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Europe's New ET Life Search Programme
hotsauce writes "The Guardian has a report on Europe's ambitious new programme to search for extra terrestial life. ESA has started a program called Cosmic Visions which will launch a series of satelites, starting with Gaia in 2011, and possibly culminating with the Exo-Earth Imager, a mission consisting of 10.000 3-metre mirror telescopes. The French are leading the charge with Corot in 2008."
I've heard about new algorithms that are going into effect at the Aricibo telescope that use wavelets to get much better results. Apparently a lot of old data is going to be re analyzed.
For those who didn't know.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
...a mission consisting of 10.000 3-metre mirror telescopes.
This is an upgrade to previous versions of the plan that called for 8.735 3-metre mirror telescopes. Adding that 1.265 mirrors really helps I'm sure.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
NPR did a story on the most efficient way to search for extra-terrestrial life, where it would be more efficient (energy/economic) to send craft out to distant solar systems rather than beam signals there. Apparantly the loss in signal strength is so severe (inverse square law) that signals get lost in the cosmic background.
Are these efforts being coordinated with other such programs, such as SETI?
I guess they got so discouraged by not being able to find any intelligent life here on earth that they just gave up on finding it out there, too. Oh, well, if we had found intelligent life, we probably couldn't have figured out what to do with it anyway.
See what I've been reading.
10,000 satellites...
*Collective shudder from Chinese villagers*
n/t
Isn't that exactly what they are doing, settling on a set of conventions?
ambitious new programme to search for extra terrestial life.
I think any program to search for ET is ambitious.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
Many scifi enthusiasts often assume that our outlook on life is primitive, and that alien races advanced enough to be space-faring races would "clearly" be more civilized than us. I have never seen the logic in that. What if our brutality is the norm for how most races behave? Do we really want to contact potentially many races that would regard us with at least the contempt, as a species, that we regard "lower life forms?" At least without making serious moves toward a more advanced state of technological advancement.
I remember an article on TechCentralStation discussed how absurd it was for anyone to assume that there couldn't be a race like the predators from the predator series. Who says that civilizations evolve the same way? A tribal warrior culture might actually thrive better in space than ours...
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Is because we've been searching using imperial-measure radio wavelengths. Once we switch to metric wavelengths and start decoding in French, we'll finally be able to understand them.
Was it nessicary to say 10.000 satellites?
Was 10.001 a possibility?
I glad to see other Nations exploring space, we could all learn something. It could even spark up NASA to get on the ball.
roamingfeet
That's what SI notation is for.
One period to denote the decimal place, and if you want to seperate digits in groups of three, you use a space.
10 000.0 telescopes.
10,434.39 becomes 10.434,39
In countries that use the decimal point as a place seperator, the comma is used as a decimal point:
2.5 (English) = 2,5 (French)
"The French are leading the charge with Corot in 2008"
Does anyone else find this statement hard to believe?
stay away from the Beta Quadrant. We all know those Romulans and Klingons don't take kindly to unauthorized surveillance activity.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Set, like one of each.
-Peter
We search for a pattern in radio signals to find proof of intelligence, yet we look at a strand of DNA and not see it.
sigs, as if you care.
Based on the French affinity for frogs, snails, and other unlikely looking edibles, they probably think of this as a chance to try out new recipes with our unfortunate alien contactees.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
This is about looking for planets, then analysing them to see if they have the conditions to support life (oxygen, co2, methane). SETI is about trying to recieve radio signals created by intelligent beings out there.
In short, this is looking for any sort of possible life, SETI is looking for "ET phone home".
SETI is fundamentally flawed, since even now we on Earth are broadcasting less and less out into space. We're using microwave and lasers to talk to our satellites, and everything on the ground is getting wired, or fed from satellites.
The days of gigawatt broadcasting over radio bands is winding to an end, so we only will have made "noise" for a century or so.
One could assume an intelligent race would outgrow the technology just as we have, or never use it in the first place.
SETI is like trying to find modern Native Americans by looking for smoke signals, when they communicate using the phone or internet these days.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
First, as I really really hope you are aware, Europe is not a single hegemonous country, and neither is the EU (despite their attempts to make it so). Thus, customs will differ between countries.
