Is ther Anybody there?

    According to scientist Frank Drake , there may well have been, be or maybe later, if they are taking a rain check. The probability is increasing over time as more galaxies are found; thus more stars which have suitable planets are observed. As the absolute value of R is large, [ though debatable ] even if the fractions end up being small, there may be a few civilizations around out there. Whether they are on our wavelength is another matter.     Evolution to this point for our hallowed species has been more a matter of luck than judgement, especially if rocks keep getting thrown around the glasshouse or the fires below are stoked up to fiery furnace level. If you consider our population growing to that of the trilobites or ammonites then  the prognosis for the future is not good. Malthus will be saying
‘ I told you so!’ His equation top and tails that of Drakes and every other species on this planet. Science will give a more optimistic view, similar to that showed to nuclear fission, the pessimists hanging on to the placards for Anthropogenic Global Warming. Evens anyone?
1. Wiki; The Drake equation [ aka the Green Bank Formulas from the meeting at Green Bank WV in 1961] states that: N= R* x fp x ne x fℓ x  fi  x  fc  x L where:
N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible;
R* = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
fi = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.
L = the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.
2. Rev Thomas Malthus. An Essay on the Principle of Population.
P(t) = P0 x ert
where P0 = Initial Population, r = growth rate, sometimes also called Malthusian Parameter, t = time.
  e? Well that stands for exponential, more commonly called the hockey stick. To the power of rt.
    Interesting to mention odds and gambling. Old Malthus’ equation is the same as that for compound interest. Look where that has got us. And then there’s entropy! You’ll love this.
    Depending on which of the two definitions you choose [ as if you had any choice in the matter ] it can be demonstrated that energy tends to spread itself around. That is you can’t get a cup of tea hot being leaving it on the desk. It’s all one way I’m afraid. Now, men much more clever than me have measured, theorized, defined and utilized this to come out with more efficient means of carrying out the tasks that a man’s gotta do. However, a bigger picture can be drawn because effectively, despite all the wonders of the quantum and theoretical saying that time may merely a dimension in space, the factor that energy only goes one way means that so does time. ‘The arrow of time’ they call entropy, as in ‘fruit flies like a banana’.
    Bit Private Frazer isn’t it?3 If you wondering why E.T. is such a miserable bugger that he hasn’t phoned home, it’s probably because all the ills that man is heir to have befallen them. Or, they are trying, as we are, to work out  a way to survive and have better things to do than looking for others in the same old deep, brown and smelly.
    Oh! Ye of little faith. Let not your woes be woes. There may be succor at hand.4
    For a start off, one of the first principles of physics is that energy cannot be destroyed. It can be changed from one form to another, electricity to movement, light heat  and 57 channels with nothing on but… energy is a tough dude.5.
3. "We're doomed, I tell ye!", 4.  As in “Never give a succour a second break.” W.C Fields
5. “ The dude abides” . The other Liebowsky.
   

    If you think The Large Hadron Collider is a mean machine then remember it needs  several hundred scientist with several hundred more computers and a whole mountain full of  engineering to finest tolerances known to man and the energy from a large town to get sparks out of bashing particles smaller than even the smallest mote of dust your  Momma can see. Wonder why thought experiments are so popular  [ and why philosophers never get any work done? ]
    Here’s one for you to mull over while I get myself a drink. Where does all the light go? I mean it’s coming down from all these stars as waves or particles or a bit of both depending on how it’s feeling and the time of the month. We CAN see it. Or rather BY it. It reflects the whole of our Nature. But if it is a form of energy then it cannot be destroyed and must change or do what exactly?

    Thought experiments go better with a beer. OK. Hands up those who say the paint or surfaces absorb it and it heats up. Hands up those who point out that when it hits the retina it causes organic changes that lead to our visual cortext getting a bump. Hands up those who have muttered ‘ bloody quantums again, ain’t it?’ Yeah I’ll buy all of those and any others that come along. Whatever happens to light it’s down at levels we have no way of looking at unless we spend a lot more money than the LHC.
    The ubiquity of light has lead many scientist in the past to try their hands at optics. You could say that the whole of physics was based on light if you include the fact that both Galileo and Newton spent a lot of time looking at the  heavenly bodies and working out how the Cosmos works whilst Robert Hooke and Van Leewenhoek were looking at the smallest objects they could find to aid  biological studies.
    The energy of light is one of the ways we know something fishy is going on. The fact that something fishy was happening attracted the scientists. It behaves in two ways at once. If you take the more common and obvious functions it exhibits a wave nature; it has different frequencies that register as colors to our eyes as Newton showed with his prism. Thomas Young proved the wave theory by polarisation and interference by diffraction. The problem was that waves need something to wave, a medium of transmission. It was also faster than anything else that  any body could measure. Or has. Foucault worked it out to some degree in 1850. In doing so he also destroyed another  theory of what light was. The particle model, also  supported by Newton, on the grounds that, though it could be refracted, light also always travels in straight lines. He explained the rainbow effect by saying that his old favourite Gravity was pulling the particles around differently. Still the science had no idea what light actually was until the 19th century when electromagnetism was discovered and Hertz found other waves that were magnetic and needed no ‘ether’ to be generated or travel on. [ Which brings a question to mind. Do other electromagnetic waves such a radio and heat exhibit the duality of light?]
    Then there was Albert Einstein. Talk about thought experiments. Whatever else he is remembered for E = Mc2 is gonna be the same all over the Universe, because whatever exists out there is exactly the same elements as exist down here and the speed of light is constant. it matters. Because c is a really big number, the total amount of the energy in the Universe is way off the scale. And most of it is locked up in matter.

    Stars have a way of busting out all over, smashing the basic protons into the helium atom, spewing out energy and electrons and photons in enough abundance to feed a planet; the other elements following in order until the start collapses into a neutron star. Which presupposes that all the protons have gained electrons and all energy has been lost. This what signals to us a black hole, the jets of super energetic gas firing far into the surrounding space. At the same time as matter is being destroyed, that final melding of heavy elements must be occurring. Where does a black hole end up? A final collection of all the matter in the Universe seething until it bursts like a boil into another singularity? Or feeding matter into another dimension or Universe with perhaps differing constraints and laws.
    Suffice to say it leaves us without a paddle whatever the result. A second pathway may lead us to hope. There are denizens of this Universe that can use energy, combine it and pass it on to others so that energy becomes trapped. Plants. OK so I’m more a biologist than a physicist but  even I realize that comparing your local weed with a star is pretty far out… however much you’ve been smoking. They are not alone. Some bacteria utilize Hydrogen sulphide to provide the energy for not only their lives but as a feedstock for a whole fauna.  Each one of those nasty creeping pests or beautiful scented rose, vital soya beans or wheat or a thousand stapless that we are so dependent on  can only survive because of the light energy given by our star. It even provides us with the gas that is so vital to us as a by product. Yet there is nothing so despised as plants. After bacteria, the first born inhabitants, the primus genus of all life on earth, the universe, wherever it may be. And the only thing we seek to control, destroy and obliterate because,’ it looks untidy’.
    It would be totally politically incorrect to use that term about animals or humans. Yet you can purchase genocide in a packet down your nearest hardware store. It is more than likely that the balance of the Universe in the first days demands that the evolution of plants precedes that of any animal life form. It may be that the symbiotic or commensal bonds that unite bees and pollinating or dispersal animals may pan out differently on other worlds. But to the question ‘ Is there anybody out there?’ I think I have to say, Yes. One can only hope they are gardeners.