Is SETI Worth It?

njdube sent in this Space.com story about the money behind SETI that opens, "It's a risky long shot that burns up money and might never, ever pay off. So is searching for intelligent creatures on unseen worlds worth the candle? After all, aren't there better ways to use our monies and technical talents than trying to find something that's only posited to exist: sentient beings in the dark depths of space?"

Comments

S.E.T.I

[imstanny]

SETI - The result of having failed to find intelligent life on Earth.

Re:S.E.T.I

[jamstar7]

Obviously, they looked in all the wrong places. Washington DC, Hollywood...

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[BadAnalogyGuy]

OJ is futher along in finding the real killers than SETI is in finding intelligent life.

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[wwwrench]

Too true.
I think SETI is really a waste for a completely different reason. And it's basically this: what should we do if we actually did find life out there? And the sensible answer is: hide. Seriously, the chance that contact with space aliens will bring us benifits is tiny. If they have the ability to visit us, then the far more likely scenario is that they will exploit/conquer us. You just have to look at our own history of contact between various cultures to figure that out. And in this case, it would be far worse, because the difference in technology, culture would be far greater than that between say, Europeans and indigenous people in North America/Australia.

So, is it sensible to spend money looking for creatures which if we find them, we should ignore? Better to spend the money figuring out how to hide!

Re:S.E.T.I

[0xdeadbeef]

So, is it sensible to spend money looking for creatures which if we find them, we should ignore? Better to spend the money figuring out how to hide!

Yes, but first you need to prove we need to hide.

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[afaik_ianal]

Haven't you seen any sci fi movies? To be intelligent enough to travel across space, they must be willing to shower us with gifts of love and candy*.

(*) "Love and candy" in alien worlds usually takes the form of nukes and anti-matter bombs, but that's beside the point.

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[bmo]

"You just have to look at our own history of contact between various cultures to figure that out. "

I got a +5 funny before for mentioning this, but the only reason why we didn't _eat_ the conquered on a massive scale was that we recognized the conquered as our own species and have taboos about it.

What's to stop a sufficiently advanced civilization, outside of biochemical compatibility, from viewing us as "the other white meat" with fava beans and a nice chianti.

"Look. I tell you what. Those who want to can eat Johnson. And you, sir, can have my leg. And we make some stock from the Captain, and then we'll have Johnson cold for supper."

--
BMO

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[ArcherB]

First, don't misread my post and think that I am some sort of PETA-freak vegan. I love a good rib-eye as much as anyone. The Atkins diet ROX!

What's to stop a sufficiently advanced civilization, outside of biochemical compatibility, from viewing us as "the other white meat" with fava beans and a nice chianti.

I would hope that a civilization that is able to travel faster than light, that is possibly thousands to millions of years ahead of us, has grown beyond the need to eat other living things. I would assume that a species that advanced would have figured out how to make nutrition from pure energy and have it beamed directly into their green blood stream or something.

If I'm wrong, I hope that I'm not very tasty!

Re:S.E.T.I

[rekenner]

If they have the ability to visit us, then the far more likely scenario is that they will exploit/conquer us. You just have to look at our own history of contact between various cultures to figure that out. And aliens would have the same psychology as we do?

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[bmo]

"I would hope that a civilization that is able to travel faster than light, that is possibly thousands to millions of years ahead of us, has grown beyond the need to eat other living things."

Food (*cough*) for thought:

If I ate merely because I needed to fill my tummy, I'd be a vegan.

http://italianfood.about.com/od/beefbracioleetc/r/blr0228.htm

"If I'm wrong, I hope that I'm not very tasty!"

Start polluting your system with preservatives and chemicals! If they find you tasty, at least you might give them cancer!

--
BMO

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[MiniMike]

Better to hide, and then see if we don't need to (after we find something that is). The reverse doesn't work as well...

Re:S.E.T.I

[forkazoo]

What's to stop a sufficiently advanced civilization, outside of biochemical compatibility, from viewing us as "the other white meat" with fava beans and a nice chianti.

