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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."
As much as i would love to support the search for life in the galaxy sometimes its not a good idea. Although i do think that as humans we should try to search any money we put into a project like this is as good as gone and in finacial hard times like this we cant afford to throw around much.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
I didn't know NASA had enough money to donate, with all the cutbacks and whatnot.
Its about time that SETI got some serious funding, its mainly been kept going by enthusiastic amateurs over the last few years and at one point in the early 80s it actually looked like it was going to close.
One thing they should be able to do with is money is investigate the interesting readings they've been getting from proxima centuri, where several M class planets have been discovered. The chances of it being life are small but the fact is that the 55Gev readings they've been getting are a complete mystery so even if the're just coming from a tachyon field it should produce some interesting new data
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
It is important to note here that the U.S. government through its agency NASA has officially thrown support to the adherents of evolution.
If there is no evolution, then there is no chance that life would exist anywhere else in the universe because it would have had to have been Created only here. The New Testament of the Bible (in which most Creationists readily and eagerly believe) repeatedly claims that there is only one Son of God and that only through Him is salvation possible. This would mean that if by some chance that there were lifeforms elsewhere in the galaxy that they would have to be perfect beings or destined for Hell. Since a loving God wouldn't create beings guaranteed to spend eternity in the flames of Hades, it stands to reason that God would have only created Life here on Earth (where, again, He sent His Son).
But with NASA supporting the search for ET life, the government has implicitly thumbed its nose at the Creationists.
It's about time, if you ask me.
I have been pwned because my
I never understood why it was so hard to give funding to a program that could make the most important discovery yet.... (except for oil on mars... that'd be the only thing that'd get us off this rock faster...)
At least they got the 24 hours of time to point Arecibo where they wanted before... now maybe they'll get more time, more radio telescope data to send out as workunits.
The whole program seemed to be a great use of national money to me when I first learned about SETI, and its still a good place to invest money I think.
Of course, I could be wrong....
I mean, with all the infrastructure and the servers running smoothly I personally believe this to be a very promising effort. So are they in or are they out of the funding?
cu,
Lispy
As much as i would love to support the search for life in the galaxy sometimes its not a good idea. Although i do think that as humans we should try to search any money we put into a project like this is as good as gone and in finacial hard times like this we cant afford to throw around much.
:P) attitudes like this piss me off enormously. All this stupid "we shouldn't put money into this, that and the other because of hard times/the poor/the children" is spurious.
At the risk of starting a flamewar (I'm in an asbestos suit
Fact: Agencies like NASA can stimulate the economy, by virtue of their sheer size. The same, but more so goes for the defense establishment
Fact: many items which we take for granted today would not be a reality if it wasn't for the research money the governments provided
I believe the single greatest hope for the eventual equality of all (which is somewhere in the american constitution, right?) is technology. You may or may not agree with this, you might say education, for instance, but more effiecient and cost effective ways of teaching and learning will come out of research.
The "I don't want to pay so my descendants will benefit" attitude is an attitude that would have wiped out the human race, or any species, for that matter, if it was rife. If you are bemoaning your contribution, there is nothing stopping you disappearing into the hills and living as a hermit (except that wouldn't fit in your comfort zone, would it), while the rest of us go and make progress for the benefit of the species as a whole.
This is also the reason that 20 new types of disposable wipe a year piss me off so badly.
Rational thought is the only true freedom
They have all the money so the research can only be done there. Almost ironic.
"seeks to answer an important question: are we alone? Statistically, probably not."
Statistically, almost certainly. Barring accidents or idiotic governments that totally devastate the human species, we will have colonised the entire galaxy in a million years or so, and be conducting engineering projects on a massive scale that would be visible from many light years away: the odds of the only two intelligent species in the galaxy evolving within a million years of each other are probably pretty slim, so if they existed they'd be here by now.
I run seti@home just on the offchance that we're lucky and there is someone else around, but statistically, if there really are aliens out there, they should be as difficult to find as a million-strong herd of penguins running around Manhattan shouting 'Phear The Penguin Horde!'.
Watch the Farscape episode "I, E.T." for a stimulating glimpse of what it might be like for us to discover alien-life. This script was well-written and well-acted. Note: it's a human making contact with an alien Jodie Foster-like astronomer.
With all due respect, the question of origins is a philosophical one rather than a scientific one. It is not possible to use the scientific method to determine origins.
The creationist and the evolutionist are in the same boat. Neither can observe, record, repeat the process.
Both are constrained to collect extant data and propose theories about what caused the universe. In that respect, they are limited to speculation.
Speculation is unlikely to provide an answer. On this idea, CS Lewis said: "It's like expecting that the accidental shape taken by a splash when you upset a milk jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset."
Studying the shape of the splash is science, and that I do not oppose. Having scientists comment of meaning (the why question) as a result of their "splash" studies is laughable.
For that matter, it is not possible for scientists to say with certainty how the universe was prior to its existence. This is not science, but speculation and should be named as such.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Unlike missile defense, SETI has at least succeeded in their original goal of mapping out 1000 stars. Their next goal is a million stars. Alternatively, SETI has succeeded in a another field. Because of their lack of funding, SETI's need for computing power helped to pioneer the use of grid computing. Although, this is a side benefit, SETI first showed how massive grid computing is possible at a minimal of expense.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
In reply to your post, you do make a point. However I would like to draw attention to a single aspect of the Drake Equation.
On Earth in the 50's we built powerful transmitters and the planet for decades glowed in the Radio Spectrum. By the year 2000 it was still glowing, but new communications technologies had formed such as satelight and cellular. I suspect that neither satelight nor cellular "leaks" anything near the level of signal that radio and TV still "leak" so I wonder if the Seti program for instance would be able to detect say cellular usage on a nearby planet.
In my mind it is quite possible that a technologically advanced civilization may develope communications technology that doesn't "leak" the way our communications does now. If so, then your point about say a 300 year window is well taken but the disapearance of signals may not indicate the "death" of the civilization... it may simply coincide with an advance in their technology and a phasing out of obsolete technology.
No, I don't smoke crack.....
Sure, even if communication is impossible.... it could create a scientific drive to invent some method to communicate.
I don't think the SETI people expect to find proof of intelligent life "any day now"
I think that a snowballs chance in hell is good enough.
50 years from now.... the event horison of places that have seen our signals, AND had time to respond, will have increased by 25 light years.
Yes, that doesn't get you a whole lot farther, but at least it opens up more doors.
The problem is... if we don't listen now, listening later might not do us any good......