Do Alien Civilizations Inevitably ‘Go Green’?
 

Do Alien Civilizations Inevitably ‘Go Green’?
by PAUL SCOTT ANDERSON on FEBRUARY 8, 2012


In the famous words of Arthur C. Clarke, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This phrase is often quoted to express the idea that an alien civilization which may be thousands or millions of years older than us would have technology so far ahead of ours that to us it would appear to be “magic.”



Now, a variation of that thought has come from Canadian science fiction writer Karl Schroeder, who posits that ”any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature.” The reasoning is that if a civilization manages to exist that long, it would inevitably “go green” to such an extent that it would no longer leave any detectable waste products behind. Its artificial signatures would blend in with those of the natural universe, making it much more difficult to detect them by simply searching for artificial constructs versus natural ones.



The idea has been proposed as an explanation for why we haven’t found them yet, based on the premise that such advanced societies would have visited and colonized our entire galaxy by now (known as the Fermi Paradox). The question becomes more interesting in light of the fact that astronomers now estimate that there are billions of other planets in our galaxy alone. If a civilization reaches such a “balance with nature” as a natural progression, it may mean that traditional methods of searching for them, like SETI, will ultimately fail. Of course, it is possible, perhaps even likely, that civilizations much older than us would have advanced far beyond radio technology anyway. SETI itself is based on the assumption that some of them may still be using that technology. Another branch of SETI is searching for light pulses such as intentional beacons as opposed to radio signals.


But even other alternate searches, such as SETT (Search for Extraterrestrial Technology), may not pan out either, if this new scenario is correct. SETT looks for things like the spectral signature of nuclear fission waste being dumped into a star, or leaking tritium from alien fusion powerplants.





http://www.universetoday.com/93449/d...ably-go-green/

I would hazard a guess to say "inconclusive" because there is no evidence to say otherwise...

Inconclusive or not, the article puts a view as opposed to the way we search via SETI, looking for life's apparent footprint.....
Nice hypothesis and worth looking at.
So we look for SETT evidence.

So why do we assume that this life, if we find it, is going to be smarter than us? What happens if there is no technology because they're still too stupid?

Some will be smarter, some will not be as smart...Time and distance
If a species has a million years on us as far as evolution is concerned, the likelyhood of them being far smarter is obvious.

Of course, it is possible, perhaps even likely, that civilizations much older than us would have advanced far beyond radio technology anyway. While I agree that other means of telecommunication may be technically possible, I fail to understand why it's likely that an advanced civilization would have 'advanced far beyond radio technology'. Manipulation if ERM has an extraordinarily large application.

This is where thought experiments of this type fall over... they rely upon a series of assumptions that need not necessarily hold.

The reasons SETI hasn't found any evidence for ETI could simply be because the universe is really, really big and these civilizations may be long, long way away...

Not true, took the dinosaurs a quite a few million to stop being dinosaurs... Who's to say that another million years will mean anything?

Naturally they rely on assumptions...Some may be way smarter and appear as magic to us....some maybe at a similar stage of development and technological advancement...and some may still be swinging in the trees.




Time and distance...time and distance....just need patience and fortitude.!

I said the likelyhood is greater which it is...so yes, very true

Based on what?

I would think that physiology would be a bigger parameter than just 'time'...

Based on chance,,,,
If a species only has ten years of evolution behind it, it is far less likely to have evolved into a technological superior being, then another species with a million years of evolution.

Still need time and always will.

Ahhh... the Ewok argument.

sure, but there is no reason to believe that just because a civilization has been around 200,000 years, it will be more advanced than one that has been around for 100,000 years...

Thus time , in itself, isn't a very good measure of level of technological advancement.

It took the dinosaurs from 245 million to 65 million years ago to evolve and become extinct... In this period of 180 million years, there we're no significant technological advancements....

I still don't think a million years will make much difference...

It's the best we have and reasonably reliable....similar to measuring cosmological distances with standard candles.

The OP premise sounds like a fanciful variation of the "noble savage" myth to me.

Going green or going technicolor... There's obvious advantages and disadvantages to both.

Personally, I'm wary of allowing nature to dominate intelligence. Nature is capricious and mean spirited, without morals or ethics and not necessarily the best design.

I can understand the rationale that a natural course of development would ultimately lead to sustainable solutions, yet I can't see how we would necessarily conclude that the "artificial signatures would blend in with those of the natural universe". For example a culture tends to preserve its heritage so I could imagine a sufficiently advanced culture may actually preserve working examples of past technologies. Furthermore, I would assume that provided it is sustainable, the best solution for penetrating the cosmos in search of other lifeforms would be preferred as opposed to those that might mimic the natural universe. If these advanced cultures wanted to encourage contact then they would have overt methods of communication to even num nuts like ourselves. :-))

Dinosaurs were slow to evolve and probably didn't need to evolve as quick as humans did when our ancestors came on the scene...plus if they hadn't been wiped out, maybe we may not have been here.

Evolution off the earth most probably would take a different path, but that's not my thing.
Do we have an astrobiologist?