The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe? By Paul C.W. Davies

Paul Davies does a really good job here of illustrating the issues of SETI's lack of success, and Fermi's Paradox. He goes into the science and philosophy of it in depth, explaining all the terms and generally making it crystal clear. What amazes me is that he's still somewhat optimistic about finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, given all the things he says in this book -- I'm now almost completely sure that even if intelligent life has arisen elsewhere (and that's still a big if) that we'll have trouble finding it because of the issue of the sheer amount of time and space involved.

Not that I don't think the search is worth doing. Even if we'll never manage to communicate with intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, we might find signs of it, and understand more about how life begins. There's so much we can learn along the way, and maybe the idea that we may not be unique will keep us a little bit more humble.

Or not. 9781846141423 Are we alone in the great big fat universe?

It's presented as if it's a real lonesome thing. Just us nine billion, no one to talk to but each other. And true, when you put it like that - who would want to spend their life with no one except human beings? You'd have to be a psycho. Human beings? Eww. Give em a planet and what do they do with it? Only thing they're good at is making more human beings.

But anyway. I don't get why people cudgel their brains about this question are we alone in the universe. Here are the facts :

1) The universe is big. It could be bigger than we think it is. It might turn out to be the biggest thing there is. Imagine that - or don't, you might hurt yourself! And - and - and - could be this is only one of a million universes. Cool. Could be new universes are popping into existence all the time. Pop! There goes one.

2) Everything is a really long way from everything else. Nothing is near. There are no corner shops in space, no local Sainsburys. There's sod all. Deep space facilities, in that respect, are poor. It would take centuries to get to anywhere. You'd have to have a massive ipod. When you look at the universe, you just think... nah. Let's stay in.

3) So... just imagine along with me ... that means that if life started in a gazillion places apart from Earth... imagine, imagine.... we're never going to find out because in order to discover each other then one of the civilisations has to have invented Warp Factor Five or whatever and then they have to happen to be living in the same galaxy as another civilisation and at the same time which is a little unlikely - it means that civilisations trying to discover each other is like one red grain of sand on a yellow beach wanting to find another red grain of sand which might appear on a different beach in 500 million years. Crazy! Just never gonna happen. Like me and that girl way back in the sixth form. Never gonna happen in a million years, and we were in the same year!

4) So therefore of course there's life out there - what, you think you're so unique? Oh stop it.

But we'll never find out. Ever.

The end.

Stop writing books about this foolishness!

9781846141423 This was a good book on how and why we need to think out-of-the-box while keeping the search ongoing for ETs (Extra Terrestrials). Paul Davies does a good job of mentioning the various ways in which we can do this, or what to look out for, where do we as intelligent beings need to think anew, and stay away from anthropomorphism and our mindsets based upon the past and present dogmas.

A pretty delightful read for people who always have questions and thoughts regarding the possibilities of intelligent life-forms away from our planet.

Having to read this alongside Jim Marss' Alien Agenda: Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence Among Us was kind of interesting . :) 9781846141423 The organization SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) was funded by the US government for a short while. It was soon decided that the money could be used for better things. SETI continues to operate with private funding. The author, Paul Davies, heads a special committee at SETI. Davies argues that the search is too narrow. SETI has been searching with radio telescopes for over 50 years without a bite. Using radio telescopes to listen for ET's is like using only a twitter account to check for messaging from everyone on Earth. Not everyone tweets. (My words, not Davies :-) ) Davies presents alternative methods of communication and I found it fascinating.

Davies doubts that Earthlings would panic if we heard a general message that said Hello, we're here! but if we got a specific message just for us Hello Earth, how are you? Please respond there might be trouble. Should we answer? I adore speculations like this. Davies writes that as of now there is zero scientific evidence that ETI exists. How disappointing. I want it to be true, be damned the consequences. 9781846141423 I had to edit this review to put in this comment:
I think it's important to note that both Paul Davies and Stuart Kauffman seem to be laboring under the idea that if life is emergent or has a predetermined plan to unfold, then it's in the realm of religion or dualism. If something is predetermined then it's not physical. But it is. We can change our ideas about the blueprint for life and for anything else that emerges without having to worry about religion or dualism. Those things don't belong in science. There is some really important work in this book and in the later books of both Davies and Kauffman, but you are going to have to ignore their concerns about emergence and simply accept it like the next generation of scientists will. You are going to have to accept that they grew up in a time where if you suggested there was anything predetermined, that meant god or something nonphysical. Let those ideas die and let's move on and just do science, whether it shows a predetermination or not.

