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Interview With a SETI Astronomer
Siduri writes "We at Pigdog Journal conducted an interview with SETI astronomer Seth Shostak, and I think it's pretty interesting. He talks about the technical details behind what SETI and SETI@home do (the two programs are very different), and he speculates about the nature of alien intelligence. He's also quite funny."
The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) will most likely discover either biology-based intelligence like our own, or an advanced form of machine-based Artificial Intelligence.
Alien civilizations conducting a similar search in the near future are likewise likely to find either us humans or the AI mind-species that succeeds us in the onwards march of Technological Singularity.
Along the lines of the SETI@home project. there is also a kind of AI@Home project to the extent that independent AI programmers have been creating Visual Basic Mind.VB and Java-based Mind.JAVA AI.
Whether we find Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence or not has a bearing on the Theology of Artificial Intelligence, because if we find that we are not alone in the universe, we will have to re-think our ideas on our relationship to our Creator.
The equation makes alot of sence, but the only thing that Drake takes for granted is that all life is based on life here on Earth. Given that we dont have anything else to compare it to, but still. Don't you think thats a really basic generalization of how life works. I for one dont think we should be basing the creation of life everywhere in the galaxy with realtion to the way life was created here on earth. It would be pretty arrogant to think that way. For all we know, it could be the exact opposite everywhere else and we are the exception. But then again, I could be wrong.
It would have been interesting get Seth's reaction to the growing rumors surrounding the discovery of a signal coming from EQ Pegasus a year or so ago.
For those who don't know what i'm talking about, the scientific comunity has been argueing about the "discovery" of an extraterrestrial signal comming from EQ Pegasus, a small binary system situated about 27 lightyears from Earth.
The signal capted by Paul Dore with a small radio-telescope was distributed to several observatories for analysis. Astronomers don't really know what to think about it. A press conference was scheduled, but it was cancelled due to threats from an unnamed source. There are rumors the Air Force was involved in silencing the guy who found it, starting some suspicion that it could have been a deep space probe, a CIA "Black" project, or similar. The signal would have been capted the October 22 & 23, which is some weeks after a powerfull Radio-Telescope from Arecibo would have picked a strange signal comming from EQ Pegasus in a project called Phoenix. Astronomers had concluded that it was just interference coming from a geosynchronous satellite.
The SETI program tried in vain to pick up the signal, and they said that this was either a big joke, or interference.
Makes you wonder.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
This interview, brilliantly transcribed as it is, hardly does Seth Shostak justice. The man, quite frankly, is freaking hilarious.
And you, too, can see him, without annoying pigdog interviewers, at the 55th annual Conference on World Affairs, held in Boulder, CO, April 8-12, 2002.
Watching this guy tear into the hardcore UFO nuts here in Boulder is highly entertaining...
seti is bunk (article i posted on epinions a year ago)
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
But as he says, we can't wait for some new kind of physics. What we have NOW for picking up signals from other starsystems is a bunch of radio telescopes and as far as we know the most likely kind of signal to look for is either a deliberate "here we are" kind of message or "leaked" stuff like our TV broadcasts that have strong carrier signals. Sure that leaves out a hell of a lot of potential signals to look for but SETI has a very limited budget - Colgate probably spends more a week marketing toothbrushes than SETI uses in a year - so they have to look for the most likely candidate with the resources they have.
As new tech become available to then such as the 1hT array in a few years they can widen the search from hundreds of stars to millions. If there is only one civilization in that search group that was broadcasting back when the light we see left their sun then there's a good chance we'll hear them.
What gets me though is that given the lifespan of the galaxy there's time enough for millions of technological civilizations to arise - but *not all at the same time*. It could be that there's only ever one or two radio capable species alive in the whole galaxy at any given time. Even if there are hundreds or thousands of civizations active right now each is trapped at the bottom of a relativistic-well: there could be a bunch of guys with tentacles a hundred lightyears away sending us a "hullloooo? HELLoooooo??" message *right now* but it'll be a hundred years before we get it. Shit, Alpha Centuri could have been beaming out "pings" for fifty years but gave up 4.35 years and one day before Marconi built the first radio. But coinidences do happen, and they are more likely when playing the odds so I am still caustiously optimistic.
Given all of this, as is pointed out in the interview, maybe what we should be looking for is not something transient like a radio broadcast or a laser pulse - but examples of stellar engineering that would be evident for millions or billions of years, Dyson Spheres or something. Though to my mind any civilization that can build a Dyson Sphere has probably discovered an energy source a lot better than solar - zero point energy or something, so there may not be a hell of a lot of Dyson Spehere out there.