Alien contact has long been a staple of science fiction writing and I thought it might be a good idea to chat a bit about it with the readers of this blog.  Despite the fact that there are many, many movies, books, cartoons, comics and recordings about alien contact almost as soon as you start to discuss the subject seriously people start to get nervous and the easiest way to dismiss their fears is to switch off and call you a “nut” or something equally charming.

Photo by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.comFor a professional scientist to discuss the subject at all is usually a way to signal that you want your career to end.  For this reason I want to make clear that despite my disagreeing with Stephen Hawking about his recent pronouncements on alien life and our best ways of surviving alien contact, I admire his courage as a professional scientist in commenting on the subject at all.

The whole topic of aliens and alien species is seldom discussed seriously.  There is no reason to suspect that they will be “Greys” or otherwise.  People prefer to discuss the X-files, or their latest government conspiracy theory – “Yes, of course I believe in aliens, but we can’t discuss it as it is above top secret and the government will find out if we do…”

What?  Are you serious?

Until very recently we had a government in the UK that couldn’t hold onto secret documents already inside intelligence agencies, let alone act with enough efficiency to stop us noticing or talking about something as big as alien contact.

Maybe the new government will be more efficient, but the jury is still out on that one! 

Space Travel Requires Advanced Technology

To be serious for a second here, Arthur C Clarke once said that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Photo by nasa1fan/MSFC

Let us take this a bit further.  As we are currently still developing the ability to launch a successful mission to Mars, how much more advanced would that technology be if it allowed interstellar flight and not just limited space flight in the solar system?

To assist in thinking about this, the distance from Earth to Mars is between 55 million kilometres and 400 million kilometres or so.  For aliens to arrive on Earth they would most likely need to have travelled from another solar system.  If we assume that it would be relatively as difficult for aliens to get to Earth from another solar system as it is for us to get to Mars, then we have a comparative measure of our technological levels.

Not perfect a perfect measure I grant you, but bear with me.

Travelling to Another Solar System

So how near is our nearest neighbour, galactically speaking?

Photo by MarkusramProxima Centauri is quite near at a mere 4.2 light years, or maybe Rigil Kentaurus at 4.3 light years.  No doubt those numbers don’t mean a lot if you have no interest in astronomy so here is an explanation.  (I will keep it brief, don’t go to sleep just yet!)

A light year is the distance light travels in one year.  Light travels at 186,000 miles per second or roughly 300,000 kilometres a second – whichever you prefer.  From this you can see a light year is a very long way indeed – about 10 trillion kilometres or 6 trillion miles.

Assuming that the trip to Mars from Earth will be taken at the shorter end of the spectrum (less than 60 million kilometres) we can compare this figure with the ability to get to Earth from our nearer stellar neighbours – for round figures lets go for 4.5 light years and include more than one star system.  This means that our alien visitors will have travelled 42,573,287,126,613.6km (4.5 light years). 

Photo by Markusram

This distance is 709,554 times further than the trip to Mars and is merely the distance to our nearest neighbours. Let us remember that star systems that scientists say could have Earth like planets are even further away.

If the distance travelled really is an indicator of the relative advancement in technology then you had better believe that any alien technology will look like magic to us!  At the very least we can safely assume that they will be well in advance of present day science and military technology.

Collecting Proof of Alien Contact

Personally, the question about alien contact is not really about whether or not the government are keeping secrets, or even whether or not we have had alien visitors already.  My question is really is, if aliens landed on Earth, would we even notice?

Photo by officer2975Humans have sufficiently advanced technology to watch animals without the animals being aware of our presence.  In fact we have technology that can spy on the average human without them being able to notice.  If an alien species arrived at Earth and wanted to survey the place; what reason is there to expect that we could even detect them?  Their travel technology would be many, many times more advanced than ours and most likely so would other aspects of their society and technology.

Anyone expecting the arrival of flying saucers and news channels showing alien footage will most likely be seriously disappointed.  The first alien sighting we know of might just be when one says “Hello Mr Obama” and shakes his hand on national television.

Hurray for impulse buying!

I write at a speed which would probably provide shame to an arthritic snail.  To be more specific, my typing speed does not exceed 20 words per minute.  Despite efforts to improve I remain a confirmed three fingered typist.  I’ve tried all the usual tools; Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and video games such as Type or Die to name but two.  There seems to be a blockage between my brain and my fingers…

In times gone by my typing speed hasn’t been a problem.  The reason for this was that when I am writing a short story I tend to consider the words and the context in which they are used to a reasonably high degree.  It is probably fair to say that I try to do my first revision at the same time as I do my first draft.  Combining the two activities slows me down considerably.

