Slashdot Mirror
SETI Gains Respect, NASA Funding
securitas writes "After having its funding cut off by Congress a decade ago, the SETI program has just received a NASA five-year grant (Google link) to participate as a lead team in the NASA Astrobiology Institute, which investigates the origin and future of life in the universe. For more information, see the Astrobiology Institute's announcement and the NASA press release."
SETI Institute Selected as Astrobiology Lead Team
The SETI Institute is proud to announce that it has been chosen as a lead team for NASA's Astrobiology Institute (NAI), the international research consortium coordinated through NAI's offices at NASA's Ames Research Center. NASA Ames is a long-standing partner of the SETI Institute in the search for life on other worlds, and we welcome this opportunity to deepen our scientific relationship.
I would like to see more funding put into projects such as those run by the non-profit organisation Seti League http://www.setileague.org/
Seti League's Project Argus aims to have approximatley 5000 small aperture radio telescopes (generally modified satellite TV antennas) operating in a coordinated effort which allows the entire sky to be continuously monitored. The problem with telescopes such as Arecibo is that because of their large size, they can only see a fraction of the sky. And we don't known when or where we are going to receive 'the call', which is why amateur organisations are important. Just think how many discoveries have been made by amateur (optical) astronomers.
-- Book
Their hypothesis is also a good test of the theory that IL abounds in the universe. But so far, in the narrow range (+-10deg) that the Arecibo telescope scans, no synthetic transmissions have yet been received. Considering that during the last 5 years signals from anywhere as close as this solar system to as far away as the edge of our galaxy could have been recieved, but have not, leads to a few hypotheses.
One, all existing IL have evolved past the use of ER as a means to communicate. Even here on Earth communications are rapidly moving to cable and the Internet, neither of which have any significant radiation leaking into space. Two, our civiliation is the only one to have reached the stage of using ER for communications. Three, there are no other civilization 'out there', ours is the only one.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
sorry to nitpick on you, but I dont think any of USA's military budget is used to
build AK47's... these are made in sweatshops all over the third world (and china).
There are some knock-offs made in the balcans, too.
I do agree about the missiles, tough. Expensive shit, and they keep building thousands
of them.
cheers
``If a program can't rewrite its own code, what good is it?'' - Mel
To all the morons complaining about NASA funding SETI...please get a clue. I mean you wanna help poor people right and this SETI funding could go to feed so many right? WRONG! The amount of funding SETI is getting is less than 10% of what we spend in ONE DAY on foriegn military actions. This is also about the same amount of money GWB raises at one of his campaign dinners. So get a clue about shit before you break out the bleeding heart feed the poor bullshit. I am all for helping people but I cant even possibly imagine how NOT funding SETI is gonna make any difference at all. It is such a tiny drop in the bucket its sad almost. I am so sure the people complaining about this are donating their time to soup kitchens and such too, not. Hipocrits...
"At first, we thought it was just another snake cult."
I made a short documentary film about SETI last year covering the origins of the SETI search, Drake's equation, the various groups involved, and people's opinions about SETI. Maybe some of you might find it interesting. Its a 25 MB download in Quicktime format and you can find it here: http://homepage.mac.com/mcgeary/seti/ Enjoy!