Why ET Never Calls
Peter Ward conducts his research within The Environment Institute's Sprigg Geobiolgy Centre at the University of Adelaide.
Peter Ward has been active in Paleontology, Biology, and more recently, Astrobiology for more than 40 years. Since his Ph.D. in 1976, Ward has published more than 140 scientific papers dealing with paleontological, zoological, and astronomical topics.
He is an acknowledged world expert on mass extinctions and the role of extraterrestrial impacts on Earth. Ward was the Principal Investigator of the University of Washington node of the NASA Astrobiology Institute from 2001-2006, and in that capacity led a team of over 40 scientists and students. His career was profiled by the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter William Dietrich in The Seattle Times article "Prophet, Populist, Poet of Science."
Peter has written a memoir of his research on the Nautilus for Nautilus magazine's "Ingenious" feature entitled "Nautilus and me. My wonderful, dangerous life with the amazing Nautilus."
His books include the best-selling "Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe" (co-author Donald Brownlee, 2000), "Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future" (2007), and "The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive?" (2009).
Question: What do you estimate are the chances that we are the only intelligent life in the universe?
Peter Ward: I bet that’s near zero. How couldn't there be? The numbers are out there. How could there not be lots of them out there? But what is the possibility that there are so few that the distances involved make it so, not only SETI could find anybody else. I mean, SETI, we already know from the SETI work to date that there’s nobody near us. This blasting out the sort of messages that the movie “Contact” is suggesting. I mean, that’s not happening. SETI itself agrees that, gee if we don’t find anybody in the next 30-40 years, there could be a pretty good chance there’s nobody close enough to us that we would ever be able to either talk to them, let alone get out there and see them.
Question: Do you predict that humans will ever make contact with life elsewhere?
Peter Ward: I suspect the chances are that we will not, at least in the next few centuries. Perhaps our technology will get to the point that we could pinpoint, not just the immediate area, which is all that we’re good for now, and spotlight the entire galaxy. Or perhaps we’ll get good enough that we can really start looking at other galaxies. I think then we’ll start picking up evidence that there’s other life out there, but if you’re talking about places hundreds of thousands of light years away, there’s no conversation you’ll want to have waiting 100,000 years to get your response. And then it comes back to you and says, “Message garbled, please repeat.”
Question: Could the “Fermi paradox” simply stem from the difficulty of communication across vast distances?
Peter Ward: Well, it could be an aspect of communication, but it also could be just another indication that Medea is correct. The life gets going on a planet and then kills itself off through colossal blunders. A friend of mine said, I should call it the Medea Hypothesis, but evolution is more like Mr. Bean; Mr. Bean blundering into one situation after another. Let’s hey, let’s make oxygen, that’ll be cool; and then poisoning almost every bit of life around it. Or, hey let’s make photosynthesis; and then reducing carbon dioxide so much that we go into a snowball earth. Or, hey, let’s make forests; and then reducing CO2 even further and producing a gigantic, almost global ice age in the carboniferous. Let’s do this, says Mr. Bean.
Recorded on January 11, 2010
Interviewed by Austin Allen
Our inability to detect other life in the universe may stem from interstellar communication problems. Then again, it may be because Earth evolution is "like Mr. Bean."
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‘Designer baby’ book trilogy explores the moral dilemmas humans may soon create
How would the ability to genetically customize children change society? Sci-fi author Eugene Clark explores the future on our horizon in Volume I of the "Genetic Pressure" series.
- A new sci-fi book series called "Genetic Pressure" explores the scientific and moral implications of a world with a burgeoning designer baby industry.
- It's currently illegal to implant genetically edited human embryos in most nations, but designer babies may someday become widespread.
- While gene-editing technology could help humans eliminate genetic diseases, some in the scientific community fear it may also usher in a new era of eugenics.
