Stephen Hawking's Aliens

I'm not usually one to blow my own trumpet, but it seems there are some scientific grounds to support what I had to say before about generation starships and bioships. Looking through a recent issue of the Journal of Cosmology, I was particularly interested in Blair Csuti's response to physicist Stephen Hawking's comments about the probability of alien life forms being hostile toward us. For those in need of some more context, you can catch up here:

In his contribution, entitled "Darwinism and Hawking's Aliens", Csuti makes much play of the fact that natural selection would compel alien species to place their own interests above those of the indigenous population of Earth. This programmatic assertion means less to me though than his argument that:

"...racing to Earth at near-light speed, it would take our would-be exploiters tens of millions more years to turn up on our doorstep. Unless they have very long life-spans, that would require a generational space ship with little prospect of returning to their home planet with whatever booty they had considered valuable enough to undertake a long and expensive expedition".

So I was right to suggest the meeting could only take place on an exoplanet. Therefore I'd like to add another twist to my Alien scenario, by suggesting that the Space Jockeys and their xenomorph cargo were the products of the evolution of the "astrochickens" originally dispatched by humans to explore the exoplanets (Freeman Dyson style). However, their evolution is so advanced that it takes considerable time and effort for a human to understand. I think back on the ending of the original Planet of the Apes movie, and there are some similarities to what I am proposing here for the Alien prequel. I just think my idea is a bit less obvious and therefore not as open to parody. You might recall, for instance, The Simpsons' musical version of Planet of the Apes, in which the sole surviving human astronaut breaks into song after at last discovering the shocking truth that the planet is not so alien afterall, but merely a future Earth where evolution has gone haywire: "You see I was wrong/it was Earth all along/they finally made a monkey out of me".

I won't comment here on Quatermass and the Pit either.

The added kick is that my version plays up to the importance of the Precautionary Principle that is supposed to regulate science, which is now generally regarded as "post-normal" because of the potential dangers it poses. It is this aspect that the evangelical presentation of Dyson ignores. Dyson goes out of his way to "blind" the audience with the wondrous nature of science, suspiciously resembling a telepreacher shaking down the true believers for the donations that will fund scientific research and shore up the expertise of scientists. So I hope Science Studies can make something of the latest instalments of the Alien franchise (remember, Social Epistemology once ran a piece on Kim Stanly Robinson, so sci fi can be useful in reinforcing critical attitudes).

Incidentally, the respective contributors to the issue in question of the Journal of Cosmology, provide more than a series of reading strategies to apply to the Alien prequel. They might also serve as useful templates for sci fi authors and readers interested more generally in how to characterise our potential relationships with alien lifeforms.

They sure make for more compelling reading than the works of Erich Von Daniken, which are not only racist in their assumption that the non-European peoples did not develop any science of their own (arguing instead that it was bestowed upon them by alien races), but also a direct ripoff of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. As this article proves, Von Daniken was an opportunist who noticed the warm reception of the mythos among French sci fi fans, which he in turn exploited to his own ends.

I hope my reimagining of the Alien universe is more compelling too than the "ancient astronauts". For me, it is not necessarily any conscious alien intervention in the evolution of the "astrochickens" used for exploration and/or terraforming, shifting the focus to our own inability to understand the contingent nature of the processes we've set in train. All of this was missing from Alien, where the emphasis was on the company's deliberate acquisition of the lifeform for military purposes. Sure, the plan was sinister, but there was a rationale behind it one could at least understand. I am suggesting, drawing on Hawking, a failure prior to this series of events to even recognise something as a form of life. The latter might gradually coevolve in more dramatic ways with our space exploration; thereby affording us a monstrous glimpse of the next stage of our development as a species.

To uncover this truth results in madness.....will the prequel capture this Lovecraftian sense of "cosmic horror"? To do so, it would have to effectively dispose of the character who learns the truth, otherwise the "unique" hybrid status of Ripley in Resurrection would appear more implausible. Only time will tell.

Bioships, replicating spacecraft and the exploration of exoplanets

We were talking the other day about the inaccessibility of exoplanets (they can't even be captured by imaging because of their obscurity), and this drove home the point as to why the "generation starship" concept is being supplemented or displaced by scientists and sci fi authors alike. The practical problems are how to sustain life and the energy required to power a ship across such vast distances over really long periods of time.

Here we see the biotech focus of this blog coming into alignment with a number of fascinating possibilities. For some background on exoplanets, it is useful to pay a visit to the Planetary Society. And here is the quote by Freeman Dyson that really caught my attention:

"Any affordable program of manned exploration must be centered in biology, and its time frame tied to the time frame of biotechnology; a hundred years, roughly the time it will take us to learn to grow warm-blooded plants, is probably reasonable".^[21]

However, Dyson is not solely preoccupied with manned exploration, as anyone who Googles "astrochicken" will quickly discover. Here we have Dyson, along with other scientists, applying the concept of "self replicating machines" to the development of spacecraft. As you can see from this link, the replicating spacecraft has also become a staple of science fiction. Unsurprisingly, while it offers in theory a means of exploring further and quicker than manned flights, there are concerns about whether replication could be controlled. If not, according to the "berserker" model, replicating probes would regard the existence of other lifeforms as competition, and would therefore seek to exterminate them. A more benign spin on the theme is the "seeder"/embryo space colonisation model, whereby genetic patterns from the homeworld are stored in readiness for the terraforming of habitable exoplanets. A degree of automation would circumvent the need for sustaining the living, breathing crew, associated with generation starships.

