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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."
The search for intelligent life on Earth continues.
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God, is that you?
Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
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.
Sure you say that now, but you'll be crying when china has all of the lucrative exclusive extra terrestrial trade deals worked out and we're still trying to sell cars to canada.
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
Sometime back, we read NASA withdrew funding for DARPA, IIRC. What's so compelling for NASA to pump more funds into SETI? Some kind of social engineering at work here, methinks.
It's ironic, but NASA seems to be getting more attention after a spectacular failure (Colombia disaster)
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
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....
That putting that trojan in the screensaver that lobbies congressmen was a good idea.....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
It's now nice to know all those 60-Some data sets I've gone through at about 30 hours each weren't in vain.
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.
Preemptive War on Terrorism. Almost taken care of.
Preemptive War on Little Green Men. That's our next Goal.
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
why don't we just stop putting money into the arts too? according to you, we can't afford such frivolous things such as curiosity and expression and searching for meaning.
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
...is point their telescopes at Alabama. Tons of other-worldly creatures live there.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
"PLZ resend disk 2 of TWO TOWERS"
Isn't it time for Slashdot to partner with NYT just like Google did (link-wise)? After all, Slashdot is a rather large referrer to NYT articles.
"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!'.
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!
Bummer. I will no longer be able to righteously correct slashdotters who ignorantly complain that SETI is "wasting" their tax dollars. :)
I was always kind of proud of SETI for making it on private donations alone; it seemed like losing federal funds was the best thing that ever happened to them. Anyway, this grant is just for the Astrobiology Institute partnership; they still have their own funds for their normal operations.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
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.
There was a headlining story on the NYT yesterday:
Gen. Tommy R. Franks said today that violence and uncertainty in Iraq made it unlikely that troop levels would be reduced "for the foreseeable future," and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld nearly doubled the estimated military costs there to $3.9 billion a month.
My math might be worse than Dubya's, but I figure it at about $130 million A DAY.
While it's great that we're "funding" SETI, perhaps some of the money we're pouring into Iraq would be better spent on science. Mars, anyone? Zubrin's plan calls for $30 billion for a long term program, just over 7 months worth of war. Which would you prefer, nonexistant WMDs or a manned landing on the Red Planet?
while (!sleep){
sheep++;
}
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
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!