To See Ourselves as Others See Us

 

The Mighty Mark 1 - a place of pilgrimage

On the day of named-storm Eunice in 2022, I managed to keep my appointment with MikeGarrett, Sir Bernard Lovell chair of Astrophysics at University of Manchester and Director of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics. Jodrell Bank, with its famous Mark 1 Telescope - made out of bits of battleships! - a name to conjure with. Many visits as a boy there; a place of pilgrimage during the Apollo program. Keeping just ahead of the storm on the M6, we were inside the Alan Turing Institute when it finally hit, and it was ‘knock-you-off-your-feet’ strong when we exited 2 hours later. It was great to meet a Radioastronomy and SETI group and to present the AMiTe idea. Lots of discussion, suggestions for references and encouragement to think further about observational consequences.

While Mike’s JBCA group of 190 people have wide ranging (multi light-year!) research interests including active galaxy nuclei and giant arrays (running  e-MERLIN, the UK's radio astronomy network), they are also active in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), and Mike is currently vice-chair of the IAAs SETI Permanent Committee.

So it’s quite fun to keep tabs on his publications. Here’s one that was publicised only in the last week: What would aliens learn if they observed the Earth? This claims to be the first proper study of the Earth’s Technosignature in 50 years and takes into account all modern human sources of radiation. We currently emit a whopping 4GW of radio noise, just from mobile phone transmission. The team has analysed databases of transmitters and considered the radiation pattern, and the potential for detection at nearby stars. These were limited to nearby systems, including Alpha Centauri, out to a maximum of 8 light-years. The conclusion:

“We worked out that an alien civilisation near these locations would, however, need much better telescopes than we have to detect the Earth’s mobile radio leakage. But that would be quite probable, given most technical civilisations are expected to be much more advanced than we are.”

It would be lovely to think that the closest stars have anciently wise civilisations, just waiting for the ‘youngsters’ (us, a mere 4.5bn years after the Earth cooled) to grow up and invent smartphones. Life may be ubiquitous (C’mon NASAPerseverance) but there again, it’s been a long, hard road here. And despite the best (breeding) efforts of Elon Musk, human numbers may start to decline as early as 2050. If the closest extant technical civilisation may be “outside theMilky Way and therefore forever inaccessible” (Brian Cox musing) then we’re going to need a pretty big ‘scope on the Cheshire Plain to detect that.

But maybe there would be a chance to detect ‘we’re here’ signals from an AMiTe point. I’m still to write up the next version of the paper with suggestions from meeting Mike, but there are some clues in the 'Brian Cox' post. Happy listening!

Picture credit: Unesco

Happy Birthday to Brian Cox: Who I Hope is Wrong

 

The Glories of the Southern Skies

I just have to say Happy Birthday to physicist and musician, fellow Irksider and also 3^rd o’March baby Brian Cox. That’s probably the end of the resemblance but not bad for an intro. Actually, we share that birthday with WW1 poet Edward Thomas who wrote a rather good poem celebrating the day, so a present for all 3/3ers (inc. my mate Eddie).

I’ve just listened to the first of the new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage Southern Skies recorded in Sydney – the lucky lot. And lots of rubbing-it-in about the ‘Majesty of the Southern Sky’ versus our “arse-end-of-the-galaxy” view from points Northern (Robin Ince on poetic form, there).

Charles Darwin clearly agreed: “Amongst the other most remarkable spectacles, which we have beheld, may be ranked, — the stars of the Southern hemisphere…” (BeagleDiaries). Here’s an image from my setting of those words for chorus/orchestra. I’ll post a clip of the music at a later date.

 

"We Beheld the Stars"

The main reason Brain (typo, but why correct it?), Robin & astrophysicist guests gave for the superiority of the Southern Skies was the view of the Galactic Centre, the star lanes and darker dust lanes between them. And lurking in the middle… “Almost every galaxy has a Super-Massive Black Hole” said Devika Kamath. “I recommend looking at it from a far distance” was sensible advice from Kirsten Banks. A terrible place, by the way, for a galactic meeting place for technologically advanced civilisations. @AstroKirsten gave some nice stories from Australian First Nation star-lore. At one point, she interjected, “You’re right, Brian, but not all the time”.

