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."

Comments

Re:An excellent point from Ray Kurweil

[JustAnotherReader]

if aliens existed and were advanced enough to send us signals, they would in all probability have mastered the use of nano-technology

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.

Radio? Radio?!?

[Volatile_Memory]

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

Re:This is like monkeys trying to figure out books

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Copyright on the Data

[molafson]

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.

Re:SETI is looking for the wrong thing

[ShieldWolf]

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?!?!