Fusion Under the Ocean

One way of siting fusion reactors in an alien civilization is to parcel them out to each city, or rather arcology, or group of arcologies. For assurance of power, perhaps there would be two or three of them linked together, with redundant levels of power, so that all the arcologies would always be powered up. Redundant cabling between the reactor site and the arcologies would eliminate that source of black-outs, and having several reactors operating in tandem would allow the task of disassembling one when it had reached its normal lifetime, right after replacing it with a successor.

Simple, easy, reliable, what could go wrong? The alien civilizations past asymptotic technology do not ask what could go wrong, as they know from long experience and high mental capability that nothing will. They ask, what could be better. There may be something.

Fusion, like fission, like fossil fuel combustion, even like wood-powered generators, is just a way of making heat, and then there has to be a way to turn the heat into something more useful. Nowadays on Earth, we would all answer in chorus that we know what is more useful, and that is electricity. Surely the aliens would put some sort of turbine generators in their fusion plants so that electricity could be made. Then the electricity could be sent into the network to travel to wherever aliens would congregate to use it.

Conversion of power to electricity doesn't actually work to 100% efficiency. Turbine generators might get 30 or a bit more percent conversion, and all that extra heat has to go somewhere. Maybe there is a lake or a river near the reactor site, and a bunch of water is vaporized to use up the heat. Or perhaps it would be better to site these reactors where there is a lot of water, like under the ocean. With the amount of water there, nothing needs to be vaporized, and in fact there is so much water, not even heated up too much. Running massive cables inshore from the offshore plants might be a small problem, but why do it? What the arcologies want is power, and why not give them hydrogen instead? We on Earth are on the verge of figuring out how to run cars on hydrogen, but the obvious extension is: why not run the whole arcology on hydrogen? Just have the fusion reactor be coupled into a hydrogen generator, and pipe it to the surface where tankers could ship it to wherever it was needed. No need for a city to be near a reactor, just near a transportation network.

Fusion has a habit of using hydrogen as well. Supposing the fuel used is deuterium, you get that from hydrogen. Giving the arcologies hydrogen that is a little depleted in deuterium would have no bad effects whatsoever. So there is a bit of a synergy here.

Hydrogen contributes to recycling in a very simple way. When you put it into a fuel cell, or whatever advanced alien civilizations use to get the power back out of the hydrogen, the exhaust is water. Water going into the atmosphere does not need to be recycled out. Oxygen taken from the atmosphere to combine with the hydrogen does not need to be separated, although we have to let the aliens do it however they want to. With a fuel cell in each apartment or domicile, each activity center, and wherever else needed, there is no need to wire up the arcology. Just a corridor is needed for deliveries, although some piping could be used instead. With this decentralized power generation, the arcology could be simplified considerably. No wiring for power; no wiring for communication, just a network of some sort, no piping for waste or water delivery if reconstitution was also decentralized. This type of arcology could be instrumental in pushing up the recycling percentages into the high numbers. Since recycling of everything is part and parcel of every alien's goals, having a decentralized arcology might be just what they need. Of course, this is all from early 21st century Earth ideas, which are likely to be replaced by better stuff shortly.

Past the genetic grand transition, it would be easy to create creatures which can tolerate high pressures in an under-ocean fusion reactor station. These intellos would be designed to perform whatever tasks were appropriate for a biological organism, which is whatever tasks are left over from having robotics or some other type of automation do it. Swimming intellos could be designed to inspect the outside of the reactor when needed, and something based on an octopus design designed for external work tasks.

Depending on the levels of radiation which build up in the fusion plant, some parts of it can be simply dissolved when it comes time to terminate one of the reactors. If the alien planet has the same sort of crustal geology as we do here on Earth, subduction might be used to dispose of radioactive waste, without any need to bring it out of the ocean.

There is one other advantage, which will not be familiar with anyone here on Earth. The aliens might want their planet to be beautiful, and fusion reactors might be designed to look impressive, but beautiful? Putting them under the ocean eliminates that problem before it even gets started. The transport of hydrogen still has to be done, but land transportation could be effected in a way which was not unpleasant to look at, and dispersal within an arcology could be done in a way which was not obtrusive. So, if one of their goals is to have an attractive planet, under-ocean reactors and a decentralized hydrogen economy seems to play in that direction.

The alien atmosphere would likely not have much hydrogen in it, since life would produce oxygen which has the unmistakable tendency to combine with it. This means, since hydrogen is the lightest element, that on any alien home planet dirigibles would be possible. While we humans may have a like or a dislike for the idea of dirigibles, on a planet where no one has to work and time is mostly leisure, traveling from arcology to arcology on a dirigible doesn't sound like too bad an idea.

Low Thrust Interplanetary Orbits

If someday we here had a huge telescope and we wanted to hunt aliens, one way is to look at exo-planets and try and figure out if there is a Great Wall there or pyramids or something noticeable. Or we could look for something else. In an advanced alien civilization, there is a good chance they would be running freighters between planets, pushing back the inevitable exhaustion of resources. Could a really huge telescope see interplanetary freighters, or at least the rocket blast from one?

One little precondition for an alien civilization building cargo freighters for shipping good stuff between planets is that it make economic sense. Figuring out the economic aspects of interplanetary shipping in a civilization we don't know much about might seem challenging. At least until we remember that energy is probably the currency they use. To see if interplanetary shipping might be useful from an economic point of view, we could compare the energy it costs to get something from one planet down to the home planet where it would be used, and then compare it with the value of that 'something' in terms of energy.

One way is to look at the displacement costs. If something, say, yttrium, takes X joules/kg to get it from planet 6 in some solar system and it takes 2X joules/kg to mine the depleted resources on the home planet, it looks like interplanetary mining and shipping is a GO. It gets a little more complicated when you consider substitution. If instead of yttrium the various needs could be satisfied by a combination of erbium and thallium (these don't make sense, just think of it as names), yttrium would be used only if the costs of substitution in terms of these alternative materials was more than 2X joules/kg[yttrium], maybe 2.5X. Then the economists on the home planet of this particular solar system would know that yttrium was the best bet, home world wise, and they would also know it makes economic sense to go get it for less energy than mining it at home.

If you want to do this comparison, you need to understand how to compute X. How many joules does it take to send a ship out to planet 6, put down some mining equipment, refine the ore and get the yttrium out, launch it back and return it to the alien home planet. When it comes to doing this, there are likely a whole lot of ways to do it. Exactly one is the most economical. That's the one you need to use to figure out X.

There are some nonlinearities here. If you are going out to planet 6 and do some mining, and the home planet only needs 2000 kg of yttrium a year, it doesn't make much sense to cart mining equipment weighing 2000000 kg to planet 6, along with some lander and launcher, and also fly it back to the home planet. If the home planet needs 2000000 kg of yttrium a year, it looks like the amortization of the setup out there on planet 6 would be worth while. So does this mean mining commonly used materials is the only way to make interplanetary shipping economical? No. It does mean that every material needs a separate calculation, to make sense of what has to be plopped down on planet 6 to get the material. Or planet 4 if that's were it is located.

It also makes sense to look at multiple materials from one planet. If you are amortizing a launch pad on planet 6, it helps to have ten different things you are shipping back home. Same with everything else. And you would want to figure out the lowest cost methods for every component of this venture.

