How Alien Would Aliens Be?

How alien would aliens be? Would they look like us or perhaps more like an octopus? How would they communicate? Could we even hear their voices, assuming they have them? Like us, aliens would be constrained by the physical world. Understanding how those physical constraints apply both to us and to aliens is the theme of this book. The constraints imply that they will not be all that different from us, perhaps half to twice as big as we are. They will depend on vision and hearing as we do and they will live on a planet much like ours. But where will they be? Do they even exist? The odds are not good. We may be the only intelligent life in the universe.

HOW ALIEN WOULD ALIENS BE?

by

John A. Cramer

Copyright 2011 by John A. Cramer

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

CHAPTER 1: INTELLIGENT ALIENS

WHAT IS INTELLIGENT LIFE LIKE?

Language

Manipulating the Environment

Curiosity

Human Distinctives

Travel as Manipulation

Culture and Civilization

SUMMARY

CHAPTER 2: DO THEY EXIST?

ALIENS HISTORICALLY POPULAR

THE FUTILITY OF FORTUITOUS RANDOM PROCESSES

PANSPERMIA

SELF-ORGANIZATION

A QUestion of Logic

BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENCE

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

SUMMARY

CHAPTER 3: WHERE WILL THEY BE? AROUND A GOOD STAR.

LIFE MUST BE LIQUID BASED

LIFE NEEDS WATER

CARBON, NOT SILICON

ON A GOOD PLANET AROUND A GOOD STAR

SUMMARY

CHAPTER 4: WHERE WILL THEY BE? ON A GOOD PLANET.

A PLANET FOR INTELLIGENT LIFE

A FAMILY OF PLANETS

A GOOD MOON

PLANETARY STRUCTURE

A FINELY BALANCED PLANET

THE ODDS ON INTELLIGENT LIFE

SUMMARY

CHAPTER 5: ON UFO'S AND SETI

UFO'S

PALEOVISITS

THE BLUE RIBBON CASES

THE CASE AGAINST UFO'S

WHERE ARE THEY?

SETI

SUMMARY

CHAPTER 6: AN ALIEN'S PLANET: A LOT LIKE HOME

GRAVITY

THE YEAR

THE SEASONS

THE SEA AND THE DRY LAND

THE ATMOSPHERE

SUMMARY

CHAPTER 7: AN ALIEN'S PLANET: A BLUE PLANET.

A BLUE PLANET

TIDES

ECLIPSES

WEATHER

SUMMARY

CHAPTER 8: WHAT WOULD THEY BE LIKE? BODIES AND STRUCTURE

BRAINS AND HEADS

HOW BIG WOULD THEY BE?

LAND, NOT SEA

BODY STRUCTURE

LIFE EXPECTANCY AND BODY SIZE

SUMMARY

CHAPTER 9: WHAT WOULD THEY BE LIKE? SENSES AND SYSTEMS.

SENSORY EQUIPMENT

Eyes

Ears

Nose

Other Senses

BODY SYSTEMS

SUMMARY

CHAPTER 10: COMMUNICATIONS

LIGHT VERSUS SOUND

TELEPATHY

VOICES AND LANGUAGE

NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATIONS

ELECTROMAGNETIC SIGNALING

WRITING AND PRINT

SUMMARY

CHAPTER 11: CULTURE

ART AND MUSIC

What is Music?

Pitch

Woodwinds

Brass

Strings

Percussions

Synthesizers

PLAY AND SPORTS

Work into Sports

Round Ball Games

TRANSPORTATION

SHELTERS

SUMMARY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Endnotes

About the Author

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Preface to First Edition

Some readers are going to wonder why the first chapters of a short book on aliens are spent arguing that aliens do not exist while the later chapters develop the seemingly contradictory theme of what aliens might be like. Is the writer schizophrenic? Mr. Hyde in the beginning and Dr. Jekyl at the end?

However unlikely it may seem, there is a rational explanation. The real theme of the book is not aliens but ourselves. As a physicist and physics teacher, I am greatly interested in the ways physical reality constrains us. Most of us have little sense of just how profoundly our bodies, interests, and abilities are shaped by the physical requirements of life and of the world around us. The book could be subtitled, How the Physical World Constrains Us.