Nothing. All the folks who say "a super advanced civilisation will have evolved beyond a need to eat us" are basing that view on absolutely nothing. If we ever find an advanced extra terrestrial civilisation, it will quite possibly be so alien as to boggle the mind, so making declarations about how they couldn't behave in some particular way is pretty dubious. The could literally be so alien that it may be impossible to ever really communicate with them. Aside from eating us, they may turn out to have a fondness for geometry, and decide to reshape our planet into a perfect sphere using quantum high energy death beams for purely aesthetic reasons.

The good news is that odds are quite good that we won't be both tasty and nutritious for aliens. The biochemistry would likely turn out to be really quite different. It's even possible that exposure to our atmosphere would be instantly toxic to them, making human hunting a bothersome affair which can only be done in a bulky and cumbersome space suit. Of course, being tasty would give them some reason to keep at least some of us around for breeding stock, so as it happens, being tasty might be a best-case scenario for humanity's long term survival!

But, in my own arbitrary guestimation, I'd expect that a really advanced civilisation would have relatively little interaction with us. There are probably nearer sources of minerals and water and whatnot than flying all the way to the sol system. They'll be so far ahead of us that we won't have any scientific information that intrigues them enough to come and steal it. If they have the sort of inclinations which would result in them wiping us out on contact, they probably would have done it to themselves before becoming so advanced. We'll probably only ever see them in person if they are interested in linguistics and anthropology and literature, etc.

As for the question of funding SETI, I don't think we'll find anything, but the potential payoff is worth the cost. Continuing with my arbitrary guesses, if there are advanced civilizations out there, they are talking to each other using either very directional signals which won't ever get to us. OR, they have invented some sort of sub space radio which is completely unknown to our understanding of the universe. In either case, we won't hear anything. What's worse, if you plug what I think are plausible guesses into the drake equation, any civilizations that are out there are probably very few, and very far away. But, there is still that chance of the biggest disovery in human history. I think that's worth something.

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[Atriqus]

I think that the actual aim of SETI is lost on a lot of people. They're not looking for signals on with the intent that we'll ever meet anyone they find (not primarily anyway), they're just trying to find some sort of evidence that intelligent life exists somewhere aside from Earth. Odds are, any signal they discover will probably be a few thousand years old. By comparison of our own civilizations, the group that broadcasted that signal probably won't be around to pick up our answer when our response reaches them in a few thousand years. In the mean time, we're still in a mixed free-market economy, so when money is spent on all of those radio dishes, it puts more money in to the R&D of them. Then there's also the concept of grid computing that SETI greatly helped popularized. Even if they don't find anything, we still benefit; so yeah, it's worth it.

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[fyngyrz]

This is true, but it's only because it's a binary solution set. Until or unless SETI finds a transmission, it will have made no progress in finding one, only in not finding one.

However, once it finds one, numerous benefits accrue; some certain, some with varying degrees of probability.

First of all, we learn that we're not alone, that we're not unique. Numerous modes of thinking posit that we are alone, or not, and those modes will receive solid underpinnings instead of speculation. This has general value for future inferences, even for current inferences where confirmation agrees. Like most of science, where this may lead may not be immediately obvious, but again like most of science, the odds are high that it will lead somewhere productive. And this consequence is certain. For instance, it would mean a great deal to me to have something I consider to be extremely likely but impossible for me to personally confirm, confirmed by objective facts.