Tribalism and discrimination
<p>One question the "Genetic Pressure" series explores: What would tribalism and discrimination look like in a world with designer babies? As designer babies grow up, they could be noticeably different from other people, potentially being smarter, more attractive and healthier. This could breed resentment between the groups—as it does in the series.</p><p>"[Designer babies] slowly find that 'everyone else,' and even their own parents, becomes less and less tolerable," author Eugene Clark told Big Think. "Meanwhile, everyone else slowly feels threatened by the designer babies."</p><p>For example, one character in the series who was born a designer baby faces discrimination and harassment from "normal people"—they call her "soulless" and say she was "made in a factory," a "consumer product." </p><p>Would such divisions emerge in the real world? The answer may depend on who's able to afford designer baby services. If it's only the ultra-wealthy, then it's easy to imagine how being a designer baby could be seen by society as a kind of hyper-privilege, which designer babies would have to reckon with. </p><p>Even if people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can someday afford designer babies, people born designer babies may struggle with tough existential questions: Can they ever take full credit for things they achieve, or were they born with an unfair advantage? To what extent should they spend their lives helping the less fortunate? </p>Sexuality dilemmas
<p>Sexuality presents another set of thorny questions. If a designer baby industry someday allows people to optimize humans for attractiveness, designer babies could grow up to find themselves surrounded by ultra-attractive people. That may not sound like a big problem.</p><p>But consider that, if designer babies someday become the standard way to have children, there'd necessarily be a years-long gap in which only some people are having designer babies. Meanwhile, the rest of society would be having children the old-fashioned way. So, in terms of attractiveness, society could see increasingly apparent disparities in physical appearances between the two groups. "Normal people" could begin to seem increasingly ugly.</p><p>But ultra-attractive people who were born designer babies could face problems, too. One could be the loss of body image. </p><p>When designer babies grow up in the "Genetic Pressure" series, men look like all the other men, and women look like all the other women. This homogeneity of physical appearance occurs because parents of designer babies start following trends, all choosing similar traits for their children: tall, athletic build, olive skin, etc. </p><p>Sure, facial traits remain relatively unique, but everyone's more or less equally attractive. And this causes strange changes to sexual preferences.</p><p>"In a society of sexual equals, they start looking for other differentiators," he said, noting that violet-colored eyes become a rare trait that genetically engineered humans find especially attractive in the series.</p><p>But what about sexual relationships between genetically engineered humans and "normal" people? In the "Genetic Pressure" series, many "normal" people want to have kids with (or at least have sex with) genetically engineered humans. But a minority of engineered humans oppose breeding with "normal" people, and this leads to an ideology that considers engineered humans to be racially supreme. </p>Regulating designer babies
<p>On a policy level, there are many open questions about how governments might legislate a world with designer babies. But it's not totally new territory, considering the West's dark history of eugenics experiments.</p><p>In the 20th century, the U.S. conducted multiple eugenics programs, including immigration restrictions based on genetic inferiority and forced sterilizations. In 1927, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that forcibly sterilizing the mentally handicapped didn't violate the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "… three generations of imbeciles are enough." </p><p>After the Holocaust, eugenics programs became increasingly taboo and regulated in the U.S. (though some states continued forced sterilizations <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/" target="_blank">into the 1970s</a>). In recent years, some policymakers and scientists have expressed concerns about how gene-editing technologies could reanimate the eugenics nightmares of the 20th century. </p><p>Currently, the U.S. doesn't explicitly ban human germline genetic editing on the federal level, but a combination of laws effectively render it <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">illegal to implant a genetically modified embryo</a>. Part of the reason is that scientists still aren't sure of the unintended consequences of new gene-editing technologies. </p><p>But there are also concerns that these technologies could usher in a new era of eugenics. After all, the function of a designer baby industry, like the one in the "Genetic Pressure" series, wouldn't necessarily be limited to eliminating genetic diseases; it could also work to increase the occurrence of "desirable" traits. </p><p>If the industry did that, it'd effectively signal that the <em>opposites of those traits are undesirable. </em>As the International Bioethics Committee <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>, this would "jeopardize the inherent and therefore equal dignity of all human beings and renew eugenics, disguised as the fulfillment of the wish for a better, improved life."</p><p><em>"Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps"</em><em> by Eugene Clark is <a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" target="_blank">available now.</a></em></p>A psychiatric diagnosis can be more than an unkind ‘label’
A popular and longstanding wave of thought in psychology and psychotherapy is that diagnosis is not relevant for practitioners in those fields.