As I am now far more active in copywriting and producing websites the exact importance of the word has taken a secondary role when compared to the amount of writing produced and the overall message, or impression, it gives.  Due to my slow typing speed producing 5000 words a day or so has been regularly taking me at least eight hours.  Speech recognition software has totally revolutionised this.

On the Nuance website the company claims that using Dragon NaturallySpeaking is three times faster than typing.  In my case this isn’t saying much!  I am however happy to report that this claim is true.  My daily production has doubled or maybe tripled and the ease of writing an article has increased along with it.

Another claim made on the site is that the software is 99% accurate.  I have a relatively broad Liverpool accent and in my case I would guess that the software achieves about 98%.  The errors the software makes are easily corrected and I can honestly say present me little problem at all.  Everyone makes mistakes in typing and even at my snail’s pace of 20 words a minute I did too.  Despite these errors in speech recognition accuracy my overall productivity has increased and I am really enjoying writing using the software.  While my version of speech recognition software doesn’t quite have the science fiction accuracy of Deckard’s version, I don’t doubt that that they will one day come.  When that day arrives sign me up for copy!

Getting back to the real world, Dragon NaturallySpeaking has proven itself to be a real boon.  I now have a real choice between doubling or tripling my output, or gaining a couple of extra hour’s spare time every day.  This is a great position to be in.

Another improvement that is worth mentioning is that the software has enabled me to change something about my writing process.  I mentioned earlier that my style of writing fiction is to write slowly and consider each word carefully.  Using voice recognition software has changed that activity for the better in one important regard.  In the past when I’ve sat down to write a first draft of a story I have frequently struggled to keep the overall ideas in mind as I write.  This problem was caused primarily by my slow typing speed allowing me too much time to think.  Now when I sit down to write a first draft I find it far easier to go with an almost “stream of consciousness” style of writing.  Probably for the first time in my writing career I can now sit down and write a full first draft of a short story in one sitting.  Of course the writing still requires proofreading and correction of silly grammar or punctuation mistakes.  I guess no software will get around this any time soon, but this is still a huge improvement.

My previous experiences with speech recognition software have been incredibly frustrating but I am happy to report that Dragon NaturallySpeaking has put a smile on my face.  This blog post was written using the software in probably a third of the time it would have taken me to type it out.

For anyone that is used the voice recognition capabilities of Windows Vista and were unimpressed I have to say I share your opinion.  There is no comparison though between Windows voice recognition and the program provided by Nuance.  They really are light years apart.

The Standard Edition of Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 10.1 comes with a DVD of the software are minimal manual and headset microphone necessary to import voice commands.  This is a complete package as you really do not need a digital voice recorder.  The software is a class leader in voice recognition and in my opinion is a bargain at around £30 ($45).  If you’re a writer looking to increase your productivity you could do a lot worse than giving Nuance’s Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition software a try.

Yesterday I came across a Sky News reports about what Stephen Hawking had said regarding alien contact.  As I have a strong interest in science fiction as soon as I saw the title of the article I was hooked.  It isn’t everyday the eminent scientist comments on the subject of alien life publicly and it certainly isn’t common for them to comment on the activities of mankind in preparation for this contact.

Those with strong fundamentalist religious belief may wish to look away now.

Alien Contact – Are We Right to Fear it?

Ever since science suggested that space is infinite there has been a related implication that there may well be other planets capable of supporting life.  After all, in a truly infinite universe the chances of such a planet existing have a probability of one, that is to say this is a certainty.  Of course some would argue that the planet capable of supporting life is Earth and we already live here!

As a teenager I remember watching a television programme featuring Carl Sagan.  In this program he systematically calculated the chances of life existing on other planets elsewhere in the galaxy.  I do not remember the exact details of how we arrived at the final figure, I do remember that the final figure was very large, in the order of tens of thousands of planets capable of supporting extraterrestrial  life.

Carl Sagan’s calculations were performed decades ago and science has moved on.  What I find interesting about his calculations however is that when compared with modern science today they were actually quite conservative.  Modern imaging techniques have proven that there may well be many, many, more planets in the universe than we originally anticipated.

Something I do not remember Carl Sagan discussing however is the relative age of our solar system compared to the universe at large.  The solar system, of which our Earth is a part, is very young in galactic terms.  Science currently tells us that life originated on Earth as primitive organisms approximately 3.8 billion years ago.  That same scientific theory also tells us that the universe is approximately 13.75 billion years old.  If life evolved on Earth by chance that it is also highly likely to have evolved by chance elsewhere in the universe.  As many of the solar system’s containing planets are much older than our own it stands to reason that if life evolved their it will be much more advanced than our own.

