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Should we lie to ET?

In a galaxy far, far away,

a scaly green hand plucks a disk from the smoldering rubble of an unidentified spacecraft, shot down after attempts to communicate failed.

Earthlings would recognize a Voyager Golden Record immediately, but Carrex isn’t sure what he’s found yet. He has his ship’s super computer scan the disk, and an image of human men running a track race flickers into view. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 fills the air. How Carrex feels about this is anyone’s guess.

John Traphagan, professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin, isn’t too keen on the music selected for the Golden Records, but is much more concerned about the images chosen.

“The Voyager records are exceptionally biased toward presenting a picture of life on Earth as peaceful, devoted to the high arts (as defined by American intellectual elites) and engaged in noble activities such as space exploration,” he writes in a 2021 article for Space Policy. “They covertly express what I term the ‘Star Trek Imaginary’ or a frame of thinking about space exploration to a potential interstellar traveler who happens upon one of the spacecraft. The Voyager records do not represent an entirely honest representation of humanity or Earth; lying by omission is a form of dishonesty.”

The Voyager Golden Records, which were sent into space in 1977 in the hopes of communicating with extraterrestrial life, contain a wide variety of information about human civilization and culture, including music, images and spoken greetings in multiple languages.

Traphagan argues this is ethically questionable. If we were to deliberately transmit false information about ourselves or our planet, we would be intentionally misleading potential alien beings. This could be seen as a violation of the principle of honesty and integrity, and could lead to negative consequences for humanity if the extraterrestrials were to discover our deception.

“The disks paint an unequivocally rosy (at least from a human perspective) image of life on Earth — an exceptionally biased picture. The contents are at best quite misleading and at worst could be interpreted as intentionally deceptive. This is where the problem with the approach taken by the team that created the records becomes significant. I can imagine at least three possible outcomes: the good, the bad and the ugly.”

The good, in Traphagan’s view, is a nonchalance: He says it’s possible that a Carrex somewhere out there might explore the contents of the records, smile and move on. “It might even be the case that ET would not find it particularly important. If they have the technology necessary to travel between star systems, they might just look at Voyager much in the way we look at a beaver dam ­— a mildly interesting, if unsophisticated, piece of technology by a somewhat intelligent species rather limited in its intellectual and engineering abilities.

Any signal we send will contain at least two vitally important pieces of information: a) these guys are technologically backward, and b) they live right there
– Kelly Smith

“Perhaps there would be a little time spent looking over the spacecraft, but they might just shrug their shoulders (or whatever they have) and move on. It is always worth noting that it is a human conceit that members of non-human civilization will necessarily be interested in talking to us.”

However, if alien societies err to the imperialistic or belligerent, Traphagan worries the records send a very clear message: “There is easy prey on that planet situated here in relation to these 14 pulsars.” He reminds us there is nothing on the record that would suggest a military capability on our planet, let alone thermonuclear bombs.

This is where the nuance in the question of whether or not we should lie to extraterrestrials comes in. There is an argument that because nothing on the records suggests we could or even would defend ourselves, it opens the door to exploitation by an alien intelligence. But even the threat of alien invasion pales in comparison to Traphagan’s “ugly” outcome.

“Suppose our alien travelers find the contents of the record interesting and decide they would love to visit this lovely planet, where people listen to good music, greet each other in happy ways, and live in peace and harmony. What will they find when they arrive? Basically, all the stuff omitted from the record: the suffering, war, disease, pollution and exploitation that characterizes much of life on our planet. The message of the Golden Record would look like a big lie, and it is fairly easy to imagine a huge, collective WTF running through those alien minds as they contemplate the intentions of a society that would send out incredibly deceptive messages about themselves.”

IMAGE: Abjad Design

Should we have sent the Golden Records in the first place? Traphagan certainly believes we created and launched into space a flawed and misleading message about the people sending it. The next question: If we do think we should be contacting aliens, who should create the message?

The Voyager records do not represent an entirely honest representation of humanity or Earth.
– John Traphagan

Kelly Smith, associate professor at Clemson University, likes the term “METI or REGRETTI.” While SETI is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, METI describes messaging them. REGRETTI should be self-explanatory. Smith’s 2020 book, “Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology,” compiled articles exploring the “broader questions in astrobiology.”

In his own chapter, he says debate about precisely what content should go into a message is largely beside the point as far as risk is concerned since any message will reveal both the location of Earth and the relative state of our technology.

“Any signal we send will contain at least two vitally important pieces of information: a) these guys are technologically backward, and b) they live right there,” Smith says.

Perhaps attempts to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence should not be led by astronomers or engineers, but by social scientists who specialize in intercultural communication. Perhaps we need space diplomats.

“Since we know nothing about aliens, parties on both sides of the debate are forced to rely on speculation of one form or another,” Smith says. “For all we know, aliens might have motives that we have never encountered before. My argument is not that METI is a bad idea in general — I would personally love to push the transmit button and send a signal to every nearby system — just that we have not yet thought it through carefully and, until we do, we should err on the side of caution.”

