The Personal Website of Mark W. Dawson

Containing His Articles, Observations, Thoughts, Meanderings,
and some would say Wisdom (and some would say not).

SETI and Vulcan

Are we alone in the universe? Are there advanced civilizations that we can detect? How can we better the odds of making contact? These questions are both fundamental and universal. Today’s generation is the first that has the science and technology to prove that there is other intelligence in the cosmos. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute’s first project was to conduct a search for narrow-band radio transmissions that would betray the existence of technically competent beings elsewhere in the galaxy.

After decades of searching SETI and SETI@home has not discovered any signs of intelligent life. Is this because the search in incomplete and insufficiently expansive, or is it possible that there is no intelligent life that can be discovered?  In my Science article “Intelligent Life in the Universe” I discuss the issues of the possibilities of evolution of intelligent life.

A brief summary of this article is that the possibilities of intelligent life evolving in our Galaxy is somewhat small. It is also very possible that detecting intelligent life may not be possible as they would be at a different technological state than we are. Therefore, we may have a situation analogous to the Precession of the Perihelion of Mercury’s Orbit that occurred at the beginning of the 20th century.

Precession of the Perihelion of Mercury’s Orbit

A long-standing problem in the study of the Solar System was that the orbit of Mercury did not behave as required by Newton's equations. This problem became observable in the 18th and 19th century as advancements in telescopes and measuring instruments made it possible to accurately measure the precession. The problem is that as Mercury orbits the Sun it follows an ellipse...but only approximately. It was found that the point of closest approach of Mercury to the sun does not always occur at the same place in space, but that it slowly moves forward in Mercury’s orbit. This effect is known as precession. The anomalous rate of precession of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit was first recognized in 1859 as a problem in celestial mechanics.

The precession of the orbit is not peculiar to Mercury, all the planetary orbits precess. In fact, Newton's theory predicts these effects, as being produced by the gravitational attraction of the planets on one another. The precession of the orbits of all planets except for Mercury's can, in fact, be understood using Newton’s equations. But Mercury seemed to be an exception.

As seen from Earth the precession of Mercury's orbit is measured to be 5600 seconds of arc per century (one second of arc=1/3600 degrees). Newton's equations, taking into account all the gravitational effects from the other planets (as well as a very slight deformation of the sun due to its rotation) and the fact that the Earth is not an inertial frame of reference, predicts a precession of 5557 seconds of arc per century. But the actual measurements showed there is a discrepancy of 43 seconds of arc per century from Newton’s predictions.

This discrepancy cannot be accounted for using Newton's formalism. Many ad-hoc fixes were devised to explain this discrepancy. One explanation was that an undiscovered planet orbited between the Sun and Mercury, causing the perturbation of Mercury’s orbit which showed up as precession. The race was then on for astronomers to discover this planet. This supposed planet was even given the name “Vulcan”. A few astronomers actually claimed that they have discovered Vulcan, but it was determined that the discoveries were equipment anomaly’s, observational errors, or very small, long-duration sunspots. No astronomer ever discovered Vulcan for the simple fact that it did not exist.

When Einstein developed his Theory of General Relativity he applied it to the problem of Mercury’s Orbit. Einstein was able to predict, without any adjustments whatsoever, that the exact orbit of Mercury is correctly predicted by the General Theory of Relativity. When he did this Einstein realized that General Relativity was correct. However, he required an additional observation of phenomena that Newton’s Universal Gravitation had no allowance for in order to prove his General Relativity was correct. He found this in his prediction of the Deflection of Starlight.

SETI - Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Is the search for SETI as doomed as was the search for the planet Vulcan? And doomed because there is no intelligent life in our Galaxy at this time, or if there is intelligent life at this time it is in a different technological state than we are. These issues and other issues are examined in my articles “Intelligent Life in the Universe” and  "Science vs. Science-Fiction", and I would encourage you to read these articles. I believe that these questions and issues are fundamental questions that need to be answered before much more time and monies are spent on SETI. More thought and research need to be expended in answering these fundamental questions. Until this is done I do not expect much from, nor pay much attention to, SETI.

Disclaimer

Please note that my Science Articles disclaimer applies to this article, as it does to all of my science articles. These science articles are for the purposes of general scientific information that is understandable to a layperson, so that they can grasp the concepts of the topic being discussed. As such, they are neither as accurate nor as thorough as academics, scientists, engineers, and science writers strive to achieve. My hope is that these science articles will be informative and interesting, and that they will pique the reader's interest in exploring these topics in further detail via the hyperlinks that I have embedded into these articles.