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New and Improved SETI
nomrniceguy writes "The new year is sure to be memorable for SETI, as glossy new instruments come on-line.
At Harvard University, a survey telescope designed to sweep massive swaths of the sky in a hunt for extraterrestrial laser flashes is becoming a reality. In Puerto Rico, the famed Arecibo telescope is getting a new feed that will speed up searches by seven times. And in California, the SETI Institute and Berkeley's Radio Astronomy Lab will soon be scanning the star-clotted realms of the inner Milky Way with the first-stage implementation of the Allen Telescope Array (ATA)
and will eventually boast 350 antennas, each 20 feet in diameter. This impressive antenna farm will be spread over about a half square-mile of terrain."
As interesting as the SETI project is, I just wonder how they manage to find the funding to build massive Laser detection devices.
Really, what are the chances of this finding anything?
- Jax
Why not wait quantum computers to make this job? For the moment the distribued project should be only used to calculate things urgent to people, as the whole processing power we have now is a joke if we compare to nextgen ways to design CPUs. Research for health is IMHO a priority for what we can do at the moment on earth.
None other than Paul Allen. Yep, of Microsoft fame. Boo, hiss, where are the groups of objectors now?
Guess what... One may dislike what Microsoft does and whatever that guy is responsible for doing there, but still like what he's doing here. Why is that so hard to imagine?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
How about an answer to the question, "Are we alone in the universe?" and starting revelations about the uniqueness of life on Earth, for starters.
as good as all their charitable things are, they can easily afford it, and more.
and it doesn't remove the fact they are fucking up the IT industry and now keeping society back years, maybe even decades.
plus, true charity is anonymous. it's hardly altruistic (or anything remotely resembling it) when you give a small fraction of your wealth in exchage for having your name or company's name all over stuff. that's called "advertising" or "ego".
I do not want to sound friendly to Microsoft, but Paul Allen is the best thing that happened to the exploration of space lately. Not only that we have a new SETI, but we also have SpaceShipOne, and soon we will have SpaceShipTwo. This is the second best use of Microsoft revenue. The first one is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which helps people in Africa.
You're being unfair. You DON'T have to give your money to ANYONE or for ANY CAUSE, but when you decide to give millions for such causes, or a billion+ to fight diseases in certain other countries, well, I applaud that. You are the kind of person who can't be pleased, as your genes have modified themselves over the years on Slashdot to have a gag response to anything remotely related to Microsoft, even if what Gates, Allen, and others are doing should be celebrated, congratulated, and enjoyed.
A blog like any other.
Seriously, could we be the first advanced civilization? I have no doubt that there are other civilizations, but perhaps we are currently the most advanced.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Lasers do have an intrinsic beam spread -- it comes out of their physics. That is, the beams are not perfect parallel rays. The exact numbers depend on the wavelength, the beam size, etc., but the odds are probably somewhat better than you're thinking. The strength of the approach is that a laser would be clear evidence for an extraterrestrial civilization and easy to pick out from natural sources.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
Progress relies on a Free Market of ideas. Priorities must be made, but focusing everything on the few things deemed immediate and important will no doubt ironically cause a slowing of technology in general and impede progress in the long run on the very things you decide were more important to the exclusion of all else.
Of course there is always the morality card to be played by some as in "look how much better I am than you, I donate to such and such, and if you don't, you are morally bankrupt"
Letter To Iran
I think it should be more like ~fitzprrklpop~~fwopzzwwep~ Why would they speak English in the first place.
true charity is anonymous
lol... do you realize how stupid that comment is ? Maybe Paul Allen & Bill Gates give three gazillionsquillionfabrillion dollars anonymously. But you'd never know, wouldya ?
You've just proven how single-sided your thinking is.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Wake up and smell the roses -- the reality is out there in the physics. Just read the evidence.
This is not to say that there are *not* aliens out there and that we cannot detect them. They are probably out there and we can probably detect them. But the approaches the SETI Institute and the groups as Harvard and Berkeley tend to be misfounded on the basis that they are going to try and communicate with us. Any ass would see that the probability of detecting those civilizations out there who ARE NOT trying to communicate with us is higher than than any few who are trying to communicate with us.
*If* one properly understood the evolution of advanced civilizations this would be understood. But most people engaged in SETI lack that knowledge.
(Sigh)
And as a postscript... Reality is about hard, repeatable evidence. And so whether it is about the president and his "faith" based perspectives or about SETI and "yes I heard them once" or "I hope to hear them once". Neither perspective cuts the mustard.
In my opinion the http://folding.stanford.edu/ project is more important and perhaps more interesting than SETI. If you can help, I ask you to contribute with it.
First, they have not to my knowledge issued an update to the original program for linux. I installed that one about 3 years ago when it first came out, but it was such a cpu hog the machine simply wasn't usable when it was running. Seti is a nice kid, running at a nice of 19, meaning it only runs when nothing else needs the cpu. Sure, the cpu stays at 100%, and gets a bit warmer, but it isn't feelable in terms of how this machine runs. FoldingAThome needs to take a few lessons from Seti, not take over that machine, after all it is MY machine. Its entirely possible it might be able to do great work, and I think it will, but when it has to have 100% of the machine instead of 98%, screw em & the camel that rode in on them. Until they learn that lesson, its not going to be running here.