One of the components is the shipping back home of the mined materials, as well as the shipping out of whatever is needed to get the materials on the planet of origin. This brings us back to the first paragraph. We need to figure out the lowest energy using way of shipping, as that is what all the alien civilizations that can and do do interplanetary shipping would use.

Let's think about some Earth examples to settle our minds. Suppose Earth was running out of something, might as well call it yttrium, and there was a pile of it on Mars. What's the lowest energy way to get it back to Earth? The energy cost of a spaceship can mostly be in the propellant and the propulsion energy source. It takes a lot of energy to get out of a gravitational well. There is also a hotel load, but that might not be so much in comparison.

Suppose we consider low thrust trajectories. There are trajectories that loop from the vicinity of Mars, using Mars as a gravitational slingshot, to direct the spaceship back to close to Earth. There are also trajectories that loop from the vicinity of Earth, using Earth as a gravitational slingshot, to direct the spaceship back to Mars. These don't belong to the same orbit, but a small amount of transverse thrust at the most useful points, the perigee and the 'perimars', can connect them. This is the essence of a low thrust orbit. The orbit isn't an orbit, as it has some changes of parameters on each passage of a planet, but it almost is. The energy cost for getting mass from one planet's vicinity to the other's is very small.

Obviously, vicinity is not a landing. There has to be some other pieces to this space navigation. Specifically, two, one being some way to get some chunk of mass from the ground to low orbit, and two being something to bring the mass up to speed to match the spaceship's velocity as it runs past the planet. What this arrangement has done is it has reduced the energy needed to move mass from one planet to another to just about the minimium possible. Energy is necessary to get out of the gravitational well, and then to match velocity for the low thrust interplanetary almost-an-orbit. The other end of this has to be included as well, specifically something to bleed off velocity of the cargo, after it is decoupled from the interplanetary shuttle, dropping it down into low orbit. And also some energy might be needed to bring it down to the planet's surface, if aerobraking can't be used. Remember, there might not be any air on planet 6.

The same mechanism for taking cargo off the spaceship and putting it into low planetary orbit can be used to take cargo from low planetary orbit and match velocity with the spaceship. In other words, some tug-like vessel just has to do one pass per orbit of the interplanetary shuttle, where it takes cargo from low planetary orbit, boosts it to interplanetary speed and couples it with the shuttle, simultaneously extracting the reverse cargo from the shuttle and then dropping it down to planetary orbit speeds.

This three tier system may be the one that uses the least amount of energy. It also means that there is not going to be any major thrusting done in interplanetary space, where Earth's gigantic telescope was hoping to see it. The bottom line is simplicity itself. Economics on the alien solar system indicates they are not going to be giving off any signatures from interplanetary shipping that we could detect. It would have been nice, to have this isolated burn going on in the middle of barren space, where it would be easy to see. But no. We will need to find another signature to nab.

Two Kinds of Thinking

By now, everybody knows there are two types of thinking, or two types of computing. Here on Earth, we are seeing some successes in AI in certain well-defined tasks, that have been too formidable before. While I don't read all the news, the articles that showed a computer has beaten the international Go champion were unavoidable. Why didn't this happen twenty years ago? Because nobody believed in the second kind of thinking. Chess was won by a machine some time ago, but that was done by sheer computational power. Go had to have another type of thinking. The articles referred to it as deep thinking or some such nickname, but what they were talking about was multi-layered associative neural networks. That's what you have in your skull.

The first type of thinking was invented before computers were invented. It is simple: programming. A program, at least it used to be, was a set of instructions that were to be executed in order. There could be branches and tests, but by an large it was doing one thing after another. It's how you communicate many things, like trades. You know, to fix a car that doesn't start, do step one, then step two, then step three, and so on. Here and there are some measurements or tests, and that affects the particular sequence of actions. Sequential games are just perfect for this type of code. You just figure out in advance what the moves might be, and pick the best one. Checkers or chess, or many others, are subject to this. You figure out what happens in ten or fifteen moves, and if your opponent can only figure out six or eight moves, he/she loses. There has to be a criteria for measuring the value of the different states you compute out, but in many games that is not too hard to find.

This type of thinking is universal in the world of computing today. Anywhere you look, there is a set of sequential commands to follow. Software engineering has become a discipline that figures out how to organize these sets of commands, how to verify and validate them, how to proof them against unexpected results, and more. The trillions of lines of code that exist in the world are all this type of computing. You might say this happened because silicon likes to be either on or off. It likes discrete things. Or you could say it happened because binary is simpler than rational numbers. Or you could say that determinism is simpler than fuzzy logic. Or you could just say that mankind is still pretty primitive.

Man's brain isn't pretty primitive. We finally got around to believing it was a useful paradigm to follow. Now that computational power has gotten much grander in scale, maybe a few hundreths or thousands of a percent of the human brain, neural networks begin to make sense. Neural networks work by not following any prescribed set of commands. Instead, they work on weights. One node of one layer of a neural net evaluates a set of inputs, most likely the outputs of a lower layer, by matching it against a template of weights, and the output is a measure of the degree of match. The next layer has a broader scope, and evaluates its own match against the inputs, which are the outputs of a dozen or a hundred nodes from the next lower layer. It may sound like a pyramid, but it isn't because each layer looks at the outputs of the previous layer, and there are scads of alternatives as to what comes out, meaning lots of nodes on all layers.

Once someone has figured this out, and also how to efficiently make a computer core, which can only do sequential stuff, simulate an associative network, then it can be applied to all kinds of problems, like anything the human brain can do, if the human brain was in a box. There is one problem, however, you have to train an associative network. You don't have to train a program, you just write it. But an associative network has many more free parameters than it has nodes, and they all have to get set. This was a big problem until some smart dude had a baby. If you watch a baby learn, you immediately see how neural nets get trained. A newborn baby can't do anything except pulse some random inputs to its muscles and suckle. That last bit is hard-coded. When you watch it, you see it initially notices a correlation between the random arm motions it makes and the visual field. This quickly boils down to the baby learning how to move its arms. The same thing happens a million times over, and the baby's brain begins to function and become the brain of a toddler, whom we all know is quite capable.

In those articles about the Go program, nobody talks about how the networks they used were trained, but it's more or less obvious. You go layer by layer, and just put in some reward structure. They train themselves, just like a baby does. You can affect the environment and speed up the training, or you can just go out to lunch.

Now that we have passed that hurdle, we on Earth will be able to see some decent AI results. We can expect that all alien civilizations that pass into asymptotic technology will have passed that hurdle as well. But it is an early hurdle. Since programmed computing and associative computing both do different things well, it is obvious to everybody that combining them produces the most capability. Alien civilizations will have done that also, early in their careers. What's the asymptote on this?

Can silicon be built to be more efficient than a wetware brain? Say, on a kilogram basis or on a joule basis? It depends on the test. Some things yes, some things no. So, on an alien planet, you can expect to see a diverse combination, as one of the precepts of an alien civilization is that it would be efficient. You would see pure neural nets, hybrids, and pure logical sequences.

This brings up an interesting point. Humans can think, well, some humans can think, in logical sequences, in other words, think like a program. How did they manage to get an associative neural network to do that? Well, the answer is clear, but we don't need to go into it here. What we do need to recognize is that biological entities and mechanical entities both have striking advantages and disadvantages, as well as a certain degree of overlap, and any advanced society would see both. Perhaps biological-mechanical hybrids as well, but there are certain disadvantages of these.

