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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.
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.
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
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"
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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