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The fact of the availability of a great number of the greatest scientists and thinkers of the human history’s different periods who speculated about the role of the Supreme Intelligence is an obvious incentive to analyze the most important issues of the life’s creation and functioning on Earth, the rationality and its planned creation not on the basis of the spontaneous development principle and, of course, not on the basis of religious beliefs.
1.8. NECESSITY OF NEW POINTS ON THE LIFE DEVELOPMENT ON EARTH
The evolutionary theory gave a huge impetus to the development of science, made it possible to accumulate huge factual material about the various species on Earth occurrence’s sequence within the process of their improvement. Therefore, all scientifi dogmas are viewed only from the standpoint of the evolutionary theory, despite its contradictory arguments and improvability. Being the only scientifi explanation of the origin of life, it argues that after millions of years since Earth had been formed, life occurred on it due to the pure chance, the development of which was performed in a natural way − from unicellular organisms to millions of various plants and animals that currently exist.
L. S. Berg (Берг Лев Семенович) expressed the need for evolutionary views’ reconsideration long time ago expressed in such scientific papers as «Nomogenesis or Evolution based on Regularities», «Works on the Theory of Evolution» and «Theory of Evolution». He compiled the vast factual material accumulated by the early twentieth century which testified the organisms’ natural variability within the evolutionary process and the organisms’ inherent initial practicability. In his opinion, as the result of the embryonic potentially available signs’ development and improvement the new, more complex forms are formed with time. The conclusion of the performative nature of evolution was the logical one. He provided the detailed and substantiated arguments in favour of the fact that, although it contradicts Daewin’s concept, evolution is not an accidental process but the naturally determined one in which chaotic mutations and natural selection have their own focus. In his opinion, the essence can be illustrated by a simple analogy: although the development of the individual organism is influenced by many random factors, there are no doubts that the inner information that is contained in the genes is the main and determining factor. The entire history of the body is the implementation of the program, which determines what will grow, for example, from the given seed, a birch or a pine. The whole biosphere’s evolution, according to Berg, is the «unfolding of a Law or multidimensional program, which contains numerous methods for its implementation. Therefore, Berg called his concept the nomogenesis (from the Greek. nomos – «law»), contrasting it to the Darwinian concept of tychogenesis, i.e. development that is based on chance. Berg did not discuss the question of the source of this law. In his opinion, a number of General biological phenomena suggest that the process of evolution cannot be described even in the qualitative aspect within the framework of Darwin’s diagram.
The principles of nomogenesis were briefly summarized in form of the table and contrasted with the Darwinism’s postulates as follows. If in Darwinism all organisms developed from one or few primary forms, in nomogenesis organisms developed from many thousands of primary forms; if in Darwinism the further development proceeded divergently, in nomogenesis it was predominantly convergent (partially divergent); while evolution in Darwinism is based on random variations that separate individuals undergo by means of slow, hardly noticeable continuous changes, in nomogenesis it is based on leaps and paroxysms, mutationally capturing the vast masses of individuals on a vast territory; if in Darwinism there are many hereditary variations and they go in all directions, in nomogenesis hereditary variations are limited in number and they go in certain directions; if in Darwinism the struggle for existence and natural selection serves the factor of progress, in nomogenesis the struggle for existence and natural selection are not factors of progress, but preserve the norm; if in Darwinism, species are connected with each other by transitions due to their origin by divergence, in nomogenesis species are sharply separated from each other due to their mutational origin; if in Darwinism the evolutionary process means entirely the new traits’ formation, in nomogenesis evolution is to a large extent the deployment of existing inclinations; if in Darwinism, the extinction of organisms occurs due to the external causes (the struggle for the existence and survival of the fittest), in nomogenesis, extinction is a consequence of both internal (autonomous) causes and external (choronomic).
A. Lima-de-Faria, a famous biologist, also wrote in the book «Evolution without Selection: Form and Function by Autoevolution» (1991) that biological evolution is determined by the three forms preceding it: elementary particles, chemical elements and minerals. In all these processes, natural selection, or something similar to it, if any, was then a secondary factor. According to him, «… each new level occurs as a typical innovation not because it creates something fundamentally new, but because it is a continuation of only few already limited combinations of previous levels».
