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AST 309L
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Review for Test 4

AST. 309L - REVIEW FOR TEST #4
  1. Evolution of Intelligent Life - f(i) (1 mill yrs/4 bill yrs?)
    1. General Ideas
      1. Intelligence = sum total of capabilities, responses, etc of species
      2. Ways to quantify intelligence - DNA length, brain capacity (# neurons x # synapses per neuron); DNA length probably limited by copying errors (more errors for simpler species)
      3. Reptiles first to have more info in brains than DNA
      4. 10^10 bits in our DNA (or less due to junk); 10^14 bits in our brains
      5. Mammals "dominant" after 65 mil. yrs ago (Cenozoic/Tertiary)
    2. Hominid evolution
      1. Sequence of evolution; Proconsul apes to Homo Sapiens (10/31 summary)
      2. Upright walking already apparent at 4.5 mil. yrs ago (A. Ramidus)
      3. Homo Sapiens probably from Africa about 100,000 yrs ago from genetic diversity studies
      4. Inter-relation of driving forces toward human intelligence: bipedalism, tool use, increased brain size, pair bonding and increased time for education, climate changes, ...
      5. Oral language allows information storage outside one person's brain
  2. Development of Culture/Civilization - f(c) (10,000 yrs/100,000 yrs?)
    1. Homo Sapiens was hunter/gatherer for most of existence
    2. Agriculture "discovered" about 10,000 yrs ago, slow change to urban life
      1. Probable link to ending of ice age
      2. Possible link to short term fluctuation in climate
      3. Began in middle East (independent starts elsewhere, too)
    3. Agriculture leads to
      1. More stable living conditions; more population supported per unit land; more free time for some; Class systems, taxes, cities
    4. Development of written language
      1. Record keeping on clay tokens and tablets started almost simultaneous with agriculture
      2. Alphabet (in modern day sense) started about 1500 BC
      3. Paper, 100 AD in China; printing press 1500 AD in Europe
    5. Technology development
      1. Clay pottery 7000 BC
      2. Copper-4000 BC, Bronze-3000 BC Iron-1500 BC, Silicon-1950 AD
    6. View of the Universe
      1. Details recorded for agricultural purposes at least 4000 BC by Babylonians; Stonhenge 3000 - 1000 BC; Mayans 0 - 1000 AD
      2. Interpretations heavy on control by Gods/ Man is special
      3. Renaissance brought the scientific method/questioning/ observational tests
  3. Lifetimes of Technological Phase With Interest in Communication - L ??????
    1. Interest impossible to quantify - Guess!
    2. Evolving ends
      1. Resource exhaustion; energy most important since recycling impossible; solar longest
      2. Overpopulation - probably self limiting (hopefully); pop. increases exponentially - current doubling time ~60 yrs.
    3. Catastrophic ends
      1. High tech wars (is agressiveness universal?), long lived aftereffects/ radiation, atmosheric dust
      2. Impacts with asteroids/comets; extinctions "every" 30-60 mil. yrs
      3. Changes in stars; solar evolution (2bil yrs to evap oceans, 5 bil till red giant), solar oscillations (?), supernova explosions prob. 2 billion years on average
    4. Avoiding some of these problems
      1. Colonizing Mars - heat to melt polar ice caps
      2. Colonizing space - how to make affordable - energy beaming
      3. Rocket basics - 4 parameters - need many factors of 2 improvement just to get to Mars in a few weeks! mostly need higher temp. exhaust!
  4. Final numbers in the Drake Equation and distance to nearest neighbors, round-trip communication







 





9 November 2006
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