Of particular interest to this blog, Alien appears suggestive of the possibility of catastrophe arising from an admixture of berserker and embryo space colonisation. The sequence of events is not clear at this stage, as we await release of the [two] prequel (s), but one possibility would be that the automation process became corrupted during either the flight or upon contact with the exoplanet Acheron, with the xenomorphs subsequently emerging as a berserker species.

One of the more interesting pieces I have read of late discusses the derelict in terms of its being a bioship.
Let me return to Freeman Dyson though, given the lecture I've watched online of him advocating the need for "heretical thinking" in science. Furthermore, the Research Channel featured a video of author Ann Finkbeiner naming Dyson as a member of "the Jasons", "a self-selecting cadre of scientists independent of the government who evaluate military technologies at the frontier of physical feasibility". If such claims bear closer scrutiny, Alien may one day prove extremely prescient, given how the Weyland Utani Corporation was likewise interested in acquiring the lifeform for military purposes. Here, I mean to suggest that "heretical thinking" in science can easily translate to "the ends justify the means".

Although I am not charging Dyson with guilt by mere association, I do share Finkbeiner's concerns, which are raised as well in sci fi such as Alien: what role should the government play in scientific research? At what point is the inventor accountable for the hazards of the invention? The sheer vastness of "the final frontier" reminds us of the inherent difficulty of regulating any applied biotechnological research in such a context.

Please note that Dyson enthusiastically endorses biotech in the first part of this talk, before moving on to the theme of what kind of life might exist on Europa, and how we might go about finding it. In the final part, around 16:00, he connects biotech to space exploration, arguing that if we cannot find life out there, we should create it for ourselves to populate the universe, thereby making it a much richer, more interesting place. Hence it will not just be us moving from Earth into the universe, but living things in general. These proposals are obviously fraught with potential benefits and hazards, but the latter are not addressed in Dyson's talk:

Is xenobiology becoming a reality?

One of the goals in synthetic biology is to design an orthogonal chromosome different from DNA and RNA, termed XNA for xeno nucleic acids. Xenobiological systems like XNA are ‘‘invisible’’ to natural biological systems, which means they could be the ultimate biosafety tool.

Read more about it in the recently published Open Access Paper:
Schmidt M. 2010. Xenobiology: A new form of life as the ultimate biosafety tool. BioEssays Vol.32(4): 322-331

For further information see also:

• ORTHOSOME: An Orthogonal Episome: an Artificial Genetic System Based on a Novel Type of Nucleic Acids
• Marliere P. 2009. The farther, the safer: a manifesto for securely navigating synthetic species away from the old living world. Systems and Syntheitc Biology. Vol.3(1-4):77-84
• Herdewijn P, Marlière P. 2009. Toward Safe Genetically Modified Organisms through the Chemical Diversification of Nucleic Acids. Chemistry & Biodiversity. Vol. 6, Iss. 6: 791 - 808

Synbiosafe Trailer from Camillo on Vimeo.

You can guess that I just couldn't resist moving to this topic after referring to the xenomorphs from the Alien series in the previous post. In this case engineering dictates that, unlike the science fiction, there is no evolution through interaction (i.e. using other lifeforms as "hosts") with the "natural" environment. But what to make of this piece of understatement from Schmidt's article?: "is it necessary to prohibit any activities that actively try to undermine the specifications mentioned above? i.e. similar to prohibiting R & D that aims at developing new offensive bioweapons?" Gee Markus, what do you think? Why the rhetorical stance? Cat got your tongue?

Make no mistake about it then, this debate will assume increasing importance. If the precautionary principle of post-normal science prominently features at this stage, how difficult will it be to maintain given the amounts of money needed to fund it into the future? Compromises might be introduced sooner than we would like (a potential for military applications will be only one facet of this). "Bring on more debate", is what I say.

Synthetic Biology

the technoscience and its societal consequences

Schmidt, M.; Kelle, A.; Ganguli-Mitra, A.; Vriend, H. (Eds.)

