Fermi's Q

While on the subject of UFO-denial conspiracies (see last post), what about Fermi’s Q? The conspiracy theorists will undoubtedly note that within days of the appearance of a White House denial that extraterrestrials exist, have contacted earth, or that we’re studying captured UFOs in hopes of finally developing a weapon that will work against both Al Qaida and the Taliban, National Public Radio has revived that long-forgotten canard, Fermi’s Question. NPR is part of the government, isn’t it? Now suddenly Fermi? In hopes of enlightening the public, here is the low-down on Fermi’s Question.

It’s summertime at Los Alamos, NM, the year is 1950 (although some say 1951, some 1952, and some even 1947—and the theorists will know how to interpret those ambiguities). Atomic physicists are having lunch. The weather’s balmy. Lunch drags on. The talk turns to space, to travel at or beyond the speed of light. Some opine, and some say that it’s Fermi who opines, that the odds of discovering a faster-than-light-speed means of travel are pretty darn good. This leads to speculation on who might be out there, how many other intelligent civilizations. Fortunately all there carry envelopes, and therefore some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations are easily made, and the upshot is that all present agree. There must be lots and lots and lots of other bright civilizations, so many, indeed, that a large number of them should by now have visited and, if that’s still difficult, at least communicated.

The lunchers are sitting in a moment of silence now, contemplating those large numbers, when Enrico Fermi breaks the silence, voicing his famous question. “Where is everybody?”

Good question, Enrico. One’s tempted to imagine that this question directly led to the SETI program later, but no. Turns out that the question’s been around for a while, at least since, in 1896, Nikola Tesla (another strange one mentioned recently on this blog here) suggested contacting aliens by radio. The question has been in the air, you might say, and perhaps literally so. Or so the conspiracy theorists will note. But the question is a good one because statistics tell us, aided by theories suggesting that life springs spontaneously from bits of water if the conditions are right, that life should be everywhere, on trillions of stars, and certainly hundreds of millions should have advanced enough to be communicating. So, therefore, where is everybody? Why hasn’t somebody checked in?

Enrico Fermi, who with Robert Oppenheimer, is viewed as the father of the atomic bomb, might have considered the possibility that, in the vector of life, inevitably, atomic bombs would be discovered—and discovered before faster-than-speed-of-light travel. And therefore, perhaps, most of those millions of advanced civilizations have managed to blow themselves to kingdom come.

A bomb with two fathers and no mother? Now there’s an interesting mystery to ponder.

Near-Forgotten Genius

I came across the quote that follows in an effort to understand better certain aspects of theoretical dimensions beyond the familiar three. My search was prompted by reading Michio Kaku’s Hyperspace. That book basically concerns string theory. The quote:

Time is a man-made reference used for convenience and as such the idea of a “curved space-time” is delusional, hence there is no basis for the Relativistic “space-time” binomium concept. I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view. [Nikola Tesla quoted in New York Herald Tribune, September 11, 1932]

The world is vast, my education spotty, hence I recognized the name but could not do much more than that. The thought expressed, however, is most congenial. I’ve always had major problems both with spacetime and with time dilation—thus the concept that time slows down with speed of travel, and the astronaut wandering out there at near-light speed would return from his years-long trip to find that he was much younger than his twin brother. At one time I spent real concentrated time studying Einstein’s theories—in the original, at that—and came to the conclusion that while clocks certainly did slow down with speed, it was the clocks that misbehaved, not time. Therefore I’m not persuaded that time dilation has been proved. I have similar problems with thinking of time as a dimension (except as a math token) and with dimensions beyond the conventional three.

Today I checked into the Serbian, Nikola Tesla (1856-1943). He was an inventor of genius. We owe him the discovery of alternating current, modern electric power plants, the AC motor, and wireless power transmission. He also built the first hydroelectric power plant, with a fellow called Westinghouse, at Niagara Falls—a place I used to haunt once when I worked for Carborundum. Tesla also clashed with other greats of his time whose names are household words while he has been as good as forgotten. A nice summary of this very strange man’s very strange and adventurous life is provided in a YouTube film (link). A listing of some thirty-six devices and principles developed by Tesla is available on Wikipedia’s article on this man (link).