The evolutionary approach dominates in modern science, and anyone who doubts its reliability risks being marked as an ignoramus. However, by the beginning of the third millennium, enough scientific facts contradicting the «random processes» theories in the development of life on Earth have been accumulated. It is becoming increasingly apparent that a complex and finely balanced set of physicochemical processes in protein organisms cannot be explained by chance. The increase of the biological complexity knowledge has created a kind of dead end in the modern theory of the origin of life. The search for truth is complicated by the fact that the creationism is the only alternative to Darwinism in the society’s opinion, which insists on a literal understanding of the picture of the world’s origin described in the Biblical text. Therefore, the educational level of a modern man contradicts the mythical views on the creation of the world and he has no other choice but to follow the dogmatic principles of the evolutionary theory, which would not have been so widespread if it had not refuted the ideas of the divine creation of life on Earth. It exists only because there is no sufficiently developed alternative.
Darwinism is the only branch of modern biology, where hypotheses are accepted by the scientifi community as suffi t ones. It is impossible to provide direct evidences to confi m the facts which took place long time ago. Therefore, the existing ideas about the origin of life on Earth are the hypothetical assumptions based on the facts of past events, which can be interpreted in different ways. The task of scientists is to choose the most logical ones corresponding the fundamental biological and philosophical laws of the development of matter. The theory of evolution is one of the options to explain the origin of species on Earth, but it is impossible to deny the possibility of other theories development that can be more convincing and more justifi d, and also able to explain many obscure phenomena observed on the planet.
It is diffi ult to disagree with the words by Fred Hoyle: «Instead of agreeing with the infi tely small probability of the occurrence of life under the influence of the nature blind forces, it is probably better to assume that life occurred as a result of a deliberate, meaningful action».
Chapter 2
CIVILIZATIONS’ DEVELOPMENT LAWS
2.1. SYNERGETICS AND «THINKING SUBSTANCE» DEVELOPMENT
The order of protein life and its increasing complexity contradict the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that disorder (entropy) can only increase in a closed system. This is especially evident in the developing organisms, when the amount of information increases dramatically during morphogenesis. The evolutionary theory’s opponents believe that evolution and the Second Law of Thermodynamics cannot be correct at the same time, and the occurrence of the living (ordered) from the inanimate (disordered) is impossible in general.
However, according to the evolutionary theory’s supporters, developing systems are always open and exchange energy and substance with the environment, due to which the local ordering and self-organization processes take place. The Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger introduced the negative entropy concept, which living beings should receive from the environment in order to compensate the entropy’s growth, leading them to the thermodynamic equilibrium and, consequently, to death. He stated that an organism can «stay alive only by means of constant negative entropy’s extraction from the environment, which is itself something very positive… Negative entropy is what feeds the organism. Or, in order to express it in a less paradoxical way, what is essential in metabolism is the fact that the body manages to free itself from all that entropy that it has to produce while it is alive».
Later, Leon Nicolas Brillouin, the American physicist, introduced the term negentropy in his paper «Scientific Uncertainty and Information» (1964): «information itself is a negative contribution to entropy». Negentropy is opposed to entropy and expresses the material objects ordering.
E. Schrödinger in one of the last chapters of his book «What is Life? Physical Aspects of the Living Cell» pointed out the existence of two different mechanisms for the ordering phenomena: the statistical one that creates «order from disorder» and the new mechanism introduced by him, which creates «order from order». He stated: «We have the right to assume that the living matter obeys a new type of the physical law. Or should we call it nonphysical one, if not to say the super physical law?» At the same time, E. Schrödinger does not explain how order occurs in living systems. He states that if the «order from order» mechanism operates in the living substance, and the order is drawn from the environmental order, then the inanimate substance owes the order occurrence to the «order from disorder» principle.
However, the question arises: what is the origin of order in the environment? The fact of an open system and available external energy existence does not generate the order in the given system. Where does the specifi information that does not only deter entropy, but contributes to the strictly determined specifi order and complexity in the course of historical development come from, if, according to the increasing entropy law, simplifi ation and degradation should take place? Not just abstract information should prevent it, and specifi complex one, which may not occur spontaneously. Protein life is not degrading, but is getting more refi ed and complicated, which is impossible without the new specifi information that someone should create. It is logical to assume that the entropy overcoming in living organisms is performed by using information created by the intelligence.
Such an interdisciplinary scientific trend as synergetic, which studies natural phenomena and processes on the basis of the self-organization principles of systems consisting of subsystems, and new qualities self-generation, can provide a certain idea of the material intelligence’s occurrence. This process, despite its spontaneity, has a certain focus: there is an increase in various elementary and primitive forms and structures to complex and more advanced ones.
