Over at DailyKos yesterday, some folks (including WalterB) were having a go-around on Contact! I was most surprised at the relative absence of what-a-stupid-discussion people in that thread. Even the dissenters appealed to some science, some reason, rather than reject the whole subject.

Liberals are more likely than others to put down space, space programs, and anything having to do with that. 'We should feed the poor first.' 'The money is better spent on ...' I heard the nyah-nyah from liberals even during the height of the space program, when the Apollo Eagle was landing.

In my mind, this fits with a general science deficit among liberals. For some reason it is unusual to be a leftie and be an engineer, scientist, doctor, shaman, guru or whatever. This often undermines the credibility of liberals on "hard" subjects. That deficit is one of the reasons I am NOT a Greenie, and don't get along with many enviros. It is also why I have labelled this site, "left and free."

I consider myself a scientist, or, at least, I have put in my time as a technologist/technocrat. I also consider myself a leftie. I think those on the Left who denounce science generally, or who just cannot deal with it (and there's lots of them), are mistaken and maybe just intellectually lazy. Science is not all Frankenstein, Frankenfood, Dr Strangelove and H-bombs. It's a lot easier to engage in glib talk than wrap your mind around any of the highly mathematical, and exacting, modern sciences. This doesn't mean I understand it all, because I don't. It's just plain to me that science is much more difficult than most liberal arts. It's also plain to me a proper understanding of modern science supplies a firm foundation for leftie ideas.

ET et al

The question whether ETs would be friendly or hostile or indifferent keeps coming up. I am having a lot of trouble with pests attacking my patio garden. So, last night, I went to bed with strange thoughts about ants becoming ETs.

How could that happen?

There's really nothing to prevent insects from evolving more intelligence. They're already pretty smart, and they quickly evolve defenses against natural enemies and man-made poisons. The chances are, however, that smart ants would have to be bigger than regular ants. That's because the brains would probably have to be much bigger. Let's say an intelligent ant would have to be at least 10 times bigger than regular ants.

How would ants build a space ship? Can they do that? Would we notice it?

I think even creatures as small as ants could build space ships. The difficulty is not in size, but in intelligence. After all, humans build things of truly monstrous proportions, so why can't ants (or giants) do the same? Going the other way, we also build things of truly small proportions, atomic sized. Smart ants could do that, too.

The size of the builders is probably less controlled than the objects they build. It is hard to see how the development of transistors could have started at much smaller scales. Problems with heat transfer and connecting wires, not the transistor principle or size, govern the design and size of chips and circuit boards. Small creatures, such as our smart ants (10 times larger than the usual ones), would have a harder time building the circuit boards needed in advanced computing. Those boards would be relatively massive objects for ants, even if they were many times smaller than our current versions.

For physical reasons, it is hard to see how a space ship could be smaller than the old German V2s - about 50 feet tall. It took the Army Redstone, a much larger rocket, to achieve orbit. Even our IBCMs are much larger than V2s. So, it could be there is some minimum size for a space ship to reach orbit and beyond.

Smart ants would almost certainly require the same sort of computerized control systems we use in space flight. Then, there are life support systems. It is very difficult to see how one ant could go into space in anything much smaller than the Apollo or Soyuz vehicles. The ant's advantage is that an ant colony probably could fly in a similar sized vehicle. One ant or a colony, we would probably be able to see their space ships. On anyone's scale, they would be big.

The cost of pushing something into space goes up exponentially with size. So, any ETs out there from planets with gravity similar to Earth's are not likely to be hugely larger or smaller than ourselves. There is a minimum size required to handle the technology. There is a maximum size governed by material strengths, gravity and available resources.

Convergent Evolution

Of course, once smart critters get into space, and once they accept the notion of "genetic engineering," things can quickly get a lot easier.

Space has its own constraints. Living things adapt, and frequently develop similar solutions to shared environmental problems. So, I would not be surprised if the engineered descendants of smart ants, humans and other ETs eventually look, work and feel a lot alike.