Spinal cord injury breakthrough makes paralyzed mice walk again
Scientists regenerate damaged spinal cord nerve fibers with designer protein, helping paralyzed mice walk again.
- Researchers from Germany use a designer protein to treat spinal cord damage in mice.
- The procedure employs gene therapy to regenerate damaged nerve fibers that carry signals to and from the brain.
- The scientists aim to eventually apply the technique to humans.
What is a spinal cord injury?
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="88b8d4e44e46b7d5fe49d1f3bca56078"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dKtBC2Sg_Bg?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>Archaeologists identify contents of ancient Mayan drug containers
Scientists use new methods to discover what's inside drug containers used by ancient Mayan people.
- Archaeologists used new methods to identify contents of Mayan drug containers.
- They were able to discover a non-tobacco plant that was mixed in by the smoking Mayans.
- The approach promises to open up new frontiers in the knowledge of substances ancient people consumed.
PARME staff archaeologists excavating a burial site at the Tamanache site, Mérida, Yucatan.
Credit: WSU
Ten things you may not know about anxiety
Cold hands and feet? Maybe it's your anxiety.
- When we feel anxious, the brain's fight or flight instinct kicks in, and the blood flow is redirected from your extremities towards the torso and vital organs.
- According to the CDC, 7.1% of children between the ages of 3-17 (approximately 4.4 million) have an anxiety diagnosis.
- Anxiety disorders will impact 31% of Americans at some point in their lives.
Here's what you may not know about anxiety...
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0ed8bd7fb8626babd10933f7ce630f96"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w4jiLIzTAa0?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p><strong>There's a fine line between stress and anxiety - and many people don't know what the difference is.</strong></p><p>Both stress and anxiety are <a href="https://www.apa.org/topics/stress-anxiety-difference" target="_blank">emotional responses</a>, but stress is typically caused by an external trigger and can be short-term (a looming deadline at work, for example). People under stress experience mental and physical symptoms such as irritability, anger, fatigue, muscle pain, digestive troubles, insomnia, and headache. </p><p>Anxiety, on the other hand, is defined as a persistent, excessive worry. Even in the absence of the thing that triggered it, anxiety lingers. It can lead to a nearly identical set of symptoms, which is why they are often confused. Feelings of anxiety then differ from an anxiety disorder - an anxiety disorder means your anxiety typically persists for months and negatively impacts your daily functioning. </p><p><strong>There are five major types of anxiety disorders:</strong></p><ol><li>Generalized anxiety (GAD) is characterized by chronic anxiety, exaggerated worry, and tension, even when there is little or nothing to provoke it. </li><li>Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts (or obsessions) and/or repetitive behaviors (compulsions). </li><li>Panic disorder is characterized by unexpected and repeated episodes of intense fear accompanied by physical symptoms such as chest pain, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, and/or abdominal distress. </li><li>Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is also an anxiety disorder, and it can develop after exposure to a terrifying event in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include things like personal assaults, natural and/or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat. </li><li>Social Anxiety Disorder (also known as 'social phobia') is characterized by overwhelming anxiety and excessive self-consciousness in everyday social situations. </li></ol><p><strong>Anxiety disorders can impact 31 percent of Americans at some point in their life. </strong></p><p>According to the <a href="https://www.apa.org/topics/stress-anxiety-difference" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">American Psychological Association</a>, 19 percent of Americans over the age of 18 have had an anxiety disorder in the past year and 31 percent of Americans will experience an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. </p><p><strong>Anxiety may be genetic. </strong></p><p><a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/is-anxiety-genetic#:~:text=Most%20researchers%20conclude%20that%20anxiety,and%20more%20research%20is%20needed." