It was George’s voice the city heard that morning, but it was the Fascinator’s image, and the city did awake for the very first time and the war began.
George did not live to see the victory that finally came. He died of a heart attack at exactly eight o’clock.
Three years ago, the sixth annual SF reprinted Ray Bradbury’s Life article, “A Serious Search for Weird Worlds,” about the origins and objectives of the felicitously named Project Ozma.
Mr. Bradbury pointed out with detailed care that this sort of undertaking would have to be measured in generations rather than years: that it would take twenty-two years, for instance, simply to exchange Hello’s with the nearest possible neighbors.
By this time, we are all well accustomed to the concept of the limiting speed of light: astronomical information cannot travel faster than 186,000 miles per second. But we have also become accustomed to faulty space-breaking timetables. Everything always happens sooner than they said it would.
And here it is four years since Ozma started. So . . .
WHERE IS EVERYBODY?
Ben Bova
It was Enrico Fermi, the late Nobel Prize-winning physicist, who asked the question. His reasoning was basically this:
The universe is so vast that, according to mere blind chance, there must be literally billions of planetary systems. With so many planets available, it is incomprehensible that intelligent life should have evolved only on Earth. There must be many—millions, at least—of intelligent races elsewhere in space. But the universe is much older than the Earth. Therefore, the chances are that intelligent races exist who are much older than man. It is not impossible to imagine many races so far advanced that they have solved the problems of interstellar flight. If this is true, then:
Where is everybody? Why have they not established contact with us? Or is the fact that we have not received interstellar visitors proof that no intelligent life exists in space?
There are usually two reasons given for our lack of interstellar tourists. The first is the “grain of sand” argument; the second is the “postage stamp” analogy.
The first argument uses a poetic metaphor to make its point:
A man can walk across a very large beach without much difficulty. He can chart its shoreline and depths, its contour and headlands. But—can he inspect every grain of sand on the beach?
In other words, even assuming that an advanced race could develop interstellar travel, could they explore every one of the Milky Way’s 100 billion stars in an effort to find other intelligent races? Stated in this manner, the prospects for interstellar contact sound dim indeed. But let us examine this argument a little more closely. Basically, it involves two facets: the ability to achieve interstellar flight, and the ability to investigate very large numbers of stars. An intelligent race could develop the technology necessary for interstellar flight. And it need not inspect every one of the Milky Way’s 100 billion stars. Some stars are manifestly inhospitable to the evolution of life; many others are too young to have allowed intelligence time enough to develop. Moreover, our solar system is situated away from the center of the galaxy, out where the stars are relatively far apart. At the galaxy’s heart, where the oldest stars are, interstellar distances must be less than half of those in our region of space.
It is possible, then, to envision an intelligent race scouting the galaxy in a highly purposeful fashion, seeking out stars that are old and stable enough to have sponsored intelligent life. With the use of powerful radio receivers or other detection devices, interstellar explorers might be able to find inhabited planets at very great distances. So it would seem that while our planet is indeed a single grain of sand on the vast shores of space, an intelligent race might find us if it had enough energy, time and purpose.
The question of purpose brings us to the “postage stamp” analogy. You have no doubt seen this picture painted by astronomers and anthropologists alike: Consider the history of the Earth. Let the height of the Empire State Building represent the planet’s five billion years of existence. Man’s one-million-year tenure on Earth can then be represented by a one-foot ruler, standing at the very top of the building. A dime placed atop the ruler represents the entire span of man’s civilization. And, at the very top of the whole wobbly conglomerate, is glued a postage stamp— this represents the length of time since man has developed modern science.
If other intelligent races exist, what are the chances of our meeting a race at exactly our own level of development? Within the thickness of the postage stamp, that is. They will either be far below or far beyond us, technologically.
Several cosmologically-minded thinkers have arrived at the conclusion that technology may be only a passing phase in the development of an intelligent race. Perhaps it is only in the first blush of its youth that a race is interested in exploring the stars. This type of reasoning is typified by Sebastian von Hoerner, of the Astronomical Research Institute of Heidelberg, who states that an intelligent race is bound either to destroy itself or to stagnate within a few hundred, or at best, a few thousand years after reaching the modern Earthly level of technology. In other words, the postage stamp may grow as thick as a dime, but certainly no thicker. Is this a reasonable assumption? Will man destroy himself? Or will he become a passive, stagnant lotus-eater, served by his machines until his ultimate (and not-too-distant) extinction?
Let us be optimistic and assume that man (or any intelligent race) will not destroy himself. Will he become stagnant? Is the technological “state of mind” merely a passing fancy? Anthropologists have amassed some solid evidence that points entirely in the opposite direction.
Even before man was fully human he was a maker and user of tools. The wheel and the plow were invented about 10,000 b.c. The so-called modern era of science, dating roughly from Copernicus, Galileo and Newton, is not completely different from the eras that preceded it. The technology that we are so justly proud of did not spring fullblown from the minds of a few brilliant men. It was the product of generations of effort. Modern society represents not so much a break with the past as an acceleration of past trends, speeded by the gathering forces of technical methods and accumulated scientific knowledge. In short, an intelligent race is apt to be technologically oriented, and unlikely to give up its technology.
It would seem, then, that the postage stamp atop the Empire State Building is an artifact. Man’s technology may be very young, but so is man himself. As long as he has been human, he has been a tool-wielder. If and when we meet other intelligent races, the chances are that the technologies will be fully as old as they are. Thus, if we meet an older race, its technology will be far advanced over ours. And if we find a younger race, its talents will be similarly undeveloped.
So far we have tested two lines of speculation and concluded that: (1) An intelligent race could reach us if it wanted to; (2) Once a race develops technology, it is not likely to dispose of it and return to nature. But our original question remains unanswered. If intelligent races abound among the stars, why have they not visited us? Is man alone in his intelligence and technology?