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Building blocks of sustainability

Since their discovery in the early 20th century, polymeric materials have revolutionized many aspects of our lives. Perhaps the most recognizable polymers in our daily lives are plastics.

Despite their enormous value, we produce more plastic than we recycle, and this is becoming a major environmental challenge. The figures are staggering: Just 9 percent of the global supply of plastic is recycled. Most plastic produced is incinerated or placed in landfills, leading to pollution. A significant amount of plastic waste is also found in the seas, creating not just an eyesore but damage to aquatic life and marine ecosystems.

At Khalifa University, Sharmarke Mohamed and his team at the Advanced Materials Chemistry Center (AMCC) are developing a new method for recycling post-consumer plastic waste that uses a combination of mechanical force (as part of mechanochemistry), light and catalysts.

The value of this technology is that it uses no corrosive or harmful chemicals.

– Sharmarke Mohamed, Khalifa University

While mechanical methods are common as a means for reducing the size of plastics prior to recycling, it is not possible to apply this for the depolymerization of most plastic waste. Instead, the researchers are looking for ways to perform low-cost recycling using a range of stimuli.

“Despite the enormous environmental challenge posed by plastic waste, we felt a sense of duty to develop these new mechanochemical tools. Most researchers around the world are exploring mechanical force as a means to build new chemicals. In other words, building complexity from simple structures. We decided to use the same principles and use mechanical force as well as light and catalysts to break down complex polymer waste materials into smaller building blocks that can then either be recycled or upcycled,” he says.

“Solar energy is responsible for the photodegradation of plastics in the environment, particularly in the UV region of the electromagnetic spectrum. We also know that some biological catalysts (e.g. enzymes) are adapted to using organic macromolecules such as plastics as fuel sources. So in essence, we are learning from nature as we try to develop a lab-scale protocol that uses these tried-and-tested methods for turning plastic waste into high-value chemicals,” Mohamed says.

“As the UAE declares 2023 to be the Year of Sustainability, our research group is very much leading this effort in a challenging area. But we are motivated by solving the environmental challenges posed by plastic waste,” Mohamed says.

About 380 million metric tons of plastic are produced each year. Of that, only about 9 percent is recycled, Mohamed tells the KUST Review. Some plastics are treated with harsh chemicals, like acid. But most plastic is incinerated, he says.

“But the problem (with incineration) is that it releases carbon dioxide and adds to the global carbon footprint. The other problem is that if you burn the plastic you can’t reuse it. Our group is trying to take the end-user plastic and come up with new low-cost mechanical methods that are able to break down these polymers into their constituent parts.”

Those constituent parts might then be reused to make new plastic products or chemicals for other uses.

Mohamed’s team is working on a three-year project to investigate a three-part process for recycling plastics. This research is supported by AMCC and funded by ASPIRE, the technology program management pillar of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), via the ASPIRE Award for Research Excellence.

The first part involves mechanochemistry: using mechanical energy to induce the chemical depolymerization of the plastic waste.

“Mainly we use ball mills to grind the polymers in the presence of proprietary chemicals we are developing in our lab. This leads to the polymer essentially breaking down and releasing its constituent building blocks, known as the monomers. Preliminary results in our lab suggest this process can be done under ambient conditions in the solid-state with yields of up to about 70 percent or higher,” he says.

We are trying to think outside the box and look at the problem from a non-conventional perspective using a mechanocatalytic approach.

– Zeinab Mohamed Saeed, Khalifa University

The value of this technology is that it uses no corrosive or harmful chemicals, which is important as it makes the entire process much more environmentally friendly than incineration or land-filling the plastic waste.

The next step is to examine the influence of light on the process, followed by experiments with inorganic catalysts (i.e. metal salts) or enzymes to break down the plastics.

“Once we understand each of these processes on their own, we can see how they can be stitched up together to create what we refer to as a photolytic and mechanoenzymatic degradation (PMED) protocol. We envisage the PMED process will be implemented serially as part of a batch process, much like a conveyor belt in a factory. Our long-term goal is to take post-consumer plastic waste and to efficiently produce the chemical building blocks of the plastic waste via our PMED process.”

Different forms of plastic break down in different ways under mechanical force, complicating the process, Mohamed says. But he says the initial work is promising.

Zeinab Mohamed Saeed, a Ph.D. candidate working on the project, says she’s excited by the non-conventional approach to a long-standing problem.

“The field of polymer degradation was there for decades,” she says. “People have been trying to come up with different ways to tackle the issue using their expertise, and now we are trying to think outside the box and look at the problem from a non-conventional perspective using a mechanocatalytic approach. I find this research challenging but exciting, and can’t wait to see what kind of results we will end up with.”

Among the challenges, however, is creating vessels that can hold the material but also allow in light of a certain wavelength. And the enzymes known to break down plastics are expensive.

