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Monday, September 11, 2017
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Essay compilation on alien life asks: where is everybody? By Lucas Sczygelski THE DAILY CARDINAL
Dr. David Bowman, orbiting Jupiter, is preparing to leave his spaceship. By this point in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the onboard computer, HAL 9000, has murdered his fellow astronauts with the kind of unsmiling single-mindedness we’ve come to expect of artificial intelligence. Bowman slips his sweating forehead into the dome of a helmet and switches the wretched computer off, then opens the ship’s bay door to meet an entirely different category of intelligence on the other side. Contentedly orbiting Jupiter is the alien Monolith, with its perfectly straight surfaces, its inert intelligence boiling under glassy black panels. No, this is not the kind of extraterrestrial life our imaginations yearn for. Where are the little green men, we ask, with their tentacles and their eyes, with their flying saucers and their warp drives? But according to a new collection of essays written by some of the world’s preeminent cosmologists, astrophysicists and geneticists, assembled and edited by Jim Al-Khalili, Clarke and Kubrick’s 1968 science-fiction film might be more correct than any of our popular imaginings; the gleaming monolith, a foreign and nonbiological intelligence, might be the best we can hope for. The authors of “Aliens: The World’s Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterrestrial Life” ask the question “Where is everybody?” and come back with predictably scattershot answers. It’s a question humanity has tried answering before. In 1870, the British astronomer Richard Proctor looked up at Venus, with its thick atmosphere, and nodded. Yes, he said, it’s definitely got life: Probably at the poles. We used to believe there was life on Mars too, huddled around the imaginary canali so confidently etched onto Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli’s 1877 map of Mars. Well, we know how both
of those assumptions turned out. Astro-geniuses of one day are recast as drooling schizophrenics in the next, firmly planted in pitiable ignorance. There’s a Bob Dylan line about this kind of thing; “Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial.” Well, if you visit a science museum, you’ll see the guilty verdicts as read: Aristotle, Ptolemy, Proctor, Schiaparelli. All wrong in their own way, all laughed at by the next whiz kid. As we learn more about the universe, it pushes back, getting stranger, sneering at more PhDs. “This is the position of the universe with regard to human life,” Martin Amis writes in his novel, “The Information.” “The history of increasing Humiliation, dear sirs, proceeds apace.” So what are the scientists doing now to answer the question? The SETI program is still chugging away, scanning the skies for the faint blip of a radio wave, a surefire sign of intelligent life. We haven’t heard anything yet. According to Matthew Cobb, an evolutionary zoologist, this is because there are no alien civilizations. We’re truly alone—or we’re only accompanied by unintelligent prokaryotes, quietly stinking up some far-away rock. “We can be beguiled by our unique abilities, and indeed by the very fact of our existence, into imagining that our evolution was the expression of evolutionary trends toward increased intelligence, and that given the immensity of space, these tendencies will be repeated on other worlds,” Cobb writes. “None of this is true. There is no direction to evolution … Even if we accept that abiogenesis [the creation of living matter from non-living components] is a relatively trivial event, that would almost certainly mean that we live in a Universe of slime, populated at best by unicellular biofilms aggregating on the surfaces of exoplanets.” The other possibility, insists cosmologist Martin Rees, is that
PHOTO COURTESY OF CREATIVE COMMONS
Research suggests alien life doesn’t look the way we might think.
other intelligent life has already evolved beyond its organic sheathing into a non-biological intelligence that we couldn’t comprehend if we tried, like the Monolith in “2001.” How would we communicate with that? What would it think about softbodied things like us? “Life on a planet around a star older than the Sun could have had a head start of a billion years or more … It may be only one or two more centuries before humans are overtaken or transcended by inorganic intelligence, which will then persist, continuing to evolve, for billions of years,” Rees writes. “This suggests that if we were to detect ET, it would be far more likely to be inorganic: we would be most unlikely to ‘catch’ alien intelligence in the brief sliver of time when it was still in organic form.” Both outcomes are rather distressing. After hearing this, what are we supposed to do with science-fiction novels, movies and comics? Science-fiction aliens, with their damp grey skin and their slanting nostrils, with their fizzing intellects and their mindbending spaceships, just won’t elicit the same shuddering gasps of “what if ?” anymore. Books by Asimov or Card, Herbert or Wells will be met with a condescending smirk as the wised-up 21st century reader tosses the yellowed paperback aside for more realistic fare. Surely we would have heard from the likes of them by now, s/he’ll say. With a soft thud, the earnest science-fiction writers join the aforementioned astronomers in defeat. A few of the book’s essayists hold out hope. Here’s the astrophysicist Sara Seager: “I must confess that I allow myself to speculate and daydream, because I am part of the first generation who has it within our reach to find signs of microbial life.” With a technique she helped develop, scientists plan to use highpowered telescopes to detect the biosignatures of exoplanets— compounds like Earth’s oxygen, which normally reacts with other compounds, but makes up 20 percent of our planet’s atmosphere because of continuous photosynthesis. Within our lifetime, the data will start rolling in. Louisa Preston even remains optimistic about life on moons in our own solar system. Sure, a 62-mile-thick sheet of ice covers Europa, and liquid bodies of methane and ethane slosh on Titan’s frigid surface—but you never know. For now, we’ll just have to speculate. Martin Amis once again puts it best, this time from his novel, “The Pregnant Widow”: “We don’t understand the stars, we don’t understand the galaxy. The night is more intelligent than we are—many Einsteins more intelligent.” Amis’ character, planted on a park bench, proceeds to “[sit] on, under the intelligence of the night.” If the scientists assembled in “Aliens” are to be trusted, then that’s all we can do—sit down, look up at the stars and revel in how little we know.
