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Explaining SETI
Lisa wrote to us about
an interview with Brian McConnell, the author of a new SETI book, who talks about how the search has touched many different scientific disciplines, and has spawned improvements in astronomy, computing, and wireless communications.
:If aliens wanted to talk, I think they would have done. Obviously they still consider us to be too primitive
We aliens from fr5xg27hYarrhtzzz.
We send messages by post account anonymous coward on slashdot interspace message port.
Nobody replys to us.
Perhaps humans think we be inferior life form.
Our friends from 31337 system have same problem.
Surely the question should be the other way around - the ancient Egyptians had scads of spare labour and piling up a big heap o' stones is about the easiest way to do monumental architecture. So why did it take them hundreds of years to develop the techniques and organisation that resulted in the Gizan pyramids? My theory is that Evil Extraterrestrial Oppressors (ETOs) were kidnapping anyone showing signs of inventiveness and independant thought. Only after the ETOs were defeated by the Benign Extraterrestrial Resistance (BET) were humans able to emerge from the shadows of their oppressors and demonstrate their true rock piling capabilities. The reason there is absolutly no evidence in the archaeological record for the existance of either the ETOs or BETs is because both sides used their Advanced Alien Technology (AAT) to build Stealthed Black Chariots (SBC) for their war. I found a fragment of one of these SBCs during a recent visit to Egypt, but I put it down in my bedroom and its stealth technology is so advanced (even now after thousands of years) that I can't find it again. Can I have my royalty cheque now please? Luke
Heh, if it eats, procreates, and maybe eventually dies, it counts as life in my book. I think people set their sights too high on what constitutes "life." Even a bacteria is the result of millions of years of change.
Also, about the changing of the conditions: you have to remember that we are talking about an entire planet here, over millions of years. As long as the conditions aren't overly esoteric, it is a good bet they existed somewhere on the planet sometime in the past. If it's too hot in an area, let the continent move farther north, or let an earthquake expose some minerals not normally found on the Earth's surface, or have the area form on the top of a mountain with lower pressure, or the bottom of the ocean under great pressure.
From what I can tell, the sience was there all along, everybody just failed to notice it.
Of course this is all IMHO.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
Great point. So what if it takes 100 years to answer them. A lot of the research that hubble is doing is looking at light that left galaxies man more years ago than that. Look at a hubble deep field shot - most of that light left before the Earth was even here. Yet we still learn things.
What if someone 100 light years was to pick up a transmission that left earth 100 years ago? What would it be...not "First Post", but probably some very weak radio program - if even that (though I feel bad for them when Erkel gets there).
Besides if we do find a signal, it gives us a target to go visit when we do get to interstellar travel.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
I liked Sagan's (only intentional) sci-fi novel on SETI called "Contact". The book is better than the Jodi Foster movie based on it.. The first part of the book gives a reasonable scenario of how SETI happens. The latter part of the book drifts into scientific and philosphical speculation, tan may turn some people off.
This may sound like a unusual idea, but came up at a UC Boulder session(*) on science funding last Friday. A prominent SETI researcher was on the discussion panel and contrasting how his field was funded compared to more traditional hot fields like genomics and computer science. But then the half-joking question came up as to why doesn't a SETI organization float stock to fund research? However, the SETI researcher replied that people have seriously considered that. He said "imagine the financial worth of a discovery, especially if some advanced alien technology was communicated". Though the chance of success is very speculative, a SETI break-through stock play could make the InterNet stock bubble seem mild.
(*)The University of Colorado holds the week-long World Affairs Symposium each spring in Boulder. It assembles a couple hundred scientists, artists, policy makers and philosophers into 200 publicly open dicussion panels and workshops over the week.
Astronomy has a long, rich history of important contributions by amateurs (i.e. people who aren't paid salaries for this work). And SETI may be the most distinctive and grand project in this line.
SETI has been an orphan of official goverment research funding. Investigators would cop a few hours here and there on radio telescopes. It finally garnered a few tenths of a percent of the NASA budget at one time, but was perodically the butt of "mad-science" jokes in Congress and finally terminated. However, it is as strong as ever from private individual funding, typically from computer entrepenuers such as Hewlitt and Paul Allen. University chip R&D project prototype new chip designs for SETI's insatiable signal processing needs.