This type of reasoning is the basis of Stephen Hawking’s comments and I read them with interest.

I write science fiction and when I do so I often take what is known to be true and extrapolate it into what is merely possible.

So what was Stephen Hawking’s advice to humanity?

At its most succinct it could be described as “hide, be quiet and hope they don’t notice us”.

The reason he gives such cautionary advice is based upon a couple of premises.  The first is that aliens may well have used up all resources on their home planet and this fact is what has caused them to become expeditionary nomads in outer space.  His view is that aliens arriving at another planet will look at it merely for the resources it possesses.  Secondly, he compares the situation of humanity to that of the American Indians at the time of the arrival of Columbus.  He points out that the technological gap between Columbus and his men and the native Indians meant that things went badly for the Indians.

While I can see the wisdom in Stephen Hawking’s viewpoints, I do not share them.

Any alien life that has propulsion technology sufficiently advanced to arrive here is also pretty likely to have solved the problems of scarcity of resources.

Energy, in various forms, is much more common in the universe that many people suppose.  For example, the whole of life on Earth is supported by the energy this planet receives from the sun and yet this planet harnesses only a microscopic fraction of the energy output of that star.  If we could make use of even 0.1% of the energy output of the sun we would have more than enough energy for everyone on Earth to live with the North American lifestyle.

There is a similar situation when we look at rare minerals and the various elements that we commonly use on Earth.  We assume that certain elements are rare, because on Earth they are, but when we look across our solar system we see that in other areas they are plentiful.  Given sufficient time to develop appropriate space propulsion technology humans will no doubt be mining in the asteroid belt.  By the time humanity manages to reach this level it is very likely that we will have solved our energy problems as well.

These ideas are not just my own either.  There have been a number of books released over the years by top scientists that show that it is not just possible, but necessary that humanity develops a space faring culture and goes to the stars.

Why Stephen Hawkings Advice on Alien Contact is Wrong

Stephen Hawkings concerns about alien contact may be well reasoned, but they seem to miss one important point.  If, when we made contact with an alien race, we were also a spacefaring culture there would be little to fear.  The reason for this is because, although a hostile alien life form might destroy individual colonies or spacecraft, the chances of them being able to destroy the whole of humanity, if humanity was widely spread across the stars, is much reduced.  Efforts to secure the future of humanity are therefore best met by being bold explorers of space and not by huddling quietly in the corner and hoping no alien life notices us.  The sooner we get into space and establish meaningful colonies there, the better.

So, thank you Stephen Hawking for your well meant advice, but when humanity makes alien contact for the first time I hope that we do it as space faring equals and not like scared schoolchildren.

Click here for more about Alien Contact

First of all, was my last post really in March?  Whoops! I have been kind of busy.  I now have 17 websites on the go and I admit to losing track a little.  Overall everything is going well and I am making a small amount of regular cash.  The amount coming in is doubling slowly and so I am hopeful about seeing some genuine residual income in the future.

However this post is about the Google duplicate content penalty and my real life experiences of it rather that what SEO ”experts” will tell you.

Some Real World Experiences of the Duplicate Content Penalty

Regular readers will know that I joined an online group back at the start of March in an effort to make a regular income from writing.  This experiment has not really run its course yet and so I have not commented very much on it.  What has happened is that I now know an awful lot more about SEO and making sure that people actually see what you write, instead of blogging to an audience that basically consists of friends and the neighbour’s cat. Admittedly much of what I have learned I still haven’t applied to this site (more is the pity) but will do so in time.

The Importance of Google

Like it or not Google is extremely important to webmasters.  The majority of search traffic goes through big G.  If you rank badly in Google then a significant number of potential visitors will most likely never even see your site.  SEO “experts” say content is king, but great content with no traffic is pointless.  If you don’t care about traffic then you should write a diary and keep it under the bed, rather than writing web pages.

What I want to talk about today is events surrounding two of the sites I have set up.

The first is a product review type site, monetised by Amazon Affiliates and the second is an online gaming site that employs auto-feeds to load flash games.

Despite a recent Page Rank review by Google both of these sites are currently PR0 – which effectively means they are at the bottom of the pile.  They are hidden from search engine traffic like a naughty stepchild, locked in the basement.  As I have placed links to these sites, I know from the results on my other websites that these pages should have seen Page Rank improvements and SERP’s increases.

Google maintains that there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty.  They say that all that happens when two pages show the same content is that they will decide which one is authoritative and show results for that one only.  Webmasters are told that, for a product review site, there is no point in listing the same information as Amazon, unless you add significant original content and reader value alongside the content from Amazon’s page.  This is exactly what I have done, but it appears that this information is wrong.

