Who might've been the first to theorize some interstellar meteors are artificial space junk?
In a previous post I examined when this might've happened. Now I look into who might've considered it prior to Professor Loeb.
Fermi’s Paradox
The story goes that in 1950 while eating lunch with co-workers Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and Herbert York at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Enrico Fermi blurted out something along the lines of, “Where is everybody?” The implied meaning of the question was that if the galaxy is as old as we think it is and if we assume our star system isn’t absurdly unique, and nor is Earth, then life should exist all over the galaxy. And some of this life would’ve been technological for millions or billions of years prior to us. We therefore should’ve been visited by someone/something many times. The existence of extraterrestrial intelligence should be self-evident. But why don’t we see any at all?
Fermi seemed to assume aliens would try to communicate with us or make their presence obviously known and that’s where our evidence would come from. Up until that point though, we spent relatively little time seriously examining our local corner of the galaxy. Realistically, the only way aliens would’ve made their presence known to us is for them to have landed on the White House lawn or wrote largely in the night sky, “Attention People of Earth: You Are Not Alone!” (Or maybe they could’ve leased a billboard in Times Square.) Since they hadn’t done any of that, Fermi assumed, there existed a paradox.
This group of dining companions would have known about any secret communication/awareness the government had with/of aliens. They were the elite of the elite. They would’ve surely been asked to advise the White House and DoD on any such matters. Therefore if this mythology is to be believed, the USG probably didn’t know extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) existed at this time.
JASON
As I mentioned in my previous post, DARPA (then ARPA) was founded in 1958 along with NASA. It’s not totally clear exactly when JASON was founded although public statements suggest 1960 as its start date. It had somewhat of a predecessor with the PSAC (President’s Science Advisory Committee) which was formed in 1957 in response to the Soviets’ launch of the Sputnik satellite. A member of that group, Herbert York, was allegedly one of the diners along with Enrico Fermi back on that afternoon in 1950. Mr. York would also go on to become a member of JASON. We don’t know who was in JASON unless they have admitted it at some point over the years. Members would not out other members.
So what is JASON? It’s not likely you’ve heard of this group. To this day they still serve as a very secretive advisory body to the DoD, DoE, various intel agencies and some other government bodies — although presently with significantly reduced prominence and an uncertain future. In the beginning, though, their only sponsor was the DoD. They were the cream of the crop. They were prominent academics, usually physicists/mathematicians from institutions like Princeton and Berkeley. Many of the early members also played significant roles in the Manhattan Project.
As Jasons (each member of JASON is also individually self-referred to as a “Jason”) these men would get together for a couple months in the summer to consult for the DoD. They’d be presented with high-level problems and sometimes were also presented with proposed solutions. They’d then discuss the presentations amongst each other, conduct research, perform calculations, write briefs, and ultimately present their assessments back to the DoD. Sometimes they’d play some role in the application of their ideas but often they’d never hear about them again. It would be unclear if the government followed any given piece of their advice or not. It’s also worth noting that somewhere between half and 3/4 of their output is estimated to be classified.
What types of things did JASON consult on in those early years? Nuclear weapon design, communication with submarine fleets, anti-ballistic missiles (ABM), satellites, global positioning systems (GPS), and nuclear test ban treaty enforcement are some of the topics we know of. But most we don’t. Inventions like the instruments CNEOS uses to track incoming meteors are probably among their brain-children.
Freeman Dyson
Freeman Dyson was (1923-2020) a British-American theoretical physicist and mathematician. He was also a longtime Jason. During WWII he worked with the RAF bomber division on things like the optimal bomber density for allied bombing runs. Who knows what else he worked on in that capacity. He would also later become Professor Emeritus of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton.
Mr. Dyson would conceive of several novel concepts that would bear his name but perhaps the one most applicable to this subject would be the Dyson sphere. In his 1960 paper, “Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation”, Mr. Dyson posited:
The high-level idea is that sufficiently advanced aliens/AI would have enormous energy requirements. So much so that they might encase their home star in a sun-light collection device (aka Dyson sphere.) This would result in a noticeable amount of unusual and detectable waste-heat in the infrared such that we could conceivably find one if we decided to look for it.
As far as I know, to this day the only scientists inspired enough to conduct such a search would be a group led by Professor Jason Wright of Penn State with their 2014 “The Ĝ Search for Kardashev Civilizations.” The Kardashev Scale is a method for classifying technological civilizations based on their energy consumption. A type I would fully utilize all of the available energy on its planet. Type II would make use of all the available energy of its host star. Type III would make use of all the available energy of all of the stars in its galaxy. The Tl;dr on Professor Wright’s team’s search, IIRC, is that they’re reasonably convinced no budding type III civilization is out there lurking but there were some interesting stars/regions that might merit a closer look as far as type II civilizations are concerned.
This effort was probably the first academic foray into Dysonian SETI. At its essence, Dysonian SETI is the search for passive evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations and their technological by-products/infrastructure. Until this point, SETI primarily consisted of listening for possible directed radio signals ETI would be using to try to contact us.
Tying it all together
What are we reasonably certain of:
In 1950 scientists of the JASON-set were wondering where all the aliens are. They theorized they should have visited us many times.
Members of JASON were involved in likely pre-cursors to the U.S. Space Command sensors supplying data to CNEOS which was used by Professor Loeb to discover Interstellar Meteor 1. See also Project Vela and an interview conducted with former JASON member Val Fitch.
We know JASON was asked all manner of defense-related questions by their sponsor the DoD. Space-related defense was a specific concern.
We know longtime JASON member, Freeman Dyson, had out-there theories on how we might find passive evidence for ETI technology.
What might we reasonably be able to speculate:
At some point, DoD might have asked JASON about defense from potentially adversarial ETI and detection of their probes. If they were ever going to consider that question this is the group they would’ve consulted, IMO.
In addition to considering the search of distant solar systems for ETI technology, I argue it’s reasonable to consider that Professor Dyson may have also considered the possibility there could exist more local passive evidence. Consider also that he had some out-there theories for interstellar travel as well.
My speculation is that the DoD, at some point, did ask JASON about detecting ETI probes. Given their work on detecting nuclear tests, which is probably also used to detect meteor impacts, augmented use of the same instrumentation would have likely been suggested. Given his timely thoughts on passive detection of alien technology and his colleagues’ related musings about “Where are they?” it would not surprise me for Professor Dyson to speculate that perhaps interstellar meteors exist (or they might have explicitly known this by now) and perhaps some of them were artificially constructed. It would be a satisfying solution to Fermi’s Paradox. If discussed in the context of a JASON meeting, it is very likely all of this information would have been classified for national security reasons. While discussion related to a near-Earth search for evidence of potential ETI technology would’ve then been off-the-table for public dissemination, methods for searching for far flung technological civilizations probably would not have violated any disclosure agreements.
I don’t mean to detract from Professor Avi Loeb’s speculation about artificial interstellar meteors. It is very possible (and all available evidence suggests) he is actually the first person to consider it. But given the topics JASON members were discussing beginning 70 or so years ago and their context, is it realistic to believe none of them considered alien probes might be flying by (or into) Earth? I think they must’ve considered this but then absence of the idea from the public record suggests to me the context of this consideration might have caused it to become classified.
Thanks for reading!