The following main empirical generalizations are at the basis of synergetic:
1. The Universe is a single self-developing system.
2. In the course of the Universe’s development, random factors are present, processes occur in terms of a definite uncertainty level. They are characteristic for all the levels of the world’s organization.
3. There is heredity in the Universe, the present and future depend on the past, but are not determined by it.
4. The world is dominated by laws, which are the selection principles. They distinguish a certain set of admissible states from possible virtual ones.
5. Selection allows the existence of bifurcation states in which it is impossible to predict the way of further development since the new channel is largely determined by factors out-of-control at the bifurcation point.
Judging from the synergetic principles, it is possible to develop an idea of the intelligence’s occurrence within the various material forms of matter’s self-development. The universal matter’s property is «reflection», manifested by the object of influence in the form of a response. Reflection is a philosophical category denoting the universal matter’s property, stating the fact that under certain conditions of interaction one material system reproduces certain aspects of another system interacting with it in its specific form. In this case, the reflection is either the new properties acquisition, or the certain reactions’ development, or the restructuring of the object that is being affected. A function occurs as the result of the multiple consolidations. A consolidated response to a frequently repeated influence is the reflection function.
The principle of reflection is characteristic for the matter at all levels of its organization and is the cornerstone of the materialist theory of cognition. Spontaneous development of the surrounding world occurs until the moment when material objects acquire the ability to think starting from the primitive responses to external stimuli formation to the information storage devices, the improvement of which can lead to the occurrence of intelligence, analytical abilities and adequate interaction with the environment. Then development takes on the features of awareness and controllability. Moreover, in addition to the passive adaptation to the changing external conditions, the former intelligence will consciously initiate further development of the surrounding world by planning and creating new materials and technologies in accordance with its needs.
Therefore, it is necessary to consider two stages in the spontaneous and self-organizing processes of the matter’s development – spontaneous (synergistic one) and managed by the developed intelligence’s one. Each of them has its fundamental features. On the initial stage there is a spontaneous complication of the physic-chemical structures until the initial intelligence’s occurrence capable of accumulating and analyzing information about the environment. On the second stage, the development of the material world is not a spontaneous one, but with the intelligent structures that carry out the activity aimed at their own life support. In this case, the environment changes already involuntarily. At this stage of development it is not the fortuity of the new material forms occurrence which will be observed but the design and expediency.
The possibility to use the information accumulated is the main factor of development. The intelligence carriers can be of different material nature. People used to associate thinking with the protein carriers of information inherent to all living beings on Earth. People have created artificially other information storage media on the basis of which the design of robots with artificial intelligence is carried on. Taking into consideration the fact that plasma represents the most part of the Universe matter’s main phase state according to modern concepts (the weight of about 99,9 %) it is logical to assume that the development of thinking matter took place and was improved on the basis of this form of the material world. It is established that the information transfer is an energetic process based on both the active substances and the receptive structures’ physic-chemical restructuring. Nowadays it is difficult to imagine the way of the information transmission and perception on the plasma level.
2.2. CIVILIZATION AS THE «THINKING SUBSTANCE’S» HIGHEST FORM OF DEVELOPMENT
The intellect occurred seeks to avoid the influence of the chaotic synergetic processes and manage its development. At the same time, the intelligence of an individual is not able to carry this process out. Such opportunities are being realized when thinking objects create associations that ultimately form a civilization that functions on the basis of material world development’s certain laws.
Civilization is the highest form of the thinking matter’s development. Its formation is the inevitable result of the thinking matter’s development. This is the highest form of its existence. At the same time, the intelligence-bearers’ capabilities and needs undergo changes ranging from the use of their own labor and the slavish exploitation of other people’s labor in various forms (through violence or material incentives) to the development of self-reproducing structures that can satisfy all the needs of a highly developed intelligence in energy and information provision. Therefore, the Universe’s global processes must be considered not on the basis of individual ideas, but from the point of view of a civilizational intelligence.
Thus, the development of civilizations, regardless of their physic-chemical properties, is accompanied by the certain laws’ implementation which can be formulated as follows:
1. The matter’s self-organization occurs as a result of the ability to think and influence the surrounding world (environment).
After this, the development goes according to civilizations development laws.
