This is the script of Rational Animations’ video linked above. It’s about how to take over the universe with amounts of energy and resources that are small compared to what is at our disposal in the Solar System. It’s based on this paper, by Anders Sandberg and Stuart Armstrong.
This is our highest-quality video so far. Below, the script of the video.
Let’s take over the universe in three easy steps
Welcome. We’ve heard that you want to take over the universe. Well, you’ve come to the right place. In this video, we’ll show you how to reach as many as four billion galaxies with just a few relatively easy steps and six hours of the Sun’s energy.
Here’s what you need to do:
Disassemble mercury and build a Dyson swarm: a multitude of solar captors around the sun.
Build self-replicating probes
Launch the self-replicating probes to every reachable galaxy.
In science fiction, humanity’s expansion into the universe usually starts within our galaxy, the Milky Way. After a new star system is occupied, humanity jumps to the next star, and so on, until we take the whole galaxy. Then, humanity jumps to the nearest galaxy, and the process is repeated.
This is not how we’re going to do it. Our method is much more efficient. We’re going to send self-replicating probes to all the reachable galaxies at once. Getting to the furthest galaxies is not more difficult than getting to the nearest ones. It just takes more time. When a probe arrives at its destination galaxy, it will search for a planet to disassemble, build another Dyson swarm, and launch a new wave of probes to reach every star within the galaxy. And then, each probe in that galaxy will restart civilization.
We already hear you protest, though: “this whole thing still seems pretty hard to me,” you say. “Especially the “disassembling mercury” part”.
But actually, none of these steps are as hard as they first appear. If you analyze closely how they could be implemented you’ll find solutions that are much easier than you’d expect. And that’s exactly what Stuart Armstrong and Anders Sandberg do in their paper “Eternity in six hours: intergalactic spreading of intelligent life and sharpening the Fermi paradox.” This video is based on that paper.
Exploratory engineering and assumptions
What we mean by “easy” here, is that we will require amounts of energy and resources that are small compared to what is at our disposal in the solar system. Also, the technology required is not extremely far beyond our capabilities today, and the time required for the whole feat is insignificant on cosmic scales.
Not every potential future technology will make sense to include in our plan to spread to the stars. We need to choose what technologies to use by reasoning in the style of exploratory engineering: trying to figure out what techniques and designs are physically possible and plausibly achievable by human scientists. The requirement “physically possible″ is much easier to comply with than “achievable by human scientists”, therefore, we introduce two assumptions that serve to separate the plausible from the merely possible:
First: Any process in the natural world can be replicated with human technology. This assumption makes sense in light of the fact that humans have generally been successful at copying or co-opting nature.
Second: Any task that can be performed can be automated. The rationale for this assumption is that humans have proven to be adept at automating processes, and with advances in AI, we will become even more so.
Design of the Dyson swarm
Now, we’ve said we are going to launch probes to every reachable galaxy. This means a hundred million to a hundred billion probes. Where do we get the energy to power all these launches? We don’t need to come up with exotic sources of energy we can’t picture yet. We can use the Sun itself! That’s why we are going to build a Dyson swarm.
To be fair, in order to be sure that a Dyson swarm will be sufficient, we need to already have plausible designs for probes and launch systems in mind, but this is a tutorial for pragmatic wannabe grabby civilizations, so we’ll get to that later, when we actually use them.
A Dyson swarm is simply a multitude of solar captors orbiting around the sun. The easiest design is to use lightweight mirrors, beaming the sun’s radiation to focal points where it’s converted into useful work—for example, using heat engines and solar cells.
A Dyson swarm has major advantages compared to a rigid Dyson sphere. A Swarm isn’t subject to internal forces that would make it collapse, and it can be made with simple and conventional materials.
Even a swarm isn’t without potential problems though: the captors have to be coordinated to avoid collisions and occluding each other. But these are not major difficulties. There are already reasonable orbit designs in today’s literature, and the captors will have large amounts of reserves at their disposal to power any minor course correction. The efficiency of the captors will not be an issue either. We will need only a small amount of energy to power our expansion into the universe compared to the energy a Dyson swarm will be able to collect.
The biggest problem to solve is how to get all of the material necessary to build the solar captors. Even assuming the lightest design achievable with today’s materials, that is, lightweight mirrors, you’d need to take apart Mercury to get everything you need for the swarm. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.
There are potentially other pathways to get the material, but being able to take apart Mercury is the conservative assumption to make, as weird as it sounds. We are not assuming future super materials that would let us build a swarm with extremely thin and efficient captors, and therefore with way less material.
Mercury looks very convenient to use in comparison to the other planets and the asteroid belt. Its orbit is approximately at the same distance from the Sun as the Swarm’s, and it’s a rocky planet, 70% metallic and 30% silicate. This is material that we can transform into reflective surfaces for the swarm, and use to build heat engines and solar cells.
The semi-major axis of Mercury’s orbit is approximately 60 billion meters long. Therefore, a sphere around the Sun with that radius would have a surface area in the order of 10^22 square meters. The mass of mercury is in the order of 10^23 kilograms. Now let’s assume we’ll use about half of mercury to build the swarm. If we conservatively pretend that the swarm is a solid sphere around the sun, we can take the fraction between half of mercury’s mass and the surface of the sphere we just calculated to get the mass of the sphere per square meter, which is 3.92 kg/m^2. This is plenty! Iron has a density of 7874 kg/m^3, so we can obtain mirrors with a thickness of at least half a millimeter. We can already easily make mirrors this thin, you can order them online if you want. But most probably, we would use a structure with a much thinner film, of the order of 0.001mm, supported by a network of rigid struts.
Disassembling Mercury
Now, let’s disassemble Mercury and build this swarm, shall we?
We are going to build the Dyson swarm during the process of disassembly. While we get material from the planet, we build more of the swarm, and as we build new captors we get more energy to power more of the planet’s disassembly, and so on.
Essentially, we need a feedback loop like this:
We mine necessary material,
We get the material into orbit,
We make solar collectors out it,
We get the energy from the collectors,
And we use that energy to mine more material, and so the cycle repeats.
Sandberg and Armstrong assume a seed of 1 km^2 of solar panels constructed on Mercury to start the feedback loop. After the seed, the loop can begin with mining the initial material.
At each cycle we have more energy at our disposal to power more mining, and the process can easily speed up exponentially.
In fact, the feasibility of Mercury’s disassembly hinges on if we get an exponential feedback loop or not. If we can’t complete the loop, or if it’s not at least near exponential, then we’re out of luck. The process would grind to a halt or take too long to complete in any reasonable amount of time. If we want the energy at our disposal to increase exponentially, the number of captors must increase by a fixed percentage at each cycle. That means that the energy required to mine materials, get them into orbit, and make captors, must remain nearly constant or decrease at each cycle. But this is not a big concern. Mining material and making solar collectors shouldn’t consume more energy as the disassembly progresses. On the contrary, towards the end of the disassembly, less energy will be required to get material into orbit, as Mercury’s gravity will be much easier to overcome. A potential problem could be cooling Mercury’s core, but this is a fixed cost, and Mercury’s heat might be harvested to get more energy.
And now, maybe you’re thinking: “Wait, even if we can get an exponential feedback loop in theory, how on Earth are we going to get the workers to do all this?” And that’s where our assumption that “any task that can be performed, can be automated” comes in. With automation, the sheer scale of projects is simply not a problem. New machines and factories can be built essentially without human intervention. Time, material, and energy become the only things we need. Encouragingly, NASA had a design for a self-replicating lunar factory in 1980. And surely, in the future we will be able to do much better than NASA in the eighties!
