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."

Comments

New processing algorithms

[2.7182]

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.

Re:New processing algorithms

[Feminist-Mom]

That's true - Coifman from the Yale math dept. that has a company that is doing this. But it hasn't hit the popular press yet. Among the mathematicians it is controversial whether it will work.

10.000 in European = 10,000 in the U.S.

[benhocking]

For those who didn't know.

Re:10.000 in European = 10,000 in the U.S.

[Tackhead]

> 10.000 in Euro = 12.700 in US.
> Sir, your margin of error is enough to buy a Big Mac, or were you planning on eating it yourself!

No thanks, but I could go for a Royale with cheese...

Talk about accuracy...

[over_exposed]

...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.

Trying to contact ET

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

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.

Re:Trying to contact ET

[DrEldarion]

I say the most efficient way is to just wait for them to come invade us. Uses no resources.

Re:Trying to contact ET

[stecoop]

Was it also NPR that ran a story that most some SETI scientist are starting to think that radio waves is the wrong place to look. Some now believe that lasers would be used by more advanced civilizations as radio waves would be used but a brief history of the civilization.

Coordinated?

[LewsTherinKinslayer]

Are these efforts being coordinated with other such programs, such as SETI?

Notice how they've given up ...

[RealAlaskan]

Remember how they used to look for intelligent life? Now they've lowered their sights, and will settle for just life.

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.

10,000?

[turboflux]

10,000 satellites...

*Collective shudder from Chinese villagers*

Assumptions about ETs

[ShatteredDream]

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...

Re:Assumptions about ETs

[justforaday]

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?"

Seems to me that we need to first move beyond considering other members of our own species "lower life forms"

Re:Assumptions about ETs

[Auton]

It all comes back to Fermi's paradox. If there are intelligent (I prefer the term 'sophont') alien life forms out there, why haven't they contacted us?

One solution says 'because they don't want to'. I find that solution very plausible at the current juncture. Odds are that if there is, in fact, a conglomerate of alien nations out there, they've set down a network of powerful signal-dampening sattelites around our solar system (the Oort cloud would be a good hiding place), controlled by a very strong AI which filters the transmissions reaching us, so that only natural phenomena and signals of our own making ever reach us. This could even be standard procedure for worlds below a certain level of technology. This is called the 'Prime Directive' solution, after Gene Roddenberry's Prime Directive from Star Trek.

Of course, another (more Occam-friendly) solution to the paradox is "Because there aren't any"...

The reason we've haven't found aliens

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Whats with the EU using '.' instead of ','

[ZigMonty]

Because in the EU they use ',' as the decimal separator?

10,434.39 becomes 10.434,39

It's a cook book!

[CodeWanker]

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.

Different from SETI

[stratjakt]

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.

Re:Different from SETI

[thesandtiger]

While I don't necessarily disagree, I don't think that we're necessarily looking in the wrong place. Imagine a civilization far in advance of our own using some sort of communications technology we can't even imagine as yet. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult for them to make a massively powerful radio transmitter to call out? In fact, I can see one very good reason to think there might be such a beacon made by an advanced civilization. Think about all the trials and tribulations we're going through right now, all this uncertainty about whether or not humanity will survive - about whether it is even possible *for* us to survive our technology. Then imagine we get a signal from space, from another civilization, one that went through what we did. "We're here, we survived, and you can too. Good luck, and welcome to the universe." Call me sappy, but I can think of no better message we could receive.

Re:Whats with the EU using '.' instead of ','

[__aagctu1952]

OK people, why does the EU use '.' as the thousandth's place separater instead of ','? It's really stupid. How can you tell if 10.000 is 10,000 or ten point zero zero zero?? It's totally ambiguous! Oh sure, the CONTEXT, right, because scientists and engineers love figuring out the order of magnitude of a number based on it's context.

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 ;-)

Re:Whats with the EU using '.' instead of ','

[Anonymous Coward]

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.