In this paper I will discuss the details of the Stephen Hawking announcement, that he believes that aliens could be in outer space that roam like nomads conquering planets to steal their resources and then move on to the next target. This completes an image that I have seen of Hawking, coming into greater focus, over the last couple of decades but which probably began before he completed his book, A Brief History of Time. The focus of a man who is fairly brilliant on one hand but in general, repeatedly fails where his brilliance should have allowed him to avoid his missteps, and instead has relied on making the cheap joke to get by with his failure to use scientific thinking. Simultaneously, I hope to bring the issue of alien life into a sharper, albeit, dispassionate, scientific clarity, while revealing an ironic twist to Hawking's clarion call warning of an alien threat from outer space. This will be the first in a three part series dealing with Stephen Hawking's positions on issues related to the nature of space and time.
Early this month, Stephen Hawking, the eminent astrophysicist, announced to the world that he believed that there was life on other worlds and that there may even be the possibility of intelligent alien life forms who could travel to other planets. For this reason, Hawking asserted that there should be no attempt made to send signals out into outer space because we are most likely to regret it if we made contact with these intelligent life forms. Some thought it may have been more of a publicity stunt to promote his upcoming TV series with the Discovery Channel, which in a promotional clip, refers to the eminent scientist as "the greatest mind on the planet", however
the announcement made headlines the world over as serious news.
There were those still who were taken aback by Hawking's insistence of the dangers of intelligent space faring races and compared the idea to recent science fiction films. In particular, the Borg of the Star Trek franchise
and the Necromongers of the Chronicles of Riddick, came immediately to my mind,
although the premise is also the alien plot line in the movie, Independence Day,
which of course fits exactly the overall scenario that Hawking feels he was alterting the world to - aliens, having detected that we are here with this nice blue planet, arrive intent on taking it from us.
The response to Hawking's warning was especially mixed in the science community. Paul Davies, speaking on MSNBC, stated that "This type of argument is completely ridiculous, I have to say..."
In Stephen's defense I have to say that such criticism from Davies is rather harsh especially when he follows that up with "They could have had our planet at any time in the past. These aliens are a million years a head of us," which is a truly a completely asinine and ridiculous statement because it presumes too many things, such as how old an unknown, hypothetical alien civilization is and for how long they have had the capability for interstellar travel. If they are not identified, as Davies himself states that he doesn't know if there is intelligent life out there, then all assumptions that he makes in his statement about their intent, and when they could have carried it out, are baseless opinions and no where near to being factual.
Other scientists chimed in with their own opionions ranging from the typical, "there are no aliens", to "I don't think we have to worry about them showing up here because the distances are too great.".Neil DeGrasse Tyson summed it up this way -
"I think it says more about what we fear about ourselves than any real expectation of what an alien would be like. In other words, our biggest fear, I think, is that the aliens who visit us, would treat us the way we treat each other here on Earth."
An interesting thought that will take on greater significance later, I promise...
However, I was only surprised that Hawking would come out so adamantly about his opinion on aliens, not that he had the opinion in the first place. I already knew his position on the subject, having been somewhat of a interested observer of his work. In the end segment, from the episode on black holes from his previous TV series on PBS, Stephen Hawking's Universe, Hawking expresses this same view, beginning at 9:37 of the clip on Youtube, where he doubts that time travel is possible because where are all the time travelers (9:58). He acknowledges that some people believe that UFOs are time travelers (10:05), however, he doubts that they are, claiming that he believes that such visits would be more obvious and "rather nasty" (10:12).
This is an example of what I have come to realize is classic Stephen Hawking. Make a comment, followed by a joke or some other kind of witty remark, and then roll away. Unfortunately, though it may be cute, this kind of drive-by science commentary doesn't begin to accurately address, let alone solve, any of the questions that he pretends to resolve. In addition, the only reason he pretends to resolve anything is because he can get away with it, and has to a point, simply because he is Stephen Hawking.