Review:
If there is no signal from alien life, why even search? This is an actual concern for policy makers who fund projects like SETI. The first answer from Davies is, Logic! How many signals could we have missed? With our limited toolset (in 2010 no less), our limited time residing on this planet in the whole history of the universe, it seems very reasonable that we might not be in an optimal position to detect a signal. That doesn't mean we should stop trying. He gives all the standard arguments about why we should fund SETI and keep looking. First Life research will certainly go a long way to helping this cause. 

It is interesting to read this 2010 book in light of my current knowledge about his work with Sara Imari Walker and others in trying to define and synthesize life so that humans can keep searching for it on other planets. His definitions of life are not as detailed as what you will find in his textbook with Imari Walker titled From Matter to Life, but this 2010 discussion is still food for thought.

I really could have done without Chapter Nine in which he spent way too much time trying to win over the religious folks. I realize how many people still subscribe to magical thinking -- while actively thinking scientific fact is too absurd to believe-- and realize some of those people have power to make policy. So, I get why it's important to discuss it. But, I am so tired of being anchored to that outdated concept that only serves to pull our focus away from continuing to gather facts and progress. Davies went all in and tried to introduce the religiously interested to Swedenborg. One of my best friends grew up in the New Church, complete with its own little Swedenborg only community. It's more progressive than Catholicism but it's still severe in its magical thinking. I just don't want any more of my head space taken up by this nonsense. (Though I did enjoy his discussion of whether Frank Drake's equation is really a religion).

Davies is concerned that, since we don't know what is out there, should we so thoughtlessly keep sending out signals? I am in the camp that wants to keep sending out signals but I really do understand how that could get us all killed if there is more advanced life out there. 
Davies' argument about how life might be more ethically advanced was worrisome to me. He thinks being more advanced might mean having GMO'd the evil out of people to prevent them from being criminals. That is so short sighted and ignores the social situations on Earth that marginalize entire groups of people and then targets them and put them in jail for ***the same crimes** committed by non marginalized people who get away with it. It's our justice system that needs fixing, not people's genes. There might be some rarer cases of genetic determinism, but it's not the rule and it was a dangerous thing to imply. 

Overall, this is a more worthwhile book that it might appear because he is really working toward something extremely important, namely updating our idea of what life is and fitting it into the frame work of not only biology but in physics where it surely belongs. Only when physicists join the discussion of, 'What is Life;, can we really understand life on our planet as well as what life in general on any planet -- or anywhere in the universe -- means.  9781846141423

Are we alone in the cosmos? This is one of the big questions, yet it remains unanswered. This book explains why the search for intelligent life beyond Earth ought be expanded & how it can be done. 50 years ago, astronomer Frank Drake 1st pointed a radio telescope at nearby stars, hoping for a signal from an alien civilization. Thus began one of the boldest scientific projects, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. After a half-century of scanning astronomers have little to report but an eerie silence-eerie because many believe the cosmos teems with life. Could it be, wonders physicist & astrobiologist Davies, that we're looking in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong way? Davies has been closely involved with SETI for three decades & chairs the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, charged with deciding what to do if we're confronted with evidence of alien intelligence. He believes the search has fallen into an anthropocentric trap-assuming alien species will look, think & behave like us. His book refocuses the search, challenging existing ideas of what forms alien intelligence might take, how it might try to communicate & how we ought respond if it does.
List of Illustrations
Preface
Is anybody out there?
Life: freak side-show or cosmic imperative?
Shadow biosphere
How much intelligence is out there?
New SETI: widening the search
Evidence for a galactic diaspora
Alien magic
Post-biological intelligence
First contact
Who speaks for Earth?
Appendix: Brief history of SETI
Bibliography
Notes
Index The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe?

