While Hari (Isaac Asimov) imagined you needed great equation solving ability to predict the future, we now have 500 petaflop computers and vast data sets of everything to make our predictions, and 60,000 Facebook employees, and Alphabet or Google’s 130,000 employees. Calculate on, dudes. However, we see that with Algorithms and disinformation, we can’t even fight a worldwide pandemic in a couple of years.
We wonder what is the point of sending our bodies across the galaxy in an advanced, civilized and settled universe. I wanted some data on the education of Floridians and their Supreme Leader, Ron DeSantis, in appointing an indescribably backward Health Minister. Did I have to fly to Florida and interview each Floridian and the Governor? No, I had my answer in minutes over the internet. Similarly, in the advanced galactic civilization, all known knowledge has already been sent across the galaxy at light speed and minimal cost and stored on each inhabited planet. No fuss, no muss. We just haven’t found the right frequency or password, or paid our subscription dues, or proved that we are a peaceful planet in order to be allowed access to this knowledge.
But there are other ways, one also thought up by Asimov, in The Andromeda Strain. A civilization sends down the DNA code, and we reconstruct the being from it, or it could also have been a fertilized egg or the components thereof.
The second, much simpler way, comes from the Facebook study, that after 300 likes, Facebook knows us better than our spouses. Simply send the one Gigabyte of data that Facebook or Google knows about everyone on the planet into space, and any computer there can construct our virtual beings, at almost no cost. Since almost our entire existence is now virtual, we can live happy, satisfying, and actually eternal lives on the Great Computer Systems in the Sky. Not to mention on Earth.
Let’s see: if we level off a 10 billion people on earth, and if there are 100 billion habitable planets in the galaxy, that is 10^21 sentient and maybe connected beings in the galaxy. And, there are 100 billion galaxies, so maybe 10^32 sentient beings.
While just 300 choices sounds like a small number, it is probably out of many more that we just pass by, without liking or disliking. However, even if given 300 specific like or dislike questions, that can have 2^300 unique answers.
Since 2^10 = 1,024, or about 10^3,
2^300 = 2^(10×30) = (10^3)^30 =10^(3×30) = 10^90. (One followed by 90
zeros).
That is far greater than the number of sentient beings we have estimated for the entire universe of 10^32.
While traveling the galaxy seems exotic, the effect on Earth-lubbers of the vast universe of ideas, customs, beliefs, knowledge, life-forms, planets and their scenery, will be transformative. Each Earthling can become an expert on a different world. I am especially looking forward to the multitude of out-of-this-world music, instruments, and superstars.
Of course, we cannot ignore the Astronomers and their funders. The goal of many is to find life outside of Earth, and astronomers will be able to detect gases associated with life. But even advanced life forms can disappear from planets, as we have seen the disappearance of the dinosaurs, from an asteroid impact far late in the evolution of our stellar system, a mere 1.5% ago in the lifetime of our planet. There is also our own rather unregulated dealing with the advent of nuclear weapons, for a mere 3/4 of a century. We have also managed to not control our increasing temperature, and its severe consequences over the next century. We have hardly been able to stop a pandemic, which even in the US has taken as many lives as a nuclear weapon on a city.