Second, it will have identified one of two things for us: Either we have revealed a civilization that is just going through radio and is feeling pretty confident about itself and others, or it will have revealed a civilization that is much further along, and is interested in contact. The former would be a pretty huge co-incidence, because broadcast radio is inefficient (witness our going to cable to preserve bandwidth, optical to increase it, satellite to ground to bolster reliability and coverage, various beam methods like lasers and tight focus radio to save energy and achieve reliability), so the odds strongly favor the latter - the 100 year or so window we used broadcast radio is closing as we consider this today. So most likely, we'll have found life that is much further along than we are technologically, and looking for other life. It isn't a huge stretch to assume that such a find would come hand in hand with new technology for us. After all, if they want us to hear them, either they want to talk, or they want to get rid of us. It seems like a lot of work to try to get rid of things you don't even know are there, doesn't it? Inefficient. And it doesn't fit the mold... if they're worried about us, then letting us know they are there in such a way that they can't tell if we know or not is imprudent. So again, the odds fall on the side of life that can and is willing to benefit us.

Third (and we're getting lower on the probability scale here, but still) the transmission itself may contain immediately useful information for us. It could be anything. Make widgets like this. Don't go to the 3rd planet of Beta Centauri. Cut it out with the nukes, assholes. Efficient space drive drive works like so. Your Aishwara Rai, can we buy her? 42.

Lastly, and least likely, we could be handed a paradigm shift. Antigravity. FTL travel of any flavor. Additional physics. How to clean up our atmosphere. Things we cannot even vaguely imagine.

All of these things only require reception. If we add transmission back to a known source of an intelligent signal, now we're talking interaction. That could be wild as well.

There may be gold mines for linguistics; for biology; for physics and all the sciences that are really corners of physics (chem, electronics, nuclear, etc.)

And in the meantime, SETI does something else for us. It serves as a focal point for a certain type of hope, a bright optimism, that I would really rather not see go away.

So if you really want to cut funds, I suggest that the place to do it is in funding, oh, I don't know, how about a certain war in the middle east? Maybe quit funding the "drug war" against our own citizens? Either of those would benefit most people (not arms manufacturers or those in the jobs that have sprung up for our most recent go at prohibition, of course, but I guess I don't really give a darn about those particular people for some reason.)

Sure would be nice that if we did find other life, that we weren't quite so involved in trying to kill and/or re

Re:S.E.T.I

[cheater512]

Depends on how intelligent they are.

If they are around our intelligence (+ or - 30 IQ points) then god help us.
If they are smarter then they would realize that they have a entire uninhabited galaxy to rape and pillage.

You've been watching far too many movies.

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[Pseudonym]

And it's basically this: what should we do if we actually did find life out there?

Essentially nothing for a few million years, since they can't get to us and we can't get to them.

In the mean time, we'd rid the world of xenophobia practically overnight. "Well, they may be darkies, but at least they're human..."

Re:S.E.T.I

[jimicus]

After all, if they want us to hear them, either they want to talk, or they want to get rid of us. It seems like a lot of work to try to get rid of things you don't even know are there, doesn't it? Inefficient. And it doesn't fit the mold...

Dude, haven't you seen Mars Attacks?

Re:S.E.T.I

[MaskedSlacker]

This isn't really an accurate characterization. A more correct way of stating it would be to say that all biological activity on this planet is characterized by reproductive rates exceeding what the available resources can sustain--leading to conflict over said resources. That realisation, courtesy of Thomas Malthus, is really the foundation of Darwin's theory of evolution (well, that and the notion of trait variation and heritability of traits, but whatever).

Re:S.E.T.I

[SetupWeasel]

We should not be trying to play the lottery with our limited scientific money.

So many slashdot readers and even astronomers buy into this because of fanciful dreams of Wookies, Klingons, and Monoliths, but in the real world, the cost far outweighs any possible benefit. The odds are low. Hell, the odds are almost negligible. This is not a matter of not trying to find life elsewhere. This is a matter of funding better science to do it. We should work on propulsion, communication, space travel. In its current state, NASA is nearly worthless. Maybe we should focus on that.

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[Capt'n Hector]

If they succeeded in becoming the dominant species on their respective planet, they're probably just as ruthless as we are.

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[ultranova]

And aliens would have the same psychology as we do?

Actually, in all likelyhood... yes.

Any advanced alien race must be a pack-forming species. The reason is simple: a race of loners would never manage to get culture going, since that requires communication between individuals. It would never reach the stars; in fact it would never even reach metal-working.

