The Lesson From Arthur C. Clarke's Predictive Errors

The television show Prophets of Science Fiction liked to portray science fiction writers as latter-day visionaries with great predictive powers. One of the writers profiled on this show was the late Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke was both a science fiction writer and a nonfiction writer who wrote about space exploration and the future. I greatly enjoyed his work, particularly when I was a teenager. Clarke first proposed communication satellites, and made some very prescient predictions about that technology.

Clarke's predictions about the immediate effects of space travel varied in accuracy. Clarke predicted that an age of manned space exploration would produce a new Renaissance, and judging from this argument the 1970's (directly following the 1969 moon landing) should have been a decade of immortal art. Anyone who remembers the music and television shows of the 1970's may chuckle at that concept.

But what about Clarke's record in making predictions about our century -- how accurate was he?

If fiction can be taken as a form of prediction, Clarke's record in regard to predicting our century was not very good. His most famous fictional work (co-authored with director Stanley Kubrick) was the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Although it was a great artistic success (and one of my favorite movies), that movie predicted that the year 2001 would see a manned mission to Jupiter, a giant-sized lunar colony housing more than 100 residents, computers that could have conversations with a human and understand our language, and a giant space station with artificial gravity and very roomy interiors. None of those things actually occurred by 2001. It is now 2014, and no one is living on the moon. We haven't even made it to Mars, and probably won't get there for many years. Although there are “chat bot” computer programs that might fool you (for a while) into thinking you're talking with some one, there is no computer that even has the intelligence of a 1-year-old. The only space station is a small station in which a few astronauts live in cramped conditions, without artificial gravity.

 The Roomy Space Station in 2001: A Space Odyssey

But what about Clarke's nonfiction predictions about our century – how well do they hold up? In 1999 Clarke wrote for the London Sunday Telegraph an article called “The Twenty-First Century: A (Very) Brief History.” Below are some of the predictions he made, along with comments about their accuracy.

Clarke predicted that the year 2002 would see “the first commercial device producing clean, safe power by low-temperature nuclear reactions,” causing the inventors of cold fusion to get a Nobel Prize in physics in that year. Serious misfire.

Clarke predicted that the year 2004 would see the first example of a human clone. Misfire.

Clarke predicted that the year 2005 would see the first return of a soil sample from Mars. Misfire.

Clarke predicted that in the year 2006 the last coal mine would be closed. Very serious misfire.

Clarke predicted that in the year 2009 (because of a nuclear accident) all nuclear weapons would be destroyed. Serious misfire.

Clarke predicted that in the year 2010 “quantum generators (tapping space energy)” would be deployed, and that electronic monitoring would all but eliminate professional criminals from society. Both predictions were complete misfires.

Clarke predicted that in the year 2011 a space probe to Jupiter's moon Europa would discover life on that moon. Misfire.

Clarke predicted that in the year 2014 construction of a Hilton Orbiter Hotel would begin. Misfire.

These misfires are not hand-picked from a list of predictions including quite a few successes. As far as I can tell from his 1999 forecast , pretty much nothing that Clarke predicted to happen between the year 2000 and 2014 actually happened (except for the arrival of a space probe to Saturn, which was already due to arrive in the year Clarke predicted).

These predictions were from one of the twentieth century's leading futurists, who had written a widely-read book entitled Profiles of the Future. My purpose here is not to belittle Clarke, who I regard highly. My purpose is merely to suggest the lesson that no matter how highly regarded a particular futurist may be, you should remember that his predictions are just educated guesses.

So the next time you see Ray Kurzweil predict that highly intelligent computers are just around the corner, take it with a grain of salt.

You should also pay very little attention to the prediction in today's news, from the SETI Institute's senior astronomer Seth Shostak. Shostak predicts that if intelligent life exists in space, we will find it within twenty years. Although there is every reason to suspect that there is very much intelligent life outside of our planet, there is fairly little reason to conclude that if it exists we will find it in twenty years.Whatever reasons have prevented us from finding such intelligent life for the past fifty years may well also prevent us from finding it in the next fifty years.