For example, just on the subject of why we have supposedly not been visited by time travelers. He actually has referred to them in the past as time travel tourists, which is another example of his behavior that I have already described. He means to compare them to the gaggles of tourists that are all too common in major sight seeing centers around the world, but such comparison reveals a lack of serious consideration of the topic and reflects a shallow, pedestrian view of the subject for which he is supposedly imparting his wisdom and intelligent insights. The fact of the matter is, as I reveal in my upcoming book, Die Physik Und Die Grundlagen Der Zeitreisen: Temporalchronoportation - Defined, Clarified and Advocated, anyone intelligent enough to figure out how to do not only time travel, but turn it into a business, is inherently intelligent enough to know better than to bring clients to other epochs in a manner that they would be endangered or recognized. You see, it's just a fact of business, that you don't want to do anything that will get your clients killed or captured. So time travelers could have been coming here for a long time and we wouldn't have been the wiser.
But there is another, more scientific reason, that this statement reflects more of an attempt to be witty as opposed to having any insightful wisdom on the topic. That reason goes right to the nature of true time travel - the Everett/Wheeler hypothesis. Everett/Wheeler states that there are parallel universes branching off into infinity from every alternative outcome that could ever happen. Now Hawking has indicated his familiarity with the EWH before, which is not to be confused with his own theory of baby universes branching off from larger ones, which has more to do with cosmology than does the EWH which is actually an interpretation of quantum mechanics. However, his failure to comprehend how it would be applicable to the issue of time travelers seems to actually be symptomatic of a possible failure to grasp the concept overall. I quote from his web site http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=63&Itemid=66 :
"The other possibility is what I call the alternative histories approach. It has been championed by the physicist David Deutsch, and it seems to have been what Stephen Spielberg had in mind when he filmed, Back to the Future".
That is from his lecture, Space and Time Warps, 27th paragraph, 6th sentence. The problem with his comment is that Back to the Future is not an example of what David Deutsch or any other proponent of the EWH or alternative histories model, would ever use. I should know, I've been an active and vigorous proponent of it since 1991. I am probably its biggest proponent now, as I actually engage in research that may prove that it is the ultimate reality, which will become more apparent in the coming months. As Hawking likes to use references to pop culture in his faux scientific quips, like Back to the Future, i will cite as an example of the EWH from the TV show Fringe which I enjoy watching. On it, they use parallel universes in their plot development, for example they have a character who exists in an alternate Earth where the World Trade Center still stands.
However, Back to the Future is exactly the opposite of the EWH. There is a direct causal link between what the character played by Michael J. Fox does in the past, and the future that he came from, so much so that it threatens his very existence and, in fact, changes his future timeline at the end of the movie. The alternative histories model, as Hawking calls it, completely rules this out.
So once again, we have Hawking making a cute little remark with a pop culture reference, which is in fact not only inaccurate, but scientifically flawed. The flaw is not only in his forgetting the key component of EWH is that there is no causal link to the past, meaning going back to the past to change the future won't work, but that due to EWH there are a near infinite number of pasts as well as futures which means that the probability of time travelers all visiting us now is nil. In fact, it is impossible. There's no reason for a time travel business to book trips to the exact same time line of the past. They would not want to get in the way of themselves in a previous visit. They would want a "fresh" past. The math reveals that futures that develop time travel are fewer than those that don't. That means that when going to the past, there's no reason for them all going to the same past, and they wouldn't want to.
It's the same thing that makes the plot to Freejack fail - going back in time to snatch someone before they are killed so you can make use of their body, after you take their soul out. But if you can go back in time and snatch someone before they die, and they escape, like Emilio Estevez does in the film, you can just go back and snatch him again from another timeline.
