TRANSCRIPT: Are We the First Technological Civilization in the Solar System?

Digging through scientific papers as I do to research the content featured on this channel is something very much like hunting for Easter eggs. I would never call any scientific work mundane, any work done by scientists helps to advance our understanding of our world around us, but I might say that most subjects one sees in scientific papers just would not make for good YouTube videos unless done by a creator far better than I.

But several times a week I find papers, or easter eggs if you will, that excite me and then I go make videos on them. Occasionally, however, I will read a paper that absolutely blows my mind. That definitely happened this morning.

This paper is entitled "Prior Indigenous Technological Species" and was authored by Dr. Jason T. Wright of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds at Pennsylvania State University, link to the paper in the description below. It's a good read folks.

But first some back story. It might surprise you, but it is fully scientific to consider the possibility of alien life having visited our solar system in the past. Carl Sagan and I.F. Schklovskii pointed this out in their book "Intelligent Life in the Universe" in 1966. This is independent of the question of whether the human race has ever interacted with an alien race. I have no problems with those that have concluded otherwise, but I have personally seen no compelling evidence that would lead me to conclude that we have. I have only seen material that leads me to more questions.

But the universe is a very old place, certainly old enough for other technological civilizations to have arisen long before ours did. It's also sufficiently old enough for an ancient civilization to have explored the galaxy end to end without exceeding the speed of light. Earth too, is sufficiently old enough to have been explored at some point in the distant past.

And, it's also fully within the realm of solid science to look for evidence of that as part of SETI operations, and indeed I've made several videos on this channel on the possibility of Bracewell or von Neumann probes hidden somewhere in the solar system. The tough question though is how likely is it that such a thing might exist?

This subject was tackled in a 2011 paper by Jacob Haqq-Misra and Ravi Kumar Kopparapu entitled "On the Likelihood of Non-Terrestrial Artifacts in the Solar System", link to the paper in the description below. They concluded that we simply have not explored our solar system thoroughly enough yet to detect such probes, if they exist, and that we should probably keep our eyes open for them just in case.

Dr. Wright in his new paper takes an interesting approach to the question of artifacts of other civilizations present in our solar system. He points out that while astrobiologists focus on searching for present or past evidence of simple life in our solar system, it may well be the case that artifacts of advanced civilizations are easier to find. And, going further, he suggests that the origin of such an artifact does not necessarily need to be another star system, but could be the solar system itself.

It is possible that advanced civilizations may have developed in the past on Earth, or even Mars or Venus which are thought to have once been earth-like. But Earth and Venus are geologically active worlds that renew their surfaces, so any evidence of an ancient civilizations is likely to be long gone on these planets. But you might find evidence of them on less active worlds like Mars or the Moon. Another possibility is that we might find an asteroid that was clearly mined at some point, perhaps by a von Neumann probe passing through.

Dr. Wright points out though that if we do find evidence, which we currently have absolutely none that stands up to scrutiny, then you must consider that the origin might not be another star system, but instead may be more likely to have originated from our own star system, especially considering that Earth would be a sort of elephant in the room since life has clearly arisen here.

While I consider it unlikely that there were ever precursor civilizations in our solar system, it is possible. And it's also possible that some day in the distant future others, perhaps from some formerly frozen moon made habitable by the brightening sun, might find evidence of us.

Thanks for listening! I am futurist and science fiction author John Michael Godier currently with a new book in the works, it's called Supermind and a 5000 word excerpt is up at Amazon Kindle Scout, link in the description below, check it out and if you like it give it a nomination! And be sure to check out my other books at your favorite online book retailer and subscribe to my channel for regular, in-depth explorations into the interesting, weird and unknown aspects of this amazing universe in which we live.