Comparisons between mechanical thinking and biological thinking are unfair until there has been enough genetic exploration and experimentation to grant to all members of a particular generation a very large intelligence. Machines are designed to be the best they can be, so why shouldn't aliens as well? There is a strong correlation between intelligence, measured in the right way, and the ability to do logical thinking, so the dividing line between tasks that are left to aliens and those that are turned over to AI will certainly move following the genetic grand transition. Biological stuff, like us, might turn out to be pretty good, after all.

Is Hard Science Fiction Impossible?

'Hard' is an adjective that some science fiction readers or critics use to denote science fiction that tries to be as realistic as possible. The author is supposed to use all the scientific training he/she has, do research into what is known about the background of the story he/she is writing, and then try and not write anything in contradiction to that. This position is fairly tenuous, as science changes from time to time, and the latest in findings as reported by the press may be overturned within a year or a decade. So adhering to the full gamut of scientific research may be even self-contradictory, if the scientists themselves had not had enough time to fully explore new findings, or what they think are new findings or deductions.

Put aside the difficulty of writing to adhere to a set of findings that are still being revised. Even if the author decides to stay away from the most recent discoveries or expected discoveries, he/she still has a very difficult task. The task is not learning about the science; that is something that gives way to great effort. The task is the plot.

There are certain things that a plot must do in order for the story to be sold and to be appreciated. The author can abandon his/her quest to write hard science fiction, and introduce whatever magic they want. If the author proceeds very far from this original concept, he/she could wind up writing fantasy, which is when there is little thought given to any consistency with what is scientifically believed. If he/she still wants to try for the pinnacle of hard science fiction, he/she has to figure out how to create a plot that is interesting for the readers. The plot is the essential part of the science fiction work, it has to have characters, including a hero and a villain, events, struggles, conflicts, relationships, and so on. That is what makes it sell. It is almost as if the science leaps forward are icing on the cake, there to appeal to a secondary motive within the readers.

If a particular reader wanted to learn about science, he would consult a textbook, go on the internet, read some scientific commentary or science news or something specifically related to science. Something without a plot and all its encumbrances. That is not what they are reading, and while someone could enjoy reading both, they take up a science fiction story to enjoy the plot.

Hard science fiction postulates a situation in which the plot is to take place, and the situation is to be consistent with known science, but it must also be self-consistent. Both of these are difficult.

To be consistent with science, gizmos are typically not possible. Like a time travel gizmo or a starship gizmo. How do you build a interesting plot when the principal devices are all off limits? Without gizmos, what can happen? Characters can interact, one can fight another one, two can ally, someone can be betrayed, a secret can be unveiled, and so on. If this is all the author has to offer, constrained as he/she is by hard science fiction, why not write it set in a historical time or a modern time? What is the point of it being science fiction if there are no gizmos allowed?

Take some examples. There are many stories written that involve time travel, and usually the author tries to be cute about how it's done to make the details interesting. Maybe destinations are not settable, maybe the machine goes awry, maybe only bits of information flow backward, maybe it is only temporary, or lots of other shenanigans related to the impossible supposition. Time travel has contradictions and doesn't happen. Hard science fiction can't use it.

What about star travel at faster-than-light speeds, without an energy cost greater than that included in a massive black hole? Countless extravaganzas are predicated on this being possible, but no one bothers to do the consistency check of finding out how the flyers get all that energy. How is it stored? How is it transformed, and with what efficiency, and where does the waste heat go? It isn't that star travel is impossible, that is not known now here on Earth, but fast, low energy star travel is. Magic portals can't exist. Hard science fiction can't use this gizmo either.

The alternative, a thousand year voyage, might be possible, but just how interesting is that? If the ship involved was a multi-generational ship, there could be the usual individual versus individual conflicts and all the strife that could happen in a tiny village, or even a small city if the ship was large enough, could happen to make up a plot. But why bother writing up such a plot unless there was something about the travel that was connected to the plot? Some dramatic turn had to be imminent and dangerous and only some particular actions on the part of some particular individual can rectify things. Why not just write about the tiny village or the small city? Why put it out in space? There are threats that face tiny villages and small cities.

Conjuring up the threats to a large ship means that the designers did not foresee all consequences of their designs, which is typical for a first design, and somehow, testing was not done. This is not consistent with how engineering would be conducted. No large expense would be taken without extensive testing. Of course things go wrong, and a look at the space exploration vehicles that Earth has sent out provides a list of things that can go wrong and have. Testing does not find all the failure modes, although it tries to. Testing does find most of them and the simpler ones for sure, so the plot has to involve something that would have escaped long term testing, of components and of systems. This makes creating a plot for a hard science fiction story involving a star ship quite perplexing.

If there is no time travel and no fast star travel, the author is left to write about life on a planet. Gizmos might be the thing that makes it science fiction, but most gizmo ideas are not based on scientific extrapolation, as that typically does not go very far. They may be based on extrapolation beyond reasonable limits. Again, many gizmos are ruled out of hard science fiction.

What is left is a translation of Earth society into a future time with some changes, but not so many that readers can't immediately recognize the type of society, its flaws, and the struggles within it. They are simply recognizing what they know, underneath the trappings of a future projection. There is a giant flaw in this, in that technology will be curing these problems, just as it cures those in health and energy. The lack of consistent projection of scientific advances across the different fields of science is perhaps the most common failing of future scene science fiction.

Almost nothing is left. Well, fantasy is more exciting to read, anyway.

Was the Earth Ever Phase-Locked to the Moon?

Recall that one of the principal theories for the origin of the moon was that of a planetoid, nicknamed Theia, which impacted the proto-Earth. The collision spewed much matter into diverse orbits, but one large chunk of mass didn't get enough energy to completely separate from the majority of the mass, that which stayed behind, and go into a planetary orbit. Instead it went into a satellite orbit, and has hung around the Earth for all the following billions of years.

This collision was a pretty lucky one. There are at least two principal variables: the difference in speed, relative to the center of motion of course, and the projected closest point of approach. The second one is simply a way of describing how far from a heads-on collision it was. A heads-on collision would not have produced any moon, just broke the proto-Earth apart, provided the velocity difference was high enough. If the projected closest point of approach was just less than the radius of the proto-Earth, it would have been a glancing impact, with the two bodies, largely intact, proceeding on orbits close to what they originally had. Instead, the projected closest point of approach was enough to tear the proto-Earth apart slightly, as the Theia object accreted some mass from the proto-Earth, much like a bullet being shot through jelly picks up some jelly on its way through.

From a momentum point of view, the relative momentum that Theia had before the impact had to be shared with both its original mass and the accreted mass, meaning for the same momentum, less velocity. Less velocity can mean a velocity less than the escape velocity from the remaining mass of Earth, so Theia-plus was in a satellite orbit. Most likely, it was nothing like a circular orbit, rather an eccentric one, but the important point is that it was a bound orbit. Thus, after the impact, the moon was in an elliptical orbit, looping back to have a close pass at the Earth, over and over again.

Nothing was alive on Earth at that time, as it was a cauldron of molten rock, but if there had been, it would have been a spectacular sight, to watch the moon rise and fill a large part of the sky, and then soon set again. The perigee cannot have been very far above the Earth's surface, as the orbit originated in an impact, at roughly the radius of the Earth.