Living in a pack puts certain demands on psychology. Pack members can't just pursuse their own interests, but must take each other into account, if the pack is to function. In other words, pack-forming animals have an evolutive pressure towards morality. This pressure is made ever stronger the higher technology rises, because any misbehavior is likely to result in far direr consequences when the misbehaving person has access to bombs than if he only had access to stone clubs. That is the real reason why the current society is nicer than, say, the Roman Empire: we aren't nicer people, we simply don't have a choice.

People always go on about how aliens can be totally incomprehensible to us, but that is just plain untrue. They operate on the same reality, under the same laws of physics and logic, as we do. If they are succesfull enough to reach the stars, then their psychology must conform to those laws; and that makes it similar to ours. Self-preservation, reproduction, social interaction: those are the things any succesfull intelligent species must base their psyche on. There may be more, of course, but these are the absolute minimum concepts all alien minds must have.

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[pipingguy]

Hey, some people think that we are only a hyper-realistic, self-aware video game simulation existing in some uber alien kid's computer (no doubt located in a basement somewhere else in the metaverses). Maybe someday he'll reset out of "hell-in-a-handbasket" mode after getting bored of toying with us.

But why would he? He's probably in fits of giggles watching us do it to our own puny software simulations of reality.

Re:S.E.T.I

[fyngyrz]

All science is lottery. Put forth an idea; test the idea. That's all SETI is. More science. And, like most science, it bears fruit. Distributed computing. Hope. Perhaps the knowledge we are not alone. Try to focus on where we're actually wasting money - for instance, it doesn't help us to continue to shoot Iraqis.

Re:S.E.T.I

[fyngyrz]

I will grant you that both political and religious entities may act out in extremely negative ways if such a discovery were made. However, I don't think that's sufficient reason to turn away from asking the question. If we're to grow, we have to face reality at some point, and I am of the opinion that sooner is better than later. Religion's is definitely losing its grip; I'm a completely "out" atheist, and they suffer me to live. :-)

Re:S.E.T.I

[fyngyrz]

Don't worry. Nothing we've ever sent by accident is likely to get to another star system in receivable form. If we want someone to hear us, we're going to have to send a lot more powerful and directional signal than anything we've done so far, and that includes OTH HF radar, probably the biggest signal RF we've ever made. It'll take an antenna built in space with a gain like we've never even come close to, in order to make a radio signal arrive ten light years from here in a form that is still intelligible to something pointed right at us with the intent of hearing it. Never mind a few hundred light years, which is a more realistic distance.

For that matter, SETI really needs an antenna array built in space with tens of thousands of miles between antennas to do a decent job. Make a great space telescope (in the RF portion of the spectrum) too.

Re:S.E.T.I

[grumbel]

### Nothing. All the folks who say "a super advanced civilisation will have evolved beyond a need to eat us" are basing that view on absolutely nothing.

How about basing it on humanity? We don't catch free animals in the nature, by far most of our food comes from farms and not even from normally evolved animals, but animals breed over centuries to fit human needs. Natural animals just aren't good enough and any reasonably advanced civilization will be able to produce better food then they can catch in the solar system. Unless the alien civilization is really weird, they really shouldn't have a need to feed on us, since food is a pretty easy problem to solved compared to inter planetary space travel.

If they wipe us out it will be much more likely by accident, illnesses our immune system can't or stuff like that.

However, since distances in space will make it a long trip for aliens there is a good chance that we won't see them anytime soon anyway.