Aliens would be just as constrained as we are by the physical world. Thinking about how aliens are constrained is the same as thinking about how we are constrained. But, from a teacher’s perspective, aliens are a better choice. Our prejudices get in the way of even admitting the existence of our physical chains but we can, seemingly, believe any impossible thing about aliens. Thus, aliens are an almost perfect vehicle for my real subject. And, aliens are fun to contemplate; they can be even more interesting as a mirror by which to see ourselves in a new light.

Now, let me explain the seeming schizophrenia of the book. If you think of it as a book about aliens, it is indeed odd to start out by arguing that aliens do not exist and then, shifting gears, considering what they will be like. Now, stop thinking about it as a book on aliens and think of it as a book about the physical constraints on life. I am arguing: first, the physical constraints on intelligent life are so severe that it is surprising any intelligent life exists and, second, given that at least one form of intelligent life exists, it cannot escape the impact of further constraints that will shape body forms and structures as well as aspects of behavior and culture. As a book about aliens, it has to change gears in the middle. But, as a book about physical constraints on life, the topics flow together without a change in emphasis or direction.

Then is it honestly a book about aliens? Yes. Assuming the universe is pretty much the same everywhere, the constraints on us must apply to aliens and vice versa. The book is about both aliens and us. After all, if there is other intelligent life in the universe, to them we are aliens.

I must warn readers that topics in the book are developed sequentially. There is a logical order to the argument. Hence, skipping the early chapters may lead to misunderstandings. For example, you will not understand why intelligent aliens would be about half to twice our size (Chapter 8), without having read the discussion of what an alien’s home planet would be like (Chapter 6). That discussion, in turn, hinges on the question of what constitutes a good planet for intelligent life (Chapter 4). SETI enthusiasts who turn immediately to the discussion of SETI (Chapter 5) will have no idea where my views are coming from. Therefore, skippers and skimmers are advised to read with caution.

* * * ~ ~ ~ * * *

Preface to the Second Edition

This second edition of How Alien Would Aliens Be? is mostly the result of changes and improvements in the science of extrasolar planets. Also, it allows me the chance to improve arguments at certain points, make wording more felicitous in places and correct typographical errors here and there.

I have expanded, and I hope thereby clarified, the argument of Chapter 2 on the state of our knowledge about how life began on Earth. The difficulties here are often waved aside but they are crucial to any attempt, such as I make here, to judge the likelihood of life and hence intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. If we have no clear idea of how life in fact arose here, then we likewise can have none about how it might have arisen elsewhere. There are many speculative suggestions of how life might have arisen here but it is important to recognize that the current lack of consensus is solid evidence that we do not yet have an answer to the question. That recognition then forces us to realize that we cannot say much about life arising elsewhere.

A great deal of effort has recently been expended on questions of planet formation and of life zones around planets and I have tried to incorporate such new information as relevant.

* * * ~ ~ ~ * * *

Chapter 1: Intelligent Aliens

Cities on football field wide branches of miles high trees. Ring worlds of primordial dust circling binary stars. Kilometers long, integral sign shaped trees, their end tufts teeming with life, whirling slowly in a solar wind. Dying worlds revolving around binary stars. Exotic life forms of nuclear matter living rapid lives on neutron stars. Intelligent beings evolved from cattle-like creatures or from tiger-like life forms. This is the stuff of science fiction. Wonderful to imagine and marvelously entertaining, but all fiction. The worlds of real aliens must be far more like our own and aliens must be far more like us than science fiction writers imagine.

Science fiction make-believe is delightful. If it oversteps the bounds of credibility, who cares? A different and perhaps more substantial delight can be found in testing the boundaries and limitations of life. For all the differences that might be, some things must not change. If the denizens of another planet enjoy different music with different harmonies and different musical intervals, their instruments must nevertheless look like ours. Not exactly, to be sure, but enough so we could distinguish a string instrument from a percussion or a brass from an oboe.

