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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.
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!
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!