Cheers, Gene
Boo, hiss, where are the groups of objectors now?
Well me for one...
True, SETI is a 'sexy' project for geeks and sci-fi fanboys but how practical is it?
Even if this thing detects 'something' there will still be a large number of sceptics. The broadcasting 'E.T.s' had better be damn specific in their message so that it is clear to everyone on the planet that it was not naturally occuring. Otherwise it just an expensive way to piss off the religous fundementalists (and we have seen first hand what happens then!).
Also given the potential distances involved, a two-way conversion would be problematic at best.
Essentially, the best-case seems to be "We found a blip that could be something, but even if it was, it was broacast a few million years ago". Worst-case is that Mr Allen may as well wipe his backside with the banknotes.
In summary, we can all put our storm trooper costumes away. Darth Vader isnt coming to recruit anytime soon.
Personally, I feel that making sure everyone in the world has at least the basic... "Food, Water and Shelter" requirements of life would be a good first step for investment. We can explore the intriquing and unimaginable vast expanse of pratically nothing, later.
And what if they're just waiting for us to be able to deal with it.
Thus, I think the better question is not "Are we alone?" but rather "Do you REALLY think we'd be able to deal with it, right this minute, if we (on a mass scale) realized we weren't?" and the related but important "If 'they' were 'further along' than us, and not just microbes in wet sand, could we deal with that too?"
A while back I emailed some of the SETI founders about this and got back a "We have procedures in place for proper dissemination of the information if it is discovered", which says NOTHING about how we are prepared to handle the emotional/psychic impact, which cannot of course be ignored. Thus, I no longer support SETI, choosing to spend my CPU cycles on something more practical like Folding@home. Discovery that we are not alone is not "usual" news, and due to its uniqueness has a high unpredictability of mass emotional/psychic impact, and I don't believe it will be something that will be treated by publishing the results in Physical Review Letters, so to speak.
Two other quick things-
For a distantly plausible workaround to the speed-of-light problem/argument against intelligent life already being here, google Miguel Alcubierre.
One last tidbit. I read somewhere (take with a huge grain of salt of course) that "they" like our music and actually owe us a lot in royalties, and are holding onto this for now (and some other things) as a good-faith gift in the event of public contact. Wouldn't it be ironic, the RIAA being a major supporter of a public First Contact?
I don't care what the chances are of them actually finding anything. I think the fact they are doing it exmplemifies something more important and fundamentally reassuring about human society. That we can peacefully explore the Universe, whether it be by travelling in it, monitoring it's output, etc.
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
I'll use my spare cpu cycles as I damn well see fit thank you. If YOU want to do folding for cancer, go for it. I for one will continue to run seti@home because I for one see it as valueable. You clearly do not. So be it.
But don't try pushing your idea of right and wrong on me or many of the others that choose to look for ETI rather than folding for cancer.
Aliens may not be there? Well "folding" may not find a cure for cancer ("cancer" of course, being a popular turn of phrase for literally dozens of diseases - curing breast cancer may not help anyone with leukemia, but I digress). I'll "waste" my time any way I feel like.
Now, if I were to say something like "why doesn't the US spend 1 months worth of the cost of the Iraq war on cancer research and find a cure " but I would instantly be labeled a troll, so I won't.
I'll just say I urge ALL of you out there to run SOMETHING, anything, of your choice and share your spare CPU cycles for the betterment of society, be it seti@home or folding@home or something else.
Just check the holier-than-thou judgements at the door.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Well, I like folding at home too, but I wonder whether there aren't easier ways to produce a molecule that matches another molecule that you want to stop.
For example, subject a molecule generator such as: a (modifed) bacteria, to radiation to cause mutation, then selectively breed the bacteria that match best. I must admit, lots of loose ends in my idea, but you might be able to work in parallel if done right.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
They were looking for Radio waves- not radio transmissions.
Every electric device you own releases some EM pollution- and they were using some assumptions in hopes that they might stumble across a planet with lots of EM pollution.
First, it has less to do with how much philanthropy is required to win respect than it has to do with how much philanthropy is required to offset his enormous income to avoid paying taxes.
Secondly, as others have already mentioned, he could make anonymous donations rather than the ego boosting, public, "see what a great guy I am" donations.
Finally, I think a better measure of charity is the degree to which a sacrifice is made. I have a lot more respect for the single mom, working two jobs, who still manages to give $20 to a local orphanage every December 20th so some kid can have a present. When you have $50,000,000,000 in the bank, a billion dollar tax deductible donation is not going to adversely impact the lifestyle.
So, yeah, he's still evil.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
> as good as all their charitable things are, they can easily afford it,
> and more.