Tides would immediately begin to circularize the moon's orbit, and here we mean solid tides, not liquid ones. The orbital period of a circular orbit near the Earth is about an hour and a half, but the orbital period of a elliptical orbit is governed by its semi-major axis, not the perigee distance, so it would be longer. It may well have been that the orbital period was less than Earth's day, whatever that was at this time. That means that the tides would lengthen the semi-major axis of the moon's orbit, shortening its orbital period, while the diurnal rotation of the Earth would slow down, and the day lengthen. This is a recipe for tidal locking, as the two approached each other.

Right now the moon is phase-locked to the Earth, with its day and orbital period being the same. What may have happened back then, in the very early days of Earth, is that Earth may also have been phase-locked to the moon. If it did happen, it was only temporary, as eventually the moon's orbit drifted out further, and the day did not lengthen enough to continue to match the orbital period.

Skip forward from the early days of the Earth moon combination, shortly after the impact that formed them, to the possible period when the moon was still fairly close to the Earth, but the Earth was phase-locked. This is similar to what astronomers think many planets of red dwarfs would be doing, and there has been a little thinking about what the conditions might be on such a planet. A planet which is phase-locked to its satellite, albeit a large satellite by mass-ratio, is completely different. Only the locking process is the same.

There would be one face of Earth which always faced the moon. With the moon still in something of an elliptical orbit, this does not mean that the moon would be sitting constantly overhead at the same point. What it does mean is that the apparent orbit of the moon would be in the visible part of the sky, to someone sitting at the right point on Earth, right under the perigee. The moon would be coming closer and closer, moving one direction and then the opposite, and then going out further and further. If the rotational axis of the Earth were aligned with the axis of the moon's orbit, sitting on the equator under the perigee would be the best viewpoint.

As the moon gets closer and closer, what happens? Gravity happens. The crust endures this very large force of gravity, or rather variation of gravity, over and over again in rapid succession. The crust would crack and split, leaving volcanic activity at an unimaginable level. As time progressed through this window of phase-locked motion, the moon would circularize and move out, so the gravitational effects would diminish with time, but still the crust would be torn frequently.

In other words, there is a tremendous source of energy here, generating chemicals of all sorts, and making sure any oceans that formed would be full of a wild mixture of various elements and molecules, many of which would be energy-rich. Back when this blog was discussing the early origination of life in an organic ocean layer, there might have been questions about whether or not there would be abundant energy around. With this scenario, certainly yes. Note that the rate of evolution, both the early chemical type and the later biological type, is affected by the amount of available energy. With lots of energy around, life can evolve faster. Unlikely processes can come to fruition earlier. Things just seem to fit together.

The crust of the Earth is all one big connected shell, but someone might guess that there would be more cracking and erupting on the perigee side of the Earth, and the back side, where the moon was never visible, might be a bit calmer. Still, with the circulation of oceans, energy would be available, but disruptive geological events might be a bit more rare. Perhaps some parts of the crust on the rear side of the Earth could stay intact for a long period. This might be the home for early life.

Fragility in Alien Civilizations

Some previous post talked about social collapse in an alien society that had achieved asymptotic technology. They had already passed by the genetic grand transition, and utilized what was learned there to endow all members of succeeding generations with all the benefits that good genes, or great genes, can provide. The implications of this are profound. More intelligence, actually at the maximum achievable, leads to a solution of disagreements, even if they are long-standing and harbored in ancient prejudices. The basics of the conclusions are simple: once asymptotic technology is achieved, society unifies and starts making all the right decisions. Individuals trade rationality for instinctual decision-making, and goals become common, rather than impulsive activity. Problems just melt under the white heat of universal high intelligence.

This implies that the alien civilization does not have to worry about its internal arrangements in thinking about threats in their future. They might have to worry about galactic threats, or stellar expansion, or a nearby supernova, or geological activity, or any of a number of external problems, but they don't have to worry that something within themselves contains the seed of their own destruction. This eliminates many of the possible reasons why aliens have not visited us. They did not destroy their planet through some technological error, as they are smart enough to figure out consequences in advance. They did not divide into warring factions and destroy the planet with their wars, again, they we too smart for that. They did not crash their economy, as they were too smart for that. And on it goes. These problems didn't stop the alien civilization.

Not so fast. What about the period of time before they achieve asymptotic technology, when they don't have universal high intelligence to rely on to save them from every kind of social problem. This situation seems remarkably similar to the one where the civilization was facing Malthusian idiocracy, in that during that comparatively short period, between the industrial grand transition and the genetic grand transition, all manner of things can go wrong. To avoid Malthusian idiocracy, they had to make some intelligent choices, and they had to do it while the level of intelligence in the civilization was no more that came from evolution. It may be that there was even some decline prior to reaching this critical juncture. The same holds true with other crises of different sorts. They have to make the right decisions to avoid the debacle, and they have to do it without the mental ammunition they would have in only a century or two.

Consider one simple phenomena: war. As technology gets more and more powerful, the destruction of war can become more and more extensive. Can the alien civilization figure out how to not divide themselves into factions that descend into an all-out war? We on Earth don't understand how wars can get started, or rather we have many diverse theories as to how wars get started, all of which contradict one another. Perhaps some particular alien society does figure it out, and then they can avoid war. Otherwise, they can avoid war by fearing the destruction that is involved. Would that be enough to prevent some particular alien civilization from simply deciding that enough is enough and war is the only answer to some problem they face? Maybe.

As far as we on Earth know, there might be multiple social phenomena which lead to war. Can all alien civilizations figure out, at this early stage in their technological progress, what they all are and even better, can they figure out how to tone down these phenomena so they do not propel the planet into war?

Consider another simple phenomena: care of the planet, sort of a sum of both ecology on a planetary scale and the environment, which is necessarily on a planetary scale. Can they figure out how to not do too much damage to it? During this phase, they are gradually weaning themselves off dependence on the planet's other life systems, but earlier on, they are still wholly supported by such things as photosynthetic food production and some water recirculation system. They might now have chlorophyll on their planet, but some other photosynthetic chemical provided by their form of evolution, but there isn't any other source of energy that can support all the life on a planet that has grown large numbers of intelligent, civilized aliens. Can they use this energy source for as long as they have to without doing something to damage it? There are likely other factors in the ecology-environment mix on their planet that they can use or damage, depending on how they orchestrate their use.

Consider a third simple phenomena: prevention of epidemics. Once genetic manipulation starts to become common knowledge, but before it is comprehensively understood, both on an explanatory basis and on a utilitarian basis, can the alien civilization figure out how to prevent accidental or deliberate genetic manipulation of disease vectors into something more suited for widespread contagion? At this point, there are still individuals who, although intelligent, are not psychologically well-balanced and this combination could lead to some pathogen being tinkered with or worse, and released. Whether this is possible probably depends on the immediate living conditions of the population. Have they begun to merge into large cities?

All in all, a single word to sum up the state of the alien civilization at this intermediate era is 'fragile'. There are many things which can go wrong, which will become impossible to happen in only a few centuries, after the genetic grand transition has fully passed by. It might be possible to come up with a long list of what possible classes or categories of fragility would exist then, and certainly the list would be long. This finding, if one can dignify it as such, means that figuring out if self-destruction is a principal cause of the lack of alien tourists is going to be much, much harder that anticipated. It is so much harder because the era before asymptotic technology is not uniform across alien civilizations, and the various technologies could progress differently on different planets, so technological determinism is going to be a bit sticky to use. The era is short, but during that period so many opportunities for poor decisions, as a planetary whole, that it could easily be the final one for many alien civilizations.