On my product review site I show an affiliate link to the product on sale along with a review that varies from 350 to 550 words in length.  The Amazon text is marked as blockquote as I believed that a search engine would recognise it for what it is – additional information from a reliable source.  This process of quoting from an authoritative source is standard academic practice and is a principle on which the internet is founded – always quote your source.

But I was wrong.

The whole site remains at PR0 despite having nine incoming PR6 links along with a variety of others.  The site does not rank in the top 150 in Google even for its own domain name!  This final point is what nails it.

The site you are reading this article on is currently PR2, with only 3 PR6 links and a lot of nofollow PR0 blog links from places where I have left comments.  My other sites have ranked with minimal linking, but all my other sites have 100% original content, bar one.

And guess what?  The other site is also PR0 and doesn’t rank even for its own domain name despite being over 600 pages in size.  So what is the problem?  I suspect that again it is duplicate content.  The second site imports a game, along with a description of what the game is about, how to play etc.  This description comes from the game publisher and is definitely duplicated content as it is widely syndicated.  I did not alter this text as I thought it was wrong to alter the original authors work.  To me, the service I am offering to users is the ability to play games online, not words on a screen.  Again, at least so far as Google is concerned, I was wrong.

To be clear on this, I have no problem with Google penalising duplicate content.  A few years ago the top ten or twenty web pages for a given search would be pr0n or the same content duplicated by a number of webmasters.  This was frustrating and had to stop.

Is Googles Duplicate Content Advice Wrong?

What annoys me in this instance is that Google advises two things:

Duplicate content penalties are only relevant to the page the content is on – this doesn’t appear to be true as on the product review site about half of the pages have no Amazon content on them at all and yet none of the pages have a page rank higher than zero and none of the pages rank appropriately in Googles SERPs.  The same pages rank well in Bing and Yahoo incidentally, so it is definitely a Google issue.

The other thing Google implies is that partially duplicated content is ok, so long as the page adds significant value apart from that content.  My product review site carries about 100 words from Amazon and on average maybe 450 words of the review itself, yet the page gets spanked by Google.  In fact not only does the page get spanked, but the whole site does, despite the fact that half of the pages have 100% original content.

Google maintains that there is no such thing as a site wide duplicate content penalty.  Forgive me, but this looks like a site wide penalty to me.

What annoys me further is that I regularly see sites with reasonable page rank and SERPs, that are only providing duplicate content.  How are they getting away with it?  Something is clearly wrong here and as yet I do not understand why this should be the case.  No doubt time and experience will reveal all.

Avoiding the Google Duplicate Content Penalty

Looking to the future, what can be done?  Well, I have signed up for copyscape.com’s services.  I now know exactly which pages are being flagged for duplicate content and have started the long process of re-writing them.

Once each page is re-written I will throw a few new links at the sites and affected articles and hope that Googles spider will notice that the content has changed.  If this does not work then I guess I will have to look at other options.

One thing is certain, I will be a lot more careful about employing affiliate links and product information in future.

A few days ago I noticed a brief report on the evening news stating that the UK was to open a new government agency called “The United Kingdom Space Agency”, or UKSA for short.  At first I thought it must be April the 1^st (Aprils Fools Day) as Britain effectively cancelled any idea of space exploration back in the 1970’s when the space program was terminated.

After a bit of hunting on the BBC website I found out that no, this wasn’t a joke but was in fact an effort to “…bring more coherence to space policy – something critics say has been missing for years.”

Here is a link to the original BBC article:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8579270.stm

Let us be clear – I welcome the UK’s involvement in space.

Does the UK have the Will to “Boldly go” into Space?

There are indeed many things that we actually do quite well regarding space technology in the UK.  I only wish that we did more.  The problem is that we neither fund space technologies well ourselves, nor offer appreciable financial support to other agencies such as the European Space Agency (ESA).

The BBC article makes this lack of funding abundantly clear.  In 2005 Italy spent roughly three times more than the UK on space related technologies.  In the same year Germany spent roughly four times more and France spent seven times more.  This amount of financial input is in no way related to the relative size of the economies of these countries and does show the UK’s relative lack of interest in the area.

While I applaud the effort to unify our efforts relating to space technologies under one umbrella, I have to wonder what an agency with a budget of £240 million can achieve in this area.  Space exploration is notoriously expensive.  Maybe the several hundred billion or so we spent on bailing out the banks recently could have been spent more wisely on a high tech industry such as this?

The UKSA hopes to achieve the creation of 100,000 high tech jobs with its limited budget and I wish them well, but I really wonder if the political will is there?  I just hope that the date of creation of the agency;  1st April, 2010, is not an omen.

Dave Felton