It is also Hawking's apparent misunderstanding of the EWH that led him to think up his famous chronology protection conjecture, where he invoked that the laws of physics would some how conspire to prevent time travel to "protect history for historians". He cited that electromagnetic feedback would travel through any connection to the past and cycle through back to the present with such force that it would collapse the connection with an explosion. This is but yet another example of Hawking not doing his homework. True, if such a connection existed, and in a subsequent paper I will reveal the single rare occurrence where such connections may exist, but for now it is sufficient to cite that there is no time travel without parallel universes, which would rule out causal connections to the past. If there is no causal connection, then there is no way for Hawking's feedback loop of energy to occur. Energy that would pass through the connection would continue on to the alternate future and not return to the one where the opening has been made.
Why then this mistake on Hawking's part? The answer is simple and yet hidden in the math. What physicists have failed to take into account is that you can represent things mathematically that can't exist phyiscally. The art of M.C. Escher is an example. In his famous drawing, titled, Relativity, figures are walking up and down stairs at impossible, perpendicular angles. However, the mathematics to depict such a drawing could be programmed into a computer so that just such a drawing could be produced, even in 3D. Despite this fact, in the real 3D world, such a thing could not exist, regardless of what the math says. An over reliance on math is what trips physicists up many times, and the reason why Einstein was such a genius - because he could see beyond math and comprehend conceptualization. Comprehension of raw, conceptual ideas, arranged into viable depictions of reality which can then be checked mathematically and experimentally, is greater than just being a good mathematician.
Relativity M.C.Escher
Einstein, who is quoted as saying, "imagination is greater than knowledge" stated that at the age of 16, he imagined chasing after a light beam and that's the thought experiment that spawned his development of special relativity. I will follow that with a quote from Vannevar Bush, the scientist who helped save the world from the Axis Powers of WWII by forming the National Defense Research Committee with FDR's blessing. Vannevar said,
"If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability".
Indeed, since he spoke those words, there seems to have been a procession to do exactly that - rely on the logical processes of arithmetic with the full ignorance of the mathematical pitfalls that await those who simultaneously fail to have the mental dexterity to conceptually comprehend what it is that they're trying to calculate.
Instead of being like Einstein, Stephen Hawking, on the other hand, likes to put his imagination into appearing witty. At a recent TED conference, Hawking was lecturing on the big questions of the universe, how did the universe get here and are we alone. In the video clip, which is online, he states at 4:59
"On the other hand, we don't seem to have been visited by aliens. I am discounting accounts of UFOs. Why would they only appear to cranks and weirdos. (snickers). If there is a government conspiracy to suppress the reports and keep for itself the scientific knowledge the aliens would bring, it seems to have been a singular ineffective policy so far".
At first glance, as with all Hawking proclamations, this appears to be a truly insightful observation, the kind that skeptics fall for every time. The historical fact is that, despite what UFOs may or may not be, they have been sighted by far more credible and trained observers than "cranks and weirdos". In fact, there was an Air Force manual produced that contained within it a chapter on UFOs. Air Force Cadet Manual, Physics 370 of the United States Air Force Academy, written principally by Major Donald G. Carpenter, has an entire chapter on UFOs. Although supposedly not a publication by the Air Force, it was used as a manual for its cadets in the area of the then (early 70s era) space frontier. This is just one of the many government related documents that deal with UFOs. According to it, the extraterrestrial origin of UFOs is the most likely explanation of the unsolved UFO sightings.
Regardless of what UFOs may or may not be or where ever they are from, Hawking is flat out wrong about who sees them. On record are numerous accounts of airline pilots as well as military personnel of the United States and other countries including Iran, South Africa and NATO forces in Europe.
But what is worse is the prerequisite, quip, the smart alec element of cynicism, to the typical Hawking commentary of this kind. His statement, that if there is a government conspiracy to suppress reports and keep for itself any scientific knowledge that the aliens would bring , iit appears to be a "singular ineffective policy so far", is nonsensical. "Really, Dr. Hawking? If the intent is to keep the scientific knowledge derived from aliens secret, then the fact that you have no evidence that the government has done so would actually indicate that if they have, it has been a wildly successful since the entire intent, as you said yourself, is to keep what they have learned, 'secret'".