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[xevioso]

The issue is that Moore's law also applies to SETI, but in a weird way. Computing power to search and analyze transmissions is increasing at a rate similar to computing power int he normal world, which means that the frequencies and areas being searched will increase dramatically over time. There was an interesting graph I saw by a SETI proponent that showed the amount of sky being searched, the rate of computing power increase, and assumptions about the number of radio-transmitting civilizations out there over time. Basically, if there are even 10 civilizations in the galaxy that we *could" detect because they have been transmitting, we should actually detect one of them some time in the next 30-40 years. If there is one, then the time goes out to 60-70 years. If there's ~100, the time is something like 20-30 years. So we should know one way or the other within a few decades, so I'm willing to wait. If we continue on in this vein and we DONT find anything, then some of our initial assumptions are very much wrong, which would be informative in any event. So, I say we continue, at least for a few decades. If we don't find anything by, say, 2050, cut funding!

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[bluephone]

Actually, when you think of everything a race has to overcome to travel the vastness of interstellar space, once you hjave thos eresoures there's little benefit to smashing puny humans. Water? Plenty of it in comets, etc, and you don't haev to pull it out of a gravity well. Ditto for metals and anything else you'd mine. Food? Well, assuming you biochemistry is compatible (a HUGE assumption), why would you expend insane amounts of energy traversing the stars to get here for food? Expend that on growing it closer to you.

Also, it'll take then most likely centuries at minimum to hear our radio broadcasts. Fear of conquest is even less likely than finding an alien signal currently.

Re:S.E.T.I

[Down_in_the_Park]

I don't know who thought, that this is insightful, it's not. How do you want to hide, if you don't know what's the technical abilities of your "enemy"? What is the most important thing in war? Exactly, reconnaissance is what gives you an advantage.

There are a lots of reasons to look for E.T.s, but if you only see it from the angle of self protection, you really want to have S.E.T.I up and running as good as possible. I much prefer to know that there is a superior aggressive Alien race living 35 light years away (and pack up my stuff and run), than finding out that there are aggressive in the moment they arrive here and asking me whether I would like to play hide and seek...

Re:S.E.T.I

[fyngyrz]

SETI can never come to a conclusion until we find the aliens.

Um-hmmm. And Fusion reactor research can never come to a conclusion until or unless we get a fusion reactor. Unless they try for a really, really long time, can't do it, and simply give up. And cancer research can never come to a conclusion until or unless we get a cure for cancer. Unless they try for a really, really long time, can't do it, and simply give up. And AI research can never come to a conclusion until or unless we get an artificially intelligent computer or other construct. Unless they try for a really, really long time, can't do it, and simply give up. This is definitely science. What you postulate is simply cowardice.

Re:S.E.T.I

[Non-Huffable Kitten]

Good point. Consider though that they will probably have trancended evolution and "rewritten" themselves. Though I'll be optimistic and say that a civilization advanced enough to do this would rewrite themselves to have more altruism, not less :)

By the way, I always found this silly in most sci-fi... Advanced technology but no changes to psychology.

IMHO the posters talking about conquering have watched/played too many movies/computer games. Heck, even we humans are already starting to realize that conquering is a bit pointless.

Re:S.E.T.I

[fyngyrz]

Not only are the things you listed more scientifically understood than alien lifeforms (We don't know if they exist at all. Period)

We don't know if workable fusion reactors can exist, either. Nor cures for cancer. Nor AI's. That was the point. Maybe you need another cup of coffee.

I would much prefer to see money poured into the subject matters you listed, than in finding that cute little ET. At least I know what I am paying for.

Yes, so? What's your problem? SETI is funded by donations. Just don't donate to them, donate to someone else, and you can see your money go anywhere you like. In the meantime, what business is it of yours where I put my money? I don't recall delegating any authority to you.

Re:S.E.T.I

[Epistax]

err.. what? Can't get your imagination going?

What about a race of loner sentients where the only interaction ever is to mate, and the parents (or parent) to teach, and that's it period. Maybe their biology makes them forget language at all times except while offspring is around to pass it on. Sure, it'd take a considerable amount of time to develop, but it could. I don't see as a giant leap to think about a race who do not directly intercommunicate, but still assist each other by chance/coincidence. Given a billion years, sure, what's to keep them from having a space ship with a million residents with no language to call their own, no communication, and people just fill a role as suits their interests, maybe given by their biology.