The same phenomena could not happen in earlier eras. The difference is globalization. In earlier eras, there were still regions that were autonomous and only poorly connected. If there was an epidemic in one area, it stayed there. If there was a war, it might be between two regional factions each occupying five percent of the planet's habitable surface area. These disasters are recoverable because of their small scale. Later, when technology emerges to connect the globe both in mobility and in communication, problems can leap up to planetary scale. This is the recipe for disaster embodied in the word 'fragility'.

Malthusian Idiocracy – Effects of Inhomogeneity

In previous posts on Malthusian idiocracy, it was pointed out that this ailment strikes alien civilizations in the interval between the industrial grand transition and the genetics grand transition. This is the interval in which newly discovered technology makes resources available far beyond previous levels, and such affluence just invites the social dystrophy of Malthusian idiocracy. It was also discussed how an alien civilization could avoid this fate, but they would have to follow a certain narrow path through this interval, and any of several departures from it would lead to collapse. Yes, one can assume they would be smart enough to avoid it, but perhaps not.

The previous discussions focused on the situation where the population was rather homogeneous. If they were not, perhaps there is less or more chance that Malthusian idiocracy could be the final resting place of the civilization. There were two varieties of inhomogeneity mentioned. Once relates to individual differences, and a good example of that would be an alien civilization that preserved a caste system. The other is locational, where one region is more advanced than another.

Caste systems can be hereditary, where a young alien born to two (or more) parents of high caste is destined to be and to stay high caste. Questionable circumstances exist in a union involving both high caste and low caste partners, and then there would have to be some social rules explaining what caste the young aliens would be. There does not have to be an ironclad policy relating to belonging to a caste, and some alien civilizations could have one in which there was some slight flow of individuals either upwards or downwards in caste, depending on what they had accomplished in their lives. High caste would be associated with a high availability of resources, and low caste, low availability. This resource availability could extend to whatever functions in the civilization that were allowed to be differentiated between caste. There could be locations frequented by only one caste, there could be professions allowed to only one caste, there could be wealth associated with caste, there could be associations restricted to one caste. Education could be linked to caste. Access to even the basics of life could be linked to caste, including access to nutrition, healthcare, communication and transportation.

The magic door out of the possibility of Malthusian idiocracy is the dispersal of intelligence genes through the population once they are discovered. The argument ran that parents of young aliens would not want their young offspring to have lower intelligence than necessary, and would opt for the use of these genes as soon as they were available. This makes sense, and works if there is no barrier that the civilization has erected to prevent some parents, specifically some in the lower caste, from taking advantage of these technology breakthroughs. If the civilization was fully accustomed to restricting access to various features of the civilization, such as the infrastructure with different functions, it would only seem natural to them to restrict access to these genetic advancements to those of high caste. The low caste parents might want them, but this would be just like wanting full access to nutritional advantages, superior healthcare, and other features. The low caste would have grown up with a recognition of their place in the alien civilization, and might not even expect or ask for such an advantage as genetic advancement for their young. The high caste would be used to causing such denials, and it would seem wholly natural for them to do it. The civilization that was built around a caste structure would utilize it rather than switch, for some new technology, to some universal accessibility. It just wouldn't make sense to them.

Is the lower caste the recipient of some fraction of the affluence that technology bestows upon the civilization during the interval between the industrial and the genetic grand transitions? The majority may be diverted to the high caste, but likely some would flow to the low caste. This is just the recipe for Malthusian idiocracy, not for the whole population, but for the low caste portion of it. Their population would surge, and their intellectual, and likely other, capabilities would decline. When this happens, the caste system itself is put in jeopardy.

The high caste can see what is happening, and decide to allow universal access to the intelligence gene technology, both for their own members but also for the members of the low caste. Once intelligence is equalized, then there is less justification for maintaining a caste system, and this will become obvious to all the recipients of the intelligent kick upwards. The high caste would also have its intelligence enhanced, and they too would begin to understand the neurology that underlies the preservation of caste.

If the high caste does not act, sooner or later there will be some scarcity developing for the lower caste, and if it comes on rapidly, this is a trigger for some sort of revolution. Whether it could succeed or not is all dependent on the details of how the civilization is set up. But succeed or not, this may be one factor that pushes the caste system to be dismantled, rapidly or gradually.

Does the revolution cause the alien civilization to be cut off from the pathway to asymptotic technology? No, it may make the pathway available where it was not before.

The other situation of inhomogeneity is one in which there are two parts to the alien world where aliens inhabit, and they are somewhat decoupled, at least so that one can advance at a faster rate than the other. Again, technology developments in the advanced region may filter down into the other region, where they could lead to the same syndrome of affluence leading to Malthusian idiocracy. The exact same phenomena, the more advanced members deciding to share the genetic technology or the less advanced members ballooning in population, running into scarcity, and migrating or otherwise putting pressure on the advanced region to respond.

It would seem that inhomogeneity in the alien civilization's population does not lead to another cause for Malthusian idiocracy to cripple society, because there are some self-repairing routes that seem to be likely. The four potential causes of it remain potential threats to the future of the civilization, but at least inhomogeneity does not make them worse that they otherwise are.

Malthusian Idiocracy – Is it Avoidable?

This particular crisis of an alien civilization en route to asymptotic technology occurs between two grand transitions, one, the industrial one, where the scientific method becomes popular and the rate of technology progress ramps up tremendously, and two, the genetic one, where the civilization transitions from something controlled by its evolutionary legacy to something controlled by reason. These great changes in the civilization would obviously have a lot of friction to them, and if the civilization takes certain paths instead of others, it does not reach asymptotic technology, winding up in civilizational collapse in a form known as malthusian idiocracy, where the average intelligence level descends too much to keep the civilization functioning.

There are forces which arise from heterogeneity within the civilization, either on a resource access basis, meaning some have more resources available to them than others, or on a location basis, meaning that some parts of the home world are more advanced than other parts. Either of these has certain additional effects, but before examining them, consider a situation where the alien civilization is rather homogeneous. This period of time in their history, between the two grand transitions, finds them still in the state that evolution left them in, so there is likely great variation individual to individual. Other than these legacy evolutionary distributions, things in this example are rather the same everywhere and for everyone.

Eliminating these two inhomogeneities allows the central question to be asked without complication. As an alien civilization becomes more and more technological, more and more in control of the planet's resources, with more access to energy, and with all the other accoutrements of technological progress, can it avoid idiocracy? The threat is that with all the resources being made available, with the amounts increasing rapidly over short time intervals, all the evolutionary pressure to develop intelligence disappears, and the fraction of the population that has a predilection for breeding goes into overdrive.

As time passes and the civilization passes through this interval, more and more of the effort needed to maintain the civilization and even to advance it becomes mechanized and then automated. This means that a smaller and smaller fraction of the population would be required to keep everything running, but their capabilities would have to increase, as the complexity of mechanization and automation increases with the degree of it. The progress of idiocracy does not mean that the intelligence of all alien members of the civilization immediately start going down, but rather that successive generations have less and less members who can achieve upper levels of technological capability. So then, in order to get through this potential chokepoint for the civilization, the progress of idiocracy has to be slower in some sense that the increase in technology. Said a better way, if idiocracy extends to too large a fraction of the population, it will start to slip downwards.

