Post by auntym on Sept 29, 2014 13:48:48 GMT -6
www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/find-alien-life-expect-unexpected-180952853/?no-ist
To Find Alien Life, Expect the Unexpected
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Highlights of a Library of Congress symposium on first contact with extraterrestrial life
By Dirk Schulze-Makuch airspacemag.com
September 25, 2014
Last week experts from a variety of fields answered a call from Steven Dick, the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress, to meet for two days and discuss the possible discovery of extraterrestrial life and the impact such a discovery would have on society. The symposium consisted of individual talks and panel discussions, along with remarks by Rep. Lamar Smith, chair of the House science committee, Mary Voytek of NASA’s astrobiology program, and Steven Dick, who spoke on how far we have advanced our understanding.
Some spectators from the media and “UFOlogists” in the audience may have been disappointed when Seth Shostak from the SETI Institute opened by stating that no signal from extraterrestrial intelligent beings has been discovered as yet. On the first afternoon I gave a talk about the “Landscape of Life,” which—as philosopher of science Carlos Mariscal put it—is extremely difficult to evaluate, since N still equals 1: There is only one biosphere we know of. And given that life on Earth is already extremely diverse, we can only image how diverse it would be in the universe.
Neuroscientist Lori Marino continued with a presentation about the “Landscape of Intelligence” among animal species on Earth, and anthropologist John Traphagan spoke about how cultural and ethnic differences influence how we imagine aliens (and often reveal more about ourselves than about the aliens!). Marino pointed out that human interactions—such as historical encounters between aboriginal and western cultures—are often used as analogs for a first contact with extraterrestrials. A better analog, she says, would be our relationship with whales, dolphins, and other intelligent species on Earth.
The morning session of the second day included philosopher Carol Cleland taking up a question that nicely complemented Marino’s talk: What would be the moral status of indigenous microbes on Mars or intelligent extraterrestrial animals? Philosopher Susan Schneider spoke about artificial intelligence and whether we might expect to contact not organic beings, but rather a “machine mind”—some sort of robot, android, or Borg. Brother Guy Consolmagno of the Vatican Observatory then considered the theological implications of first contact. To the question “Would you baptize an extraterrestrial?” he responded, “Only if he desires so!”
CONTINUE READING: www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/find-alien-life-expect-unexpected-180952853/#4Zg1qCb6gX05vYXX.99
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To Find Alien Life, Expect the Unexpected
]
Highlights of a Library of Congress symposium on first contact with extraterrestrial life
By Dirk Schulze-Makuch airspacemag.com
September 25, 2014
Last week experts from a variety of fields answered a call from Steven Dick, the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress, to meet for two days and discuss the possible discovery of extraterrestrial life and the impact such a discovery would have on society. The symposium consisted of individual talks and panel discussions, along with remarks by Rep. Lamar Smith, chair of the House science committee, Mary Voytek of NASA’s astrobiology program, and Steven Dick, who spoke on how far we have advanced our understanding.
Some spectators from the media and “UFOlogists” in the audience may have been disappointed when Seth Shostak from the SETI Institute opened by stating that no signal from extraterrestrial intelligent beings has been discovered as yet. On the first afternoon I gave a talk about the “Landscape of Life,” which—as philosopher of science Carlos Mariscal put it—is extremely difficult to evaluate, since N still equals 1: There is only one biosphere we know of. And given that life on Earth is already extremely diverse, we can only image how diverse it would be in the universe.
Neuroscientist Lori Marino continued with a presentation about the “Landscape of Intelligence” among animal species on Earth, and anthropologist John Traphagan spoke about how cultural and ethnic differences influence how we imagine aliens (and often reveal more about ourselves than about the aliens!). Marino pointed out that human interactions—such as historical encounters between aboriginal and western cultures—are often used as analogs for a first contact with extraterrestrials. A better analog, she says, would be our relationship with whales, dolphins, and other intelligent species on Earth.
The morning session of the second day included philosopher Carol Cleland taking up a question that nicely complemented Marino’s talk: What would be the moral status of indigenous microbes on Mars or intelligent extraterrestrial animals? Philosopher Susan Schneider spoke about artificial intelligence and whether we might expect to contact not organic beings, but rather a “machine mind”—some sort of robot, android, or Borg. Brother Guy Consolmagno of the Vatican Observatory then considered the theological implications of first contact. To the question “Would you baptize an extraterrestrial?” he responded, “Only if he desires so!”
CONTINUE READING: www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/find-alien-life-expect-unexpected-180952853/#4Zg1qCb6gX05vYXX.99
Save 47% when you subscribe to Air & Space magazine bit.ly/NaSX4X