Bouncing Black Holes May Cause the Sun to Suddenly Vanish

The sun has been shining for billions of years, and scientists say that in all probability it will continue shining brightly for billions of additional years. We assume that there is 100% probability that the sun will continue to shine throughout our lifetimes. But surprisingly enough, there is a very small chance that the sun will suddenly disappear at any time -- perhaps a thousand years from now, perhaps ten years from now, or perhaps even tomorrow.

The sun might vanish at any time because there is a very small chance that a particular theory I will now describe is true. If this theory is true, the sun might instantly disappear at any time.

The theory I mention is a theory involving black hole collapses. To explain that theory, I must first discuss why scientists think that black holes are formed. Scientists say that black holes are formed when very massive stars begin to collapse, with the collapse being caused by the enormous gravity of the star. A star that is more than five times more massive than the sun has a tremendous gravity many times higher than the gravity of our planet. But such a star emits lots of energy through thermonuclear fusion, and that causes an outward force that balances the inward force caused by the star's gravity.

But when the star nears the end of its lifetime and runs out of hydrogen and usable helium to burn as nuclear fuel, then there is no longer any outward force to counteract the force of gravity. The star's enormous gravity causes the star to suddenly shrink in size. Gravity crushes the mass of the star in a mighty collapse. Scientists think this causes a supernova explosion, along with the formation of a black hole. Much of the star's mass is blasted off into space, but the remaining mass then collapses into a state of infinite density called a black hole.

What happens to all that matter once this black hole forms? This is a matter for speculation; no one knows for sure. There are many exotic speculations. One speculation advanced by more than one scientist is that when black holes are formed, they create a spacetime wormhole. The idea is that the matter lost in a black hole travels through a wormhole, and then suddenly appears elsewhere in the universe. Such a sudden appearance has been called a white hole. Of course, this idea is pure speculation, and there is no evidence for white holes. But let us consider what the consequences might be if white holes were to be created from the creation of a black hole.

If a white hole were to be created, one possibility is that we might suddenly see a gushing of matter coming out from some point in space, perhaps some point in interstellar space. But we've never observed anything like that happening. So let's consider another possibility.

Another possibility is that once a white hole is created from a black hole, the white hole then immediately collapses to become a black hole again. This would make sense from a gravitational standpoint. Imagine if a star of 10 solar masses were to collapse, causing 7 solar masses to collapse into a black hole. That might cause the appearance of a white hole elsewhere in the universe. But an instant after that white hole appeared, you would then have 7 solar masses suddenly existing in some small area. Gravity would then probably cause all that matter to collapse in a process similar to the process that produced the original black hole.

We are led, then, to a fascinating possibility – the possibility of “ever-bouncing” black holes. The creation of a black hole might be the beginning of a process that works like this:

1. A super-massive star collapses to become a black hole.
   
2. The black-hole creates a spacetime wormhole, which causes the appearance of a white hole somewhere else in the universe, as the mass from the star collapse reappears elsewhere.
   
3. The matter coming from that white hole is so dense and concentrated that it very soon collapses to become another black hole.
   
4. That black-hole creates a spacetime wormhole, which causes the appearance of a white hole somewhere else in the universe.
   
5. These steps keep repeating over and over again endlessly, ad infinitum, forever and ever.
   

Theory of ever-bouncing black holes

Because many black holes have been created in the history of the universe, if this “ever-bouncing” black hole theory is true, then white holes could be appearing at various points in the universe millions of times every second. 

At this point the reader may well be thinking: well, that's a fascinating idea, but it is no reason for thinking that the sun may suddenly vanish – because the sun is not a supermassive star of the type that becomes a black hole.

It is true that the sun will never become a black hole purely because of its own gravity. But if this wild theory of “ever-bouncing” black holes is correct, then the sun still might be in danger. This is because when a white hole appears from the creation of a black hole, the white hole could randomly appear within the volume of the sun.