SETI has also spawned the worlds largest hyper-computer and public-donated computing resource. At last count there about 2.4 million SETI@home screen savers out there, diligently searching for spectral peaks in small chunks of radio recordings.
oreilly.com: What could we learn from another civilization?
McConnell: One of the things I discuss in my book is how it is easier to undress and petrify hot young actresses than most people imagine. All that is required is a scientifically proven magical petrification ray and a giant aibo. But what we cannot do is undress and petrify hot young daughters of famous open source programmers. If there is another technological civilization nearby, it will be possible to communicate using equations, images, and algorithms. And one of the things we'd like them to communicate is a method for creating a naked and petrified Heidi Wall. I discuss this at length in my book.
I don't know about any of you, but that's a book I'm going to have to purchase. Also, I'm going to start donating my cycles to SETI today.
--Shoeboy
There isn't an easy answer here. In a society where the taxpayer decides what the taxes pay for, you have no guarantee that the taxes are going to fund things like "feed the hungry."
As a society, we must spend our money on many different issues, trying to address many different problems. You rely on the taxpayers to bicker it out amongst each other (directly or through their representatives) how to spend the money, and how much they're willing to pay.
Personally, I think the "feed the hungry" banner is flown a little too often (yikes, here come the flames). Many countries are hit by famine not because they don't have enough food, but because of wars, because of corrupt politicians, whatever. It doesn't do any good to send a barge of food to a third-world country if the dictator siezes it upon arrival and shares it with his supporters.
Yes, even the so-called wealthy nations have hungry people living in poverty. But at some level, that's not my fault, and I shouldn't have money taken away from me to fund their food. Before you talk to me about being out of touch, I lived off state-provided money for about 7 years of my childhood. I know what it's like to get foodstamps and government cheese. I also know what it's like to pull yourself out of that gutter, and I know plenty of people who never did. We need a system that feeds those that really need it, without making it so easy for people to milk the system that they stop trying to get off of it. That's a delicate balance, and a problem that won't go away just by throwing money at it.
Why dedicate any money to funding the arts? Why dedicate any money to researching cures for AIDS (after all, it's fairly easy to avoid catching the disease, isn't it [tongue in cheek here, folks])? Why go to the moon?
Millions of reasons. Here's one for you. Because if we hadn't gone to the moon, if we weren't building rockets and space stations, what would I have had to dream about as a kid? What would have inspired me to learn enough math and get good enough at it to get scholarships to college?
We need money to keep people alive, yes. But we also need to keep their dreams alive. IF (and this is a huge IF)...IF we ever find anything out there, it will be the biggest thing to happen to our society EVER. Considering how cheap it is to continue this research, we would be terribly remiss in stopping it.
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
SETI@home offers some other statistics asked after here. Their FAQ circles the issue a bit, but finally admits in essence that SETI@home is unable to detect Earth-level technology even on the closest stars. (And there's no guarantee beyond-Earth civilizations still use radio-frequencies - in fact odds are against it). Their latest "Science Newsletter" just happens to discuss the separation of intelligent signals from noise as well, but leaves pretty hazy impression.
Other wisdom gleamed from the SETI@home web-site includes the notion that the projects budget so-far has been $500.000, and they're capable of detecting signals tenth of the strength of best other SETI projects - which scan wider frequencies and typically concentrate on the likely locations, though.
There are two sets of odds which must be considered when calculating the probability of SETI working. First, the chance of life developing elsewhere. Second, the chance of elsewhere developed life becoming intelligent. The first can be relatively common (or more specifically, only rare, not extremely rare) but the second be extremely rare and SETI still won't work. And this looks like the case.
Personally, I'm all for SETI. As long as it's zero success rate proscribes it's receiving massive funding. I know that when scientists have to scrounge, have to be imaginitive, they are often doing their best work. Should Aricebo be used for SETI? Occasionaly, but there is plenty of other science to do as well.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
While Sagan's book is really good about the SETI side of things, I thought it really, really came up short on other issues. Sagan helped me get into his alma mater, but we squared off on the roles of both capitalism and religion. He basically thought they had little or none in the modern world (or at least the modern mind.) These deep beliefs pervaded both his book and the movie. Then again, I think he would have regarded the movie as a decent adaption of the better book.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
Now, I have to disagree with you on the pi issue, or lack thereof. I thought the dialog between the bureaucrats about how long the blank tape lasts was a suitable replacement and a lot less technical for the average movie-goer.