The

Paul C.W. Davies Ç 1 REVIEW

This is a great book. The greatest potentially answerable question 'are we alone in the universe?' is explored from every imaginable perspective and with its possible ramifications. I don't think any one explains science to non-scientist better than Paul Davies does. He excels at giving both sides of an argument to a dilemma and lets the reader make the informed decision.

The book doesn't just look at radio astronomy but considers all the other evidence or lack of evidence for what it takes for other intelligence to be elsewhere in the universe. For example, the lack of evidence for non-DNA based life on earth or other planets in our solar system implies that life might not be as easily created as some might state. No systematic harnessing of black hole energy through out parts of the galaxy implies we just might be alone.

The narrator is the same one who read The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil. That is good since the themes between the books overlap so much and my mind would naturally go back to that book as I was listening to this book. He gives the best refutation to the Fermi Paradox I've seen so far.

This book is much more than what the title implies. He covers everything related to are we alone? and fairly provides all relevant arguments to the table. He has his opinions and states them but always realizing that it's just his opinion and there are not necessarily right answers. 9781846141423 There are but very few instances where you pick a gem that many mistook for just a dusty rock. How could this book be so unpopular. Maybe thats the most compelling evidence for the eerie silence.

The intellectual orgasm was quite similar to that from the movie Interstellar. Its like a thousand classic science fictions distilled to just over 200 pages. The shadow biosphere, the great filter, neutrino beacons, nanoprobes... Oh baby, it's Christmas. And it reaches its pinnacle when Paul convinces you almost certainly why biological intelligence is to quantum processers as apes are to humans. The stepping stone in evolution. Phew.. And to end it all consider three choices to reason the eerie silence. Either we, as earthlings, are really special to hold life, Or really really special to hold intelligent life, Or are just the next iteration in an often repeating cosmic cycle of self destructing intelligence.

By reading popular reviews you may feel that this book mainly discuss Fermi paradox and the impact of alien contact on religion. Not at all. This book about the search. Why it began, why the silence, what's the probability of success, where should we look, what to do when the contact happens and its impact. It's Bible for anyone remotely interested in aliens. 9781846141423 This book was written so well. It lays out the evidence and reasoning and ties it into the Fermi paradox... if we're not alone in the universe, and this book suggests the science for how we most likely aren't, then where the f*ck are all the aliens? I'm by no means a scientist or physicist or astronomer or astrophysicist but the information was so clear and well-broken down that I understood all of it! It's the worst when you can't understand the science in a non-fiction book and you KNOW that you're missing out on the entire effect of it.

Thankfully with this book that is a fear you will not have to face.

p.s.- if there's an alien reading this somehow, please visit us. even if you destroy us or something at this point the length of our search is getting a bit pathetic and our self-esteem is diminishing.
merci.
9781846141423 Paul Davies is an astrobiologist who (at the time of this book at least) was the chair of SETI's Post-Detection Taskgroup, so if you're interested in the question of Are we alone? this book offers a number of unique and necessary insights.

For most of the book, Davies carefully avoids offering his opinion on whether or not there is other intelligent life in the universe, giving instead numerous possibilities of what non-Terrestrial life might look like, or why it might not even be there. He goes back and forth between optimistic and pessimistic about the chances of life existing elsewhere, but one thing he says for certain is that if intelligent life does exist out there, SETI currently is very unlikely to find signs of it.

One of the big questions, he says, comes down to whether life is common in the universe or life is rare in the universe, and with our sample size of 1 we have no way of really answering that question yet. But he does put forth various reasons why he believes it is either very common or very rare: he does not believe there is a middle ground in this case. He suggests that if the genesis of life is common, it may well have happened more than once here on Earth (an idea that never occurred to me before!) and that studying our own planet more may determine whether or not SETI is worth it.

SPOILERS (if you want to know what position he ends up taking at the end of the book):
9781846141423 I had to read this book for an astronomy class, but I actually enjoyed it way more than I thought I would! Yes it was a bit tricky to keep up with as the language was sometimes a bit too academic and... sciency? (lol) But the actual content was very fascinating and I'm glad I got forced (voluntarily) to read it! I feel like I've learned a lot and I will definitely carry a lot of these things with me from now on. It has really widened my views on how I look at space and how I think of myself and our planet in the vastness of the universe. 9781846141423