In this period, reproduction is still done in the same way that evolution provided, with two (or three or whatever) different sexes sharing genes. This particular trick of evolution speeds up mutation, so it is likely that it would be found in an alien civilization. If like largely reproduces with like, then intelligence might continue in a subset of the population, and the machinery of the civilization can keep on running and technology can keep on advancing. If mating is more random that this, there would soon be no such subset. So the question of whether an alien civilization can survive the growth of idiocracy long enough for them to cross the threshold of universal high intelligence becoming available translates into a question of the mating patterns of the aliens.

So far we have only covered on effect of idiocracy on the progress of the civilization, specifically, the reduction in the numbers of alien citizens smart enough to maintain and advance the technology. There are other effects. Another one is the control that the population exerts on progress. It may well be in a particular alien civilization that governance has little to do with the passing wishes or the desired policy of the average alien. In this case, idiocracy would not be able to reject technological advances. In the alternative case, where there is a strong effect on what happens in society exerted by the average citizen, then progress itself may lose favor and be halted, such as by being cut off in funding or personnel. Thus, both mating customs and popular governance are variables which might allow the civilization to progress or to halt it and reverse its trajectory.

There is a third effect. This relates to the spread of technology. Techological advances can be made, but if they are not implemented throughout most of the population, it is as if they had never been discovered or invented. Depending on how the populace communicates among itself, there might develop some antagonism toward some or even all technology advances, and they could be rejected in application. In other words, bright things would keep flowing out of the laboratories or wherever aliens do their research and make their inventions, but they would not flow anywhere, just into the graveyard of new ideas. Old ideas and old ways of doing things and old technology would stay in vogue, except perhaps in some sector of the population which was involved in developing the new technology. This is not a lack of enthusiasm for novelty, but instead a fear of new things, perhaps generated by the expected lack of the requisite intelligence to utilize them. Nobody wants to try or use new things.

There is even a fourth effect. This arises from the malthusian part of the idiocracy. As affluence rises and makes a higher population possible and, temporarily, sustainable, the population responds over some generations to take advantage of it. Those who can make do with less and prefer to have more new members of the civilization will eventually push the limits of the planet. Then, as scarcity hits, population might not be controllable, but instead, resources would be diverted away from everything, such as research, into sustaining the population.

To summarize, idiocracy could be the social effect which derails an alien civilization's progress to star travel capability and this would happen with some unfortunate luck in four areas: mating practices, governance style, popular individual communication modes, and whether scarcity hits before the genetic grand transition is passed. If the alien civilization is unlucky in any of these four areas, they may not be able to visit us.

Malthusian Idiocracy

The title is a pleonasm. All idiocracies are malthusian. The adjective was added to emphasize that effect of an idiocracy.

As noted in the posts on idiocracies, they arise because of a negative correlation between reproduction rate and intelligence. If that happens in an alien civilization, the average intelligence will decline with each generation. At some point, if this continues, the civilization will not have enough intelligent members to function well, and governance may break down, the economy may stumble and collapse, or technology can begin to lose ground, instead of continually advancing.

Recall that all organisms, with the exception of fairly advanced civilizations of intelligent aliens, are malthusian, breeding as much as the environment can support. This is the essence of how evolution works. If the alien planet had evolved a million different species over the history of its life, all of them were malthusian. Any mutation that lost the drive to be malthusian was competed out of existence. This is perhaps one of the most fundamental laws of evolution. The implication is that no resources are accumulated, except in situations of affluence. They are all used up for breeding purposes.

Affluence happens for a species when it discovers resources in large quantity that enable the species to reproduce at the maximum rate possible. This can happen when a species migrates to a new area, with abundant foodstuffs, or a lack of predators, or some other advantage that eliminates the limitations that scarcity typically imposes on a species. Perhaps pest-borne disease was the limiting factor on the population of a new species, and they gain access to a new area where the pests cannot survive the environment. This is the equivalent of finding new resources. The explosion of population that would result is simply a reflection of the malthusian drive, although it can be described in other ways. It might be that for some species, water was a critical limit in their environment, but the climate shifts, and rains start coming and keep coming. Again, the limiting factor is removed, and the population expands up to the limits imposed by some other factor. Affluence may not be the best word to describe the situation immediately following the removal of one of these more obscure caps, such as disease or water, but the idea is that where there was limitation before, there is none, of that kind, later.

In the population of the species under some condition of population limitation, the organisms in that species continue their contribution to the genetic mix because of a combination of effects, genetic in origin, that affect survival and that affect reproduction. An individual who is more capable of dealing with the surroundings in which it lives is in a balance with an individual who is more capable of reproducing fast and furiously. To phrase it in the terms used before, an individual who is more capable of dealing with the limitations of the situation in which it lives can have the same reproductive contribution to successive generations' genetic pool as an individual who is less capable of dealing with these limitations, whatever they are, but instead concentrates on fast reproduction. You could loosely say that intelligence is on a balance with fast reproduction, in competition for future generations' genetic makeup.

Now consider the situation just after affluence starts. Those two individuals just mentioned are affected differently. The one who is better at dealing with the environment finds its skills not nearly so useful now. The one who is better at fast reproduction is ideally suited for the new affluence situation. Thus, it makes sense to assume that there is a negative correlation between externally directed skills, also known as intelligence, and reproduction rate. What this sums up as is that under the conditions of affluence, idiocracy is the direction the population heads in. This is a situation for all mobile organisms, not aliens. It is almost a basic unavoidable result of evolution working the way it does.

There is a time rate question here. If the limitation which most severely affected a species very slowly and gradually lifts, evolution still remains in charge and the individuals who are more capable of dealing with the environment are not left with nothing to do. In the very slow change situation, the same competition between the two classes of individuals, those whose genes favor survival and those whose genes favor fast reproduction, continues to exist and keep the two in balance. Only in situations where there is a rapid change, over only a single generation or a small number of generations, does the affluence model hold sway.

Now consider the alien species which achieves intelligence, an associative neural network or some equivalent of it. That intelligence is equivalent to the opening up of new resource after new resource, bringing on a sequence of affluence situations. Once the technology curve ramps up enough, there is nothing but new resources being made available. If there is a segment of the population still malthusian, there is going to be a population explosion. This is likely on any alien planet, on their way to star travel.

In this blog, the hero that rushes in to save the situation and rescue the alien species is the genetic grand transition, which is assumed to allow all of the alien species to take advantage of it over some short, in generations, time, so that intelligence becomes universal, and intelligence is the antidote for malthusian procreation. One alternative which has been booted around is that the dispersal of the genetic improvements for intelligence do not become universal, and there are some 'left-behinds' on the planet, who simply, for one reason or another, do not participate in the upgrade of intelligence.

If the left-behinds amount to ten percent of the total population, there would seem to be no significant effect on the alien civilization moving forward to asymptotic technology and eventually to the capability for star travel, if that is their goal. On the other hand, if they represent fifty percent, or ninety, or ninety-nine, then their effect may be to quash technological progress. It would appear incumbent on anyone purporting to study the advance of alien civilizations to dig more deeply into this numeric ratio, and the implications of it being rather high.

How Important Is a Large Moon to Life?

