Oct 11, 2022 05:18 PM
(This post was last modified: Oct 11, 2022 07:04 PM by C C.)
Open Science and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/open-science...73d3169383
INTRO (Avi Loeb): If the government finds evidence for an extraterrestrial technological origin of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), the President will be the first to know about it. But such an event will be no different than the President being the first to know that the most abundant element in the Universe is hydrogen. It makes little sense for scientific knowledge of reality to adhere to national borders. Science should be done in an open and a transparent way, so that all of humanity will benefit from it. In the case of COVID-19, many lives would have been saved if the detailed scientific information about the outbreak in Wuhan, China, would have been immediately shared throughout the world.
Yesterday, I posted a paper with a quantitative scientific calculation, implying that the dark objects identified as “phantoms” by a team of Ukranian astronomers led by Boris Zhilayev, are likely artillery shells. The objects were characterized by the astronomers as having sizes of 3–12 meters and speeds of up to 15 kilometers per second at a distance of up to 10–12 kilometers. I showed that these characteristics would result in huge fireballs around the objects as a result of their unavoidable friction with air. The power of the fireball scales as the inferred distance to the fifth power. If the distances are overestimated by a factor of ten, the size and speed of the dark objects would match those of artillery shells... (MORE - details)
Finding aliens could trigger global conflict with dire consequences: study
https://www.newsweek.com/detecting-alien...er-1750248
EXCERPTS: "In their 2022 paper for Space Policy, Jason T, Wright et al. criticize the contention that was made by Wisian and Traphagan in their 2020 paper in Space Policy that suggested that there was a measurable risk of conflict being induced by one party merely detecting an alien signal in a passive SETI search – and then trying to maintain exclusive access to that signal," John Rummel, a former SETI program scientist and senior astrobiologist at NASA, told Newsweek.
[...] "In our paper, we argue that the specific scenario many people imagine, that the signal will contain "advanced" physics and engineering that we can use to build new technologies, perhaps even military technologies, is pretty unlikely, and that even if it happens, there's not much governments could do to get a monopoly on that information," the author of the space policy paper and professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the Penn State Extra-terrestrial Intelligence Center, Jason T. Wright, told Newsweek"A signal from space will be available to anyone on Earth with a satellite dish, so there's not much point in, for instance, sending the army in to take over a radio telescope facility."
"The issues raised [in 2020] represent a problem in international cooperation that might be applied to any technological advance (e.g., atomic weapons, quantum entanglement, etc.), rather than something exclusive to SETI or METI searches," Rummel added.
According to Wright, the ways people would react to that information are hard to predict, meaning that governments might mistakenly think sending in the army is a good idea.
"We argue to prevent that we need to make sure policymakers and government officials are aware of what SETI is, and understand the nature of any signal that gets detected early. There are some protocols in place that SETI practitioners know and generally try to follow, and these include widely sharing the details of any detected signal to make sure there are no misunderstandings...(MORE - missing details)
RELATED (physics dot org): How should the world's governments respond if we detect an alien civilization?
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PAPER ABSTRACT: We discuss the recent “realpolitik” analysis of Wisian & Traphagan (2020, W&T) of the potential geopolitical fallout of the success of SETI.
They conclude that “passive” SETI involves an underexplored yet significant risk that, in the event of a successful, passive detection of extraterrestrial technology, state-level actors could seek to gain an information monopoly on communications with an ETI. These attempts could lead to international conflict and potentially disastrous consequences. In response to this possibility, they argue that scientists and facilities engaged in SETI should preemptively engage in significant security protocols to forestall this risk.
We find several flaws in their analysis. While we do not dispute that a realpolitik response is possible, we uncover concerns with W&T’s presentation of the realpolitik paradigm, and we argue that sufficient reason is not given to justify treating this potential scenario as action-guiding over other candidate geopolitical responses. Furthermore, even if one assumes that a realpolitik response is the most relevant geopolitical response, we show that it is highly unlikely that a nation could successfully monopolize communication with ETI. Instead, the real threat that the authors identify is based on the perception by state actors that an information monopoly is likely. However, as we show, this perception is based on an overly narrow contact scenario.