The hope, however, is to scale up the technology to levels required by industry. That’s still some time off, however.

“Now we can do up to a gram or two. This is fine for feasibility and patenting,” Mohamed says.

The Advanced Materials Chemistry Center (AMCC) was formed in 2022 and combines expertise from different disciplines to tackle major environmental problems. Its methods for treating plastic waste “align with the UAE’s ambitions to transition to a green circular economy and achieve its net-zero targets” Mohamed says.

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2 promising approaches to
treating wastewater

Wastewater treatment protects human as well as environmental health. And it conserves water. Abu Dhabi researchers offer promising approaches using innovative membranes:

Filtering out nutrients

High levels of nutrients sounds like a benefit to an ecosystem, but when an environment sees too many, otherwise known as eutrophication, algal blooms and waters with too little oxygen can kill fish and seagrass, setting off a chain reaction in the ecosystem.

Large amounts of carbon dioxide from the decomposing matter acidify the water, slowing the growth of fish and shellfish. Eutrophication is an economic threat as well — smaller harvests mean more expensive seafood.

“We need to control the levels of nutrients and develop innovative technologies to treat water and remove excess nutrients,” says Shadi Hasan, director of the Khalifa University Center for Membranes and Advanced Water Technology (CMAT), whose team published its research in npj Clean Water.

The KU team developed a composite polylactic acid (PLA) and nanomaterial membrane to remove nutrients from wastewater.

The membrane works via adsorption, the process by which a solid holds molecules, in this case liquid, as a thin film. The team used a functionalized positively charged multi-walled carbon nanotube/graphene oxide hybrid nanomaterial to remove nitrogen (as ammonia) and phosphorus from wastewater while enhancing water permeability. The nutrients are collected in the pores of the nanotubes at the surface of the membrane.

Removing oil from water

Wastewater can be difficult to treat, especially when trying to remove fine oil droplets.

“The large volume of industrial oily wastewater is difficult to treat due to its emulsified fine oil droplet content,” says Linda Zou, a Khalifa University professor. “Conventional membranes experience low separation efficiency and oil fouling issues, which we wanted to overcome.”

Zou and other researchers incorporated molybdenum disulfide (MOS2) nanospheres into a cellulose acetate matrix. MOS2 nanospheres repel water but attract oil — that is, they are oleophilic — whereas the cellulose acetate polymer has high water affinity and is hydrophilic. The membrane is designed to be amphiphilic, meaning it can target and capture oil droplets in a large volume of water. This is important for separation because the membrane has components that attract the oil droplets but can also facilitate the passage of water.

The membrane’s amphiphilic nature also eliminates fouling caused by oil droplets.

The team found the membrane had a high separation efficiency in tests, with greater than 90 percent removal of oil from the diluted oil-in-water mixture. The membrane also had good stability and durability, meaning it could be used repeatedly without losing performance, which makes it a promising material for industrial application.

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Making space for women

The UAE is celebrating International Women’s Day a little early this year with news of the first female Emirati astronaut set to graduate from NASA.

Nora Al Matrooshi, NASA class of 2023, will graduate in March 2024 alongside her Emirati counterpart Mohammed Al Mulla, the National reports. The ceremony will take place in Houston, Texas.

Al Matrooshi, an engineer formerly of the National Petroleum Construction Co., was one of two candidates chosen from over 4,000 applicants for the 2021 NASA training program.

When she was initially selected, Al Matrooshi in a media conference said she was inspired to reach for the stars by one of her teachers who would set up a tent in the classroom and ask the students to try to imagine it was a spacecraft en route to the moon.

In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova of Russia became the first woman in space, but the next wasn’t until two decades later.

In 2020, Phys.org reported that only 11.5 percent of the 566 people who have gone to space were women, and the United Nations Space4Women program reports that 20-22 percent of the space workforce is women – virtually unchanged from what it was 30 years ago.

But the flight crews are increasing in female numbers and Al Matrooshi aims to be an inspiration for other young women: “If I can do it, then you can do it too. If no one has done it yet, then you just go ahead and be the first,” she said in a 2021 interview with The National.

This brings the Emirati astronaut count to four as the UAE space program grows and continues to rack up firsts.

CAPTION: International Space Station IMAGE: NASA

The first Emirati astronaut, Hazza al Mansouri, spent eight days aboard the International Space Station in 2022, followed by Sultan Al Neyadi with a six-month stay in 2023 and first Arab space walk.

Al Matrooshi’s graduation coincides with the most recent advancement in the UAE’s space program – a ticket to the moon.

The UAE recently agreed to provide NASA with an airlock for the Gateway lunar station, which will serve as an exchange center for crew and science payloads. The deal comes with UAE access to the station and a lunar mission. The deal comes with UAE access to the station and a lunar mission.

No decisions have been made about which UAE astronauts will be selected for the first UAE lunar mission.

According to NASA, the Lunar Gateway will record its first mission no sooner than 2028.