Sagan's normal arguements on faith were two pronged a) disprove an interventionist god, b) apply the Principle of Parsimony (Occam's Razor) to refute the need for God. I thought the movie paralleled this M.O.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
The main gap in the argument is the assumption that the travelers do, in fact, colonize other planets. Given the technology to maintain a self-contained habitat for generations, building a few more out of a few stray asteroids is more efficient, and closer to the lifestyle to which the travelers have become accustomed, than colonizing a planet.
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/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The underlying theme of the whole book is Faith (with a capital F), particularly faith in religion. How do you prove the existence of God to a scientist? Ellie is unable to accept the existence of God since she is a scientist and there is no "proof" (remember the pendulum experiment where she challenges her friend to step a bit closer to the huge swinging pendulum to see if his God would protect him?). Then she returns from her voyage and is ironically unable to provide any proof of their existence and everyone will just have to accept her testimony on "faith". Ellie continued to search for "signals" and ultimately found "proof" in the immutable fabric of the universe...in the digits of pi she ultimately finds another signal to decode, but this is a signal from God, not from other beings.
The signal in Pi was left out of the movie completely and totally ruined it for me. YMMV of course.
SuperID
Free Database Hosting
Well, perhaps we're looking in the right place, but we just don't know what we've found. Take the sugar that was found in a cloud of gas near the center of our Milky Way. If that isn't a calling card for carbon-based life, I don't know what is. Since we search for electro-magnetic signals we make assumptions that other life will be of a similar tech than us. We are really a fledgling race in our capacity to study the heavens constantly being startled by the phenomena we find in space. It is still too early for us to identify when something is not standard out there. That supernova might just be a distress beacon.
An excellent novel (if a wee bit cycical) dealing with some of the problems of our search for sentient life is His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem. He proposes the problem of how to interpret a purposeful signal once we find it. The scientists in the book are attempting to decipher a neutrino stream that they accidently detect coming to us in a repeating pattern for a fixed amount of time. The answers are not entirely satisfying. Do we really have the capacity to think outside our little box?
Firesign Theatre rules! My family has actually long been friends with the quartet, and I'm always glad to see references to them and their work :)
http://matt.waggoner.com/ (see how many Firesign references you can find)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Don't let's forget The Skeptic's Dictionary, which contains hundreds of entries on everything from the Bermuda Triangle to Amway, Zombies, Ghosts, UFOs, pyramid power, etc. One of the best skeptical sites on the web.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I believe the big thing thats standing in SETIs way is that the signal to noise ratio of transmissions from other planets (or even those we are sending out) is so low that their signals can't be separated from normal stellar noise at the interstellar distances we are talking about.
This is not an original thought though, does anyone have a good link?
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
More modern systems with weak or no carriers, like spread-spectrum systems, devote only a few percent of their signal energy to synchronization information. So they're far more energy-efficient. But they look like noise unless you know what you're looking for. (This is why modern modems sound like a white-noise hiss. Early modems, up to 300 baud, had audible audio tones. The same thing is true of radio modulation.) That's a problem. Finding a spread-spectrum signal when you know nothing about the transmission system is very tough.
But it's not impossible. Any transmission system must have some fraction of its energy, even if it is quite small, devoted to synchronization. And to get through noise, there has to be some redundancy. That's what to look for.
I think SETI should be looking at the nearer stars, picking up stuff that sounds like white noise, and crunching real hard, looking for sync patterns and redundancy.
Two possibilities
1) We're the first form of life an alien race has ever found, and they are interested in studying us; alien antropologists. And want to remain hidden away perhaps for centuries.
2) They know more about the universe than us and are able to travel at near or greater than the speed of light. Warp drive, subspace, jumpgates, instant transmission, transporters, something undiscovered by us as of today.
Also, Teflon saves me about 15 minutes a day in ease of cleaning my dishes. Figure, my time is worth $50/hour, so that's $4562.5/year, or (considering 40 working years) $182500/lifetime. If I worked during the time that Teflon saves me, and i invested all the money when i make it, and then at the end of my life i donated that money to charity, then i would be donating a few million dollars. Multiply that by the percent of people who use teflon dishes, and you have a good donation.