Other posts in this blog have talked about the utility of the moon in several aspects of originating and evolving life. One idea is that the moon is responsible for reducing the severity of the variation in orbital and planetary parameters, such as axial tilt and eccentricity. By slowing down these changes, there is time for evolutionary adaptation to the changes, and early life forms are not subjected to sudden ice ages or other large scale changes in the surface conditions on the planet.

Another idea is that the formation of the moon, via impact of the proto-Earth with a large planetoid, would do many things necessary for the origination of life. In that concept, the impact was responsible for seeding the atmosphere with organics, enough so the immiscible ones would form pools on the liquid water bodies, making a meniscus where something like a cell membrane could form. The same impact would leave a completely unsettled liquid core and solid outer shell, meaning there would be massive volcanism for long periods, which provide the energy source for the early chemotrophs.

Now comes a third idea. A recent new theory hypothesizes that the moon is the principal source of energy for the magnetosphere around the Earth. That magnetosphere serves to deflect the solar wind, which might serve to kill off much of the early life, if the magnetosphere was not there. Tidal effects of the moon on the liquid portion of the current core keep it rotating, somewhat non-uniformly, which is enough to generate the magnetic field. This idea can be extrapolated backwards in time, when the moon was much closer to the Earth, and the Earth's core was all liquid metal, without the solid core which formed later. This would indicate the magnetosphere was more powerful at early eras of life, meaning a stronger degree of protection ws being provided.

There are other speculations as to the roles that the moon played. One relates to Earth's atmosphere. The impact of the planetoid would certainly have served to heat it up, accelerating the dispersal of the lightest gases, specifically hydrogen, from it. Other gases, not as light as hydrogen, may have been lost to a higher degree resulting from the planetoid impact, but also from the tidal action of the moon shortly after formation, when it was in close orbit around Earth. The interaction of the gravitational force of the moon and the dynamics of atmospheric motion would have led to some of the upper atmosphere being out farther than otherwise, and this could contribute to the loss of the lighter gases. These gases, if present at many times the amount they are today, would have cut photon arrival at the surface, slowing down the evolutionary process by which photosynthesis replaced chemotrophy as the principal energy source of early life.

All these factors, and all the ones no one has thought of yet, indicate a large moon is instrumental in the origin and evolution of life, which implies that planets without a large moon would not have alien civilizations on them, and certainly not be the sources of star travelers. Exo-planetary astronomy is not yet able to detect moons, but if any moon might be detected, it would be one which has such a high ratio of mass to its planet such as the Earth-moon system does.

There are currently at least three methods of detecting exo-planets, all rather recent in development. The wobble method, by which the motion of the star, specifically the doppler change in the spectroscopic location of the most distinguishable lines, is good for large planets is close orbits. To get down to Earth-sized planets at distances like an AU, it would be good to have another order of magnitude sensitivity in the spectroscopes that do the detection. This means more photons, which means larger collecting apertures. This is certainly possible. To then go and look for a large moon would require another one or two orders of magnitude in photon count, to say nothing about the instrumental accuracies that would have to be developed.

The second method is the transit method, which means that the reduction in total photon flux that happens when a planet crosses between a star's surface and us, and it is also difficult to beat without more photons, meaning more collection area. To discriminate between a planet and a planet-moon combination requires more than simply photon counting. The total cross-section of the planet-moon stays constant, except for something of the nature of an eclipse of the moon, except seen by us not them, and only when the planet is making a transit. The slight fluctuations possible when the planet-moon system is entering the disc of the star or leaving it is again just a tiny change in the current signal. The transit method looks to be less likely to detect large moons than the wobble method.

The third method is direct imaging, which requires the light of the star to be blocked out very accurately, and the planet being imaged to be distant, rather than close in with the wobble method. Typically imaging a planet results in the planet occupying only one pixel at a time, and so there is no opportunity for doing a Galileo on an exo-planet until some way of extending the aperture of the observing equipment is found, something that could resolve the planet into more than one pixel, something like ten or more.

What comes first, the chicken or the egg? Or phrased more specifically, in a situation where one piece of research would motivate another, in either direction, and neither of the two are being pushed hard enough so that they are in the near future, where to press to see a resolution of the questions? If more geological work was done on the formation of the moon, and the condition of the Earth shortly after the impact, and for the folowing hundred million years, together with work on life origination under these unusual conditions, then there might be motivation to look for moons on Earth-like planets.

If, by some stroke of astronomical genius, it became possible to detect large moons on Earth-size planets, and it were found that there simply weren't any at all of them, and further there was no signature of life on all of the planets, this would imply that the moon has something to do with it, and Nobel prize seekers could focus on figuring out the mysteries of life origination on Earth-moon systems. Regrettably, it seems that neither of these two avenues is going to be explored while most of us are alive on the planet.

Early Origination of Life – Organic Oceans – Part 10

The organic ocean idea is based on the existence of large amounts of organic compounds on the early Earth, including many which are immiscible in water and would form their own ponds, lakes, pools, or more importantly, layers upon a water body. It goes on to assume that some ambiphilic moleculess would be formed at the meniscus between the two liquids, and some of these would have sufficient mutual intermolecular forces to cause them to link together, forming some continuous areas. Then the idea includes the idea of a intermediate organic molecule which can insert itself between the two halves of the ambiphilic molecules in the membrane and which can also catalyze other copies of the same molecule to insert themselves into other copies of the same ambiphilic molecule. This meets the definition of a self-replicating molecule, and chemical evolution would take over from here.

One principal alternative was that these organic compounds were created during the impact of a planetoid onto the proto-Earth, which led to the formation of the moon. The impact itself would create many of them and the resulting very long period of volcanism, when the new core settled down, would add more. Complex organic molecules can be thought of as simply another form of higher energy state, the population of which would be vastly increased by the heat generated in the impact and the volcanism.

To create a theory of life origination, it would be nice to foresee that there are possible next steps that would lead, eventually, to something having the attributes of organic life, which might include the existence of an entity, rather than simply patches of membrane made of one or more interesting molecules. Some potential next steps would be having different intermediary molecules, assuming more than one can catalyze its own insertion into the ambiphilic ones, which are assumed to form independently. Perhaps the membrane has a natural curvature, with the lipophilic side being smaller in cross-section, so that there would be a tendency to curve and eventually close. There would have to be permeability to various molecules coming in or going out, as the membrane at this point is simply a means of concentrating populations to increase the reaction rate.

Life, and chemical evolution, need energy to function. The initial impact would produce many molecules from which energy could be extracted, as could the volcanoes. The initial intermediary molecule, the self-catalyzing one, would evolve to other ones, and later migrate some component to the end of the hydrophilic end. Then some molecular component might be added on which would serve as an energy transport, taking energy from one or more kinds of molecules floating in the oceans and storing it until it became time to use it in the replication process. If the membrane closed upon itself, one next step would be for some components to float freely in the interior of the membrane, while others stayed attached.

If there was some inherent curvature present in the membrane, then as it increased with more ambiphilic molecules being inserted into it, it would buckle and perhaps separate into two. If one new membrane-enclosed volume was lacking copies of some key molecules that were the product of chemical evolution, this budding would be a failure. If the density of the key molecules was high enough so that all of them had copies inside both pieces, we have an instance of reproduction. Perhaps it could be called a cell at this time.

