{"id":18533,"date":"2018-05-08T17:50:42","date_gmt":"2018-05-08T09:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/eggs-for-alien-earths-at-94-physicist-freeman-dysons-brain-is-still-going-strong\/"},"modified":"2018-05-08T17:50:42","modified_gmt":"2018-05-08T09:50:42","slug":"eggs-for-alien-earths-at-94-physicist-freeman-dysons-brain-is-still-going-strong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/eggs-for-alien-earths-at-94-physicist-freeman-dysons-brain-is-still-going-strong\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Eggs\u2019 for alien Earths? At 94, physicist Freeman Dyson\u2019s brain is still going strong"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_418152\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-418152\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-418152\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/180507-dyson2-630x420.jpg\" alt=\"Freeman Dyson\" width=\"630\" height=\"420\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/180507-dyson2-630x420.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/180507-dyson2-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/180507-dyson2-1260x840.jpg 1260w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-418152\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Physicist Freeman Dyson\u2019s latest book is \u201cMaker of Patterns: An Autobiography Through Letters.\u201d (Dan Komoda \/ Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ USA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Alien megaspheres \u2026 rockets powered by nuclear bombs \u2026 freeze-dried life in outer space: These are just some of the ideas that have flowered in the brain of physicist Freeman Dyson, and he\u2019s not done yet.<\/p>\n<p>Dyson, who turned 94 last December, has spent most of his career at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and he still hangs his hat there as a professor emeritus. But he also has a connection to the Pacific Northwest: His son, tech historian George Dyson, lives in Bellingham, Wash.<\/p>\n<p>The elder Dyson renews his Northwest connections on Wednesday at a Town Hall Seattle presentation that\u2019s framed as a conversation with Seattle science-fiction author Neal Stephenson and Robbert Dijkgraaf, director of the Institute for Advanced Study.<\/p>\n<p>Topic A is sure to be Freeman Dyson\u2019s newly published autobiography, \u201cMaker of Patterns,\u201d which is based on letters he sent to his family between 1941 and 1978. During those decades, Dyson rubbed elbows with many of the great minds in physics&nbsp;\u2014 including Richard Feynman, Niels Bohr, Robert Oppenheimer and Stephen Hawking.<\/p>\n<p>He even crossed paths, literally, with Albert Einstein, who spent the latter years of his life at the Institute for Advanced Study. \u201cWe saw him each morning walk from his home to the institute, and each afternoon walk back, but we never spoke to him,\u201d Dyson writes.<\/p>\n<p>Dyson himself made his mark in fields ranging from quantum electrodynamics to nuclear engineering. \u201cMaker of Patterns\u201d sheds light on that scientific work as well as his involvement in the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement and efforts to reduce nuclear arms.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Freeman Dyson with Neal Stephenson and Robbert Dijkgraaf: Maker of Patterns\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iw6OKaREW-0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Ironically, the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty killed off one of Dyson\u2019s best-known ideas, Project Orion, which called for setting off atomic bombs to power massive rockets on interplanetary voyages.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am really sorry about this,\u201d Dyson wrote in 1963. \u201cBut I had to admit in my own mind that no single project of that sort could be allowed to stand in the way of a treaty.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another idea attached to Dyson\u2019s name is a concept that came to be known as the Dyson Sphere: In 1960, he suggested that an extraterrestrial civilization could be detected by its infrared signature around its parent star. That&nbsp;suggestion came back into the spotlight a couple of years ago when astronomers speculated that an \u201calien megastructure\u201d might exist around a weirdly behaving star.<\/p>\n<p>The astronomers eventually ruled out the idea, but Dyson said he was amused by the controversy while it lasted.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course that\u2019s just all rubbish,\u201d he told GeekWire in a telephone interview. \u201cThis was basically a misunderstanding of the word \u2018biosphere.\u2019 I used the word \u2018biosphere\u2019 to mean the habitat in which creatures would be living, and you\u2019d see the warmth outside this habitat. The science-fiction people misunderstood \u2018biosphere\u2019 as meaning a big round ball. And of course it doesn\u2019t have to be a ball.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dyson is also on record as suggesting that if scientists wanted to look for life on Europa, a moon of Jupiter thought to harbor an ice-covered ocean, the easiest way would be to look for organisms that are splashed into space as the result of cosmic impacts.