Indeed, the very forms of life are more restricted than is commonly recognized. So too are the conditions for the existence of life. There is really no reason to suppose living creatures made of nuclear matter or waves in stellar matter or gas are possible. Gases, whether in stars, on planets, or in outer space, are too tenuous to support life. Chemical reaction rates there are too slow and conditions too chaotic. Nuclear matter is too simple to support life for life needs chemistry and nuclear matter has no chemistry. Life in double or multiple star systems would be nasty, brutish, and short with special emphasis on the latter. Life of any real intelligence will be confined to planets like our own. That means that intelligent life in this universe, if we ever find more, will be surprisingly like us.

What is Intelligent Life Like?

If we are going to think about intelligent alien life, we had better start by defining intelligent life generally. Intelligence is hard enough to recognize on Earth without the additional burdens an alien's strangeness would impose. If we do not sort out from the beginning what we are looking for, we will merely end up confused. It would be foolish to claim, for example, that intelligent aliens must be like us if intelligent life by definition means that all examples of it must be like us. If only to avoid circular reasoning, we ought to begin by asking what the criteria for identifying intelligent life must be. How will we know them when we see them?

Since, out of all the animals that live or have lived on Earth, few (only one?) are or have been intelligent, intelligent aliens will likewise surely be minority members of a vast array of species. In fact, based on our own experience, intelligent species are very rare. Given that a place has life, the poor odds of intelligent life are apparently somewhere in the vicinity of one out of a billion, perhaps much less. It is conceivable (as science fiction writers have demonstrated by conceiving it) that an alien planet may have many species but no intelligent life. Our own planet has been exactly such a place for most of its history. We might find ourselves confronted with an almost overwhelming task, looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. If we aren't sure what we are looking for, if we do not have solid criteria, the project will be a complete waste of time.

The problem of identifying intelligent beings is an old one to anthropologists. They need to determine the intelligence of species known only from usually very incomplete sets of bones and occasional cultural remains, primarily stone tools, associated with the bones. What they have done in response is instructive.

Early hopes that brain volume would be simply related to intelligence have proven groundless; nor have combinations of brain size and bipedal stance been definitive. Since bipedalism freed the hands for tool carrying, tool making has been considered as another possible criterion. But, apes and other animals engage in very simple tool making and using. Tool use appears in unlikely places. Vultures are not considered paragons of wit and yet at least two species of vulture are known to break large eggs by throwing stones at them with their beaks. Thus, tool using does not seem to be a sound criterion of high intelligence. Nonetheless, the tool making interest has led to careful study of the bones and muscles of the hand. Sadly, none of this seems likely to aid us. Aliens may not even have hands, let alone thumbs!

If you have studied comparative anatomy, you may recall that, the shape of the hyoid bone is unique in humans. Lying in the throat at the base of the tongue, this U-shaped bone is essential to speech. Probably the different shape of this bone in apes means they will never speak. We might hope, naively, that this little bone would be the key to the anthropological problem. Perhaps only hominids with proper hyoid bones were intelligent. Alas, life is not so simple! Hyoid bones are fragile. They are rarely recovered although one lucky find suggests that Neanderthals were as verbal as modern humans.

Another trace of language left in bone has been used by Richard Leakey who tried to estimate the size of the language processing part of the brain from casts of the interior brain casing. Human brains differ from all others in at least three respects possibly related to language use. The left cerebral cortex is especially active in human speech whereas the brain stem and limbic system control animal communications. The right-left lateralization of the human brain is exceptional and appears to be related to language use.Finally, only human brains have the so-called Broca’s area of the left temporal lobe. The earliest fossil trace of Broca’s area appears in a two million-year-old specimen of Homo habilis. All these differences may be detected in interior brain casts. However, not all anthropologists concede that language ability is related in any direct way to gross brain anatomy. Of the three features, agreement is perhaps strongest about Broca’s area. It is generally agreed that this evidence implies that Homo habilis was probably the first true language user.

The unique extent of human brain lateralization seems also to imply that language users are distinctly right-handed or left-handed. Now, handedness has traceable effects on tool making. A right-handed tool maker holds the core (prospective tool) with the left hand, chips with another tool held in the right hand, them rotates the core clockwise as seen from above and chips again. The next chip will thus have a flake scar on the left side. This process has been shown to produce chips that are 57% left flake scarred for a right-handed chipper. A study of chips from numerous sites, some as old as about 1.9 million years, turns up this 57-43% pattern consistently.