It is all well and good to originate life in a temporary situation, but there has to be enough time for chemical evolution to allow for the occurrence of two things we know happened on early Earth. One is that the organic pools disappeared, leaving only water bodies. If by this time closed membranes had evolved, and they were able to function wholly in the water, without contact with the meniscus, then whatever simplistic form of life this is could continue. The second thing that happens is that volcanism stops, or almost stops. Perhaps there are still some vents in deep ocean areas, and some volcanoes under the sea busy erupting from time to time, but nothing like the maelstrom that existing for millions of years after Theia, the impacting planetoid, hit the proto-Earth.

Without volcanoes, what is going to produce molecular energy for the simple cells? There are only two energy sources possible, photons from the sun, and chemical energy from the deep Earth or from some exposed rocks. There may be some primitive cells that absorb and consume other cells, but there has to be some energy entering the domain of life; it is impossible to have an area with only carnivores – something has to get energy from another source. Either some early form of photosynthesis, or rather simply photon absorption into some stored energy form, had to have evolved before the volcanoes died down, or the chemotrophs would have to retreat into some small areas where there were still sea vents or other sources of chemical energy. This would represent a drastic chokepoint for life on Earth, but certainly not a definitive reason for extinction.

If volcanism did not go on in one area long enough for photon absorption to evolve, it would be necessary for these primitive cells to migrate to another area. There is no process that would end the existence of such a cell. If it did not encounter any substances it needed to continue to grow and even bud, it would not shrivel up and die, it would just keep floating around in the ocean until some event happened to destroy it, or it floated into an area where there were the right kind of organic molecules that would permeate through the membrane and allow it to resume functioning. There were no predators, no acid areas as far as is known, no high temperature regions, and in short, not much to destroy the little cell. A lightning bolt at the right time and place could certainly do it, but the probability of that is low, and ocean depths might serve to limit the possibility of such damage.

What this implies is that life origination happens and early chemical evolution happens and even the first steps of the most primitive cellular evolution happens relatively quickly, when there are massive amounts of organic chemicals around, including many possessing extractable energy. After that, evolution slows way down, until at some later date photon absorption becomes possible. Then it speeds up again.

Some key questions related to this hypothesis about the origination of life are: is it possible to develop organic oceans in large volumes except via the impact of a planetoid; how long would extensive volcanism last after such a major rearrangement of the mass of the planets involved; what would be an estimate of the rate of formation of the first cellular structures following the meniscus membrane concept. Another one would be: is there any possible signature still present on Earth that could show if there was a period when there were organic pools present on Earth.

If the answers to these questions come back to favor the organic ocean/Theia impact hypothesis, we may be the only life in the galaxy. Perhaps orbital simulation of possible early solar systems could tell us if it is extremely rare to have such an impact, or if we are going to be surprised to find that impacts like this are almost as common as exo-planets.

Design for Recycling

When some organization wants to build a nuclear reactor plant, they have to figure the lifetime costs in order to apply. Nuclear reactors are unique in that a decommissioning phase must be included in the cost and the schedule for the plant. Because of the lingering radioactivity, it wouldn't be good to treat it like a steel plant that had reached the end of its life, when the company simply shuts down, locks the door, and lets rust take over. There are too many toxics in the reactor area, so the organization must have a plan to eliminate the potential hazard. Some of the radioactive toxics will last for centuries, so any plan which had only a shuttering of the doors and a posting of some guards would be hazardous to say the least.

The materials in a nuclear plant are not recycled, but a large-scale recycling plan, one which encompasses mostly everything, and goes on continuously, has one similar feature. Everything is designed to be recycled. The organization that builds a nuclear power plant is forced to deposit the monies needed to decommission the plant, so that there is some guarantee that bankruptcy or other financial woes will not prevent the decommissioning. If an alien civilization decided to move, gradually, to near 100% recycling, they might adopt the same tactic. Put a charge on disposal of anything manufactured, so that any materials not recycled would be saddled with a large bill. Soon any organization doing manufacturing of anything at all would be figuring out how to not have any items for disposal at the end-of-life of the manufactured object. Once recycling of every component and material became a cost item, the design of the manufactured objects would be done to minimize the total cost, including the disposal costs. The tax on disposal would be traded off against the cost to recycle, and if the disposal tax was high enough, design work would be done on integrating the plan for recycling into the plan for manufacturing.

This means that an alien citizen would have objects in his possession and in his environment that were fashioned quite differently that those we see here on Earth. One of the big costs in recycling of mixed waste is the separation of different materials. Shredding an object, like a car, that has in it dozens of different types of materials generates severe sorting problems. Many stages might be necessary. So, aliens would likely not have shredding processors in their arcologies, but would adopt a different strategy: disassembly.

Shredding and sorting is based on the recognition that most components in a manufactured object are there as pure materials, and the shredding produces fragments of different materials, mixed together, that can be sorted. If a manufactured object is composed of multiple pure materials, disassembling it into those pure materials does the same thing as shredding and sorting, except more efficiently. The efficiency of disassembly is related to how the assembly process was orchestrated. If assembly is done in a way to facilitate later disassembly, even more efficiency can be achieved.

The fastening processes or mechanisms which hold together different materials in a manufactured product can be either easy to undo or difficult to undo. Obviously, design of a manufactured object in a mandatory recycling regime would involve fastening processes and mechanisms that were as easy to undo as possible. This cuts waste as well, so that recycling can be pushed closer and closer to 100%.

Once the design for disassembly hurdle is passed, another change looms on the horizon. That is that maintenance can be done by disassembly and reassembly, perhaps with one component swapped out. Recall that this era is long past the point where there would be upgrades to do. They are already at the end-point of capability and all conceivable upgrades have been done and incorporated, centuries ago. But maintenance is something that does not go away, only diminishes with better design. Assuming that design is at optimality, there is still some small residual maintenance that must be done.

Thus, alien citizens would be used to simply giving whatever they owned over to the local robots or intellos and getting back one that was refurbished. It is almost as if manufactured objects have a life of their own. You have something, maybe a communicator, and its screen was replaced two years ago, and the case four years ago, and the circuitry eight years ago, and the other parts at different times. When you die, it will be a perfectly useful, completely up-to-date communicator, in fine shape for someone else to use. If one is accidentally destroyed, a equivalent replacement, identical in form, function and appearance, would be available. Two citizens who accidentally swap their identical objects would not notice any difference, and not particularly care that there was a swap.

This has a psychological effect. Objects more or less lose their value. If everything is like air, one breath being the same as another, why be concerned about it at all? The twin effects of the end of novelty and the efficiency demands of recycling and disassembly would have put a close on the acquisitiveness that aliens may have evolved with.

All objects would fall under this umbrella. Perhaps it might be thought there would be art objects that had special value. But manufacturing would be able to duplicate anything, and since there is no utilitarian reason to have an original anything, why would any alien want one? Old museum pieces would be duplicated for anyone who wanted one. New art would likely be in a mass-production media, so as many copies would be available as were wanted. Simply put, there is no object that is particularly worth having, except for what it does, and there are mass-produced copies of anything that does have a use.

For an Earth person of our era, this seems like a civilization with a vacuum where value used to be. Yet it appears to be the unavoidable result of technological progress. This is simply one more example of how different an advanced alien civilization would be compared to our own, and therefore how difficult it is to make snap judgments about what aliens would do or like or how they would behave.