Sandberg and Armstrong make a few additional assumptions to precisely estimate how long it’ll take to complete the Dyson swarm.
They assume:
Solar captors with an efficiency of ⅓.
Only 1⁄10 of the energy will be used to propel material into space. The rest will be used for mining, reprocessing material, or simply lost.
It takes five years to process the material into solar captors and place them into the correct orbit.
Only half of Mercury’s material will be used to construct the captors.
Under these assumptions, the power available will increase exponentially every 5 year cycle. Mercury will be disassembled in 31 years, with most of the mass harvested in the last four years.
But as long as the exponential feedback loop is possible, the details aren’t that important, and we will complete the disassembly within a few cycles and a short amount of time.
And even if an exponential feedback loop turns out not to be possible, it doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t build the Dyson swarm. This is just one way to attack the problem, which relies on plausible future technology constrained by conservative assumptions. For example, if we’re able to produce super materials, taking apart a large asteroid might be sufficient.
Design of the probes
Now that we’ve built the Dyson swarm, we have the energy to launch countless self-replicating probes into the universe.
Our probes should be capable of safely landing on other planets or asteroids, use the resources there to make copies of themselves, build other dyson swarms, launch another wave of probes, and ultimately start civilization on other star systems.
By guessing that building self-replicating probes will be possible with future technology, we are essentially making use of the assumption “Anything possible in the natural world can also be done under human control”. Every living thing is capable of replicating. Here’s a table of some of the smallest replicators in nature. The smallest seeds on Earth weigh a millionth of a gram, and the smallest acorn weighs 1 gram. Think about it: an acorn is a solar-powered factory for the production of more acorns that generates large structures in the process: namely, oak trees.
When thinking about the size of our probes, we need to make a distinction between the self-copying piece of the system, and the whole object that gets launched, which may include fuel, rockets for deceleration, and other equipment.
A reasonable upper limit for the size of the replicators is 500 tons. This is the size of the replicator in NASA’s self-replicating lunar factory design, which made very conservative assumptions.
As a lower limit we can use a design of molecular assembler by Robert Freitas and Ralph Merkle, from their landmark book “Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines”, a comprehensive review of self-replicating designs up until 2004. The mass of this replicator would be in the order of 10^-18kg. For reference, this is about thirty thousand times smaller than a red blood cell.
The data storage on the probe would probably be of insignificant mass. An extremely compact design would be diamond constructed with carbon 12 and carbon 13. The two isotopes would encode the bits 0 and 1. A memory like this would have a capacity of six billion terabytes per gram. Or we could use a data storage mechanism with the same compactness as DNA, in the order of a hundred million terabytes per gram. As a comparison, the total amount of data in the human world in 2020 could be stored in about 500 grams of DNA-level storage.
Apart from the replicator, the probe needs fuel to decelerate when approaching its destination. Sandberg and Armstrong hypothesize three possible types of fuel to power the deceleration. In order of increasing speculativeness and efficiency, they are: nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, and matter-antimatter annihilation. As you can see in this table, they calculated the mass of fuel needed given different deceleration amounts and type of fuel. In the table, the replicator is assumed to weigh 30 grams. You can take the “delta v” column as also indicating “starting velocities” if the probe then decelerates to zero. The values in bold are the kilograms of fuel needed given the most reasonable combinations of starting velocities and type of fuel available.
This table doesn’t take into account many things that could aid deceleration though:
For example, the trajectory of the probe might be designed to use gravitational assists to slow down. Or magnetic sails could be used to create drag against the local magnetic field in the destination galaxy. Moreover, the expansion of the universe means that some amount of deceleration will come for free, and probes launched to distant galaxies would arrive with little velocity. In that case, we would need fuel only for maneuvering at the end. There are many other speculative options to help decelerating, such as the Bussard ramjet, which uses enormous magnetic fields to collect hydrogen atoms from the interstellar medium and compress them to achieve nuclear fusion.
Another potential design choice for the probes is to equip them with shields. Intergalactic space is not empty. The probes might encounter dust, and at relativistic speeds, collisions can easily destroy our probes. Another solution is simply to launch redundant probes to compensate for the fact that some might be destroyed. Sandberg and Armstrong estimate that, for speeds of 50% to 80% the speed of light, launching two probes per galaxy is enough to expect that at least one will arrive. If the probes travel at 99% of the speed of light, then we’d need to launch 40 probes to each galaxy.
The launch phase
Alright, now let’s say we’ve chosen a viable design for the probes. Their construction has taken little material compared to the Dyson swarm. The final combined mass of all of the probes, redundancy included, is in the order 10^11 to 10^12 kilograms. This is about the mass of a mountain. The Dyson swarm is operational, and provides us with all the energy we need. It is time to launch the probes.
We will not use rockets, but a fixed launch system. Rockets would be needlessly difficult and inefficient to use for achieving acceleration to relativistic speeds. They need to carry fuel, which would in turn need to be accelerated, and the fuel needed increases exponentially with the change of speed we want to achieve. Fixed launch systems sidestep this, and are often reusable. For example we could use coilguns. Essentially, long barrels around which coils are arranged and switched on and off with precise timings, causing the probe in the barrel to accelerate due to the magnetic forces generated by the coils. With coilguns, we would shoot our probes into space. In combination, or by themselves, we can also use solar sails accelerated by lasers or particle beams.
Now, look at this table: for each type of probe and for each type of replicator, you can find in bold the time required to power the launch if the energy of the Dyson swarm were entirely devoted to the task. In the case of the 30g replicator, the numbers are insignificant on a human scale. 6 hours of the sun’s energy is the maximum we would need. Instead, if the replicator is the 500 tons version, we would need hundreds of years of the Sun’s energy. But this also looks very feasible if you consider that humanity might survive millions of years, and over time might divert some energy from the dyson swarm to power launches, and not necessarily launch all the probes at once.
After the universe, the galaxy
Now, picture a future President of the Solar System proclaiming: “everyone turn off their virtual reality sets for six hours, we’re taking over the universe!”
The probes are launched to every reachable galaxy and the travel begins.
Once this first wave is enroute we can launch a new wave of probes within the milky way at lower speeds. So we’d start expanding into our own galaxy only after having started expanding into the wider universe!
Meanwhile, the probes we’ve launched to other galaxies will progressively continue to start new civilizations for the following 10 billion years, and after that, our expansion will be complete. Ten billion years may sound like a lot, but the universe will last for trillions of years. Future humanity will have plenty of time to enjoy even the most distant galaxies.
Armstrong and Sandberg calculated that at speeds between 50% and 99% of the speed of light, the probes will reach 116 million to 4 billion galaxies. The higher the speed, the more galaxies the probes can reach, because the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace, and as time passes an increasingly large number of galaxies becomes forever out of reach if we can’t find a way to sidestep the speed of light limit.
Final considerations
And now that every step is complete, you know how to take over the universe. You don’t need to do everything exactly in this way, though. This paper proposed many possible designs and methods at each step, but there are certainly many more ways to go. Moreover, Armstrong and Sandberg used conservative assumptions; the real designs will probably be better. The point of the paper was to illustrate that the feat is in principle possible with cosmically insignificant amounts of energy and time.