Second, how is "." for decimal places and "," for separators any less ambiguous?
(if you must know, I prefer no separators myself)
On topic: kudos to ESA! Although I severely doubt that we'll find any ETs, projects like these almost always get a lot of beneficial scientific data as a bonus... and if not, you at least get a few pretty pictures out of it
I really wish that some of these vast quantities of capital would be invested the the Search for Asteroids.
It would just be typically ironic for our SETA projects to be succesful just as we're decimated by an asteroid
And furthermore, why can't you all speak English and have a representative democracy just like ours? Also, please get rid of any parts of your culture that are not identical to my own. Thanks, n1ywb.
It's not all of europe, some countries seem to like to switch the more common (in the US and UK) uses of ',' and '.'
Most notably the french.....
IMO Earth and/or humans are being ignored or ostracised.
Why?
Earth is remote... Humans are primitive... Humans are archaic... Humans are violent...
MY FAVORITE!! Humans are not agressive. They must come to us!!
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
They will surrender shortly after.
In french (and on the ESA website), thousands are separated by spaces and not dots nor commas, i.e. 10 000 instead of 10.000
If there was intelligent life out there, it would be here by now.
Intelligent life has to start as "just life"...
I wonder whether Europe will, upon discovering "life" across the big pond of space, send missionaries in their grand tradition of civilizing the heathens. Centauran coffee, anyone?
--
make install -not war
Canada and the USA have a treaty now that lets the USA bring back draft dodgers (people who emigrate to avoid the draft) from Canada, so you might as well save your money and stay here.
There won't be any deferments for college like there were in the Vietnam era, either.
I suggest you vote on November 2.
Except in programming, of course, and most maths apps, since the conventions are generally US english...
I can get her across the border withouth any check points... Not just the hell's angels know how to get across the us/canada borde with no probs.. And I am not being drafted so I can work there.. I plan on voting...
You may not be aware, but using a "," as a separator gives you numers like "12,345,678.89". Not ambiguous at all.
A simple example against the "." separator:
There are 10.234 ppm of asbestos in your air at work.
If you are using the "," and "." system you know that this means about ten. If you are used to seeing numbers like "12.345.678.89" you have no way of knowing if you have 10 or 10000.
looks like we need tinfoil hats in europe now, theyre looking for intelligence, us!
Someone seems to have leaked the Doom movie script.
*orchestral strings swell louder as sun rises on ruins of base*
The Rock (staring out across red dust of Mars, now dotted with demon corpses): We search for a pattern in radio signals to find proof of intelligence, yet we look at a strand of DNA and not see it. Uhuh.
Female Lead With Shiny Hair: Oh, darling, how deep!
Cute Freckled Kid Rescued From Demons: Now let's go back to Earth and kick DEMON BUTT!!
*distorted guitar sound enters music, which turns into a party metal anthem as the credits roll*
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Come play Moral Decay!
Are you sane? English - similar derivation in national citizenry titles, yes? The English did invent the English language; Noah Webster and his dictionary are the cause of differences that divide American English from proper English, British English. Natural derivation seems to have occurred as local dialects evolved. As to returning to one standard, the reverse of localization or intentional alteration of a language is difficult to reverse. To explain, investigate German. German is divided into Swiss, Austrian, and nearly a unique dialect in each Bundesstaat; the most separate of all, Dutch German, is very nearly a separate language entirely as it was formed based on Latin grammar. Each are generally more entrenched then the variants of English are but for this purpose the general effect is the same. The attempts to unify the language dialects with spelling reforms are usually highly contested.
The alternative to "12,345,678.89" is not "12.345.678.89" as you suggest. It could be written "12.345.678,89" in one country and "12 345 678.89" in another country. Check out this site for more info!
Come play Moral Decay!
This shows a deep lack of understanding about what is being searched for.
The pattern being looked for is a pattern that cannot arise via natural processes.
DNA can be explained as a result of natural processes. Note that I said CAN. It is only those processes for which a natural process can not be provided for which intelligence can be inferred.
Consider the discovery of pulsars. They caused quite a stir at the time. But since a natural process was discovered that could explain then, the original thoughts that they might be evidence of intelligent life was quickly discarded.