I mean gee, perhaps the parents can even implant the morality in the offspring's genetic code, and give them a calling in life. This would be sort of like a cell telling an offspring cell what its role is, and any communication after that is just chemical.

Anyway you could hypothesize scenarios where a drastically advanced race has no real society or culture, or anything we'd consider a society or culture. I chalk up any "it wouldn't work!" claims to the self centeredness that develops for us. I mean look at my description, I'm talking about what they don't have. That's because my view is skewed to our norm and I can't adequately explain something I can't comprehend.

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[darkwhite]

Your attitude is stupefyingly anti-scientific.

The best science is always done by people who don't know if it's going to work. That's because it has by far the biggest pay-off in case of success. SETI's hypotheses are no more extravagant than those of thousands of other successful scientific efforts.

If you were a scientist put in position to pursue a novel hypothesis that requires a substantial amount of work to prove, you would give up and get nothing done.

Yeah, what a crock.

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[Digital Vomit]

Ah, the old "religions will crumble if we find intelligent life elsewhere" bit.

How interesting it would be if we finally make contact with an alien race and the first thing they ask us is whether or not The Creator has sent a "Messiah" to us yet.

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[Magnus Pym]

Christian values are responsible for "humanity"?

So the civilizations that existed in Greece, China, Japan, India before Christianity existed were devoid of any humanity, I presume.

When I read comments like this, I understand why Bush and his neocons keep getting elected in the US.

Magnus.

Re:S.E.T.I

[nwbvt]

"Um-hmmm. And Fusion reactor research can never come to a conclusion until or unless we get a fusion reactor."

Sure they can, as long as they follow the scientific process and break it down into smaller testable parts (as opposed to the SETI process which would involve simply putting a bunch of things together in a box, looking for a fusion reaction, and if it doesn't occur move on to another combination).

"And cancer research can never come to a conclusion until or unless we get a cure for cancer. Unless they try for a really, really long time, can't do it, and simply give up. And AI research can never come to a conclusion until or unless we get an artificially intelligent computer or other construct."

And this just proves you don't know what you are talking about. We get better treatments for cancer and more advanced AI applications each year. You want to know why? Researchers in those fields are using the scientific method (well, cancer researchers are, AI is more of a mathematical discipline so its approach is rather different, but still not the pseudo-science SETI method).

Re:S.E.T.I

[s4m7]

I wish I could mod you up.

SETI is funded by donations.

This seems to be the most important aspect of this discussion. The total of SETI's 'wasteful' expenses is like 14 million a year. 3/4 of that is privately donated, with 1/4 coming from competitively-awarded NASA Astrobiology research grants.

What are these supoosed "better ways" to look for alien life?

Re:S.E.T.I

[Lemmy Caution]

No, Christianity is responsible for a very specific ideology called "humanism."

Other civilizations produced different ideologies, many of which we might see as humanistic in their own way, and often for similar reasons. Buddhism and Islam were also, in their ways, "leveling" religions, appealing to masses of people by removing social strata.

The instinct to confuse the ideology of humanism with any and all expressions of goodness and kindness is only a demonstration of its pervasiveness as a value system in the west.

Re:S.E.T.I

[2short]

"SETI systematically scans the entire sky in every direction, and even in failure to locate signals finds other astronomical events, and provides statistical upper bounds on the possible existence of broadcasting civilizations.""

It provides an upper bound for the number of civilizations that fit in those criteria and an unknown number of others, because we only have one example of such a civilization to extrapolate from. An idea of how unlikely it is that there are more than a certain number of things in a category whose definition is unclear isn't knowledge. Let's say we know there's a less than 1 in 20 chance that there are any civilizations within 1000 light years of us that are enough like us that SETI could detect them (noting that we have no idea what the range of possible civilizations is, so we know nothing about number civilizations total). Is it all that useful to get that down to a 1 in 50 chance? Because then we would know... still nothing.