Fair Enough. One thing where I hope Brian is wrong (or, scientifically speaking, a test could be proposed which may show his conjecture to be wrong) is the following. In another, epoch-defining IMC, episode ‘UFO Special’, broadcast 17/2/20, Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock set up the question with, “If civilisations don’t overlap, we will never meet the aliens.” Brian replied, “The question is how close the nearest civilisation (is at present); I think the answer may be outside the Milky Way and therefore forever inaccessible.”

Thereby giving me a good steer in the right direction for my lock-down project, ‘how an engineer would find the Aliens.’ Rule 1 in engineering is ‘relax the constraints to make the challenge easier’. If you want to find a needle in a haystack, and you have the chance to remove the haystack, you might find the job easier (other things being equal). I’ve written about a better place to look in this blog and in the referenced paper. If you have the time (about 20MY).

But there may be an even better place to look, if you’re a bit impatient. And only those lucky ‘beholders of the Southern Stars’ can gaze up there (but I recommend a Space-based observation, for about a hundred years). Can you spot it in the map above? I will write further about the target at another time.

Happy 3/3:

“Here again (she said) is March the third
And twelve hours singing for the bird
'Twixt dawn and dusk, from half past six
To half past six, never unheard.” 

Edward Thomas (d. April 1917, Arras)

Picture credits:

Music: “Remarkable Sights” copyright DFG

Observing the AMiTe Point: busiest point in the (Local) Universe?

 

"The Most Exclusive Address in the Local Group", right hand edge of M31 core

At the date of posting, 1^st December 2022, the Northern Sky is a fine sight (no street-lights in our village). The waxing Moon has proceeded along the ecliptic from Saturn, is now passing Jupiter and, via the two bright stars of Aries, is on its way to join Mars for Opposition on 7^th December (‘Opposition’, for planets further away from the Sun than us is, just like the full of the Moon, getting in line with us and the Sun). When the Moon’s light is out of the way, then it’s a good time to look up and locate the point in space with the highest likelihood, selon-moi, of the presence of Alien civilisations in the known universe.

This blog, with its starry header, indulges my twin fascinations for the origin of life, human‘n’all (via the celebration of music related to Charles Darwin and DNA including my own composition, performed at both Oxford/Cambridge Universities), with a possible far future for humans, which is at least an entertaining one.

On ‘8-Billion Day’ (15^th November 2022), I posted an article suggesting a very unorthodox view of future population first published in my ‘AMiTe Paper') – or see the separate page in this blog. This came out of my lockdown musing of ‘how to meet the Aliens’ and neatly gets the humans out of the picture for a few million years. (Don’t worry: “We Shall Return!”)

The AMiTe paper is all about how, practically, with currently envisaged technology, an engineer from any technical (sorry! no super-dolphins!) civilisation, with our level of vanity - might try to crack the problem. A difficulty, of course, is for everyone in the galaxy to agree to meet at the same place when you can’t talk to them first (the ‘Schelling Point’ problem). The answer, funnily enough, and ‘proving Brian Cox wrong’ (in a way), is almost certainly for robotic ships to meet outside the galaxy (Martin Rees should approve, leaving it to the robots).

Just above Aries (see map) is the long line of bright stars connecting the Square of Pegasus with Perseus and his bright ‘Sword Handle’ double-cluster, the three middle stars being ‘Andromeda’. You may well have observed the farthest-you-can-see-with-the-naked-eye Andromeda galaxy, at 2.54 Million light years distance and 2.54 Million years ago. You go up from the central star Mirach (‘Girdle’), do a little shimmy to the right and the cloudy smudge is it. Or rather, it’s the bright central part of a monster galaxy of a trillion stars. The lovely spiral stuff covers a much bigger extent – about 6 full-moons in breadth – but is just beyond the grasp of eyes which also have to cope with the daylight Sun. It's our Milky Way’s biggg sister (we’re the middle-weight of three). Just in line with the right hand edge of the smudge (to our line of sight) is the most exclusive address in the Local Group – the mid-point of the two galaxies, the AMiTe point, Andromeda/Milky-Way Treffpunkt (‘meeting point’, see the paper for why). The beautiful thing is that every intelligent race in the trillion stars of Andromeda and the four hundred billion of our own spiral knows where it is…

I will write again on 16^th December, Arthur C. Clarke’s birthday, (which I hope he’d have appreciated) of a grand but tenuous ‘intergalactic bridge’…