One additional point motivating the paper is that since spreading through the universe doesn’t require a lot of resources, that means that the Fermi paradox is a lot sharper than we imagined. There are millions of galaxies that could have potentially reached us by now. And yet, we don’t see any alien colonization projects in our local neighborhood. This could simply mean that there is pretty much no one else out there, or another answer could be the one given in the grabby aliens videos. If we could have seen aliens they would be here now instead of us.
If there are indeed aliens out there, that means our time to begin expanding into the universe is even more limited than we previously thought. Not only is the universe expanding at an accelerating rate, making more and more galaxies forever out of reach, but aliens might also be out there grabbing galaxies instead of us!
So, what are we waiting for? Let’s go and do it ourselves! Let’s take over the universe!
Sources and more readings
Eternity in six hours: intergalactic spreading of intelligent life and sharpening the Fermi paradox, by Anders Sandberg and Stuart Armstrong:
http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/intergalactic-spreading.pdf
NASA’s self-replicating lunar factory design:
- https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/1982-Self-Replicating-Lunar-Factory.pdf
- http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/GrowingLunarFactory1981.htm
Kinematic self-replicating machines, by Freitas and Merkle: https://www.amazon.com/Kinematic-Self-Replicating-Machines-Robert-Freitas/dp/1570596905
The quote at 15:11 is almost an actual quote from the paper!
Great video.
Minor complaint: Is there no way to fix numeric mistakes in post production? Sounds to me like a problem modern sound editing software should be able to fix.
Human technology obviously cannot replicate neutron stars or black holes in the near or even medium term future. So this assumption seems very exaggerated.
A limited subset of the natural world can be plausibly replicated with human technology.
They are also assuming coordination and communication costs between each unit are non-exponential. What’s more likely is that coordination and communication problems will increase exponentially rendering vast swarms unfeasible.
Coordination is only exponential if most units have to coordinate with most other units rather than following more localized coordination. Huge flocks of birds and swarms of drones coordinate just fine. They only need to be aware of local variation and broad trends.
Huge flocks of birds also occasionally dive straight into the ground, injuring many of them. Such as https://www.boston.com/news/world-news/2022/02/17/mexico-viral-video-explained-100s-of-birds-diving-to-ground/
Which has obvious parallels to possible failure states of robotic swarms.
Large quadcopter type drones also don’t ‘coordinate just fine’, you can look into it yourself what the requirements are for hosting those huge shows. The requirements are not simple or easily reducible to a few paragraphs of instructions.
Intel even released a promo video touting, in 2016, how a challenge of 500 drones in simultaneous operation was groundbreaking and incredible even with their state of the art technology.
“The difference between 100 and 500 is mind-blowing.”—Natalie Cheung, Light Show Business Lead, Intel
You need to do a bit more research if you were unaware of the complexities.
Thanks for the links! My intuition was that space is big enough that global coordination isn’t always needed to avoid basic failures like collisions but I definitely do need to do more reading/thinking/modeling to figure out how valid that intuition is.
Does anyone have a link handy related to complexity of coordinating Earth’s satellites?
Earth has fewer than 10^4 satellites. Taking apart Mercury over year-like timescales would mean enough equipment to remove a thousand tonnes of rock and metal per hour in every square metre.
I’m sure a superintelligence can find a way to do that, but I’m pretty sure that the optimal solution won’t be a flock of duck-sized probes nibbling it to death, no matter how numerous.
For humanity to try to spread physical space exploration across the universe were to be among the very most macro-criminal worst unethical courses of humanity’s trajectory that it could at all possibly take, and—especially after having by now sent e-mails to almost 5.000 worldwide institutions and professors within the last half year to emphatically warn them about this impending danger—I’m baffled how ethics-detached scientists still dare to even advocate or advertise and support such astronomically gargantuan, massive crimes worse than all crimes from humanity’s past together, but it is worthy of condemnation and absolutely ought to stop as soon as possible, and here is 1 among many reasons for why:
It is rather irrelevant if we could ever colonize other stars(′ exoplanets), because humanity—like any civilization in this universe—has the utmost important macro-ethical imperative to safely make sure to never even try to do so.
1. Axiom: The ethical importance of an issue or decision axiomatically is proportional to the difference in generated well-being depending on it. Or in other words (using proxies to the definition), the ethical importance of a decision increases alongside the number of by it affected sentient lifeforms, the time duration during which they are affected by it, and the vastness of the affected space to the extent to which changes of it affect the lifeforms.
2. Extremal case: By the standard that is set in the above statement, according to the current body of humanity’s knowledge, general forms of evolution of life (if on earth or on other habitable celestial bodies) forever constitute the most ethically important issue to exist in the universe: With billions of species—each with innumerable individual lifeforms—together with durations on the scale of billions of years, and spacial extension of at least a whole planet, it dwarfs any other conceivable ethical issue’s level of importance.
3. Valuation Axiom for the extremal case: According to many scientific studies, such as by Richard Dawkins, Brian Tomasik, Alejandro Villamor Iglesias, Oscar Horta, pain and suffering dominates over joy for animal wildlife in general forms of Darwinian evolution of life due to the global, near eternal war-like situation commonly framed as survival of the fittest (rather than the demise of all unfit), and therefore—when accumulated across all logically entangled parameters such as duration and count of involved individuals—instances of such forms of evolution of life has to be kept at a minimum in the universe, as there never was and never will be anything that could be more important, to change the conclusion of this Anti-Panspermia-implying directive.
Since it is tightly related, here is the macro-ethics-based key component that dominantly shapes the form of the compound solution of the Fermi paradox:
It is possible that ethical assessment of general forms of evolution of life in the universe constitutes the central issue which intelligent alien species’ macroscopic decision-making, such as for the topic of natural panspermia, directed panspermia, space colonization, megastructures, or self-replicating spacecraft revolves around. If the result of generated well-being assessments of enough and sufficiently in time extended initial or lasting portions of expected or prospective cases of evolution is among all other ethically relevant factors the dominant ethical concern of intelligent alien species, and if furthermore a large enough negative expected generated well-being is assigned to sufficiently common forms of expected or prospective cases of evolution, then foregoing directed panspermia, space colonization, the construction of megastructures as well as self-replicating spacecraft, but also active attempts to mitigate the consequences of interplanetary and interstellar forms of natural (litho-)panspermia and abiogenesis may (and ethically ought to) follow. While in the case of space colonization it might ultimately stay too uncontrollable to—by technical or educational means—ensure settlers or emerging space colonies themselves consistently keep acting in accordance to the awareness of by colonizer considered major ethical dangers accompanying physical interstellar space exploration, and for the case of interstellar self-replicating spacecraft, due to potential prebiotic substances in interstellar clouds and exoplanets’ atmospheres and soils, it may forever stay impossible to ensure their sterility to avoid contamination of celestial bodies which may kick-start uncontrollable evolution processes, reasons to forego the creation of a megastructure, even if such may be beneficial to an intelligent alien species itself and also to some other intelligent alien species imitators of their behavior, may mainly have psychological origin. Since certain megastructures may be identifiable to be of unnatural, intelligent design requiring origin by foreign intelligent alien species, for as long as the by an intelligent alien species expected number of (especially less experienced or less far developed) from them foreign intelligent alien species capable of identifying their megastructure as such is large enough, the by them rather uncontrollable spectrum of interstellar space endeavor related influences this may have on those foreign intelligent alien species might constitute a too strong ethical deterrence from creating megastructures that are from outer space identifiable as such, until eventually a lasting state of cosmic privacy may be attained by natural or technological means.
agreed, but why ever would that mean we shouldn’t simply fix that problem and then go ahead with it?
