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.As mechanicsbroadened, it always turned out that the energy concept could becarried over in to the new interpretation, while retaining theconservation property.Thus heat can be identified with the kineticenergy of molecules.The concept even extends into the quantumrealm.There is no question that energy is a concept of huge significance forphysics.It is a major tool for dealing with the mathematics, and itrepresents how material objects behave with considerable accuracy.It iscertainly possible that the reason why the formal concept of energyextended so readily as physicists improved their models of nature is thatenergy genuinely is real, that the universe runs on an energy economy,trading it like hard currency.There is no question that when doingphysics, it makes life far simpler if you assume that energy is real anddon t think too hard about what that would entail.But we can questionwhether energy has a genuine existence beyond that of a mathematicalconstruct.Is the universe made from a thing, energy, along withperhaps other things? That s not so clear.Maybe energy is merely anepiphenomenon a concept derived from reality, but not part of it.Theoretical physicists may be aghast at the suggestion that energy isnot real; but then, theoretical physicists are the ultimate Platonists.Andthey re very happy nowadays to tell us that space, time, and matter arenot real, so why stop there? Consider an analogous concept, that of anegative number.If a chicken lays three eggs and the farmer removestwo, how many are left? Clearly 3 2 = 1, one egg.Mathematicianslearned, long ago, that it is convenient and useful to enlarge the numbersystem to include negative numbers, such as 2.By exploiting negativenumbers, subtraction can be reduced to addition: 3 2 = 3+( 2).Nological inconsistency can be introduced by extending the numbersystem in this way: that s been proved, it s a theorem.And the extendedsystem correctly describes transactions with eggs.However, although 2 eggs occur in one version of the arithmetic, 2 eggs do not exist.Youcan t start with one egg and remove three.You can interpret 2 eggs asa debt of two eggs, but that sets up a new context, and in any case a debtis a concept, a social construct, not a thing.Energy may be no more real than minus two eggs.The same goes for information.There is no good reason to suppose332 HAVE ALIENS VISITED US?that it is anything beyond a mathematical epiphenomenon.Useful, yes;suggestive, yes; real no.In order to turn a message into a beautiful, deadly, alien female, youneed a context in which that message will be interpreted correctly.Making an aircraft is not merely a matter of e-mailing someone theblueprint: something has to turn the blueprint into a flying machine ofaluminium and plastic, and the only something that we know will workis an aircraft factory.Similarly, the only context for turning information into an organism that we know of is another organism, orperhaps one of its cells if it has any.As every IVF clinic knows, it takesfar more than a printout of a DNA sequence to make a baby.Even theDNA sequence is no use on its own: its message must be impressedupon a fertilised egg.Moreover, to make a human baby, it has to be ahuman egg, and the DNA has to be a human genome.So Speciesdoesn t work, and the plot could be rescued only with some very clever,sophisticated, and carefully engineered ultra-high technology test-tube aliens.So you don t need to worry that if you take part in SETI sinternet search for alien intelligence, an incoming message will turnyour PC into a slinky, death-dealing, humanoid beauty.More s the pity.There is one way for an alien message to wreak havoc, though.Alienscould transmit a computer virus into the internet, and disable it.Theywould have to observe internet traffic very closely, and learn howWindows"! works, but that s child s play to a superintelligent being.Independence Day plays the same trick in reverse, with humans hackinginto the computer system that controls the aliens invasion fleet.Theinvading commanders would do well to heed the advice displayed onone of the pages of the World Wide Web, which offers instruction toalien programmers on how to write secure code that can counter thisdisturbing threat to their plans for dominating the universe.333 14GALACTIC EMPIRESEAR HEADQUARTERS,D Warning of Imminent Rise to Technical Competence of theHumanoid Terran Species.(Confidential/Urgent.)We have just discovered something that we inadvertently omitted fromthe Earth Prospectus.Earth humanoids, primate type DBDG, haveattained technical competence.Barely.They should now be considered asproperly extelligent (for evidence consult Appendix 1).However, a second group of species on the same planet, in an ecosystemalmost totally disconnected from the humanoids habitat, has made contactwith us.This species-complex is a biologically engineered set of tool-organisms of type JZZX*, complicit with a bacterial cloud of type UUDDthat regards Abel as its progenitor (Appendix 2).To anticipate your question: yes, we have checked that there has been nogenetic contamination.These are both very primitive extelligences.Neither species has yetexperimented with discorporation or interstellar spaceflight, and each stillbelieves that the universe was designed for them alone.That there are two of them should soon disabuse them of suchalienthropic philosophies
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