It is the same with life. At first it was believed to be miraculous, the result of a special creation. But as we learned more about how life actually works, we come to see that it can be explained as the result of natural processes. And thus not evidence of intelligent design.
Of course, since intelligent life is a consequence of physical laws, anything life does can be consdered a natural process ...
SteveM
Clarifications. Implication of Netherlands as a bunderstaat is an error, it is a separate nation with dialect of German.
The planet Earth is in quarantine;
the visits were canceled,
since visitors would be put at risk
of malice, envy, power and slavery.
..Europe's ambitious new programme to search for extra terrestial life. ESA has started a program...
Does anyone else find the mixed British / American spellings a little odd? I feel a little like a dork but this oddity was the most striking feature of the submission to me.
Ahh the wonders of American / British Spelling Differences
In SI notation the decimal separator can actually be either a comma or a period. Originally only the comma was used but there is still no confusion as the separator between groups of digits is always a space.
If you don't use separators the number 10000000 becomes mysterious, and adding a $ to the front makes it frighteneing. $10.000.000 is much easier to recognize.
Either a "," or "." separator solves this problem.
However, when you see 10.234 this could be two very different numbers under the "." system. You can guess using context, but guessing could be very bad.
BR Give me my $10,000,000 and 10,234 any day, I know what they mean and even if you don't know my system you know what they mean as well.
See this. If "over 400 government, military, and intelligence community witnesses testifying to their direct, personal, first hand experience with UFOs, ETs, ET technology" isn't good enough for you, then start here to research our gov's own documents, and then go here and dismiss these reports with "swamp gas" or "venus" or "a flock of birds". And lastly, read "UFOs and the National Security State", one of the very best and most referenced book on the subject using our own gov's documents once again.
This "we may contact other intelligent creatures someday" is a complete and utter farce.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Science is also based on the SI (Systeme Internationale) notation (based on properties of light and water etc. rather than body parts)
:P (-1 Troll)
Which explains why you Americans are not familiar with it
It's projects like these that make you realize a lifetime is too short. I can't wait to see the results of this project in several decades, I just wish I could be around to witness the results of the first manned missions to these planets. If we don't blow ourselves up first. It's great to see all these space-related stories being featured. Hopefully this renewed interest in space exploration will become infectious worldwide. I can only imagine what the world will be like for my kids.
Oh wait.. I think I remember hearing something about getting laid being a requisite for producing offspring.. can anyone confirm this?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
a mission consisting of 10.000 3-metre mirror telescopes.
I'm not sure what's more amazing - the fact that they've projected the number of telescopes they'll need out to 3 decimal places, or that it appears to be a perfect integer. Unless they rounded it off to the nearest thousandth.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
The title was a joke.
The fact remains that the SAME word was written in the summary with BOTH the British and American spellings. I don't have a big problem with the existence of the two standards, my gripe is with MIXING them. You know what, fuck it, mix 'em. But don't use two different spelling for the SAME FUCKING WORD in adjacent sentences.
So, do you have anything to say that relates to my actual point? I mean, I used bold and everything. Maybe if you got off your high horse for a second you could understand what someone else is saying.
Thanks for the rambling "lesson" anyway.
-Peter
Dutch may be classed as a Germanic language but it is still very different from German. Given the huge differences I think you can't realy call Dutch a German dialect.
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." Ref: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Watterson
If you ever have to export floats to ASCII, please please keep the Europeans in mind. Excel expects comma's over here, and completely fucks up if it gets periods. If you export to a file which will not be opened in a text editor but in Excel, Access or any other program which will interpret the number, use a format like "0000000E00". The number 123.4 then becomes 1234E-1. This is the only way of writing a float which will succesfully import/paste into every copy of Excel on this globe.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
SETI is fundamentally flawed, since even now we on Earth are broadcasting less and less out into space. We're using microwave and lasers to talk to our satellites, and everything on the ground is getting wired, or fed from satellites.
Where did you get the impression that SETI is looking for radio leakage from a civilization?
Or are you just out for a morning troll?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
ET has already been found in the UK!
The attempts to unify the language dialects with spelling reforms are usually highly contested.
