Well, this week’s statement came straight out of left field; actually, it technically came from outside of the galaxy, but we’ll get to that.  It’s not that common or reasonable of a statement, but it does highlight the misuse of an idea you’re all probably familiar with.

I think I first saw the idea that gamma ray bursts (GRBs) might be caused by intelligent life in Tuesday Morning Quarterback on ESPN.com, though the comment was probably tongue-in-cheek.  (It’s impossible to tell with him anymore, which is one of the many reasons I no longer read his column.)  However, I have seen this idea seriously argued elsewhere, though often by UFOlogists who don’t really feel the need to justify alien-based explanations.  When justification for invoking little green men (LGM) to explain GRBs is given, it’s almost always Occam’s razor.

(A quick aside: any spelling and/or linguistic geeks out there?  It seems that the spelling of Occam/Ockham changes with context, so that Occam’s razor was proposed by William of Ockham.  What gives?  And then there’s the little issue that we say Occam’s razor and not William’s razor, but I’ll grant you that the former sounds way more badass than the latter.  A note to future generations: if I think of something cool, I want it called Joe’s X or [Last Name]’s X, and not [Hometown]’s X.  I would also approve of my last name being adopted as an SI unit, but definitely not a CGS or English unit.)

As you might expect, the hypotheses astrophysicists toss out about GRBs are really complex.  These things are probably the most energetic events in the universe since the big bang, so the physics are extreme by definition.  People that make this week’s statement claim that Occam’s razor tells us to keep it simple.  And, claiming that GRBs are just the stray shots of some intergalactic empire’s Death Star is definitely way simpler than all that high-energy physics hullaballoo.  Are they right?  Are GRBs just ray gun blasts from some alien war?  And what does this Occam guy have to do with aliens, anyways?

ASAP, WTF are GRBs?

GRBs never last more than a few minutes, so I’ll spend roughly that amount of time explaining them.  They’re incredibly powerful jets of radiation streaking across the universe, always from outside our galaxy and often billions of years old.  They were first detected when the US put up satellites looking for radiation bursts from illegal Soviet space-based nuclear weapons tests, but instead they detected blasts of gamma rays coming from literally every direction in the sky.

The cause of GRBs is the subject of current scientific controversy.  According to Pamela Gay of the AstronomyCast podcast, astrophysicists are pretty sure that they have at least some of the GRBs pinned down.  The short-duration blasts probably come from two massive objects like black holes or neutron stars colliding and merging, and the long-duration variety may ultimately be a new type of supernova (hypernova).  However, these ideas aren’t completely worked out, which makes for some disagreement and debate in the astrophysics community.  Hey, it’s a real scientific controversy for once!  (Unlike some fake controversies we’ve discussed ... cough, cough, intelligent design, cough.)

Splitting Hairs with Occam’s Razor

Occam’s razor can be stated in a variety of ways, ranging from the fully colloquial KISS Principle of keep it simple, stupid to the original Latin scribbled down by Friar William of Ockham: entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.  It is often stated as the simplest solution is the best, or all things being equal, the simplest solution is the most likely to be true.  As we saw when discussing the second law of thermodynamics a few entries ago, we need to be precise with the wording if we’re going to try and seriously apply this idea.

The original Latin of Occam’s razor translates to entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.  When you apply the razor to hypothesis formation, it is usually referred to as the Law of Parsimony or the Law of Succinctness.   By ‘entities,’ we here mean a priori assumptions: things we take to be true without evidence.  When you form hypotheses, you make assumptions along the way.  Among others, the death ray hypothesis for GRBs assumes there are death stars out there, and the hypernova hypothesis assumes that there are even more gargantuan stellar explosions than we’ve explained before out there.  Occam is telling you to keep these assumptions as minor as they can be while still explaining the phenomenon of interest.

So, when you’re using Occam’s razor to analyze different hypotheses or explanations, don’t just pick the simplest one.  Pick the one that makes the least significant assumptions.  Imagine walking into your kitchen and seeing a broken plate on the floor.  Let’s say the two hypotheses that leap to your mind are: (i) you left the cabinet ajar, your cat jumped onto the counter, nudged his way into the cabinet, and knocked a plate out for no good reason; or (ii) a gremlin did it.  The second hypothesis might be worlds simpler than the first, but you have to assume freaking gremlins exist for it to be true.  Friar Billy would tell you to blame the cat, if he hadn’t died 700 years ago.  (Unless of course you break his rule and assume he’s speaking from beyond the grave.)

So, What Does Occam Think About LGM and GRBs?

Let’s go over some of the assumptions hiding behind the competing hypotheses for GRBs.  On the alien side, we have to at least assume that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe and that this life is capable of controlling power outputs more extreme than the most colossal supernovae we currently know of.  For you nerds out there, we’re probably talking a Type III civilization on the Kardashev scale, so my Star Wars reference above was appropriate.  On the hypernova side, we’ve got some ultra-high-energy astrophysics that I don’t understand.  But, for the sake of argument, let’s graciously assume that you must postulate some exotic form of degenerate matter or a host of new unstable subatomic particles to get hypernovae to spit out GRBs.

Balance a scale on top of Occam’s razor and the alien assumptions are going to beat out even quark matter or stars the size of a thousand suns.  Science doesn’t have a handle on the intersection of relativity (the rules for big things) and quantum mechanics (the rules for small things), and things like supernovae and black holes live directly on that intersection.  Speculating about the next layer of complexity is hardly a deal-breaker; in fact, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do as a scientist.  On the other hand, assuming that’s no moon, that’s a space station is just goofy.

Be Careful with Razors, Especially Occam’s

Hopefully it wasn’t painfully apparent, but this was a toughie to write.  I stuck with it because I’ve wanted to cover Occam’s razor in an entry for awhile and I happened to be reading an article about GRBs where someone commented “why couldn’t these be alien weapons?”  They certainly could be, anonymous commenter on forgotten site, but there’s no reason to really think so.  It’s fun to think about epic space battles in a galaxy far, far away, but isn’t it also fun to think about how there are natural events happening all around us that science still can’t quite explain yet?

Occam’s razor is a great tool for skeptics, but it’s also often misused by pseudoscientists.  Don’t let some ghost hunter tell you ten stories about this one time he investigated some ‘haunted’ house, and then exclaim “the simplest explanation is ghosts!”  Give yourself a moment to séance with the spirit of William of Ockham, and calmly explain that assuming he’s a true believer who spent a night walking around spooking himself is far more appropriate than assuming ghosts were goosing him and breathing chilly air down his back.