Because that would be impossible for the overwhelming vast majority of all evolutions of life that ever were to happen across the universe as result of humanity’s direct & indirect forwards-contamination mistakes (let alone humanity’s inability to do anything about evolution on earth in the past). I shouldn’t have needed to explain this simple fact. Next time give yourself time to think about the reasons yourself first. The many foolish downvotes on my initial comment really demonstrate the lack of topical education, intelligence and ethical maturity of not insignificantly many on this forum. But I guess I should start expecting that, since it’s only the 3rd millennium and 21st century so far, where irrationally unconditional humanity-preservation-priority centered worldviews as well as denial & coping—the first stages of grief—in the face of the existential question on if this for almost all to ever exist in it animals miserable giant Stockholm syndrome furnace universe is worth trying to be colonized by any macro-ethically matured alien civilization to begin with are still commonplace. Don’t worry though, humanity will grow up eventually.
There seem to be quite a few possibilities that you haven’t considered.
For example, on this website, we tend to assume that in the very near future, artificial intelligence will replace human intelligence as the guiding force on this planet; certainly before anyone gets to colonize the other worlds of this solar system, let alone the rest of the universe.
You also reject (“that would be impossible”) the idea of a biosphere in which suffering doesn’t dominate. But in fact we don’t even know what the relationship between matter and consciousness is. We don’t know all the possible modes of being.
You also don’t mention the idea that values like yours could actually drive an expansionist cosmic civilization. It might wish to prevent panspermia, or it might wish to save suffering worlds that already exist.
There is also something implausible about your scenario, according to which all spacefaring civilizations in the universe come to the same precautionary anti-life conclusion, and that’s why the universe still seems to be in a “wild” state everywhere: all alien life with technology is virtuously staying on its homeworlds in order to not accidentally create suffering biospheres, and even refrains from making megastructures so as not to tempt others into space. Too many other value systems and pathways of civilizational development are possible, for this to be a universal outcome.
I will also say that if you want your reasoning to affect the future of this planet’s technological civilization, you need to somehow enhance your understanding of normal human psychology and normal human expectations. Writing to strangers who never had your thoughts, and then condemning them as ignorant and immoral when they don’t adopt your conclusions, is a pathway to irrelevance.
I think you underestimate the amount I’ve thought through this problem, but I would definitely be interested in hearing more about reasons it would be difficult.
this site is a little bit unique, there are two kinds of downvotes: appropriateness and agreement. Your comment has many agreement downvotes but those don’t affect your karma, and it has one appropriateness karma. It’s fairly normal to get downvoted because someone disagrees, but your comment was not judged to have been an inappropriate thing to say. I would certainly like to hear more about your thoughts, though I cannot guarantee I will find everything you agree with to be obvious, I have done a lot of thinking about ways to make evolution much safer and I think we can probably pull it off.
Okay, I’ll lay out 1 major argument to explain my point, and maybe that’ll be sufficient.
Let’s assume first that—according to what the current scientific body of studies & analysis appear to support—sufficiently many general forms of evolutions of life—in whatever manner they may play out on exoplanets or also beneath the surface of ice (exo-)moons—dominantly aggregate (with among all ethically relevant phenomena in the cosmos by magnitudes highest priority & therefore solely decision-making determining) gargantuan levels of suffering
(i) before (if ever at all) not only a human-intelligence-like species eventually may emerge in the midst of them, but also one where its individuals have suitable physiology for manipulating their environment, and additionally, where the environment is suitable to allow for such technological transformation of it towards a local, labile, temporary, by its own biosphere forwards-contamination risking approximate utopia (until the situation may revert back if such species dies out, leaving the wildlife behind)
(ii) and as long as sufficiently many (in numbers and kinds, if thermally, mechanically, chemically triggered, or salient) nociceptors emerge in those evolutions of life, increasing fitness of species in the process (by providing otherwise not as easily and immediately as waste of energy or harm identified incidents part of courses of actions of animals, as people with congenital insensitivity to pain may see), making them pay with pain for survival in nature wildlife’s arms race to the bottom until further spread of nociceptors across skin & interiors were to hit a saturation limit at which they don’t further boost survival of a species anymore.
Now, if a civilization’s attempt to spread across the universe were to require or sufficiently much increase the chance that any as such clear to make out indication of their existence (as advanced, organized, intelligent lifeforms) becomes accessible in this very see-through universe to any alien civilization in it close enough (and for reference, in our case, exoplanets have been possible to find also in nearby galaxies by now, not just the Milky Way galaxy) that developed eyes for sight to be able to do effective astronomy and space-faring, then this sole visibility fact (with quite literally far-(across-the-universe-)reaching consequences) alone can easily constitute a massive forwards-contamination & evolution of life kick-starting en masse risk, which can turn into an uncontrolled naturally self-feeding process via abiogenesis and interstellar & interplanetary litho-panspermia together with non-sterile ice moons’ geysers spewing materials out hundreds of kilometers to space where it won’t fall back and can be caught & carried away by space rocks.
A reason for why as such from far away identifiable techno-signatures can lead to unnoticed, accidental, or (initially) intentional forwards-contamination events (with dire consequences) perpetrated by ignorant, young, foreign, far away alien civilizations could possibly be studied by analysis of the various, diffuse manners in which humanity itself might react to such (very dangerous if it happened and became public, and therefore top secrecy warranting) finding.
In a philosophy server, I made it a poll question if people think humanity’s physical outer space activities were to be boosted, were to increase (and hence boosting forwards-contamination risks alongside that), if we were to find a techno-signature (even if it were extremely far away), and almost all people think those activities would be increased. Though generally speaking, for gauging how an alien civilization might react to finding a techno-signature, one might at first consider all thinkable interpretations they may make of this, as well as how easily conceivable such interpretations individually may be, which may affect how long it may take for them to come up, relative to each other, and it’d also seem relevant to then consider how many of them (e.g. based on pure curiosity, or intention for light-based or physical messaging, or wanting to make friends, or fear of potential threat, or indifference, or intention towards hiding, possibly with or without prepared infrastructure with which to—catastrophically—send life-seed probes out to exoplanets in case a global threat based on something to be perceived of as an attack originating from such techno-signature were to approach) might end up increasing the forwards-contamination-based s-risks they may cause as result. Though if such civilization doesn’t react uniformly to a techno-signature, multiple interpretations may co-exist and lead to multiple separate reactions parallel to each other, and the same can be true even for uniform interpretation and reaction of such civilization, namely for if this interpretation and reaction isn’t long-term stable but might change repeatedly, each after many years, which would be a blink of an eye for astronomical time-scales. A civilization cannot nearly expand out to space or keep control of space at as fast of a rate at which a techno-signature originating from it can expand through space and become noticeable by alien civilizations and have s-risk effects there where nothing can ever be done about it, let alone in manners that themselves wouldn’t further worsen the situation. The best way in which an alien civilization can cooperate with other civilizations in the cosmos appears to be (quite sadly, and frustratingly, for as much as one might want to help) to make it seem like they don’t exist and hence just not communicate and not be visible to not at all risk misleading others by giving them false hopes which in turn can be cause of cascading s-risks across the cosmos, especially if other civilizations were to repeatedly make the same mistake, which could trigger a whole step-wise wave (with delays in between, due to travel time for light) of civilizations becoming visible due to striving towards an own techno-signature. As side-note, something similar to this can hold true for interstellar forwards-contamination if it were to be employed en masse, where—once initiated—an uncontrollable, irreversible chain-reaction of cosmic calamity could be triggered, even if the initial civilization that tried to seed exoplanets would at some (far too late) point realize of it to have been a giant mistake, since far into the future, on at least a small portion of all such exoplanets, once again unknowing civilizations may emerge to repeat the mistake towards all the nearby exoplanets that may exist in space near them in those billions of years into the future.