-f
-f
www.blackant.net
It's very cool place to visit, BTW. I would say something like "visit it if you're in the area", but it's the ONLY thing the area - if you're actually in the area, chances are you're already going there. :-)
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1. SETI has searched almost exclusively in the frequency channel around 1.42 gigahertz, which corresponds to the emission line of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe. The idea is that if extraterrestrials had to pick some frequency to attract our attention, this would be a natural choice.
ISSUE: Although this may be a reasonable assumption it is not necessarily true. Perhaps the extraterrestrials would chose another frequency for reasons not know to us. In addition, the shift in frequency caused by the expansion of the Universe rules out the possibility of receiving signals from other Galaxies.
2. SETI assumes that intelligent civilizations would have the power to send wide-beam signals into space.
ISSUE: The further a message has to travel, the more power it requires. In addition the wider the beam is, the more energy is required to send it at the same relative power. These power requirements are orders of magnitude greater than we are capable of and it does not necessarily follow that other civilizations would be capable of producing such power.
3. SETI assumes that other civilizations would send continuous messages into space.
ISSUE: To date, Earth has only sent out a limited number of messages. These were tightly beamed messages to specific stars in the Galaxy. Earth lacks the power to send wide-beam messages. It is a big assumption to think that other intelligent life would behave differently than we do. Perhaps they spend most of their time listening as well.
4. SETI assumes that intelligent civilizations are long lived.
ISSUE: The reason the night skies are not completely filled with stars is that stars have limited lifetimes. During the 5 billion years since the formation of earth, we've had the capability of sending narrow beam signals to other stars for perhaps 50 or so years. Based on our consumption of natural resources, it remains to be seen if we will continue to have this capability for thousands of years.
My main issue is that these assumptions are glossed over. SETI needs to be forthcoming about its assumptions and how they may effect the probability of success. They need to do this so that in 10 years if donations start drying up, they'll have some credibility and be able to explain the lack of results in terms of their assumptions.
Frylock: That's not a toy!
Master Shake: You say that about everything you own. You should own toys. They're fun.
It's actually pretty easy to prove. The galaxy is what, 12 billion years old? Once a civilization creates space travel, it doesn't take that long (relatively speaking) to fill up the galaxy with life, even at sub-light speeds. I forget the exact amount of time, but the fill rate is geometric. X time to travel to the next star, X time to establish industry, and then send 10 more "seeds" to the next one. It only takes a few million years to fill the Galaxy.
Since we're alone on Earth, we're alone in the galaxy.
And is it all that surprising? I would imagine that lower forms of life might be relatively common, but I think it's probably likely that self-aware life is unbelievably unlikely. It only seems likely to us because it happened to us.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
What if they don't WANT to be noticed.
Who is "they"? Either self-aware life is common, or it isn't. Human's have existed for a very, very, very short period of time. If self-aware life is common, they we would have had one a long time ago that colonized the whole galaxy. Like I said before, it doesn't take that long compared to 12 billion years of history. Do the math, don't give me this fuzzy "I just know" stuff.
and even we are on the verge of faster than light travel through gravity warping,
We're not on the "verge" of jack. We don't even have any decent theories that say it's possible, much less practical, much less on the "verge".
We are NOT alone, don't want to go into details, but we are definitely NOT alone, and haven't been for a very long time.
You're thinking emotionally, not rationally. Again, do the math. Figure out how long it takes to fill the galaxy if you have a race that wants to travel, even at sub-light speeds. It's a blip in the history of the galaxy. It only takes one race.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
They could exist on planes or as forms of matter that we don't even imagine.
So what? Sure it's possible, but the only form of life that we know is possible is our own. The point is that it only takes one race developing intelligence and space travel to fill the galaxy in a relatively short time. Since that hasn't happened, it must be the fact that life like ours is extremely unlikely.
Sure, it might be the case that there are other forms of intelligence that are occur much more frequently, but don't tend to fill up the galaxy. Possible, but it doesn't seem very likely.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
heck, if they have anything like a trek subspace transmitter, radio would be obsolete. Obsolete as Napoleon's Semaphore system. A good place to look is the Dead Media Project, as discussed and linked in this slash article. Technologies go obsolete all of the time, so why not radio, tv, etc.