"In addition, SETI is cheap, often piggybacking search onto the back of other funded projects,"
Wait, I thought other astronomical events were being detected by SETI? Real astronomy is a fine thing; I'm all for it.
Let's just focus on analyzing signals for evidence of intelligence; that's the stupid part to spend money on. As you point out, it's not my money, which is why I just rail about it on slashdot, not lobby to cut off it's funding.

"Who knows. Maybe SETI will spot an inbound asteroid 30 years in advance of impact and give us time to nudge it."
Asteroids don't broadcast radio signals, and certainly not ones encoding intelligently produced data.

"They're the only ones trying to look at the whole sky."
What an idiotic claim. Before engaging in' defense of SETI, there's a topic you should have some familiarity with. It's called Astronomy. It is studied by people called Astronomers. You should look into it.

Re:S.E.T.I

[david.given]

The total of SETI's 'wasteful' expenses is like 14 million a year.

$14 million dollars would fund the Iraq war for 88 minutes (based on the official Pentagon 'burn rate' estimate of $6.8 billion a month).

Madlibs!

[Silverlancer]

Isn't _______ (space program, particle physics, string theory, insert science program that isn't directly applicable to everyday life here) totally useless and a huge waste of money? This money could be better used elsewhere!

Re:Madlibs!

[diamondmagic]

Space programs are what have given us many daily-use things, and even if they were not invented for space, they were improved by space research. Stuff like space blankets, radio transmission, insulation, solar power, energy use, ect.

We study space because usually (I hope) the same physics laws that apply to space apply to everything on the Earth, too. Knowing how particles collide out there could help us figure out a safe source of energy here.

Not to mention, artificial satellites drive television syndication, GPS, monitor ground conditions, and other things (secret government projects). Stop and think about the number of slashdot articles that have been posted about a new use for space technology.

Re:Madlibs!

[scottv67]

Saying "why is Benjamin Franklin bothering to fly that kite, what good is this 'electricity' he talks about?"...but it's good folklore that makes the point.

Lightning bolts I have observed over the course of forty years: 1000+
Aliens/alien spacecraft/alien civilizations I have observed over the course of forty years: 0

Re:Madlibs!

[SnoopJeDi]

Number of cosmological formations you've observed: 0

I'm intrigued by your black-white interpretation of the universe and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

However, I have not seen you, so you therefore do not exist.
(does that mean your newsletter is ghost-written?)

Re:Madlibs!

[darthflo]

if we took the 600 billion (approx.) so far spent on space and instead spent it directly on research, how would it compare?

We would've probably gotten more. But there's another question:
If we took the trillions ($800bn spent on Afghanistan and Iraq alone, estimates range up to $2.4tn (some $8'000 per American citizen) for Afghanistan and Iraq in a ten-year window) spent on Bushes and instead spent it directly on research, how would it compare?
As opposed to the space programme, no great discoveries should and are expected. It's pretty hard to even find a reference point for comparison as the only direct effect of the U.S' government's warmongering seems to be anti-americanism throughout the world (including most intelligent americans ). It's four times as expensive in an I-don't-know-how-much shorter timeframe. Seriously, if you're concerned about what's being done with your tax money, rage against the military, not science funding.

3 million dollars per year is a pittance

[hlomas]

Three million dollars a year is a small price to pay for the chance at discovering another sentient race in the galaxy, even if it is a longshot. It is one cent per year per individual.

Re:3 million dollars per year is a pittance

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Three million dollars a year is a small price to pay for the chance at discovering another sentient race in the galaxy, even if it is a longshot. It is one cent per year per individual."

I have a similar opinion. I'm a big fan of diversity when it comes to programs like this. Challenges bring innovation, right? They didn't have a lot of money, SETI@Home is born. It becomes popular, we start seeing more distributed computing apps like Folding@Home. Would that have come about anyway? That's possible. Heck, I may not even be correct about Folding@Home's origins. But I do wonder how many people picked up Folding@Home after playing around with SETI@Home. If I'm right that one influenced the other, then it stands to reason that investment in SETI also indirectly supported cancer and disease research. You never know when an advancement in one field will cause an advancement in another.