The vast, ethically extremely relevant psychological effects of one civilization’s for possibly very many other civilizations across astronomical time-spans visible techno-signatures are not to be understated, and ought to be considered by a civilization prior to creating a techno-signature of their own.
---
Oh, and by the way, next year in April already, space agencies start (possibly still unbeknownst of it) risking to force humanity alongside them into a long-term fate determining point of no return, by possibly forever irreversibly kick-starting evolution of life on various ice moons but also planets like Venus, namely by means of the JUICE mission to an ice moon, and the russian Laplace-P ice moon lander mission at unknown date in 2023, and in later years the same with Europa Clipper, EnEx, Dragonfly, VERITAS, DAVINCI+, Tianwen-4, but for interstellar matters there is also the following highly concerning projects: Yuri Milner’s project Starlight & Breakthrough Starshot, and Prof. Dr. Claudius Gros’ GENESIS project.
And then there is the current beginning of mass-production of solar-/light-sails (still) planned to explore all celestial bodies of the solar system with, which is a forwards-contamination risk and therefore s-risk nightmare.
Mind you, NASA Science Directorate Associate John Grunsfeld already (bafflingly just as mere side-note, even) confirmed that Mars accidentally got contaminated by unknown microbes carried there, with unknown fate (which was a matter relevant to a COSPAR meeting), so I mention this to highlight that the risk is not at all hypothetical but absolutely real.
But this is a matter I have been (maddeningly) busy continuously, tirelessly informing & warning so far roughly 5.000 worldwide institutions, professors and many others about throughout the last half year, including the UNOOSA & the Space Operations Command (SPOC), and not only because the Outer Space Treaty prohibits harmful forwards-contamination & legally binds states to be liable for damage caused by space objects they are responsible for (independent of if space agencies realize the existence of such risks or not). In my opinion it would be relieving & great if this extraordinary, once-in-a-civilization’s-life-time matter could soon at least reach the public, as it appears to be in need of a mass peer-review.
I’m somewhat confused why Nolan Funeral Home is one of the organizations you needed to contact about panspermia contagion, via some random person’s memorial page. Is this some kind of spam program gone awry?
There’s some disingenuous (or at least ignorant) framing in there, but ultimately, the message insight needs to get out there and be taken extremely serious, and I’m slowly but surely running out of suitable contact points, and so alongside the contact search, after some months of daily contacting without results, I extended my approach so that if I find any other contact points during the search that wouldn’t be much of a detour (just few minutes) of adding them, I decided to do so, and there is a variety of lines of reasoning by which that can make sense, as the main point (which if it’d finally happen were to obsolete my e-mail contacting efforts, which I’m still waiting for but will also not allow time to pass by unused, if I can still significantly increase the chance of sooner outreach by myself) is that this extremely urgent news hits the worldwide public, and if every person I contact were to at least inform 1/5000th as many other people as me, with that each being further people not yet having heard of the matter, then these earth shattering news would already be known across the globe. And it’s frustrating seeing how that still hasn’t happened yet. And no, this is all done manually, and to frame the most important insight & warning messaging—a godsend to this civilization’s current situation—spam is extremely ungrateful.
1 Samuel 21:15
How many of them have replied?
There were 65 responses, so about 1% to 2% of all replied. Generally it were understanding and agreeing response sentiments, except for Robin Hanson. Here is a list of those that did respond, and their responses:
Center for Ethics and Technology / M.Sc. Mariska Bosschart
Initiative for Interstellar Studies / John I Davies
The Life You Can Save Organization
Eurogroup for Animals
TED Talks
Royal Institute of Philosophy
Vegan Society
Prof. Chris Impey
Prof. (apl.) Dr. Michael Schetsche
Chris Williamson
Prof. Dr. Greg Matloff
Prof. Dr. Christopher E. Mason
UPF—Centre for Animal Ethics
European Union
Prof. Dr. Tyler Cowen
European Institute of Innovation & Technology
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
Prof. Dr. Robin Dale Hanson
International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
Conscious Entities
Mario Livio
EarthSky
Paul Gilster
Südwestrundfunk
Association for Practical and Professional Ethics
Dr. Anthony Milligan
Interstellar Beacon
David Suzuki Foundation
Founders Space
Action for Dolphins
Interstellar Research Group
Prof. Dr. Roald Hoffmann
Outer Space Institute
Royal Anthropological Institute
European Committee of the Regions
European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers
Millennium Circuits
Jenny Stanford Publishing
Nintendo
GRASP Laboratory
Lunar
Supertrends Institute
Economics for Peace Institute
Slush
Marcus Chown
Stanford Summer Humanities Institute
Asher Soryl
Friends of the Earth Melbourne
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Friends of the Earth International
Investigation Office of the Volkswagen Group
B.A. Kevin Weller
Tunbridge Wells Friends of the Earth
Dr. Tricia Lynn Lois Larose
William Green
Space4Water
Prof. Armel Kerrest
Rational Animations
Prof. Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz
Nishimura & Asahi
AOC International
Defence Command Denmark
North Carolina Department of Justice
Prof. Dr. Kent A. Peacock
Prof. Philip Kotler
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Dear Bernd Clemens Huber,
Thanks for contacting us. Your ideas are interesting. Our centre is a collaboration between the technological Universities in The Netherlands. We don’t have our own projects. So, we cannot put this on our website. But thanks for informing us about this.
drs. Mariska Bosschaert MA
Coordinator 4TU. Centre for Ethics and Technology
External PhD student Philosophy of Technology
Philosophy group
Department of Social Sciences
Wageningen University & Research
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Dear Bernd Clemens Huber
Thanks for getting in touch with i4is.
Your concerns about the ethics of Directed Panspermia are, I believe, widely shared.
For example, Prof Greg Matloff has been writing about this since at least 1979.
I’d be interested in what you are working on just now,
John
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Dear Bernd
Thank you so much for reaching out to the Life You Can Save, and for sharing your concerns. You are correct in that there are several categories of what have been described as ‘existential threats’ facing humanity.
You may find of interest this short YouTube clip with Peter Singer speaking about extinction risk in an interview, and here is an article published in October last year where he speaks on the same topic. Professor Singer also recommends the book The Precipice by Toby Ord, where the author engages with the topic in more depth.
As you correctly point out, this is a complex topic which deserves engagement and many great minds are making efforts in that regard. The Life You Can Save has a relatively narrow focus, which is ending extreme poverty, and the hope is that people engage with these immediate concerns, alongside considering the issues which may arise in the future.
Kind regards
Lydia
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Many thanks for your email. Unfortunately, we are not the right recipient for your message. Our primary mission is to work at the level of the European Parliament to address, improve, lobby for animal welfare rights and legislation.
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Hello,
Thank you for your email!
The best way to submit your idea to TED is through our speaker nomination process:
http://speaker-nominations.ted.com/
A few things to know about speaker nominations:
The curators work on filling all conference programs throughout the year (so there is no deadline).