If we assume that a white hole appears at a random position in space, it is overwhelmingly likely that the white hole would appear in interstellar space, the space between stars. But there is a very small but nonzero chance that the white hole could appear in the worst possible place – right in the very volume of space that the sun occupies. Who knows, there could be some strange relativistic reason why a white hole is more likely to appear where there is already matter, perhaps something along the lines of matter being attracted to matter.

If such a white hole were to suddenly appear within the volume of the sun, it would be as if the sun were to suddenly acquire a mass many times greater. Most of that mass would be material that could not be used for nuclear fusion. So rather than suddenly becoming much brighter, the sun would suddenly be like a super-massive star at the end of its lifetime, about to collapse into the super-density of a black hole. Shortly thereafter, the sun would presumably collapse to become a black hole. There might or might not be the flash of a supernova explosion. Then the sun would vanish.

Imagine what it would like for you if this were to happen. You might go to work one day at the office. Then in the middle of the day, people would suddenly start shouting, as they noticed that it was inexplicably dark outside. Some people would say: “Wow, I didn't know there was a total eclipse today.” People would wait for the supposed eclipse to end. But the sunlight would never return.

People would gradually realize that the sun was gone forever. There would then be a desperate struggle, as everyone tried to gather up food, clothing, and generators that might allow them to survive as long as possible in the cold. It would soon become colder than the North Pole. Crops would stop growing. Remnants of the human race would probably be able to survive for a few months longer until the food and fuel ran out. A few lucky ones might even be able to survive for a few years.

Of course, the chance of this happening is extremely remote, but it is interesting to realize that there are theoretical reasons why the sun might suddenly vanish at any time. I don't know what effect such speculation has on you, but I, for one, am going to take serious measures to protect myself from this theoretical cosmic menace.

I am going to go out right now and buy myself a nice pair of wool mittens.

2 Scientists Say You Are Descended From Distant Alien Life

In their scientific paper Life Before Earth, scientists Alexei A. Sharov and Richard Gordon present an argument that life on Earth has a development time that stretches back 9.7 billion years. Therein lies a paradox, because our planet is only about 4.6 billion years ago. To account for this discrepancy, Sharov and Gordon suggest that all life on our planet is descended from life that first appeared in some other solar system billions of years before our planet formed.

Sharov and Gordon reach this conclusion about the origin time of earthly life by doing a backwards extrapolation. They suggest that the growth of life's complexity follows a law of exponential growth similar to Moore's Law, the law that the number of components in a state-of-the-art computer doubles every 18 months. The scientists created a graph that plots on a logarithmic scale the growth of genome complexity in earthly organisms. They find that on this graph the growth of complexity pretty much follows a straight line. When one traces that straight line back to its beginning, you come to a point about 9.7 billion years ago.

A graph from the scientific paper (click to expand)

This conclusion is startling. The standard story is that life first appeared on our planet a few billion years ago, because of some lucky accident. When they started to put together this graph, the scientists must have expected the trend line to begin at a point about 4 billion years ago. Instead, following the trend line back to its beginning, they end up with a starting point 9.7 billion years ago.

Could it be, however, that the rate of evolution has not been constant? Some evolutionary scientists support a theory of “punctuated equilibrium,” in which species exhibit little change over very long periods, and then suddenly branch off into several new species. But Sharov and Gordon anticipate this objection. They argue that while one species may split into several in a fairly short time (geologically speaking), the overall growth in functional complexity does not have sudden spurts:

The reason why living organisms cannot increase their functional complexity instantly may be that it takes a long time to develop each new function via trial and error. Thus, simultaneous and fast emergence of numerous new functions is very unlikely. In particular, the origin of life was then not a single lucky event but a gradual increase of functional complexity in evolving primordial systems. Similarly, the emergence from prokaryotes to eukaryotes was not the result of one successful symbiosis, but may have involved as many as 100 discrete innovative steps.

But how do these scientists reconcile this starting point of 9.7 billion years for earthly life with the fact that scientists say Earth is only 4.6 billion years old? Do they suggest that Earth is twice as old as we thought? No. Instead Sharov and Gordon suggest that earthly life is descended from life that originated elsewhere.

