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rfmcdonaldThe problem with Dr. Paul LaViolette's recent book Decoding the Message of the Pulsars: Intelligent Communication from the Galaxy is that it's so compelling. Might pulsars in fact be actively manipulated extraterrestral communications beacons? This might be so.
I altogether lack the scientific training to be able to independently evaluate LaViolette's claims. I was skeptical of the sorts of people and publishers praising the book, but that was unfair. My internal alarms were turned on definitely only when he began talking about the structural similarities between pulsar distribution and crop circles, and about the "Mylar mirrors" that famous French ufologist Jacques Vallée was reputedly kept from talking about. Um, yes.
The merits of LaViolette's arguments have been widely questioned, with a seeming consensus that LaViolette is a classic example of a pseudoscientist. This, the considered evaluation and dismissal of a certain set of arguments made badly, is a good thing.
Well, mostly. LaViolette seems to be the most visible person making claims about pulsars and SETI, and I worry whether LaViolette's lack of credibility will unfairly colour people's judgements as to the overall plausibility of possible SETI-pulsar connections. I'd be rather surprised if there were actual connections between extraterrestrial civilizations and pulsars, but it seems at least superficially possible that one might exist elsewhere without having to throw in galactic civilizations of unmatched power sending secret messages to Earth that get intercepted by shadowy government agencies. Perhaps I'm being premature, but these vast networks never sounded plausible even when I liked watching The X-Files.
Why is it that these possibilities attract the same sorts of people as these conspiracies?
While scientists continue to work on the complex and perplexing mechanics of pulsars, most of them are not inclined to view them as potential alien transmission devices. The broader scientific community does however support the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) initiative. The support that SETI enjoys is likely due to the fact that it represents something of an agnostic view of ET. Its primary goal is to detect signs of intelligent alien life, scanning the skies for electromagnetic waves in the hope that we can pick-up the signals of an alien civilization within our giant galaxy. But this method is riddled with difficulties and assumptions about the aliens themselves. For instance, there are the impracticalities of transmitting radio signals due to the power required to send a signal over vast distances, as well as determining what frequency to use. And just what are we supposed to be listening for exactly? And as for the aliens, assumptions abound! Their technologies would need to be relatively comparable to our own. They would also need to be living in a time period coinciding with our own civilization's existence - a big ask, considering the age of the universe compared with the age of humanity. And these aren't the only assumptions and limitations associated with the SETI project, but they're enough to give you an idea of the difficulties involved.
The idea that pulsars are an alien engineered form of galactic communication isn't greeted with much enthusiasm by the scientific mainstream. But scientific uber-maverick Paul LaViolette, author of The Talk Of The Galaxy, who has a background in astronomy, climatology, and systems theory, claims that the more we learn about pulsar signals, the more mystifying they become. Some of this strange behavior includes the intricacies of pulse sequencing observed by researchers that cannot yet be accounted for. Part of the problem may lie in the fact that observations of pulsars do not coincide with the models we've created. Astrophysicist Gerry Zeitlin, an advocate of LaViolette's work and firm believer in the status of pulsars as communication beacons, states that: "Out of some twenty different proposed theoretical models of possible sources of these pulsing signals, astronomers settled on the 'neutron star lighthouse' put forward by Thomas Gold in 1968." If LaViolette is correct in his idea that pulsars are galactic markers created by an alien civilization, then this analogy of pulsars as lighthouses, at least functionally, may not have been far off the mark.
I altogether lack the scientific training to be able to independently evaluate LaViolette's claims. I was skeptical of the sorts of people and publishers praising the book, but that was unfair. My internal alarms were turned on definitely only when he began talking about the structural similarities between pulsar distribution and crop circles, and about the "Mylar mirrors" that famous French ufologist Jacques Vallée was reputedly kept from talking about. Um, yes.
The merits of LaViolette's arguments have been widely questioned, with a seeming consensus that LaViolette is a classic example of a pseudoscientist. This, the considered evaluation and dismissal of a certain set of arguments made badly, is a good thing.
Well, mostly. LaViolette seems to be the most visible person making claims about pulsars and SETI, and I worry whether LaViolette's lack of credibility will unfairly colour people's judgements as to the overall plausibility of possible SETI-pulsar connections. I'd be rather surprised if there were actual connections between extraterrestrial civilizations and pulsars, but it seems at least superficially possible that one might exist elsewhere without having to throw in galactic civilizations of unmatched power sending secret messages to Earth that get intercepted by shadowy government agencies. Perhaps I'm being premature, but these vast networks never sounded plausible even when I liked watching The X-Files.
Why is it that these possibilities attract the same sorts of people as these conspiracies?