2. The development of any civilization requires a growing energy provision, the main and best source of which is the Sun’s renewable energy.
3. A highly developed civilization must develop a system of self-replicating structures that can store and process the solar energy at a certain stage of development in order to use the Sun energy, as well as for the development of new living spaces. Various types of such structures will be developed and improved. They will be adapted to the conditions of the environment under exploration and programmed to provide a constant energy supply.
In a human society, the possibility of the highly developed civilization’s parallel existence is not considered and the results of its activity are not analyzed, while this can be observed in the diversity of species of protein organisms on Earth. This may be a thinking form that is absolutely unusual for us. «The intelligence that we will discover one day may be so different from our ideas that we don’t want to call it Intelligence,» Stanislav Elm wrote in his book «The Sum of Technologies».
Chapter 3
SPECIFIC FEATURES OF HIGHLY DEVELOPED CIVILIZATIONS
3.1. OTHER WORLDS
The existence of an infinite number of different cosmic civilizations was allowed by many thinkers throughout the history of humanity. According to the principle of Copernicus, the laws of nature are universal and function the same way everywhere in the Universe, which means that there is a possibility that, in addition to the Sun and Earth, there are other planets in the Universe with identical conditions where life could have occurred.
Developing the Copernicus’ (Mikoyan Copernic) heliocentric theory, Giordano Bruno stated in his book «On the Infinity of the Universe and the Worlds» (1584) that the omnipotence of God allows Him to create not one world, but an infinite number of them. Bruno quoted Epicurus, Lucretius, and also wrote about the infinite Universe in other works published beyond the reach of the Inquisition in Protestant countries. He believed that, despite the highest temperature, stars can be inhabited by plants and animals, which develop due to the cooling effect of neighboring celestial bodies (just like living creatures on Earth develop due to the heat of the Sun). All stars are the living and thinking beings. A fluid similar to blood circulates in their internal channels. Such an approach to the Universe’s nature was called the «Copernicus – Bruno principle». For the church fathers, multiple world’s concept was an attribute of pagan beliefs. After the publication of the Bruno’s Inquisition case, it became known that his biggest «heresy» was the idea of multiple inhabited worlds in the Universe. However, some authorities of the Catholic Church also expressed similar ideas. For example, Thomas Aquinas, the theology founder, wrote that the world in which we live is not the only possible one. Hercules Cyrano de Bergerac, Fontanel, Bernard le Bevier de Fontanelle, Christiaan Huygens, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, Pierre-Simon de Laplace, and William Herschel dedicated their works to this issue, though they were the speculative ones. Camille Nicolas Flammarion wrote in his works «La plurality des Mendes Habits» (Numerous inhabited worlds, 1862), «Les Mendes imaginaries et les modes reels» (Imaginary worlds and real worlds, 1865), «Les Etoiles et les curiosities du ceil» («Starry Sky and Its Miracles») (1881) and others that there is a dynamic principle in space, invisible and intangible, dispersed throughout the Universe, independent of the visible and weighty matter and influencing it. And the intelligence superior to our one is in this dynamic element.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky expressed similar ideas in his works «Cause of the Cosmos», «Will of the Universe», «Unknown Intelligent forces», «Monism of the Universe», «Scientific Ethics». In a philosophical note «Planets Inhabited by the Living Beings,» he wrote the following: «In the known Universe, one can count a million billion suns. Therefore, we have the same number of planets similar to Earth. It is inconceivable to deny the life’s availability on them. If it has occurred on Earth, why can’t occur it under the same conditions on planets similar to Earth? Their number may be less than the number of suns, but still they should be. It is possible to deny life on 50, 70, 90% of these planets, but it is absolutely impossible to deny live of all of them».
Winston Churchill, a famous politician, wrote an essay entitled «Are We Alone in the Universe?» in which, on the grounds of the «Copernicus principle», he stated that the Universe is too vast for the life on Earth to be unique. He determined that reproduction is the necessary condition for life, and the presence of water, appropriate temperature and gravity to form the atmosphere stand for significant factors. Based on these assumptions, Churchil believed that, speaking of the Solar system, the life could have occurred only on Mars and Venus in addition to Earth.
Hugh Everett, an American physicist, put forward a theory of parallel worlds in the mid of the XX century. His article on Physics titled «Formulation of quantum mechanics through «related states» was published in the journal «Reviews of Modern Physics» (1957, v. 29, № 3, p. 454-462). The author’s multi-world interpretation (The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics) suggested the «parallel universes» existence, in each of which the same laws of nature function and which are characterized by the same world constants, but which are in different states.