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">According to HealthLine</a>, anxiety may be genetic but can also be influenced by environmental factors. It's possible to have anxiety without it running in your family, however, there is speculated to be some genetic component that makes anxiety more prevalent in some individuals. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5573560/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Research</a> has indicated some link between genetics and anxiety, though much more research is required in this area. </p><p><strong>Anxiety often begins in childhood. </strong></p><p><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/data.html#:~:text=For%20children%20aged%203%2D17,also%20have%20depression%20(32.3%25).&text=For%20children%20aged%203%2D17%20years%20with%20behavior%20problems%2C%20more,also%20have%20depression%20(20.3%25)." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">According to the CDC</a>, 7.1 percent of children between the ages of 3-17 (approximately 4.4 million) have an anxiety diagnosis. Six in ten children (59.3 percent) between the ages of 3-17 have received anxiety therapy or treatment. </p><p><strong>Having an anxiety disorder can increase your risk of other physical health complications. </strong></p><p>According to research from <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/topics/anxiety" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Harvard Medical School</a>, anxiety has been indicated in several chronic physical illnesses, including heart disease, chronic respiratory disorders, gastrointestinal conditions such as IBS, and more. </p><p><strong>Cold hands and feet? Anxiety may be the reason. </strong></p><p>If you're someone who constantly struggles with having cold hands or feet, it could be a result of your anxiety. When we feel anxious, the brain's <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response#:~:text=The%20autonomic%20nervous%20system%20has,can%20respond%20to%20perceived%20dangers." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">fight or flight instinct</a> kicks in, and the blood flow is redirected from your extremities towards the torso and vital organs. </p><p><strong>Anxiety can be related to anger issues and memory loss. </strong></p><p>A lesser-known side effect of anxiety is <a href="https://discoverymood.com/blog/anxiety-and-anger/#:~:text=Anxiety%20is%20often%20connected%20with,which%20can%20lead%20to%20anger." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">anger</a>. When you feel powerless over a situation, expressing anger is a natural way to feel as though you have some kind of control. With chronic sufferers of anxiety, depression is the most common issue to develop, but anger is close behind. As <a href="https://discoverymood.com/blog/anxiety-and-anger/#:~:text=Anxiety%20is%20often%20connected%20with,which%20can%20lead%20to%20anger." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Discovery Mood</a> explains, "anxiety is often connected with overstimulation from a stressful environment or threat, combined with the perceived inability to deal with that threat. In contrast, anger is often tied to frustration. When anxiety is left unacknowledged or unexpressed, it can turn into frustration which then easily leads to anger." </p><p><strong>Anxiety can also cause memory problems. </strong></p><p>According to <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alzheimers-disease/in-depth/memory-loss/art-20046326#:~:text=Stress%2C%20anxiety%20or%20depression%20can,loss%20by%20interacting%20with%20medications." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mayo Clinic</a>, stress, anxiety, or depression can often cause forgetfulness, confusion, and difficulty concentrating. <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/anxiety-and-memory-1393133" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">VeryWellMind</a> explains further, "memories can be affected when you are under periods of stress or experience some sort of disturbance in mood. Having a significant anxiety disorder like GAD can create some of these problems routinely, leaving you operating below your normal level of memory functioning." </p><p><strong>Anxiety can even impact your sense of smell. </strong></p><p>People who struggle with anxiety may be more likely to label natural smells as bad smells, according to research published in the <a href="https://www.jneurosci.org/content/33/39/15324" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Journal of Neuroscience</a>. When processing smells, typically it's only the olfactory system that is activated. However, in people with high anxiety levels, the emotional system can become intertwined with the olfactory system, which can slightly alter our perception of smells.</p>