Technosignatures

When looking for life on other planets, we do not look for little green men, or cities, or canals. Telescopes are nowhere near powerful enough to see that kind of detail. Our best satellite-based telescopes hope to see a dot, if we are lucky, if we know where and when to look.

The way we look for life is to look at the color of that dot. The precise spectrum will indicate the chemicals that are present. Certain chemicals are a sign of life: molecular oxygen, for example. Oxygen bonds really well to very many chemicals. It is unlikely to see much of it unbonded. We only have unbonded oxygen on earth because we have plants that make it. Oxygen molecules are a sure sign of life. Methane is also a likely indicator. This makes oxygen molecules a biosignature: a sign of life.

Professor Adam Frank is looking for technosignatures: a light spectrum that indicate the presence of a technology-using society. Solar panels and pollutants are two types of technosignature.

First Flight

 This piece of cloth was part of the first powered flight on earth. 

...and on Mars.

Marshmallow is Not Soft

Buckets of ink have been spent on the “marshmallow study”. Walter Mischel started the test in the 1960s; finished it in the 1980s and people have been buzzing about it ever since.

The most famous version goes like this. A 4-5 yr-old child is placed in a room with a marshmallow. She is told that she is welcome to eat it now, but if she waits until the adult comes back, she will get two marshmallows. The wait was usually 15 minutes, all alone, in a bare room with a table, two chairs and a plate with a marshmallow. (You will find no shortage of (very cute) videos on this study.)

• The result: decades later, the kids who resisted were dramatically more successful.
• The moral: self-control is they key to success.

The study’s fame grew until it is now one the ten best-known stories in psychology, maybe the best. Then, in 2018, Watts published a study claiming Mischel’s conclusion was too simple.

Popular press articles exploded: the marshmallow study is wrong! Debunked! There were lots of takes. One says that it’s really about education: kids from poor families have less willpower. Another says it is about trust in adults: kids from un-trustworthy parents didn’t believe they were ever going to see that second marshmallow. Well, Watts never really thought his study “dubunked” the original, just that it told a more nuanced story.

Well, now a study from New Zealand, originating back in 1972, says...self-control is an excellent predictor of future success. We’re sorry, Walter Mischel.