Overall, we critique W&T’s argument and resulting recommendations on technical, political, and ethical grounds. Ultimately, we find that not only are W&T’s recommendations unlikely to work, they may also precipitate the very ills that they foresee. As an alternative, we recommend transparency and data sharing (which are consistent with currently accepted best practices), further development of post-detection protocols, and better education of policymakers in this space. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2209.15125
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/open-science...73d3169383
INTRO (Avi Loeb): If the government finds evidence for an extraterrestrial technological origin of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), the President will be the first to know about it. But such an event will be no different than the President being the first to know that the most abundant element in the Universe is hydrogen. It makes little sense for scientific knowledge of reality to adhere to national borders. Science should be done in an open and a transparent way, so that all of humanity will benefit from it. In the case of COVID-19, many lives would have been saved if the detailed scientific information about the outbreak in Wuhan, China, would have been immediately shared throughout the world.
Yesterday, I posted a paper with a quantitative scientific calculation, implying that the dark objects identified as “phantoms” by a team of Ukranian astronomers led by Boris Zhilayev, are likely artillery shells. The objects were characterized by the astronomers as having sizes of 3–12 meters and speeds of up to 15 kilometers per second at a distance of up to 10–12 kilometers. I showed that these characteristics would result in huge fireballs around the objects as a result of their unavoidable friction with air. The power of the fireball scales as the inferred distance to the fifth power. If the distances are overestimated by a factor of ten, the size and speed of the dark objects would match those of artillery shells... (MORE - details)
Finding aliens could trigger global conflict with dire consequences: study
https://www.newsweek.com/detecting-alien...er-1750248
EXCERPTS: "In their 2022 paper for Space Policy, Jason T, Wright et al. criticize the contention that was made by Wisian and Traphagan in their 2020 paper in Space Policy that suggested that there was a measurable risk of conflict being induced by one party merely detecting an alien signal in a passive SETI search – and then trying to maintain exclusive access to that signal," John Rummel, a former SETI program scientist and senior astrobiologist at NASA, told Newsweek.
[...] "In our paper, we argue that the specific scenario many people imagine, that the signal will contain "advanced" physics and engineering that we can use to build new technologies, perhaps even military technologies, is pretty unlikely, and that even if it happens, there's not much governments could do to get a monopoly on that information," the author of the space policy paper and professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the Penn State Extra-terrestrial Intelligence Center, Jason T. Wright, told Newsweek"A signal from space will be available to anyone on Earth with a satellite dish, so there's not much point in, for instance, sending the army in to take over a radio telescope facility."
"The issues raised [in 2020] represent a problem in international cooperation that might be applied to any technological advance (e.g., atomic weapons, quantum entanglement, etc.), rather than something exclusive to SETI or METI searches," Rummel added.
According to Wright, the ways people would react to that information are hard to predict, meaning that governments might mistakenly think sending in the army is a good idea.
"We argue to prevent that we need to make sure policymakers and government officials are aware of what SETI is, and understand the nature of any signal that gets detected early. There are some protocols in place that SETI practitioners know and generally try to follow, and these include widely sharing the details of any detected signal to make sure there are no misunderstandings...(MORE - missing details)
RELATED (physics dot org): How should the world's governments respond if we detect an alien civilization?
- - - - - - - - - -
PAPER ABSTRACT: We discuss the recent “realpolitik” analysis of Wisian & Traphagan (2020, W&T) of the potential geopolitical fallout of the success of SETI.
They conclude that “passive” SETI involves an underexplored yet significant risk that, in the event of a successful, passive detection of extraterrestrial technology, state-level actors could seek to gain an information monopoly on communications with an ETI. These attempts could lead to international conflict and potentially disastrous consequences. In response to this possibility, they argue that scientists and facilities engaged in SETI should preemptively engage in significant security protocols to forestall this risk.
We find several flaws in their analysis. While we do not dispute that a realpolitik response is possible, we uncover concerns with W&T’s presentation of the realpolitik paradigm, and we argue that sufficient reason is not given to justify treating this potential scenario as action-guiding over other candidate geopolitical responses. Furthermore, even if one assumes that a realpolitik response is the most relevant geopolitical response, we show that it is highly unlikely that a nation could successfully monopolize communication with ETI. Instead, the real threat that the authors identify is based on the perception by state actors that an information monopoly is likely. However, as we show, this perception is based on an overly narrow contact scenario.
Overall, we critique W&T’s argument and resulting recommendations on technical, political, and ethical grounds. Ultimately, we find that not only are W&T’s recommendations unlikely to work, they may also precipitate the very ills that they foresee. As an alternative, we recommend transparency and data sharing (which are consistent with currently accepted best practices), further development of post-detection protocols, and better education of policymakers in this space. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2209.15125