Hugh Everett suggested that the Copernicus’s Universe is only one of the universes, and it is the physical multitude that is the basis of the Universe. In his opinion, the «perceived reality» is a multitude of classical realizations of physical worlds, built on the basis of rationally conscious worlds that reflect the interaction of the Observer with a single quantum reality.
According to the H. Everett’s concept, the Object and the Observer’s quantum-mechanical interaction leads to the formation of a set of different worlds, and the number of branches equals to the number of physically possible outcomes of this interaction. And all these worlds are real. Hugh Everett called the multidimensional interpretation of quantum mechanics the «state relativity». In his opinion, this theory perfectly explained the mysteries of quantum mechanics, which caused fierce debate among scientists at that time.
Hugh Everett’s theory is sometimes mistaken for the parallel worlds’ theory. However, it does not imply the real existence of other worlds, but only one really existing world, which is described by a single wave function, which, while measuring a quantum event, must be divided into an observer (conducting a measurement) and an object, each being described by its own wave function. On the contrary, the Copenhagen interpretation places the observer in his classical world, which is different from the quantum world of the object observed.
The main reason for rejecting the Everett’s ideas recognition is the assertion that they are «experimentally unprovable». In addition, scientists using this interpretation cannot explain the nature of the boundary between the quantum and classical worlds. This theory explains a number of phenomena only at the micro-level, and it does not agree with the laws of preservation of mass, energy, momentum, etc. at the macro-level of our existence.
Modern Physics, based on a multi-world interpretation of quantum mechanics, superstring theory, multiuniverse theory, implies the multiple worlds’ existence. According to the theoretical physicists estimates adhering to the theory of superstrings, parallel worlds can be from ten raised to one hundredth power to ten raised to five hundredth power. Today the «many-world interpretation» is called the Oxford interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is one of the leading ones along with the Copenhagen one.
Experts do not exclude the possibility that the other worlds’ representatives of live somewhere in the depths of the vast universe. Physicists of Stanford University have been able to establish a hypothetical number of universes formed as a result of the Big Bang. Moreover, it is possible that they can be included into each other and inside our Earth as well. Perhaps there is a hidden Earth-2. They also estimated the amount of information that such a number of the parallel worlds’ existence carries, and came to the conclusion that a person is not able to observe all the universes, since the structural features of his brain are not able to perceive more than ten raised to the sixteenth power bits of information during his lifespan.
Frank Donald Drake, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, has developed a formula that, in his opinion, determines the number of extraterrestrial civilizations. The formula named after him consists of seven constituent elements: the number of stars formed during the year; fraction of stars representing planets; the number of planets or their satellites with livable conditions; the probability of the life’s occurrence, the probability of turning it into an intelligent one; fraction of planets with highly developed creatures; lifetime of a civilization that lives on the planet. Depending on the choice of parameters, the Drake formula gives grounds to believe that there are from 10 to 100 extraterrestrial civilizations in the galaxy at each separate moment.
However, repeatedly performed calculations with the Drake’s formula being used gave a different number: from their complete absence up to 5 thousand. Such a dispersion arose due to the fact that the researchers evaluated the values of the parameters included in the formula in different ways. Critics note that the Drake’s formula does not take into account the time variation of the parameters included in the formula. At the current level of the scientific development, only two coefficients for this formula can be relatively accurately determined, while others cannot be determined at all.
Brian Lacki, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study showed that depending on the combination of parameters necessary for the intelligent life’s occurrence, the probability of its existence in the world ranges from 1.4 up to 48%. He mentioned the type and mass of the planet, the distance between it and the star, as well as the variety of genetic material for the various life forms’ occurrence among the factors determining the appearance of civilization.
Adam Frank, a professor of Physics and Astronomy from the University of Rochester and his colleagues from the University of Washington’s astronomy and astrobiology department, by means of the Drake’s formula, calculated not the estimated number of intelligent civilizations, but rather the probability that human civilization is the only one intelligent in the Universe. It turned out that this probability is less than one divided by 10 raised to the 22nd power. Their further calculations showed that there are approximately 10 billion intelligent civilizations in the Universe. There are several thousands of them only in our galaxy, in the Milky Way. Many of them died, but it is possible that several hundreds of high-level civilizations still survive in our galaxy. In their view, the intelligent life is a common phenomenon in the Universe.