<\/p>\n<p>The idea of looking for Europa\u2019s \u201cfreeze-dried fish\u201d may sound fanciful, but it helped inspire strategies for detecting organic materials within the plumes of water spraying up from Europa&nbsp;or from Enceladus, a similarly ice-covered moon of Saturn.<\/p>\n<p>Dyson warned against overemphasizing the astrobiology angle for space missions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s a big mistake to announce beforehand that a mission is going to search for life,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s almost certainly going to fail. But if you send out a mission to explore what\u2019s there, whether it\u2019s alive or not, it begins to make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That being said, Dyson\u2019s \u201clatest brainwave\u201d has everything to do with life in space&nbsp;\u2014 as in sending out earthly life to take root in outer space.<\/p>\n<p>The concept would make use of what he calls \u201cNoah\u2019s Ark Eggs.\u201d Here\u2019s how he described the idea during our interview:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe Noah\u2019s Ark Egg is a way of making space colonies highly cost-effective. They\u2019re very cheap, and also very powerful. They\u2019re using&nbsp;miniaturization to spread life in the universe, not just for exploring.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Noah\u2019s Ark Egg is an object looking like an ostrich egg, a few kilograms in weight. But instead of having a single bird inside, it has embryos&nbsp;\u2014 a whole planet\u2019s worth of species of microbes and animals and plants, each represented by one embryo.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s programmed then to grow into a complete planet\u2019s worth of life. So it will cost only a few million dollars for the egg and the launch, but you could have about 1,000 human beings and all the life support, and all the different kinds of plants and animals for surviving. The cost per person is only a few thousand dollars, and it could enlarge the role of life in the universe at an amazingly fast speed. So you&nbsp;could imagine doing this in 100 years or so.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019d need to know more about embryology before we could do it. We\u2019d want to know how to design embryos, and design robot nannies to take care of them until they\u2019re grown up. But all that could be done.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The idea sounds as if it\u2019d require interstellar travel on the scale seen in the \u201cInterstellar\u201d movie, but Dyson insists that the scheme could work in our own solar system. \u201cThere\u2019s lots of real estate in the solar system&nbsp;\u2014 of course, most of it is small objects, but there\u2019s plenty of sunlight,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Dyson is skeptical about the prospects of sending humans beyond the solar system. However, he\u2019s supportive of projects such as the Breakthrough Starshot initiative, which aims to send miniaturized probes flying past the Alpha Centauri star system.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGetting to Alpha Centauri is really hard, and it\u2019s something we really don\u2019t know how to do,\u201d he said. \u201cBut on the way, we\u2019ll get to a huge number of other places which are also interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dyson has a lot more to say about different approaches to exploring outer space, which we share in the audio clip below. The way he sees it, the important thing is to keep exploring.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSpace is not empty,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s full of all kinds of interesting stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/441370638&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Freeman Dyson discusses \u201cMaker of Patterns: An Autobiography Through Letters\u201d with Neal Stephenson at Meydenbauer Center Theater in Bellevue, Wash., at 6:30 p.m. PT on Wednesday, May 9. The event is being presented by Town Hall Seattle and Meydenbauer Center, and moderated by Robbert Dijkgraaf, director of the Institute for Advanced Study. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $5. For information and tickets, visit the Town Hall Seattle website&nbsp;or Stranger Tickets. The event will also be live-streamed via YouTube.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Physicist Freeman Dyson\u2019s latest book is \u201cMaker of Patterns: An Autobiography Through Letters.\u201d (Dan Komoda \/ Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ USA) Alien megaspheres \u2026 rockets powered by nuclear bombs \u2026 freeze-dried life in outer space: These are just some of the ideas that have flowered in the brain of physicist Freeman Dyson, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4666,1874,4418,5244,4570,21,5245],"class_list":["post-18533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-alien-megastructure","tag-astrobiology","tag-books","tag-freeman-dyson","tag-physics","tag-space","tag-town-hall"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18533"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}