So, the evidence is overwhelming that Hawking is flat wrong about his comment about UFOs. However, it fits the pattern that Hawking has seemingly established, using his status earned by the success of his book, A Brief History of Time, to essentially just rest on his laurels and pretend to have something significant to say, no matter how wrong it may be on its face.
Regardless of what is flying through our skies, there is a problem with the idea that just because there are so many stars and planets out there, that there must be many different space faring civilizations. Many people point to the so-called Drake equation to bolster their argument. The Drake equation states that:
where:
- N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible;
and
- R* = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy
- fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
- ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
- fℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
- fi = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
- fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
- L = the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.
What the Drake Equation, and even its detractors, have failed to recognize is the very low probability of any kind of advanced technological society that would be spacefaring. Just look at our own planet. How many nations have been to the moon? For that matter, for all of the nations on this planet, how many have an air force? How many religions are there that have at one point or another prohibited scientific inquiry? What if they had been successful? Look at skepticism, another form of religion that masquerades as a science. If skeptics had power over research budgets of governments or the private sector (and in many cases they do), this is the list of items that never would have existed and or would have been used on a much limited scale, if their actions were based on the opinions of these supposedly learned and well educated men below. This list is from the paper, Cognitive Processes and the Suppression of Sound Scientific Ideas by J. Sacherman, the following quotes were revealed as taken from The Experts Speak, Christopher Cerf and Victor Navakky:
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction." -Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology France, 1872 (p.30)
"Fooling around with alternating current in just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever." -Thomas Edison, 1889 (p.207)
"Airplanes are interesting toys, but of no military value." - Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre (p.245)
"To affirm that the aeroplane is going to 'revolutionize' naval warfare of the future is to be guilty of the wildest exaggeration." -Scientific American, 1910 (p.246)
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" - H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers Studios, 1927 (p.72)
"The whole procedure of shooting rockets into space. . . presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished." -Richard van der Riet Wooley, British astronomer (p.257)
"The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine." Ernst Rutherford, 1933 (p.215)
"Space travel is bunk" - Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of Britain, 1957, two weeks before the launch of Sputnik (p.258)
"But what hell is it good for?" -Engineer Robert Lloyd, IBM 1968, commenting on the microchip (p.209)
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -Ken Olson, president of Digital Equipment Corp. 1977 (p.209)
What the list reveals is only part of the picture. We can go back to the beginnings of man and see how so many things could have taken place to have prevented any kind of real advancement. I'm not even factoring in such things as environment, philosophy, desire, politics, or any number of other powerful elements that effect advancement. The odds are actually against the rise of spacefaring technological civilizations, even if they don't destroy themselves the way Earthlings have nearly done, and still could do so, in the future.
I have often wondered what would have happened if say, the Romans, hadn't shared their knowledge with those nations that they conquered. What if they subjected them all to the kind of slavery and domination that their Celtic subjects would impose upon Africans centuries later. Couple that with a kind of Nazi-esque mentality of being the master race. I have wondered if they would have continued their development and reached our level of technology, and in what length of time. If that had happened, could they have developed space travel and then considered the possibility of claiming other planets for Rome?
You see what engaging in these kinds of speculations requires is true creativity. If you understand the creative mind, it's even better. So lets take Rome and factor in at the height of their empire a kind of new renaissance which would have been probably been inspired in part by some Greek philosopher, perhaps since no Roman actually did it. Something along the lines of "a true god creates and transforms the universe". Instead of the idea that Caesar is god and should be worshiped, the idea that Caesar proves he is a god by expanding the wealth and power of the empire for the good of the common citizen who then in turn worships him. Sure, this was done in a fashion with lavish spectacles at the Colluisieum, but it was at the expense of the empire and eventually bankrupted and brought about its demise, along with a range of other factors. My point is that if that if the idea had become the new policy, Rome might still be here today. In fact, it might have outposts on the Moon and Mars.
