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<\/p>\nNew Uses for the Eschaton
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One way to examine problems with huge unknowns \u2013 SETI is a classic example \u2013 is through the construction of a so-called \u2018toy model.\u2019 I linger a moment on the term because I want to purge the notion that it infers a lightweight conclusion. A toy model simplifies details to look for the big picture. It can be a useful analytical tool, a way of screening out some of the complexities in order to focus on core issues. And yes, it\u2019s theoretical and idealized, not predictive.<\/p>\n
But sometimes a toy model offers approaches we might otherwise miss. Consider how many variables we have to work with in SETI. What kind of signaling strategy would an extraterrestrial civilization choose? What sort of timeframe would it operate under? What cultural values determine its behavior? What is its intent? You can see how long this list can become. I\u2019ll stop here.<\/p>\n
The toy model I want to focus on today is one David Kipping uses in a new paper called \u201cThe Eschatian Hypothesis.\u201d The term refers to what we might call \u2018final things.\u2019 Eschaton is a word that turns up in both cosmology and theology, in the former case talking about issues like the ultimate fate of the cosmos. So when Kipping (Columbia University) uses it in a SETI context, he\u2019s going for the broadest possible approach, the \u2018big picture\u2019 of what a detection would look like.<\/p>\n
I have to pause here for a moment to quote science fiction writer Charles Stross, who finds uses for \u2018eschaton\u2019 in his Singularity Sky<\/em><\/a> (Ace, 2004), to wit:<\/p>\n I am the Eschaton. I am not your God. Love the \u2018or else.\u2019 <\/p>\n Let\u2019s now dig into the new paper. Published in Research Notes of the AAS<\/em>, the paper homes in on a kind of bias that haunts our observations. Consider that the first exoplanets ever found were at the pulsar PSR\u20091257+12. Or the fact that the first main sequence star with a planet was found to host a \u2018hot Jupiter,\u2019 which back in 1995, when 51 Pegasi b was discovered, wasn\u2019t even a category anyone ever thought existed. The point is that we see the atypical<\/em> first precisely because such worlds are so extreme. While our early population of detections is packed with hot Jupiters, we have learned that these worlds are in fact rarities. We begin to get a feel for the distribution of discoveries.<\/p>\n Hot Jupiters, in other words, are \u2018loud.\u2019 They\u2019re the easiest of all radial velocity planet signatures to find. And yet they make up less than one percent of the exoplanets we\u2019ve thus far found. The issue is broad. From the paper:<\/p>\n \u2026over-representation of unusual astronomical phenomena in our surveys is not limited to exoplanetary science. One merely needs to look up at the night sky to note that approximately a third of the naked-eye stars are evolved giants, despite the fact less than one percent of stars are in such a state\u2014a classic observational effect known as Malmquist bias (K. G. Malmquist 1922). Or consider that a supernova is expected roughly twice per century in Milky Way-sized galaxies (G. A. Tammann et al. 1994)\u2014an astoundingly rare event. And yet, despite being an inherently rare type of transient, astronomers routinely detect thousands of supernovae every year (M. Nicholl 2021), as a product of their enormous luminosities.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n That\u2019s quite a thought. Go for a walk on a clear winter evening and look up. So many of the stars you\u2019re seeing are giants in the terminal stages of their lifetimes. Those we can see at great range, but our nearest star, Proxima Centauri, demands a serious telescope for us to be able to see it. So we can\u2019t help the bias that sets in until we realize how much of what we are seeing is rare. Sometimes we have to step back and ask ourselves why we are seeing it. <\/p>\n In SETI terms, Kipping steps back from the question to ask whether the first signatures of ETI, assuming one day they appear, will not be equally \u2018loud,\u2019 in the same way that supernovae are loud but actually quite rare. We might imagine a galaxy populated by stable, quiescent populations that we are not likely to see, cultures whose signatures are perhaps already in our data and accepted as natural. These are not the civilizations we would expect to see. What we might detect are the outliers, unstable cultures breaking into violent disequilibrium at the end of their lifetimes. These, supernova style, would be the ones that light up our sky.<\/p>\n Kipping\u2019s toy model works on variables of average lifetime and luminosity, examining the consequences on detectability. A loud civilization is one that becomes highly visible for a fraction of its lifetime before going quiet for the rest. The model\u2019s math demonstrates that a civilization that is 100 times louder than its peers \u2013 through any kind of disequilibrium with its normal state, as for example nuclear war or drastic climate change \u2013 becomes 1000 times more detectable. A supernova is incredibly rare, but also incredibly detectable.<\/p>\n Image:<\/strong> The toy model at work. This is from Kipping\u2019s Cool Worlds video<\/a> on the Eschatian Hypothesis.<\/p>\n The Eschatian search strategy involves wide-field, high cadence surveys. In other words, observe at short intervals and keep observing with rapid revisit times to the same source. A search like this is optimized for transients, and the author points out that a number of observatories and observing programs are \u201cmoving toward a regime where the sky is effectively monitored as a time-domain data set.\u201d The Vera Rubin Observatory moves in this direction, as does PANOPTES (Panoptic Astronomical Networked Observatories for a Public Transiting Exoplanet Survey). The latter is not a SETI program, but its emphasis on short-duration, repeatable events falls under the Eschatian umbrella.<\/p>\n Rather than targeting narrowly defined technosignatures, Eschatian search strategies would instead prioritize broad, anomalous transients\u2014in flux, spectrum, or apparent motion\u2014whose luminosities and timescales are difficult to reconcile with known astrophysical phenomena. Thus, agnostic anomaly detection efforts (e.g., D. Giles & L. Walkowicz 2019; A. Wheeler & D. Kipping 2019) would offer a suggested pathway forward.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I\u2019ve often imagined the first SETI detection as marking a funeral beacon, though likely not an intentional one. The Eschatian Hypothesis fits that thought nicely, but it also leaves open the prospect of what we may not detect until we actually go into the galaxy, the existence of civilizations whose lifetimes are reckoned in millions of years if not more. The astronomer Charles Lineweaver has pointed out that most of our galaxy\u2019s terrestrial-class worlds are two billion years older than Earth. Kipping quotes the brilliant science fiction writer Karl Schroeder when he tunes up an old Arthur Clarke notion: Any sufficiently advanced civilization will be indistinguishable from nature<\/em>. Stability infers coming to terms with societal disintegration and mastering it.<\/p>\n Cultures like that are going to be hard to distinguish from background noise. We\u2019re much more likely to see a hard-charging, shorter-lived civilization meeting its fate. <\/p>\n The paper is Kipping, \u201cThe Eschatian Hypothesis,\u201d Research Notes of the AAS<\/em> Vol. 9, No. 12 (December, 2025), 334. Full text<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
\nI am descended from you, and exist in your future.
\nThou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
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