Language

In spite of questions as to how fossil traces can lead to legitimate conclusions, speech as a criterion of intelligence is surely a sound idea. Despite prodigious efforts with dolphins and great apes, only humans speak. The fascinating results with chimpanzees, particularly the bonobos, have pushed the use of sign language to the forefront of this area. As delightful and fascinating as the results have been, there is no indication that any other animal on Earth has the explosive capacity for language acquisition that is so astonishingly evident in human children beginning at around the age of eighteen months. Yes, chimpanzees have some sort of a language capacity. Whatever its degree (the situation is hotly debated), it is at best a pale reflection of human abilities.

Reflection is, in fact, a most appropriate word here because humans have taught the chimps. Hence, sign language use in chimps is obviously different from language use by humans. We know that chimps never used sign language until we taught them the limited amount they have learned. Historically they had at least as much time to devise language as we humans did. That they did not, we must assume, is due to an underlying, substantial difference in intelligence

In contrast to chimps, as far as we know, no one taught humans to speak. True, our nervous systems are evidently hard-wired for language learning in a way no other animal can even approach. But human babies who are not spoken to eventually lose the ability to acquire language. The disastrous 18th-century experiment of Frederick the Great comes to mind. Convinced that Hebrew was the natural tongue of the human race, he collected a large number of babies in a nursery where their physical needs were met but they never heard human speech. Frederick expected they would all grow up speaking Hebrew! To the contrary, these unfortunate infants all died.

Similar but less fatal examples show the long-term devastation on language acquisition wrought by depriving infants of the sound of human speech. Demonstrably, we humans have a predilection for language and speech that cannot be realized unless children are exposed to speech. But how this all got started is not easily explained. Babies born with a modest language capacity presumably would have failed to thrive if raised by parents with no ability to speak. Certainly they would not have learned to speak. How language got even so much as a toehold among us is a lovely little mystery.

Language also correlates with laughter. In fact, some thinkers have insisted that the ability to laugh defines intelligence. The cute chimps we see laughing in Disney movies or on television are not laughing but merely mugging on command for the benefit of the camera. In fact, an open mouth is a sign of aggression in the animal world. I do not know of any psychological studies of laughter but, from personal experience, it seems obvious that laughter usually arises from a delight in surprise. Both delight and surprise would seem to require intelligence. But laughter is, nevertheless, a physiological response. Aliens may not have a similar physiology. Hence, we had better not count on laughter as a sign of intelligence.

A problem with language as a criterion for intelligence is that it may be difficult to recognize. I will elaborate on this problem in the chapter on communications. For now, I will simply advance a few claims that will be supported later on. Sign language is too limited in the range of ideas it can express to function as a good criterion of intelligence. The language of intelligent beings would need to be based on sound signals with light signals a poor second choice.

Unfortunately, our own sense organs survey a limited range of sound and light frequencies. We may overlook or fail to recognize communications outside that range. After all, we have to assume elephants have been communicating by low frequency sound for millions of years but humans have only very recently recognized the fact because we do not hear such sounds ourselves. The use of ultrasound by bats is also a recent discovery. Again, this fact went long unrecognized because our sensory equipment does not respond to that range of sound. Hence, we ought not put all our eggs in one basket. Some equivalent of human speech is one of the criteria we will use to identify intelligence but it should not be the only one.

Manipulating the Environment

Highly developed language use apparently correlates strongly with a level of manipulation of the environment considerably greater than any minor nest building or bed making of other animals. Language, after all, is a kind of manipulation or juggling of symbols and sounds. That is, language use and manipulation of the environment may just be opposite sides of the coin of high intelligence. If so, the two must always occur together. Intelligent aliens would do both.

Early hominids manipulated their environment far more than we may credit. If their stone or bone implements seem primitive, try making some. As anthropologists who have experimented with these primitive techniques attest, considerable forethought in selecting and preparing materials is required.⁷ Additionally, experience and high manual dexterity are needed in the making of such tools and the maker must at all times monitor and control the process, a highly purposive behavior.

Tool making was not the only environmental manipulation practiced by early hominids. Fire control and use may have been associated with hominids as far back as Homo erectus. The