Once submitted, your nomination will remain in a speaker database to be considered for all future TED events.
Selection is based not just on the individual merit of a nominee, but also on how their idea fits within a particular conference’s theme and overall program.
For these reasons, and the sheer volume of submissions our curators receive (25,000+ a year), they’re unable to respond with a status at any point or let you know if your submission will be a likely fit.
Learn more about speaking at TED:
https://www.ted.com/about/conferences/speaking-at-ted
I hope this helps!
With kindness,
Katie
TED Community Support Specialist
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Thanks but if you’re interested in disseminating your research you should be submitting to journals. I can’t follow up on random introductoins to people’s work form the people themselves: I’d be overwhelmed.
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Hello,
Thank you for taking the time to get in touch and share your thoughts and wider hypothesis. It was interesting to read and understand your position.
Kind regards,
Joel
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Some excellent points, but I regret pressure
of work—end of semester, grading, projects,
many demands from students—mean I can’t
get into a dialog about this. CDI
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Danke, Herr Huber, für Ihre Ausführungen!
Inzwischen bin ich allerdings in Rente und beschäftige mich nur noch
höchst selten mit wissenschaftlichen Fragen. Falls Sie einen
Kommentar zu Ihren Thesen wünschen, schreiben Sie am besten
meinen ehemaligen Kollegen und Mitautor Dr. Andreas Anton an:
anton@igpp.de
Vielleicht hat er ja die Muße, um Ihre Thesen mit Ihnen zu diskutierten.
Beste Grüße aus dem Ruhestand
Michael Schetsche
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Hello Bernd
Hope you’re well!
We really appreciate you reaching out. I’ve passed it onto Chris and made him aware, he gets a large amount of correspondence so may not be able to reply directly, but he’s very grateful for your message.
Let me know if there’s anything further I can help with, and if you haven’t already join our Locals community on https://modernwisdom.locals.com/
Again, thank you!
Benjamin Hancock
Personal Assistant to Chris Williamson
Instagram: @chriswillx
Host of the Modern Wisdom Podcast
Filling nightclubs at Voodoo Newcastle
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Dear Bernd
All the best with your research. I suggest that you publish your concepts or deliver them at an appropriate conference.
Regards
Prof. Matloff
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Hi – thank you for your email…I actually just wrote a whole book about this; perhaps you’ve seen it?
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/next-500-years
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Hi Bernd,
Sorry for the late reply and thank you very much for sharing your reflections on this topic.
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Sehr geehrter Herr Hubert,
vielen Dank für Ihre Nachricht und für das Mitteilen Ihrer Ansichten.
Bitte beachten Sie, dass wir in unserer Eigenschaft als allgemeiner Informationsdienst nicht in der Lage sind, Ihre Ansichten zu kommentieren.
Ihre Nachricht wurde zu Informationszwecken an den zuständigen Dienst der Europäischen Kommission weitergeleitet.
Wenn Sie sich an der europäischen Politikgestaltung beteiligen und Vorschläge machen wollen, stehen Ihnen mehrere Möglichkeiten offen, die Sie hier finden:
https://europa.eu/european-union/law/have-your-say_de
Falls Sie Fragen zur Europäischen Union, ihren Aktivitäten oder Institutionen haben, helfen wir Ihnen gerne weiter.
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All very interesting stuff, and I do hope to write more on these topics soon...
Tyler
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Bernd,
Thank you for contacting the American Society of Civil Engineers. We appreciate you taking the time to share your concerns regarding Ethics on Cosmic Scale, Directed Panspermia, Outer Space Treaty, Technology Assessment, (and Fermi’s Paradox). I will pass this information along to our volunteer leaders for their consideration.
Best regards,
Lindsay A. O’Leary, P.E., CAE, F.ASCE
Director, Technical Advancement
American Society of Civil Engineers
1801 Alexander Bell Drive
Reston, VA 20191-4400
512-803-6358 (direct)
1-800-548-2723
loleary@asce.org
www.asce.org
https://www.asce.org
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Sehr geehrter Herr Huber,
vielen Dank für Ihre Anfrage an das Europe Direct Kontaktzentrum. Wir danken Ihnen für Ihre Nachricht und die Mitteilung Ihrer Ansichten.
Wir haben Ihre Nachricht zu Informationszwecken an die zuständige Abteilung der Europäischen Kommission weitergeleitet.
Sollten Sie zu irgendeinem Zeitpunkt Fragen zur Europäischen Union, ihren Aktivitäten oder Institutionen haben, stehen wir Ihnen gerne zur Verfügung.
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Dear Bernd Huber,
Thank you for you interest in the Kauffman Foundation. We support education and entrepreneurs. We do not do any work in any of the areas you listed in your email. Please seek out more relevant organizations for possible partnerships.
Have a nice day,
Shari Wassergord
Brand Management Coordinator
Public Affairs Department
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
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I think I have a pretty opposite opinion to you; I’d rather there were lots more panspermia, including from Earth. Most all life is preferable to a dead empty universe. Robin Hanson
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Dear Dr. Bernd Clemens Huber,
Thank you very much for addressing ISPRS.
I will share your email with my colleages to decide.
Kind Regards
Lena
Lena Halounova
President, ISPRS
c/o Czech Technical University in Prague
Thakurova 7, Prague 6, Czech Republic
Tel.: +420 22435 4952
isprs-sg@isprs.org, www.cvut.cz
https://www.cvut.cz
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Thanks, Bernd
You make some interesting points and I think I would agree that it is by no means too early for the issue to be raised, with a view perhaps to some international agreement. I do not think that would be easy to achieve, because we still have a colonising mentality and advocates of ‘directed panspermia’ would not, I think, be lacking.
While subscribing to the overall proposition, I don’t think I accept the ethical case based on suffering. You can make a case that life is inseparable from suffering (I think that is a core Buddhist belief), but if I can put it metaphorically, I believe most organisms would rather be alive than not nevertheless.
I fear, however, that that is all beside the point as I can’t really help with raising awareness. I haven’t blogged on Conscious Entities for a while and have no immediate plans to restart.
I wish you success, however.
Peter
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Thank you for your note. I understand your point. This issue has come up in discussions of Space Agencies in the past. It is a matter for international discussion, which will probably take many years to resolve.
Thanks again,
Mario Livio
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Hello, Bernd.
Thank you for writing to EarthSky. We are always glad to hear from our readers.
Have you looked into the National Space Society? It is actually international.
https://space.nss.org/
Cordially,
Claudia
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Thank you, Bernd. I can feel your passion for the subject and your concerns about directed panspermia. What you have written is along the lines of a paper that could be submitted to a journal of one kind of another. I would suggest you consider editing this piece and submitting it to the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, where it would receive a wide audience.
To do this, check the BIS website to learn how to submit. I would strongly recommend a tight edit, however. This is a long piece, partly because the subject is complicated, but there are places here where you could easily cut the text in order to achieve a more forceful presentation. Be wary about sentences that are overly long in places where they may obscure meaning rather than enhance it.
Good luck with this. It’s an interesting concept and not something I’ve heard voiced before.
PG
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Dear Mr. Huber,
your mail reached us at the customer service of SWR television. We relieve the specialist departments and editorial departments of Südwestrundfunk (SWR), view inboxes, answer inquiries and channel messages. Thank you for your input.