But how could earthly life be descended from life that arose elsewhere in the universe? Not wishing to use the deus ex machina of extraterrestrial spaceships, Sharov and Gordon suggest a simpler idea: spores. The scientists put it this way:

Bacterial spores have unusually high survival rates even in very harsh conditions, and therefore, they are most likely candidates for interstellar transfer. Contaminated material can be ejected into space from a planet via collision with comets or asteroids. Then bacterial spores may remain alive in a deep frozen state for a long time that may be sufficient for interstellar transfer. Bacterial spores were reported revived after 25-35 million years of dormancy.

The basic idea can be summarized like this:

Phase 1: Billions of years of extraterrestrial evolution in some other solar system

Phase 2: Spore migration from other solar system to our solar system

Phase 3: Billions of years of earthly evolution

The idea of life naturally spreading across the stars may seem farfetched, but it seems more reasonable when we consider that according to astronomers many of the elements on our planet originated in other solar systems. Scientists say that all of the elements heavier than iron originated in supernovae explosions that occurred before our solar system formed. Those explosions of stars are believed to have created the elements heavier than iron, and spread those elements around into interstellar space. Scientists think that such explosions enriched with heavy elements the cloud of gas and dust from which the solar system formed.

With its emphasis on the long time needed for life to evolve, Sharov and Gordon's theory may help to supply an answer to Fermi's Paradox, the issue of why extraterrestrials have not appeared here or taken over our planet. If it takes something like 10 billion years for intelligent life to evolve from the most primitive state of life, that can help to explain why “they” are not here already. It could be that we are one of the first intelligent species to evolve. 

The theory of Sharov and Gordon may have merit, but I don't think they have done enough to promote their “life before Earth” theory. Perhaps they need a more catchy marketing approach. To help them sell their theory, I have created the promotional poster shown below, which I give them permission to use. In this visual I combine elements of their theory with motifs from two of the most beloved science fiction series. 

 

The Smog of Tomorrow Visualized

Chinese cities have an extremely bad problem with smog, which is getting worse in cities such as Shanghai. I wish I could present a graph showing the decline of air quality in Shanghai. There used to be an excellent site that allowed you to type in a start date and an end date, and then see the air quality for previous days in Shanghai. Unfortunately that site no longer has any recent data (the link is here, but when you press the Ok button you no longer get any data for any time after January 1, 2013). 

Here is some data I have accumulated from recording the air quality in Shanghai on random recent dates this year. An air quality number above 100 is considered unhealthy:

1/18 197
1/19 177
1/20 152
1/21 107
1/22 95
1/23 87
1/24 64
1/25 279
1/28 153
2/3 64
2/13 96
2/14 75
2/17 147
2/22 177
2/25 165
2/28 107
3//5 135
3/7 107

This is a total of 12 unhealthy days out of 18. The air pollution in China is so bad that scientists think it is starting to drift to the United States, and is helping to decrease the air quality in cities in California. It is estimated that air pollution in China is causing the premature death of up to 500,000 people every year.

The decline of air quality in Shanghai is a tragic tale of the price of runaway growth. When I first visited the city about twenty years ago, the air was relatively clean, the streets were packed with bicycles, and there were relatively few skyscrapers. Now more and more Shanghai residents drive cars and Shanghai has many skyscrapers, but the air quality is very poor. One of the main reasons for building a skyscraper is to give people a nice view from the tall building. But that doesn't work if you look out the window of a skyscraper and cannot see very far.

Let us extrapolate a few years into the future and imagine what the view will look like from a skyscraper in an average large city of China.

You might see a view that looks like this:

Or looking out of the window of your expensive apartment, you may see a view that looks like this:

Or on a day of better-than-average air quality you might look out the window of your high-rise office building and see a view that looks like this:

These visuals are art pieces I created using the Bryce computer program. Do you think this is just alarmist art? Do a Google image search for “Beijing smog” and “Shanghai smog” and you will see many photographs that show smog as bad as shown in these visuals.

What can you do to help reduce this terrible problem of air pollution in China? Buy less. Much of China's smog is produced by factories producing manufactured goods to support the wasteful lifestyles of US consumers.