Duncan Forgan from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland developed a mathematical model and software that analyzed the probable number of inhabited worlds (not in the entire Universe, but only in the Milky Way) on the basis of three criteria: living organisms either occur with difficulty, but then develop well, or they have difficulty with turning into intelligent creatures, or life could be transferred from one planet to other one. As a result, three positive results were obtained. In the first case, the number of intelligent civilizations will be no less than 361, in the second – 31 513 and in the third – 37 964. William Borucki, the head of the group of researchers working with the «Kepler» space telescope, presented the data on potentially inhabited planets at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Statistical analysis of data gathered by means of the telescope showed that 44% of the stars in the galaxy have planetary systems. Since there are approximately 100 billion stars in the Galaxy, it turns out that they can have about 50 billion planets. Out of them, approximately 500 million may be in the so-called zone of life, i.e., at approximately the same distance from the star as Earth from the Sun.
Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute), while taking part in the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) symposium held in 2014 at Stanford University, promised that the extraterrestrial intelligent life would be revealed in 2038. However, his optimism has subsequently diminished.
Nikolai Kardashev, the Russian astrophysicist, suggested evaluating civilizations by their energy consumption in order to classify them. According to this classification, Type I civilization uses planetary forms of energy, with the help of which it can adjust the weather, change the direction of hurricanes or build cities in the oceans. Sources of energy are mostly limited by their planet.
Type II civilization is the interplanetary one and uses the energy of the entire star, with which comets and meteors can be directed in the opposite direction, ice ages can be prevented, and climatic conditions can be changed. It is the thermonuclear energy which is used. Type II civilizations are actively moving through the Universe and populate (colonize) other planets.
Type III civilization is the interstellar one. Distant stars and new galaxies are reachable for colonization by it and captured and newly discovered stars become the new energy sources. It can travel through the galaxy freely. Such a civilization can use energy of 10 billion stars. Each type civilization increases the amount of energy used by the previous type by 10 billion times, i.e., the energy consumption of type III civilizations is 10 billion times higher than that of the type II civilizations’ one. Currently, humanity uses only about 0.16% of the total energy budget of the planet and approximately corresponds to the 0.72 level of technological development without reaching type I planetary civilization’s level.
It should be noted that the Kardashev scale is the hypothetical one and it is not possible to verify it at the moment. At the same time, it gives an idea of the possibilities for the civilizations development on a cosmic scale. In addition, these stages of the civilizations’ development are far from the distant future scientifically based scenarios. The Kardashev scale was supplemented by Carl Edward Sagan. However, these additions are not taken into account by astrophysicists but are considered by science fiction fans.
Sensitive new-generation telescopes allow astronomers to measure the level of background infrared radiation, which should be a type III civilization’s indicator according to the Kardashev scale. Professor Michael Garrett from the University of Leiden (the Netherlands) decided to verify this theory and studied about 50 galaxies from the list, not only in the infrared spectrum, but in other radio frequency bands as well. The analysis of the results showed that the type III developed civilizations do not exist in the observable Universe at all.
Numerous arguments supporting the idea of the existence of a significant number of technologically advanced civilizations in the Universe are not proved by observations. It has been established that there are more than 8.5 thousand stars and more than 3 thousand planets similar to Earth within a radius of 80 light years from Earth.
It is has been estimated that the diameter of our Galaxy is about 100 thousand light years. If at least one civilization capable of moving between stars at a speed 1000 times lesser than the speed of light existed in the Galaxy, it would spread throughout the Galaxy in 100 million years.
So far, it has not been possible to find a planet that would resemble Earth: with an oxygen atmosphere, water and a more or less acceptable climate. The airless Moon, the dead sands of Mars, the red-hot sulfuric atmosphere of Venus, the icy worlds of gas giant satellites cannot be an environment for the protein life’s development. No one has ever got the evidence of the aliens’ existence within the mankind’s existence. Therefore, the belief in the existence of intelligent beings on other planets is gradually dying away.
The direct contact with other civilizations is impossible at the modern changing level of scientific and technological development of human civilization due to the huge interstellar distances. Even Proximal Centauri, the closest star, after the Sun, is at a distance of about 40 trillion kilometers, and it would take the spacecraft about four Earth’s years to reach it, even at the speed of light. Therefore, the theoretical possibility of the direct contact may be assumed if other civilizations have the superluminal speeds’ methods of moving, which are difficult to imagine on the basis of modern physical knowledge of a human being.