JON YOON/THE DAILY CARDINAL
Foster the People played in Madison for the first time on Saturday.
Foster the People set the bar high for concerts this year By Logan Rude THE DAILY CARDINAL
As the first major concert of the semester, Foster the People’s sold-out show at the Orpheum was a triumphant success. Breaking into the mainstream with their hit single, “Pumped Up Kicks,” Foster the People have been a mainstay in alt-rock since 2011. However, Saturday marked the band’s very first appearance in Madison. Fans came out in droves to see their musical darlings. With a line that stretched halfway down the 100 Block of Johnson Street, it became abundantly clear that the fans would convey their excitement shown in line to a raucous display of affection during the show. As guests poured in, the crowd began to move like the ocean— ebbing and flowing toward and away from the stage as wave after wave of eager fans fought for the best spots available. Opening for the headliners were California-based indie pop band Palm Springsteen. Combining heavy reverb and synths with a pop-oriented sound, Palm Springsteen were fantastic openers for Foster the People. Their brief set was just enough to leave audience members craving more music before the headliners arrived. Not only did their performance get the crowd excited, but the band clearly attracted a handful of new fans with their contagious sound. After a soundcheck that lasted nearly an hour, Foster the People finally emerged into the smoke-filled theater. Kicking off the show with a series of tracks from their new record, Sacred Hearts Club, the theater was enveloped in bass so heavy my organs felt like they might burst. A slight departure from the group’s previous work, songs from Sacred Hearts Club were clearly influenced by hip-hop and EDM production. Despite this new aesthetic for the band, they were still able to hold on to what made their previous albums so enjoyable. A dizzying light show synced to the pace of the beat accompanied every song, creating visuals that took the performance to a new level. Despite the Orpheum’s small size, it seemed as though Foster
the People were performing for an audience of thousands. Following a succession of tracks from Torches and Sacred Hearts Club , the band finally broke into tracks from their sophomore album, Supermodel. The psychedelically-inspired songs served as a gorgeous bridge to the massive finale. Near the end of the set, frontman Mark Foster participated in the age-old tradition of preaching about music’s power to unite people from different walks of life. While the speech was as cliché as they come, Foster had a point. There was a feeling that the fans had a genuine connection to the music the band had created over the years—a connection that I haven’t felt at a show in a very long time. Immediately after his speech, Foster broke into a stunning rendition of the track “Sit Next to Me”—one of the lead singles from Sacred Hearts Club. Fueled by an overwhelming sense of bliss and unity, the audience sang along to the chorus word for word. Then, as expected, Foster the People closed down the show with two tracks from their debut album. The anthemic “Miss You” provided an extended instrumental to which heads, hands and bodies could be seen bouncing up and down recklessly. The lights went dark and everyone waited patiently for the most highly-anticipated song of the night: “Pumped Up Kicks.” Screams of excitement rang out as soon as the iconic opening drum-and-synth combo rang through the theater. The infectious whistling near the end of the track combined with an acoustic break made for a serene conclusion to a show of massive proportions. After their clearly successful Madison debut, fans could be heard raving about the show as the full house slowly emptied into the dimly lit State Street. With a staggering amount of concerts soon to come in Madison, Foster the People set the bar unbelievably high for upcoming artists. If other bands can capture the energy and excitement that Foster the People brought, then we are in for a spectacular collection of concerts this fall.