We have forwarded your lines to the editors of science. In the editorial meetings, feedback and suggestions from the public are discussed and evaluated internally. Please understand, that the editors have to weigh up editorially whether and to what extent reporting is possible, especially in the case of scientific studies. The editors are also not always able to initiate a dialogue or send out a rejection, this is simply due to the flood of submissions, that the editors receive every day.
All the best to you and stimulating and informative entertainment with the offers of Südwestrundfunk (SWR).
Kind regards
Petra Votava
SWR Fernsehen Zuschauerservice
SWR
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Hi,
If you would like to submit a proposal for a talk on this topic at our conference next year, please review our Call for Proposals information.
Thanks.
APPE Admin
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Dear Bernd Huber,
Thank you for your email. The format is very Spinoza. It contains a good deal to think about.
Best wishes.
Tony
-
Interesting read….
Are you Dr. Bernd Huber, The economist?
Bill Kitchen
-
Thank you for your email and for sharing this information with us.
Unfortunately, the Foundation has not conducted research on this specific topic and we are therefore unable to provide proper feedback. We do encourage you to visit our website, which contains specific information on our current campaigns, including publications and further internet links.
Everything is interconnected, and there are multiple issues that fall into our program areas. However, in order to be effective, we need to focus our efforts on the specific campaigns that we have committed to and where we feel we can have the most impact.
Fortunately, there are many organizations, communities and individuals, such as you, working across Canada on a number of important issues. We are inspired by the amazing work that is being accomplished.
We appreciate your effort to stay informed and find solutions. We wish you luck in your research.
Please see the handy link in our e-signature below.
Kind regards,
Sarah
-
Hi Bernd,
I’m sorry, but I couldn’t understand what you are asking for.
In one sentence, what would you like from Founders Space?
Thanks
Janet Harting
Coordinator
-
Hi Bernd,
Thank you very much for your email and for sharing that information with us.
We really appreciate you taking the time to share all of that knowledge with us, it sounds like you are extremely passionate about this issue, and I will forward your email onto the rest of the team immediately, so that we can all have a read and then discuss together.
Thanks again Bernd, we really appreciate it and appreciate all of your incredible support for the cause too.
Stay safe and have a wonderful day.
Warm regards,
Diana
The AFD Dolphin Protection Team
Action for Dolphins
Email: info@afd.org.au
Tel: 0427 399 056
www.afd.org.au
https://www.afd.org.au
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Dear Mr. Huber,
First, let me apologize for the extreme lateness of this reply. It
turned out that no one was actively monitoring the info@irg.space email
account (I guess we all thought someone else was doing it).
I’m also sending this email to Kelly Smith, from the Society for Social
and Conceptual Implications of Astrobiology (SSoCIA), as I think it may
be of particular interest to that organization. It may be that you can
have a productive conversation with Dr. Smith on this topic.
If you would be interested, please submit your paper for consideration
for our 8th Interstellar Symposium next year, in Montreal:
https://irg.space/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/IRG_CALL_FOR_PAPERS.pdf
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Dear Mr Huber,
Thank you for contacting the European Committee of the Regions.
We are kindly let you know that the ENVE Chair will be informed about the topic you raise in your message.
With best regards,
ENVE Secretariat
-
Dear Bernd Huber,
Thank you for your message and most humble apologies for the extreme delay in response. We have taken note of your kind email and shared it with the respective team for this to be passed on to the right person.
Kind regards,
Farmaz
To view your ticket, please follow your ticket link: https://support.eage.org/support/tickets/public/c78d53c119f9377111bad1b401eafb98fbfb875f3281d93672b31349f6e8dd00
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Hello, thanks for reaching out.
How can I assist?
-
Hi Bernd,
Thank you for your reply and interest. An introductory book on this topic would be interesting. You’re welcome to propose a flexible time frame and you may also wish to collaborate with your colleagues.
Once you have pondered on the book idea, please provide us with the following information
1) Title
2) Author(s)/Editor(s)
3) Publication type (monograph, review volume, textbook, lecture notes, etc.)
4) Brief description
5) Estimated number of pages
6) Tentative deadline
Based on the above, we will discuss your proposal together with our editorial committee and referees, and will get back to you soon on our feedback. Upon analysis of the book’s scope, academic level and potential market, we will share with you the royalties’ structure based on net sales received worldwide.
There won’t be any costs incurred to you and financial fees from copyediting, proofreading, reformatting, indexing, etc. will be borne by us. Once everything is finalized, we will then prepare the publishing agreements for both parties to sign.
In the meantime, please visit our website at www.jennystanford.com and our distributor www.routledge.com to know more of our other publications. Thanks again and we look forward to your reply soon.
Best Regards,
Jenny Rompas
Director and Publisher
Jenny Stanford Publishing
101 Thomson Road
#06-01, United Square
Singapore 307591
Tel: +65 6829 5445
Email: jenny@jennystanford.com
Web: www.jennystanford.com
Inspiring Innovation through Publishing
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Dear Mr Huber,
thank you for contacting Nintendo about your concerns regarding these issues.
Please keep in mind that this is the Customer Service for the German speaking market, so we are only able to handle cases in German, i will however handle this case in English out of goodwill.
We are happy to hear your interest and your engagement about these important subjects.
Thank you for these information, we have shared these with colleagues and made it internally visible to all.
It was a very informative read and quite understandable, i personally am not new to these subjects, as some of my greatest interests are in the fields of astronomy and space exploration.
Our company Nintendo does not have any product that currently is in deep space, nor are there any plans and rumours about anything like that coming any time soon.
Hence why these information might not impact Nintendos products and procedures in the current times.
We wish you the best and good success in educating the world about these topics, especially since they have an ever-growing importance with the development and future of humanity/life as we know it.
If you have any further inquiries, feel free to ask, we are happy to help.
Thank you for contacting Nintendo Customer Support. We appreciate your trust in our support team!
We’d like to take this opportunity to ask you a few questions about your experience with us.
We place high value on your feedback which will be helpful to improve our service.
The survey will be sent shortly to your email address. We are looking forward to your answers.
Best regards,
Richard Wegscheider
-
Dear Bernd,
Thank you for your inquiry and interest in the GRASP Lab! You may feel free to reach out to any GRASP Faculty Member directly that aligns with your research interests to discuss further. GRASP encompasses a wide range of research areas that can be seen here and our GRASP Faculty page is a great resource as well.
All the best,
-Mariel Celentano
-
Hi Bernd Huber,
Thank you for your message and interest in Lunar.
I will reach out to the right person regarding this and they will get in touch if it is in our interest.
I wish you a lovely day
All the best,
Lærke
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Dear Mr. Huber,
Thank you for this interesting piece on Panspermia. We are currently in a process of organizational restructuring and strategy building; therefore we currently don’t have the means for disseminating this type of content.
In a couple of months, when the platform that we are currently building will be ready, we will invite you and other experts to contribute content or take part in debates on various topics, this one included.
Thank you for your understanding.
Kind regards,
Catalina Sparleanu
Head of Content
Supertrends AG
Erlenstrasse 16 | 6300 Zug | Switzerland
-
Hello. Thank you for explaining these matters and your transmittal through our website contact form.
Please print the content you have provided and send it by mail to :
Economics for Peace Institute
PO Box 1837
Port Townsend, WA 98368
Please provide a return mailing address.
Our organization is not issue specific and this is outside of our scope.
We will forward your printed content to a reviewer or two.
That person may be able to help you with outreach.
Thank you again.
In your mailed communication, please indicate in what ways you wish to support our organizational efforts at local social fieldwork to inform public decisions. We will keep you on our newsletter list if there is a clear indication that you understand the scope of our work and support it.