Regardless under what structure it is arranged, a people focused on the advancement and projection of power and influence of their own culture, would know no bounds as long as they could navigate the pitfalls that lay in wait for any and every powerful and affluent culture. Such advanced societies could operate with an ulturistic intent, forming cooperatives with lesser ones instead of conquering them outright, but that is not a requirement. However if conquest is the agenda, that is how you end up with something a kin to the Borg or the Necromongers.
If Nazi Germany had been successful, this is the model that certainly would have been spread, although the cult film in progress, Iron Sky, takes a different tact - the defeated Nazis flee in prototype flying saucers to the moon and return as invaders in 2018.
In reality, the Nazis had been involved in highly advanced research projects, many of which were seized by either the Allies or the Soviets at the end of the war. These included the designs and prototypes for saucer shaped flying platforms. If the war had been won by the Nazis, there's no telling where their research would have led them.
There are some who claim that the Nazis went further than experiments with disc shaped craft but that they actually had a secret space program. This program, it is said, had as its intent the exploration and colonization of the Moon and then other planets, as well as contact with extraterrestrials that members of the SS hierarchy believed existed.
Let's set aside speculation of this sort however and take up that of another kind. A victorious Third Reich now free to pursue all kinds of unbridled research. How long before one of their scientists, working on solving the collapse of the wave function, the problem that Hugh Everett was working on back in 1957, thinks of the same solution as Everett did? What would this mean? Two things. If it was taken seriously, it would certainly raise the issue of potential contact of alternate worlds and eventually travel to them. Second, why worry about going to other planets and taking on the risks and costs for trying to establish bases there when you know that, if the problems of crossing the barriers of decoherence are resolved, you have a near infinite number of parallel Earths to travel to? Some in fact where there would be fellow Nazis in a struggle with their enemies who would be happy to get the assistance of their Nazi brethren from an alternate Earth. Nazis who perhaps were losing WWII or even were underground because they had already lost it. Like the ones did here.
So you see, Stephen Hawking does have a reason to be concerned. For even though the likelihood of his invaders coming from outer space are remote to nil, a slightly greater chance exists for his fears being realized from those who he mocked before - time travelers from the future, but not in the form of tourists but instead Nazi armies who most certainly epitomize those very same human traits that he himself described as "natsy". In other words, Neil DeGrasse Dyson is correct in a way. We have seen the "alien" enemy and it is us. Well, at least some of us...
So the odds of the Necromongers, or the Borg or anything like them, hurtling through space like intergalactic plagues of locusts, devouring everything in sight, are about as good as Hawking winning the Nobel Prize for physics. The odds for conquering armies arriving from a parallel Earth are perhaps a bit better, but not as good as my winning my bet with Hawking over the Large Hadron Collider discovering the Higgs Boson particle.
So in the end, Hawking has held this view, that if aliens exist, and are out there, then they will be hostile if they come here so we should hide our existence and not transmit signals into space, for quite a while. The reality is that there would be few if any spacefaring races and the likelihood of a Necronomicon type is nil. There are just too few planets flung across the vastness of outer space that would sustain life, to make it worth roaming the galaxies in search of one. The smart money would be to find the nearest one that could be terraformed and just stay there. The greater danger is from an alternative Earth civilization gaining the technology to travel to further alternate Earths to continue the same kind of unbridled conquest that we have all witnessed already. However, the vast number of alternate Earths makes the likelihood of them arriving here almost as equally small, but not zero. Hawking, in his fear of what he himself cites is a similar danger to that of the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the Native Americans, has missed where the greater threat is from because of his self-displayed pedestrian awareness of a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics. It is the very same Everett-Wheeler hypothesis, now featured so heavily in Fox TV's Fringe that holds the secret to so many of his speculations.
So Stephen Hawking, as he is many times, is wrong again - at least in part. "The greatest mind on the planet", or no.