Then there is the matter of interstellar politics. Let's face it, if the local area just had the equivalent of Attila the Hun go rampaging through, it might be a good idea if no body visited. and it would be understandable if no body was transmitting.
And then again, maybe we *are* the first ones, at least for practical purposes, in our section of galaxy
And so on. There are many possible scenarios.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
All of them describe meetings with some sort of angel, or flying being. All of them talk about the chariots of the gods. The Nazca plains in Peru have long straight lines that could only have been used as a runway.
If aliens wanted to talk, I think they would have done. Obviously they still consider us to be too primitive
I hate this argument when it is used to counter any funding on any pure science. It is naive to beleive that spending any more money on the starving people is going to make much difference since most of the problem with the starving people of the world is POLITICAL and not a matter of funding. If the governments of the world cutinue to war with their people burn fields and bomb rail lines then their people will starve
Of course science funding could help people more than spending directly on foods by coming up with things that help distribution of food like refrigiration did. Or maybe enhance the quality of the food they can grow like golden rice. Or we could just spend the millions of dollars to ship food that will be hijacked by some guerilla army and get no real benifit from it.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
I think the really big thing is not what the possibly existing ET have to say, but the mere knowledge that they do exist. Propably their reply is something like:
'First Post!'
'All your planet is belong to us'
'Goat secx'
For example, from the interview (and this one is real, and not about young Miss Wall!)
"
Because the number of potential sites is so large (20 to 40 billion sun-like stars in our galaxy), this means the odds have to be stacked against the formation of life in a pretty big way for it not to develop elsewhere.
"
And?
Guess what - they are stacked against it.
When it comes to creating complex organic molecules by trying to recreate early atmospheric conditions, the scientists have done a fairly good job - and created dead stuff.
By focussing on creating more living stuff they've done a fairly good job of creating self-sustaining complex-molecule-building reactions, but nothing that matches even the simplest virus for complexity (Tobacco Mosaic, for example).
And that's from scientist that have had the ability to _direct_ their experiments ("let's increase the partial presure of Oxygen by 5%, and provide a transition metal surfaces for molecules to bind to catalytically." each new day. The dear suns and planets don't get that option. The planets can't slow down of they're too hot and need a farther orbit. They can't decide to melt their ice caps or condense their atmospheres to provide surface water.
Sheesh - where has the _science_ gone?
THL.
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Keeping
"This argument always annoys me when it pops up, and unfortunately it tends to do so all too often. I find it fairly safe to assume that any alien civilization with technology advanced enough to cross light-years and keep our planet under continuous observation for thousands of years could reasonably also be expected to have stealth technology as far beyond ours as their propulsion and communications systems. Most likely, their technology would for all intents and purposes appear as "magic", according to Clarke's Law."
Crossing light-years and keeping a planet under observation doesn't require any new science. Just a lot of time and energy. A "cloaking device" requires new science. If we are going to posit the existence of a "cloaking device" why not just have them watching us through wormholes in the comfort of their own homes? Or maybe just sensing our "thought energy" across the light years? Or some other equally scientifically unsupported and unfalsifiable means? The question here isn't "could aliens logically be ancient gods." After all, we could be brains in vats owned by the aliens. The question here is "do we have any evidence of or reason to believe that aliens beings were ancient gods." Answer: No.
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That second book that I read (mentioned in another post) specifically addressed UFOs and ancient astronaut ideas. It took them seriously, but then showed how it unlikely they were.
For instance, ancient astronauts: The Earth is 4 billion years old. Recorded history is only 1 millionth that long. The chances of aliens showing up *just* when humans are starting to write things down is therefore pretty low. Alternatively, if aliens have been here all along, where are they now? You might say "UFOs" but then were is their base? There are no anomalous items in nearby space and certainly nothing on Earth.
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324006
Incredible. Last week I checked two books out of the library about SETI. One was by Asimov, published in 1979. It was a little short on hard science, but did a very good job of showing calculations indicating the number of habitable planets in the Galaxy. Another was by "some guy", written in 1989 (ten years later). The writing style was chaotic, but the upshot seemed to be "if there are so many aliens out there, where are they?" The most interesting thing about this book is that it mentions much the same stuff that Asimov did--but then shows how it doesn't apply or has been changed, or whatever.
Now this thing is out. Up or down?
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