2010, VIII, 186 p., Hardcover

ISBN: 978-90-481-2677-4

Usually dispatched within 3 to 5 business days

119,95 €

• About this book

Synthetic biology is becoming one of the most dynamic new fields of biology, with the potential to revolutionize the way we do biotechnology today. By applying the toolbox of engineering disciplines to biology, a whole set of potential applications become possible ranging very widely across scientific and engineering disciplines. Some of the potential benefits of synthetic biology, such as the development of low-cost drugs or the production of chemicals and energy by engineered bacteria are enormous. There are, however, also potential and perceived risks due to deliberate or accidental damage. Also, ethical issues of synthetic biology just start being explored, with hardly any ethicists specifically focusing on the area of synthetic biology. This book will be the first of its kind focusing particularly on the safety, security and ethical concerns and other relevant societal aspects of this new emerging field. The foreseen impact of this book will be to stimulate a debate on these societal issues at an early stage. Past experiences, especially in the field of GM-crops and stem cells, have shown the importance of an early societal debate. The community and informed stakeholders recognize this need, but up to now discussions are fragmentary. This book will be the first comprehensive overview on relevant societal issues of synthetic biology, setting the scene for further important discussions within the scientific community and with civil society.

Content Level » Research

Related subjects » Biomedical Sciences - Biotechnology - Medicine - Production & Process Engineering - R&D / Technology Policy

Table of Contents

1. Introduction, Markus Schmidt; 2. That Was the Synthetic Biology That Was, Luis Campos; 3. An Introduction to Synthetic Biology, Carolyn M.C. Lam, Miguel Godinho, Vítor A.P. Martins dos Santos; 4. Computational Design in Synthetic Biology, Maria Suarez, Guillermo Rodrigo, Javier Carrera, Alfonso Jaramillo; 5. The Ethics of Synthetic Biology, Anna Deplazes, Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra, Nikola Biller-Andorno; 6. Do I understand what I can create?, Markus Schmidt; 7. Security Issues Related to Synthetic Biology, Alexander Kelle; 8. The Intellectual Commons and Property in Synthetic Biology, Kenneth A. Oye, Rachel Wellhausen; 9. Governing Synthetic Biology: processes and outcomes, Joyce Tait; 10. Synthetic Biology and the Role of Civil Society Organisatons, Dirk Stemerding, Huib de Vriend, Bart Walhout, Rinie van Est; 11. Summary and Calculations, Alexander Kelle; Index

Blanchot's "The Proper Use of Science Fiction" (1959)

Incredible analysis from Blanchot here. I regard him in this instance as intimating some of the concerns I touched on my 2 "carbon chauvinism" posts. But it also breathes new life into what I regard as the most interesting and enduring philosophical questions, in part because they touch on issues familiar to sociologists and anthropologists. I'm thinking here of systems theorists, along with the profane and the sacred as foregrounded in the writings of Durkheim, and "the liminal" as featured in the writings of Victor Turner. All it took was a PhD for me to shape up to this legacy as in some sense constituting a theory of creative action.

Then as now, the questions of interest to me: What is a system? How does it negotiate its inside/outside? What is transgression, and how can it be situated, if at all, with regard to conceptions of "other spaces"?  I wrote in my thesis something about Benjamin Noye's discussion of Bataille and "the summit", so it is clear today that I also need to revise my notes in order to come to terms with the meaning of "the limit" described by Blanchot in the passage to follow.

I'm taking off tomorrow, so I can't even begin to touch on Cyclonopedia, which derridata bequeathed to me yesterday...suffice to say, I'm intrigued by the discussion of "exteriority" in that book as well.

Shelving these concerns for the moment, let me just add [in Twitter mode here] that I'm intrigued by what I regard as an approximation of the "performative contradiction" I mentioned in my 2nd carbon chauvinism post (see the conclusion of this excerpt from Blanchot). In any case, clearly these are issues that every science fiction writer has to engage with at some stage, and I suspect the same might be said about the imaginative capacity of xenobiologists to make allowance for the possible existence of lifeforms that confound their existing taxonomies.

Whenever science fiction guides us through space and the future as in a beyond where we are puerilely detached from ourselves, it proves vulnerable to all the jibes that Marx reserved for religion and philosophy. It is curious to see with what simplicity the great myths of transcendence learn to survive in these hypothetical worlds consecrated to immanence: that is interesting, and disappointing as well. ...What would happen if man suddenly encountered a superior being? The most common, and, imaginatively speaking, most impressive solution consists in finding signs of superiority in the lowest forms of life- insects, larvae, microbes- something which cannot but recall to us an immense chapter of theology.  But here we clearly see the import of this way of inverting the problem: it is that the problem itself is absurd, it is that human consciousness will never be able to convince itself, upon discovering it, of a superiority of other species; for this is the characteristic feature of consciousness: because it is null and void, it is always equal to all that is, the biggest and the smallest. Man is the summit- virtual or real, it little matters which. The idea of God, the idea of the microcosm, are only translations of this impossibility of consciousness being, in itself, inferior to that of which it is conscious. There thus remains only the trap of those species said to be inferior: if we admit, indeed, that among the beings known to us there are some that are ontologically beneath us, that means that they are just as much above us: these are truly our gods, and the literature of the fantastic makes use of this revelation in order to astound us for a moment. But the dramatic core of such visions remains this: man [sic] can never encounter a being superior to himself; this means that he will always be superior to everything, given that such superiority constitutes precisely the limit he tries in vain to surpass....