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Keeping the skies dark

When most people think of polluted skies, they often think of smog.

But there’s another source of pollution that disrupts natural wildlife patterns, damages human sleep, contributes to the increase of CO2 in the air and obscures the stars at night.

Light

CREDIT: Apostolos Kyriazis, Abu Dhabi desert, UAE. This photo is available to download in high resolution here.

Streetlights, neon signs, car headlights and even the lamp at your window all contribute to light pollution. But there are things people can do as individuals and communities to prevent light pollution’s harmful effects.

In 2001, Flagstaff, Arizona, home of the Lowell Observatory and the Pluto Discovery Telescope, became the first city designated as an International Dark Sky Place. The U.S. city instituted progressive codes to prevent unnecessary lighting and preserve the integrity of the night sky for casual stargazers and professional astronomers alike.

The Pacific island of Niue in 2020 became the first country to be designated as a Dark Sky Place, as defined by the International Dark-Sky Foundation. But the foundation isn’t the only group promoting the concept. Oman’s leadership, for example, in 2019 decreed the formation of the Western Hajar Reserve, southwest of Muscat.

CAPTION: This photo is an excellent example of how much light pollution obscures the night sky. The bright areas below are city glows that can be visible from hundreds of kilometers away. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Apostolos Kyriazis, Abu Dhabi desert, UAE.

But even if they don’t live in an area with codes to protect against light pollution, individuals can do their part if they:

CAPTION: While the moon is quite bright, capturing such a photo is a bit tricky. Astrophotographers use multiple techniques to generate a final image, like stacking to enhance the details and reduce noise and abertation, and multi-exposure to capture both the bright and dark side of the moon. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Darya Kawa Mirza, Irbil, Iraq.

These steps will help protect the beauty of a starry night as captured here by some of the Middle East’s best amateur astrophotographers:

CAPTION: The Spaghetti Nebula is the remains of a dead star that exploded 40,000 years ago. It spans around 3.5 degrees across the night sky. It appears in the sky as big as seven full moons side to side. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Maroun Habib, Lebanon.
CAPTION: Our closest galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), is considered to be right next door on a cosmic scale, yet the light in this photo took over 2.5 million years to reach us. Talk about a blast from the past. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Abdullah Alharbi, Kuwait. This photo was awarded an APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) by NASA on March 22, 2023.
CAPTION: The NGC 2264 area has lots of star formations such as the Cone and Fox Fur nebulas and the Christmas Tree and Snowflake clusters. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Anas Albounni, Abu Dhabi desert, UAE.
CAPTION: Not all nebulas are created equal. Some emit light and some obscure it. In this case, the opaque dust clouds of the Horse Head and Flame nebulas obscure our view of glowing ionized gases. The brain’s ability to identify shapes helps us name them. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Wissam Ayoub, Abu Dhabi desert, UAE. This photo was awarded an APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) by NASA on Nov. 3, 2021.
CAPTION: A composite image of the Milky Way core includes many nebulas such as the Lagoon and Trifid nebulas on the left and Rho Ophiuchi nebula in the Scorpius constellation on the right. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Amr Abdulwahab, White desert, Egypt. This photo was awarded an APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) by NASA on May 10, 2023.
CAPTION: M78, a nebula located in the Orion constellation, is a cosmic cloud of glowing gas and dust where new stars are born. When you look at it, you see the light from these young stars bouncing off the surrounding dust. It’s a bit like a celestial nursery where stars are taking their first steps into the universe. This photo is available to download in high resolution here. CREDIT: Arun Vijay & Souhayl Ben Khaled, Abu Dhabi desert, UAE.

 

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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.”