Originally published 12 April 1999
In his autobiography, the brilliant physicist John Archibald Wheeler makes this confession of faith: “Whatever can be, is.”
He goes even further. “Whatever can be, must be,” he says.
What he means is this: Anything that is not prohibited by the laws of nature, exists.
For example, the theory of relativity predicts the existence of something called wormholes, curious kinks in the fabric of space-time that connect remote places: fall into a wormhole at one place in the universe, pop out somewhere else, perhaps trillions of miles away. Of course, no living organism could survive such a journey, but even the idea of wormholes stretches credulity.
Wheeler asserts, “If relativity is correct, and if it allows for wormholes, then somewhere, somehow, wormholes must exist.”
Whatever can be, must be. A simple philosophy, but one with profound human implications, if true.
It means, for instance, that we are not the be all and end all of creation, because certainly we are not the most complex or intelligent lifeforms consistent with the laws of nature.
If the laws of physics and chemistry do not prohibit creatures more intelligent than ourselves, then according to Wheeler’s principle such creatures must exist.
Which is one reason why scientists want to look for intelligent life in the universe.
Recently, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and the SETI Institute — named for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — announced their intention to build the world’s biggest radio telescope dedicated to the search for intelligent signals from somewhere out there in the galaxy.
The telescope will consist of 500 to 1000 small dishes with a combined area of one hectare (about 2.5 acres). The dishes will scan the sky in unison. The telescope will increase by a factor of ten the efficiency of the search for intelligent life. Tens of thousands of sunlike stars will be monitored.
If anyone is beaming signals our way, the new scope will find them.
The One Hectare Telescope is conceived as a precursor for a Square Kilometer Array, a radio telescope 100 times bigger that astronomers want to build by the year 2010. The Square Kilometer Array will be powerful enough to pick up radio “leakage” from nearby planet systems. A technological civilization would not have to be beaming a signal our way to be detected; they need only be using radio to communicate among themselves.
These efforts will ultimately cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Is the investment worth it?
If another intelligent civilization is detected, it will be the biggest news in history and the best money ever spent.
And if Wheeler’s principle is true, they are out there.
But is Wheeler right?
Before we rule out anything out there as impossible, we should consider the improbable diversity of life on Earth.
Some years ago, this column mentioned Dr. Seuss’s Grickily Gractus, a bird “that lays eggs on a cactus,” as an example of a wildly improbable creature. Sure enough, a reader sent a photograph of a bird on the island of Bonaire perched — where else? — in a nest on a cactus.
Apparently, not even Dr. Seuss can think up creatures that are impossible to exist.
Not long ago I had mail from a biologist friend who had returned from a field trip to the upper Rio Negro in Brazil. He described a school of Curimata fish, in their tens of thousands, that passed beneath his boat, filling the water and air with a “metallic buzzsaw sound” (caused, my friend discovered, by the stridulation of the fish’s air-filled swim bladder by a bone).
Singing fish. Not even Seuss could think of that.
Cactus-laying birds and singing fish are fine object lessons in the diversity of life on Earth. Every niche in every habitat is filled. And for every creature alive today, a thousand others, even more improbable because they are less familiar, have lived before and become extinct.
Of course, every imaginable life-form does not exist, now or in the past. All life on Earth is related by common descent, and there has not been enough time to exhaust diversity. Nor are terrestrial habitats infinite in number. While the astonishing diversity of life on Earth certainly bears witness to Wheeler’s conjecture, it does not confirm it.
But the chemistry of carbon-based life presumably applies throughout the universe, and the universe presents us with the prospect of hundreds of billions of galaxies, all chockablock with stars and planets. The number of worlds, and therefore habitats, is unimaginably large, perhaps infinite. Who is willing to bet against any possibility in that vastness?
Whatever can exist, must exist, guesses Wheeler, and since our finite minds have only the dimmest notion of nature’s rules of possibility, we can hardly rule out anything.
If Wheeler’s conjecture is true, then of this we can be sure: We are not alone. Somewhere among the multitudinous galaxies creatures as intelligent as ourselves certainly exist.
Construction of the One Hectare Telescope, now known as the Allen Telescope Array, was completed in 2007. The development of the Square Kilometre Array continues and is hoped to be completed by 2027. ‑Ed.
