This last Tuesday evening I attended Science Café at the Unicorn to witness a scientific debate pub style! Science Café is the University of Calgary’s recent attempt to bring academia to the masses (err, the masses being as many people as can fit in a small corner of the Unicorn pub in downtown Calgary). The discussion for the evening was titled Hellooo! Anybody Else Out There? which centered around the question of whether or not extraterrestrial life exists in the universe. The two speakers on this topic were Dr. Russ Taylor from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the U of C and astronomer/producer Alan Dyer from the TELUS World of Science. Both speakers presented their opinions on the topic (pint in hand) in a argument then rebuttal format, after which the floor was opened to questions from the audience.
Russ Taylor began, stating that he believes that we are not alone in the universe, we aren’t special. As a race, humankind has been moving away from a heliocentric view of the universe and ourselves, coming to the concept that our earth and sun aren’t special, that in fact our planetary system is indeed common. The elements that we’re made of–hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen–are everywhere in the universe, ready to make life. In our case, the earth was formed about 4.57 billion years ago, with the first signs of life appearing at about 4 billion years (there are fossils from about 3.5 billion year ago). Looking at this history of 4 billion years, most of life during this period is largely microbial. Intelligent life however has a much shorter history and it’s development was much harder. What this means for extraterrestrial life, is that it may well exist and there are lots of places in the galaxy for it to survive (it’s estimated that there are 10′s of millions of planets in our galaxy that could support life), but will it be intelligent? The question was then raised, can intelligent life survive? If they exist, Taylor believes we’re going to find them.
Personally, I feel that this question, the survival of intelligent life, is extremely timely and well worth our consideration. Looking at the social, political, and environmental issues from the last hundred years, a pessimistic opinion might see the future of the human race to be rather bleak. Ecologically, the sustainability of the lifestyle of our species is undoubtedly suspect. Will our race, intelligent as we are, enjoy any reasonable amount of longevity?
After Taylor’s initial comments, the floor was turned over to Alan Dyer, who stated flat out: “Russ is wrong.” It is Dyer’s opinion that the existence of extraterrestrial life is commonly asked as question of faith: do you believe? The infamous poster of Fox Mulder’s comes to mind:
The point here is that, as a question of faith, are we still talking about science? But back to science for the moment, Dyer went on to state that the cosmic evidence suggests that life may be indeed common, but that’s microbes. Intelligent life is another matter. Now where there is water, there may also be life but that raises another question: is life easy to start? We don’t know. Thinking about animals here on earth, their existence is extremely fragile. There have been five major known mass extinctions in the earth’s history, so as resilient as life appears to be, maybe the earth is unique. There are a lot of things that need to happen to allow for the possibility of life, and when it does happen maybe they come and go, like ships passing in the night. It comes down to galactic time scales and maybe life is only present for a fleeting galactic moment. Coming back to the question of sustainability of intelligent life, what will be like in a thousand years? (Will we even make it that far?) Dyer’s concluding point is that there may well be other life in the galaxy, but this life may be well gone by the time we find it. “We aren’t the center of the universe, nor the center of time.”
Taylor’s rebuttal to the rebuttal was naturally dramatic: we’re resilient!! You can’t stop life! Taylor acknowledged the time argument, but skillfully countered rhetorically asking how long do civilizations last? As short as humankind’s history is, in that period we’ve moved from creating fire with sticks to building rocket ships and in the last one hundred years we have become a space faring race. Taylor furthered his rebuttal, arguing that with intelligence comes curiosity and with this curiosity we are going out into the galaxy. As Sir Arthur C. Clarke put it: either way, if we are alone or not, it’s an interesting answer. Indeed with the seeming popularity of microbial life, we may in fact be the aliens.
At this point in the evening, attention was turned to the audience who began bombarding Taylor and Dyer with questions. Things got a bit fragmented, but here’s what I pulled out. The famous Drake Equation was mentioned. Taylor suggested that the real miracle is the creation of the universe itself. In reference to S.E.T.I., Dyer mentioned that humankind isn’t broadcasting into the universe quite the same as we once where, that earth may be radio quite in 50 years; and radios have only been around for less than one hundred years at that. And lastly, a planet with O2 gas means life.
My concluding thoughts on the Science Café, is that it’s great. Bringing these kind of relatively accessible and interesting pseudo-academic debates to places like a pub in downtown Calgary is absolutely terrific. It’s intellectual entertainment, much like reading National Geographic or listening to Quirks and Quarks, and it was well worth the two hours on a Tuesday evening.
But to end on a culinary note, what I would not suggest is the Unicorn’s 8 oz. charbroiled swordfish steak. Took much sauce. Get the rib eye steak instead.
, was annoying to say the least. The whole day was kind of a big funk which never really redeemed itself. I’m still going strong for the challenge, but [the moral of today's story] I’m going to make extra super sure that I make it, one time and early (cause the classes do fill up, and it’s first-come-first-serve), to ever class. No more of this being locked out crap. It sucks.