Best regards,
tech team at econ4peace
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Hi Bernd,
If this is important, can you please pitch this in three sentences? :)
Kind regards,
Maria
—
Maria Koskela
Marketing & Comms
maria.koskela@slush.org
slush.org
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Dear Bernd,
Thank you for telling me aabout this topic, which seems very interesting.
Best wishes,
Marcus
-
Pre-Collegiate Studies Staff (Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies)
Sep 26, 2022, 10:42 AM PDT
Hello Bernd,
Thank you for your message.
Stanford Summer Humanities Institute (SHI) is a program offering academic enrichment courses for high school students in the areas of history, politics, literature, and philosophy.
Should you be interested to share your research or raise awareness about this issue, we suggest to contact departments at Stanford University that are relevant to your academic discipline(s). Typically, their departmental email addresses can be found on their websites.
You may also find helpful resources from the Stanford Office of STEM Outreach (Stanford OSO): https://oso.stanford.edu/programs/graduate-students-and-postdoctoral-fellows.
We wish you the best in your studies and research.
Regards, Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies
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Hi Bernd,
I’m sorry for the late reply, I have been travelling through Europe for the past few weeks with limited time to check my emails. All I can say is that I agree completely, and am currently in the process of shifting my career projects toward mitigating this risk. Perhaps we could have a talk sometime about this topic? I’m currently in Melbourne, Australia, but in several days I will be back home in New Zealand—if you’d like to chat, feel free to suggest a time for us to zoom (preferably in a week as I’ll be more settled).
Best,
Asher
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Bernd --
Thank you for contacting us, I will forward your enquiry to the appropriate team member at Friends of the Earth Melbourne.
With thanks and solidarity.
Jemila Rushton—Friends of the Earth Melbourne
http://www.melbournefoe.org.au/
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Dear Bernd Huber,
A Ambrose mentioned you in the following request:
Request #561457 Ethics on Cosmic Scale, Directed Panspermia, Forwards-Contamination, Outer Space Treaty, Technology Assessment, Planetary Protection, (and Fermi’s Paradox)
@Bernd Huber
Good Day Mr. Huber,
Thank you for contacting the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Vehicle Safety Hotline Information Center.
Unfortunately, this is not a matter that NHTSA has jurisdiction over. The Hotline Information Center can provide you with assistance and information regarding vehicle safety, recalls, or motor vehicle equipment defects.
We hope that you find this information helpful. However, if you need additional information on our services please feel free to contact us at 1-888-327-4236.
Thank you,
NHTSA.dot.gov Response Team
Disclaimer: “This response is for information purposes only and does not constitute an official communication of the U.S. Department of Transportation. For an official response, please write U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Ave, SE, West Building, Washington, DC 20590.
https://nhtsa.4me.telesishq.com/requests/561457
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Dear friend,
Thank you for your email.
You have contacted the Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) Secretariat, the administrative centre for the FoEI Federation. We have read your message with interest.
For your information, we have a Friends of the Earth group in your residence country. Their contact details can be found on our website: https://www.foei.org/who-we-are/member-groups/
Our member groups operate independently.
Thanks again for getting in touch. Your support helps us to work at the forefront of the global environmental struggle, and enables us to advocate for the human rights of those who defend our world.
Kind regards,
Argy
Argy Alexandratou
Information Request Team
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Sehr geehrter Herr Huber,
vielen Dank für Ihren Hinweis, den wir im Zentralen Aufklärungsoffice unter dem Aktenzeichen 2022 0007 bearbeiten.
Wir haben Ihren Hinweis und die dortigen Ausführungen ausführlich aufgenommen und uns genau angeschaut. Bitte beachten Sie, dass wir im Zentralen Aufklärungsoffice dafür zuständig sind, zu prüfen, ob ein Anfangsverdacht hinsichtlich eines möglichen Mitarbeiterfehlverhaltens von Mitarbeitern des Volkswagen Konzerns gegeben sein könnte.
Könnten Sie gemäß Ihres Hinweises uns bitte näher erläutern, wo hier ein konkretes Mitarbeiterfehlverhalten liegen könnte?
Ich erlaube mir, Ihnen auf Deutsch zu antworten. Gerne können wir jedoch auf Englisch kommunizieren.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Peter Böker, LL.M.
Rechtsanwalt (Syndikusrechtsanwalt)
Group Whistleblowersystem (K-ICW)
Group Compliance
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Why? What is the relevance of this? What makes you think it could be worth contacting me? Why is this a valuable use of your talents and intelligence? Good luck!
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Dear User,
We received your email sent via our website and will work on it.
Kind regards,
UNOOSA
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Good morning
Thank you for your message.
I will read it. Having had a quick look, it seems to be food for thought.
Yours sincerely
Armel Kerrest
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Hi!
You should perhaps post your thoughts on the EA Forum first! Also, I have a script-writing contest going on (search for it on the forum). So, if you want to pitch anything, that’s a good way to do it.
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Dear Dr. Huber:
Thank you for bringing these ideas to my attention. Good luck with your endeavors.
Prof. Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz, Emerita
Editor-in-Chief Emerita, Journal of Space Law
http://joannegabrynowicz.com
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Mr. Huber,
Thank you for your e-mail dated October 20.
Our firm is unable to assist you with this matter.
We greatly appreciate your understanding in advance.
Regards,
Nishimura & Asahi
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Sehr geehrter Herr Huber,
vielen Dank für Ihre Anfrage/Rückmeldung bezüglich eines/Ihres Monitors.
Diese Anfrage wird unter der Fallnummer 03269755 bearbeitet.
Da Sie kein Problem mit einem AOC-Monitor haben, wird dieser Fall nun geschlossen.
Entschuldigung für die späte Antwort.
Da Sie kein Problem mit einem AOC-Monitor haben, wird dieser Fall nun geschlossen.
Bitte kontaktieren Sie uns nur bei Problemen oder Fragen zu unseren Produkten.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Jonas Wagner
AOC Monitor Support
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Sir,
Thank you for your email.
Defence Command Denmark has no comments to your inquiry.
Kind regards
Anders Oakley
Administrative Officer
Defence Command Denmark
Joint Operations Staff
Administrative Section (J1)
Herningvej 30, 7470 Karup J
“The Joint Operations Staff employs the capabilities of the Danish Armed Forces for the benefit of Denmark”
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October 28, 2022
Bernd Huber
Dear Bernd:
Thank you for taking the time to write my office.
As Attorney General, protecting the people of North Carolina is my top priority. Hearing views from people across the state helps me better do my job as your Attorney General.
Please do not hesitate to share your perspective with me or my office in the future.
Sincerely,
Josh Stein
Attorney General of North Carolina
JS/OW
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Dear Bernd Huber --
Thank you for your interesting thoughts, and sorry I could not respond sooner. The ethical implications of panspermia certainly do seem important, although I am inclined to think that it is not the most immediately crucial problem we face. Our immediate problem is how to do we survive our own effects on our own planet, as manifested especially in climate change and loss of biodiversity.
Sincerely,
Kent Peacock
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Bernd,
Your case is stated in great detail, almost ready for a court case.
However, if you are trying to convince the public, you need to rewrite the material in a much more readable form.
It should not occupy more than one page. It should consist of simple sentences and very short paragraphs.
I suggest that you ask a marketer to restate your case in brief words.
Good luck.
Philip Kotler