Originally published 21 September 1992
On Columbus Day [1992], NASA scientists will launch a massive new search for intelligent alien life. The $100 million, 10-year project will use some of the world’s largest radio telescopes and fastest computers to scan the entire sky for signals of intelligent origin, with particular emphasis on 1,000 carefully-selected sun-like stars.
The project has been a frequent target for budget cuts, and full funding is still in doubt. As project manager Michael Klein admits, the search for intelligent aliens has “a high giggle factor,” meaning that not every politician takes the project seriously.
One must suppose that Columbus himself was forced to contend with the giggle factor. Surely, some advisors in the court of Isabel and Ferdinand tittered gleefully when the Genoese navigator said he would reach the East by sailing west. If not the giggle factor he might have been supplied with something more than three, tiny, worm-infested ships.
Given that there has probably always been a giggle factor, it is interesting to imagine how it might have influenced other decisive moments in the history of science, such as the discoveries of microbes, the laws of genetics, and relativity.
Perhaps a letter such as this from Henry Oldenburg, Secretary of the Royal Society, London, to Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Delft, Holland, 20th of October, 1676:
Dear Mr. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek,
Your letter of October 10th has been received here with amusement. Your account of myriad “little animals” seen swimming in rainwater, with the aid of a so-called “microscope,” caused the members of this society considerable merriment when read at our recent meeting. Your novel descriptions of the sundry anatomies and occupations of these invisible creatures led one member to imagine that your “rainwater” might have contained an ample portion of distilled spirits — imbibed by the investigator. Another member raised a glass of clear water and exclaimed, “Behold, the Africk of Leeuwenhoek.” For myself, I withhold judgment as to the sobriety of your observations and the veracity of your instrument. However, a vote having being taken among the members — accompanied, I regret to inform you, by considerable giggling — it has been decided not to publish your communication in the Proceedings of this esteemed society. However, all here wish your “little animals” health, prodigality, and good husbandry by their ingenious “discoverer.”
Or a letter from Cyrill Franz Napp, abbot of the Monastery of St. Thomas, Altbrunn, Moravia, to Father Gregor Mendel, June 15, 1859:
Dear Brother in Christ,
On Wednesday of this past week I had tea with His Excellency the Bishop. During the course of our conversation, he inquired about rumors that have come to his ear regarding certain experimental investigations by one of the brothers of our monastery. He was referring, of course, to your own inquiries into of the procreative habits of peas. I assured him that your efforts were in earnest, and that you had discerned intriguing mathematical patterns among the inherited characteristics of your plants. The Bishop suppressed a giggle as I described your pea-genealogies, which he thought more exquisitely contrived than the family tree of the Emperor himself. He asked if I thought it seemly for a man of your intellectual attainments to be plodding in a pea patch, prying into the germinal proclivities of peas. He suggested that pea propagation was a subject less worthy of your curiosity than, say, the writings of the Church Fathers or the Doctrine of Grace. My dear Brother Mendel, as sympathetic as I am to your researches, we can ill afford to have the monastery made the laughingstock of the diocese. I have therefore issued instructions that your prolific pea patch be plowed and replanted with potatoes.
Or this, from the Editor, Annalen der Physik, to Albert Einstein, July 10, 1905:
Dear Herr Einstein,
I am in receipt of your three papers submitted to this journal for publication, on a “quantum” theory of the photoelectric effect, a revolutionary interpretation of Brownian motion, and a “relativistic” explanation of the laws of electrodynamics. The editorial staff of the Annalen der Physik are in agreement that the papers represent ingenious parodies of contemporary physics, and send you hearty congratulations for having concocted such elegant spoofs. What makes the papers so terribly clever is their apparent ordinariness, but of course, the perceptive reader will recognize that your theses are at odds with the entire structure of physics. If your ideas had veracity, all of physics from Newton to the present would be called into question. Once we discerned the joke, we had a rollicking good laugh. We are impressed that a mere patent clerk could devise a theory with such a high — ah, what shall we call it? — such a high giggle factor. We are herewith returning your three amusing papers, and thank you for the entertainment.
The NASA SETI project, launched in 1992 despite much ridicule, was canceled within a year by the U.S. Congress. ‑Ed.
