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SETI Project Scientist Discusses Prospects
An anonymous reader writes "Today Astrobiology Magazine interviewed SETI@home Project Scientist, Dan Wertheimer, about subjects including the first detailed 'best of SETI' candidate reobservations for repeating telescope acquisition on the most promising 166 star candidates. Their policy is not to release precise sky coordinates on the best ones yet (so far a signal called SHGb11+15a), with this type of Gaussian signal shape. The candidates number some 400 million Gaussians and 5.7 billion spikes."
How advanced would a civilization have to be to send out signals? A simple array of radio transmitters beaming out a simple message wouldn't be too hard to build.
And a physical object, however small, would take a lot longer than a radio message to reach another star.
boom boom boom
How does that follow? We've been sending signals into space ever since we started broadcasting radio and television and we don't have any usable nanotechnology.
Sending signals into space is fairly simple. building microscopic machines is not. I don't see how the presents of one means we should assume the existence of the other.
What can we possibly learn from a buncha backwaters critters still interested in such a primitive form of communication as radio?
-or-
What can THEY possibly learn from a buncha backwaters critters still interested in such a primitive form of communication as radio?
v.m
I have a "Zero Policy" tolerance.
*/
We're not necessarily trying to find transmissions based on how we transmit, we're trying to find transmissions that don't look like background noise.
Even if you can't decode wavelet-encoded HDTV, it's certainly still going to be identifiable as a signal that didn't happen by accident.
steve
SETI actually brings up a very interesting issue. So let's say they do find an alien civilization, would SETI get to copyright and patent the material that they gleen from the alien civilization?
Are you joking, I can't tell. If SETI finds conclusive proof of the existence of alien intelligence, I think the last thing on most of our minds will be copyright law.
I mean, it's like asking if Jesus comes back will he prefer Linux or BSD. The significance of the event so far outweighs the debate that the debate is rendered meaningless.
Yeti, angels and ley lines are at best, implausible. The idea of other intelligent life forms "out there" somewhere is at least *plausible* and therefore not the waste of time you seem to believe it to be. The degree to which energy/money is spent looking for it can be argued, but you can't say "never." It happened here, so it follows that it could happen elsewhere.
[ insert your own witty .sig here ]
Therefore, what SETI should be looking for are signals that, at first, appear as white noise. Then try to decode them.
That is single-handidly the dumbest thing they could do.
The sky is ABSOLUTELY FILLED with white noise. Nature is random, that is the whole point of looking for NON-random signals; they suggest intelligence at work.
Another point is that we are not just looking for signals that are essentially radio-pollution from another civilization, we are looking for DELIBERATE signals from a society trying to communicate with us. Why would they encrypt or otherwise obfuscate those signals?!?!
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
Sorry to break the bad news, but you live in a world full of people. The first thing that will be on the minds of lawyers is how this affects law. The first thing on the mind of investors would be the effect on their portfolio. The first thing on the mind of politicians would be the effect on the next election and the first thing on the mind of the scientists will be who gets top billing on research paper and if their name is spelled correctly. The first thing on the mind of the avid /.ers is who will get first post, and will they get good karma in what will be lively thread. It will probably be that guy who welcomes evil overlords.
And, yes, I am joking about human nature, but realize that there will be profound effects on all of our fundamental theories of nature. BTW, I suspect that there are lawyers at SETI already thinking about this.
Yes :)
;-)
We can burn, rape and pillage as much as we want.
Steal, lie, and murder!
Genocide, baby......
As long as you have faith, you get to go to heaven anyways....
Isn't it good, to be a christian?
Note: I'm not......So I'd better be good
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Other than this being like looking for the needle in the proverbial haystack, this is not what is behind the SETI project. SETI works under the assumption that someone out there is beaming a signal into space with the express intent of being discovered. A civilization attempting to do such a thing would attempt to make the signal as unambiguous as possible, at least the initial "greeting" message. This is why "Contact" used the plot device of having the initial signal be pulsed to represent the first few prime numbers. The idea behind it was that certain mathematical concepts are universal, and this would be a clear indication that there is an intelligence behind it.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
Now, since the conditions for the existence of each target are unknown and incalculable in these cases, you can't even compute a probability. Hence, I declare (according to our present knowledge and understanding) that all of these things DO NOT EXIST.
Yeah, because atoms didn't exist until we discovered them. Likewise, the sun really did revolve around the earth until we discovered otherwise. And disease was caused by bad spirits, and were nothing a good bleeding couldn't cure.
Yes, we can never prove the non-existence of invisible pink unicorns. As far as we know, the prerequisites for invisible pink unicorns (IPU) do not exist in this universe.
But we already have the evidence for one (marginally) intelligent species in the universe. Ergo, they exist, and we know the prerequisites for intelligent life also exist.
It would be extreme foolishness to claim there is no other intelligent life in the universe.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I think it's actually more likely than that that there was no parallel to our technological development cycle at all. They may, for example, have developed biology to such a point that they send actual engineered viruses rather than nanobots (eg: biological rather than technical) or maybe aquatics rather than air and space flight(and therefore not sending signals) or telepathic/hive mind so they wouldn't send signals...
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
*sigh*
No offense buddy, but it's Christians with attitudes like yours that give the rest of us a hard time.
From a Christian perspective, the Bible contains what *we* (human beings) need to know. No mention is given of alien life, but that does *not* mean that God has not created it. It means that their existence (or lack therefore) is inconsequential to the message that the Bible conveys. You are arguing from silence.