Actually, there basically is one common spelling in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Of course, there are differences, like words which are used in one country, while being uncommon in others. But in general German words have an official spelling which is the same in all 3 countries, the only exception I can right know think of is that the Swiss dont use that special 'sharp s; character used in Austria and Germany (and write 'ss' instead). The contested spelling reforms are about changing the official (common) spelling alltogether, but not to unify it, since it is already unified.
I think the Gaia mission is pretty exciting, above and beyond the giant space mirror array. A precise mapping of the galaxy's stars, their distribution and relations would be invaluable. It also presents some great marketing possibilities while the search for exo-planets drags on.
As the number of users grows, the probability that someone flames your post approaches ONE.
At ca. n_users = 9*10^5,
i'd say p_flame > 90%
You have to relax. It's simply unavoidable that someone won't like or understand your post plus has the time to reply.
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
did a story on the most efficient way to search for extra-terrestrial life
Sending probes is beyond our technology as a way to search for life - you have to either expect a return contact from the more advanced civilization or radio back the findings yourself. We can barely pickup the Voyager signals and they're still in our own solar system.
It's also a pretty hit-or-miss way to contact other life.
Imagine if we were on the receiving end. Say they were shining a laser at us - with a powerful enough laser they can light up the solar system. Every planet in the solar system could see the signal. Any observatory on earth over a year or so would see the signal.
Now, imagine they sent a probe to our solar system. Where would it go? Would it land? On Earth? In a city? On a tundra? Would it be stepped on by a dinosaur or decoded by a physicist?
Maybe it would stay in orbit or a planet, or at a Lagrange point. With our current level of technology if it's not around our planet we would have no idea it's there - we can't even catalog the NEO asteroids and they're alot bigger than a space probe would probably be. If it was in orbit and not known to be space junk would we send a exploratory team?
The point of the NPR spot is really about sending massive amounts of data, but we're still working on the "hello, world" part. Once we've made contact it might make sense as a next step, unless "they" have a better idea.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The point remains: if you see the incredible, wonderful complication that is our DNA structure and say, "This is from a natural process", how in the name of tinker toys will you find a pattern in radio waves that is there by someone's design?
Rejection of intelligence in the design of DNA sets the bar way too high.
sigs, as if you care.
incase it didnt get thru to you, thefreedictionary is a spam site ripping off wikipedias work
I don't see why the Europeans want to go out looking for space aliens when they are already here. I'd say that the new conventional thought is that you are in a some sort of fugue-denial state if you don't believe that they have been swinging by regularly.
The difference between common skepticism (the kind that the soccer mom next door might give you) and scientific skepticism has now been recognized by the average joe. Scientific skeptics say that the common skeptics now have a great deal of explaining to do. AND BALL LIGHTENING AIN'T GONNA CUT IT!
www.nuforc.org
Wow, you really must be a red blooded usian if you have to ask. Moron.
We have all these programs for trying to find patterns in signals from space but are we doing anything to make life easier for anyone that is trying to find us? Sure, we are emitting a bunch of electromagnetic radiation from our broadcasts but how far would it actually reach to be detectable? Wouldn't it be more efficient to send powerful laser pulses that are specifically targeted at "promising" nearby star systems?
Is anybody in the world doing something like this?
When men used to be men
A negative answer (disregarding that a proper answer would be impossible to get) to the question whether there is other life in space might prove just as interesting to us than a positive one.
I'm telling!!! You used a bad word twice!!!
sending out information is not exactly the smartest thing, especially if we got the resources a highly intelegent species needs (think independence day). Its almost like a person telling all his friends about this new and very expensive toy he got thats in his locker and then telling all of them where his locker is and what the combination is; not the smartest idea... Most likely the aliens will look at our planet, look at all the people on it, and then decide to put an intergalactic highway through it...
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. - Catcher in the Rye
Well, as an EU citizen, I for one eagerly await the arrival of our new alien slimeball overlords. Anything is better than the current lot in the White House.
Tone
If so, I for one welcome our new alien overlords.
Ah the Euro-pee-ins want to get involved search for extratesticular intelligence. Well, isn't that special?
This will never work, the French will surrender to the first meteor they encounter on this so called, "charge."
So THAT's why there are no French capacitor manufacturers - they can't test them.
The can use the United Nations to callabrate their instruments for non-intelligent life.
Great to see the French website was last updated in March 2004
A clean chord is a happy chord...