If it's my hard earned money, what I do with it is upto me. Nobody has an obligation to give away their money just because they can afford to, no matter what the voices in your head tell you.
> and it doesn't remove the fact they are fucking up
> the IT industry and now keeping society back
>years, maybe even decades.
Excuse me? That is *such* a blanket statement to make. But guess what? You said it yourself - IT industry. When you are in any industry, you're in the business of making money. Do not like their methods? Fight them on their turf but do not blame them for chasing profit.
You're an idiot if you think Microsoft hasn't contributed to technological progress in the IT industry. Perhaps you disagree with their methods, technology and ideas -- that does not mean they are wrong or that they are detrimental to progress.
In fact, I laud Microsoft because they have been one of the few people responsible for bringing computers to the masses. They have proven that software as an industry can sustain independently and have contributed a real lot to IT and computer science, but then you're probably too blind to see it.
Yes, they're a company that have had buggy softwares. Do you think building complex software is easy? It's a fine line between usability, security and stability and it's one that Microsoft has learnt to walk quite well. Funny, people still make fun of Microsoft products crashing but their products have become increasingly stable, reliable and secure over the years. Perfect? No. Better? Yes. Give credit where it is due.
Yes, they're guilty of a few questionable acts - but they are a business with an obligation to their share holders. You've apparently not stepped to the inside of a boardroom, so I'll not even bother telling you what or how hard business is.
And if you were a really genuine techie concerned about technology, you'd realize that progress is independent of who makes it -- it will ultimately happen no matter what. Not to mention that places like Microsoft Research quite possibly contribute much more to IT than you can ever possibly imagine.
> plus, true charity is anonymous.
Einstein, you would not know if it were anonymous.
> it's hardly altruistic (or anything remotely resembling it) when you give a
> small fraction of your wealth in exchage for having your name or
> company's name all over stuff. that's called "advertising" or "ego".
Funny, people have been doing this for ages - and yet when Bill Gates or Paul Allen does it, it's somehow wrong.
Heard of the Nobel Prize? Pulitzer Prize? Fields Medal? Guess who these are named after.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen are running a business in one industry and are using the profit they make from that to help make this world a better place. I somehow think fighting AIDS and famine is infinitely more important than writing software, but that's just me.
And I care two hoots on whether doing so boosts their ego or if they use their name -- they're helping science and society, and that is what matters.
You're being unfair. You DON'T have to give your money to ANYONE or for ANY CAUSE,
Uh, that's an extreme response. "Your money" is protected by the institution of society, the financing of which is mostly done by the middle class in the poor. Anyone who claims Bill Gates actually pays 38% of his income in taxes is a either a lying rich fuck (who doesnt believe it), or some overworked Joe Sixpack who is gullible and believes it-- and BTW watches Fox News.
Go ahead and take the "Let them eat cake" attitude. It's refreshing to hear your honesty.
They would look for potentially life-bearing star systems, and try to send a message to them - by, for example, shining a laser that's tight and powerful enough to be detected from the target, and encoding data in the frequency or amplitude of that laser.
I've made this point in past SETI threads, but nobody who favors your style of approach has given me a good answer: How do you actually accomplish that thing you just hand-waved? Put yourself in the place of the alien. Heck, if you assume there are aliens, then you are an alien to them! Plan what you just described and just imagine all the complexities you/they face actually trying to pull it off.
I mean, what does "potentially life-bearing" mean for an alien? How many light years out will they be willing to look? When they shine their very tight beam, will it really be in our direction? That is, their observations detect where Sol (or whatever star) was x years ago and their message has to be sent to where it will be in x more years. How accurate would they have to be in all those things, and yet still have beam spread and strength to detectably cover an entire solar system?
And even then, how long are they going to just spew out that energy, both in terms of pulse length and project duration? What are the odds that they'd be sending longer than the inhabited planet is behind the target star, what are the odds they're sending when the detectors are facing the right way as the planet rotates, what are the odds that the civilization is even looking for a signal at the point in time it arrives? How long are they willing to do it all and wait without a response?
I don't recall that verse.
If SETI or by any other means, intelligent (or even not) life is discovered, that pretty much erases the Bible and Jesus.
By what stretch of imagination? The owner's manual to my car says nothing about my Playstation 2, but that doesn't mean that the latter doesn't exist. The Bible is a collection of books chronicling our interaction with God, not necessarily that of other civilizations.
but would a Christian Holy War break out against the scientists,
No holy war. Such thing as evolution are infinitely debatable, since although huge mountains of evidence exist to support one train of though, there are no absolutely hard, fast facts saying "this is exactly what happened". An ET message saying "Hello, people of Earth! This is how you build a warp drive!" would be pretty impossible to deny.
or would facts in evidence cause a suppression of some religions?
Yes, but only those religions founded on the belief in a lack of ET intelligence. Although some Christians (and Muslims and Hindus and people from pretty much any religion other than Scientologists - they're into this stuff hook, line, and sinker) will freak out, the mainstreams will move onward as normal.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?