Humanity has tried to establish contacts with the intelligent civilizations of our galaxy. Thus, the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, a mathematician, put forward an idea to cut clearings in a dense forest and plant them with wheat or rye 200 years ago. The result would be in a contrasting geometric figure of gigantic dimensions, consisting of a triangle and three squares, known as the «Pythagorean pants». This figure, according to Gauss, could have been observed from the Moon and even from Mars. Soon after, Joseph Johann von Littrow, an Austrian astronomer, came up with a suggestion about digging wide channels and filling them with water with kerosene: «If one burns them at night, they will turn into geometric shapes – for example, into triangles – that Martians will not accept for a natural phenomenon, but for a sign of an intelligent life on our planet». All these ideas were based on the human analyzers’ ability to perceive the world around them. But the fact that other civilization can treat fire differently than a human being does it was absolutely not taken into account.
As for our time, there was an attempt to establish contact with the extraterrestrial civilization by means of a message transmitted by the Arecibo radio telescope on a distance of 21,000 light-years to the outskirts of the Milky Way, but again without a presupposed analysis of the other civilizations’ perception possibilities, only on the basis of human ideas and relatively modest knowledge in Physics. In addition, the message represented a series of digital images, 1679 bits of information in each of them. Today, these pictures resemble the very first video games due their primitivism.
Prior to this, the US space agency NASA launched the interplanetary probes Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. Each device had a metal plate fixed to the case with a set of characters and images of the naked men and women. However, it is likely that such drawings will turn out to be incomprehensible to aliens as well as the images on the Nazca plateau remain a mystery to us.
In other case, a gold plate was placed inside the «Voyager» apparatus, which was launched outside the Pluto orbit, for the playback of which a special player is needed and which is unlikely to exist in the other life form. Therefore, contacts organized on the basis of human ideas will not bring success without the other life forms properties’ comprehensive studying, as far as possible.
Sebastian Rudolf Karl von Hoerner, a German astrophysicist, in his article «The Search for Signals from Other Civilizations» explained the silence of the Universe by the fact that the tools of mankind are still very imperfect with the costs of the search being completely negligible. Perhaps people will never be able to visit other star systems, so it is possible to start looking for other civilizations and try to contact them remotely, in the radio frequency band, by means of the SETI and METI projects. The term SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) refers to the international efforts aimed at extraterrestrial civilizations’ search. The SETI experiments are not aimed at the life’s search in the entire galaxy, but at finding out whether there is a civilization that uses a certain portion of the radio frequency band for communication using a radio telescope within 50 light-years distance from the Sun. Dozens of experiments have been conducted in order to search for signals in the radio frequency band as well as in the optical range within the last fifty years. However, they did not produce any results. Developed civilizations, and especially super-civilizations, are not likely to use radio communication, which is uneconomical and ineffective at large distances, and is also limited by the light barrier.
The lack of evidence of the highly developed civilizations’ existence in the Universe may confirm the erroneousness of our ideas about their nature. Any methods used by a person wanting to establish contacts with a highly developed civilization should not use the concepts conventions developed by a human civilization. In my opinion, the universal language of communication with all civilizations, regardless of their material form, should be based on the geometric shapes. Moreover, not on figures, but on fractal images created by means of these figures. Fractals are sometimes called the language of geometry. The letters of any alphabet carry no semantic meaning unless they are combined into words. In the same way, complex images expressing a certain meaning can be composed of the geometric shapes. As well as, for example, in the Chinese language, where symbols already express certain meaning, fractal geometry can be considered in the same way. There are two main groups of fractal languages: linear and non-linear. Both groups use an infinite number of algorithms and cover an infinite number of possible fractal images, most of which use a deterministic set of rules, similar to grammar rules. The linear fractals’ geometry is the most common form of fractal languages. Such fractals are usually formed starting with the initial figure, to which a certain basic pattern is being applied. Self-similarity is manifested at all levels of all deterministic fractals. Encoding by means of the fractal images is justified only if there is an effective method of an image hidden in fractal algorithms’ «extraction». Having mastered the language of fractals, one can describe any messages by means of images that use the language of traditional geometry. Aren’t crop circles an attempt of a highly developed civilization to leave a message by means of the fractal geometry language?
