opens space up to smaller countries, especially communication satellites. Micro G manufacturing is also an attractive option and could create exotic materials that would be difficult or impossible to make on Earth. In addition there are power considerations, solar power would be easily available to both power the elevator and possibly beam power down to Earth, imagine shifting power generation from the surface of the planet into orbit. The possibilities are amazing and endless.

Resources

http://jsea.jp/en

http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=7382.php

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2226676/japan-sets-plans-space-elevator

http://www.impactlab.com/2008/09/22/japan-space-elevator-association-to-draw-up-timetable-for-space-elevator/

SETI

“The truth is out there”, any idiot knows that, the trouble is finding it. This is exactly what the SETI Institute is attempting to do. While scoffed at by some this is a legitimate line of inquiry. Unfortunately even if life is out there the chances of finding it are vanishingly small. We regularly run into two concepts when we talk about SETI projects, 1. The Fermi Paradox and 2. The Drake Equation. The Fermi paradox merely states that if life is common (or at least not rare) then we should see it all around us. Fair point and the answers are many (too many to list and respond to all here), ranging from “We are the aliens” to “There’s no-one else”. The Drake Equation is an attempt to estimate the number of intelligences in the galaxy. The equation can be stated:

N = N* x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x fL

Where: N* is the number of stars, fp is the fraction if stars with planets, ne is the number of “earth like” planets, fl is the number of planets with life, fi is the number of planets with intelligent life, fc is the fraction of those that communicate and fL is the longevity of of the communicating aliens. There are a lot of question marks for these terms, we really only have good estimates of the first and maybe the second. This means the answer could be anywhere from thousands to 1. This does not mean however that the attempt to look should not be made. The cost of running the SETI project is tiny compared to the amount spent on almost any large scale endeavor and while the odds of a payoff may be small the implications of realising that payoff would be profound and far reaching.

So we may be alone but advances in any area do not come about by accepting defeat but by pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. Contact with an alien civilisation would arguably be the greatest event in human history, it seems petty to deprive ourselves of the chance to make that discovery. That said, we could be in for a long wait.

Resources

http://www.seti.org

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~js/cosmo/lectures/lec28.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation