The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence -Paul Davies

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- About the Author


- Review by Sameer Rahim (U.K. Telegraph)


- Excerpt: Chapter 1; Is Anybody Out There? (NYTimes)


- Audio: Paul Davies & John Lennox on Unbelievable radio show; "Are We Alone in the Universe?"

- "Aliens? Be not afraid" by Joseph Wood (The Catholic Thing)

- "Alien Ideas Christianity and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life" by Benjamin D. Wiker (Catholic Education Resource Center)

- Wiki SETI page.           - The Drake Equation.                
  - The Fermi Paradox.      -The Great Filter.

   "We are so wedded to the human concept of a machine as, for example, chunks of metal with buttons and knobs, or as information being processed (as in software), that we find it hard to conceptualize technology involving levels of manipulation above these. What do I mean by this? A conventional machine  such as a car moves matter around in an organized way. Information technology on the other hand moves information around in an organized way. For example, Photoshop on my computer can rotate an image. When that happens, matter moves too, namely electrons in the computer's circuitry, but we wouldn't recognize the technology in action by observing the electrons - we see it via the complete image.
    One way to think about information is as a 'higher level' concept than matter. The higher level builds on, but transcends the lower level. Thus software - an abstract concept - invariably requires physical hardware to support it: swirling bits of information inside a computer, or sense data in the brain, need switches or neurons.  Now, I ask, are these two conceptual levels - matter and information - all there is? Five hundred years ago the very concept of a device manipulating information or software, would have been incomprehensible. Might there be a still higher level, as yet outside all human experience, that organizes information in the same way that information processing organizes electrons? If so, this 'third level' would never be manifest through observations made at the informational level, but that doesn't mean that it is non-existent, and we need to be open to the possibility that alien technology may operate at the third level, or maybe the fourth, fifth...levels.

The Goldilocks Enigma; Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life? -Paul Davies

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- video: Paul Davies on an Ultimate Explanation,   
- Part 1/5
- Part 2/5       
- Part 3/5      
- Part 4/5      
- Part 5/5

"I am convinced that human understanding of nature through science, rational reasoning, and mathematics points to a much deeper connection between life, mind, and cosmos than emerges from the crude lottery of multiverse cosmology combined with the weak anthropic principle. In some manner....life, mind, and physical law are part of a common scheme, mutually supporting.  Somehow, the universe has generated its own self-awareness. I shall argue in the coming sections that the bio-friendliness of the universe is an observer selection effect but that it operates at a much deeper level than the passive "winners in a random lottery" explanation.
   

The Privileged Planet; How Our Place In the Universe is Designed for Discovery -Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards

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- About the Authors

- Book's Website