So I say yes, it is worthwhile. Money can always be 'better spent', but hindsight is 20/20. Never know until you try.

Re:3 million dollars per year is a pittance

[Grave]

I keep hearing that argument, but why do we always assume alien life must be either micro-organisms or far beyond our understanding? Given that a decade ago, we didn't know of too many (any?) extrasolar planets, yet now we're realizing how common they are, isn't it likely that life is pretty common too? And thus, it's highly possible that other planets with evolved, sentient life may well be along similar technological paths as us, and at some prior time (or even now) used radio transmission. Sure the message will take a long time to get here, but if we're not listening it'll take even longer for another transmission message to be receivable.

Re:3 million dollars per year is a pittance

[Boronx]

3 million dollars? Compare that to the Iraq war. If we'd directed that money towards, SETI, we could have discovered 100,000 times as many alien civilizations as we have.

Re:3 million dollars per year is a pittance

[fyngyrz]

Completely wrong. When we try to talk to apes, do we use laser encoded packets? No, we use the simplest symbols we can in a way that we think is most likely they will have a chance to understand.

If advanced life isn't using radio for themselves, that does not in any way imply that they would not see the value in using to talk to beings at our approximate level of development.

The only "narrow" window is for accidental recovery of radio signals, and that is most unlikely anyway due to the distances involved and what happens to radio signals over distance. If we hear someone, I'd lay good money that it'll be someone who was intentionally making it relatively easy to do so. And that they are, in fact, more advanced than we are.

Depends on the viewpoint

[athdemo]

If you're willing to look at it as an investment of sorts, and that the potential "payout" is absolutely enormous, I'd say it's a fair deal. Not something at the top of the list to keep in a depression or anything, though.

SETI is cheap

[dlleigh]

The press spends more money covering SETI than the scientists spend actually doing it.
Just because something involves "space" doesn't mean that it has a NASA-like budget.

Hey, it worked in Star Trek

[danbert8]

Didn't you see First Contact? As soon as we find aliens, world peace occurs. Can't you please think of the children?

Is it worth it?

[ackthpt]

Of course it's worth it. Just think of all that alien anime we're missing out on!

The first trolls failed to RTFA

[ducomputergeek]

It's written by Seth Shostak, who has been one of the people involved with SETI for a number of years and is in favor of continuing the research. Last time I checked SETI is now a non-profit that uses donations to fund their research. If that's what people want to donate their money to and think it is worth while, then let it continue.

Summary

[boron boy]

Yeah it's not practical, yeah it's expensive, but damn, if it pays off, it pays off big time. Besides, it's not like we're asking you to pay for it, SETI runs off private money.

Personally I think they'll have more of a chance in the fledgling field of optical seti, where they're looking for aliens pointing laser beams at us... yes really.

Worth it... depends

[ArcherB]

Is SETI worth it?

That single part question requires a multipart answer.

First, SETI is extremely worth it, without a doubt. It seeks to answer the biggest question in history, "Are we alone?" While SETI will never prove that ET life does NOT exist, it might prove that it does. That will be the largest discovery in the history of man... BY FAR!

However, that said, we could be talking about civilizations that are millions of years ahead of us. Think about that, one million years. How far have we come in a million years? Do you think that if primate-pre-man were looking for us a million years ago, he'd know to look for radio waves? Of course not! Hell, we didn't know about radio a mere 200 years ago. So, do you really think that a civilization that advanced uses radio? I'm going to guess that they don't. I'm sure they would have perfected something else by now. Something like quantum entanglement or something (has anyone clocked the speed on that?) that we would never think to look for. Well, not for another several hundred thousand years anyway.

So, I think SETI is wasting their time looking for radio waves. Not only is a long shot to find ET life, but multiply that by finding ET life that happened to be using radio at a time that matches how far they are away (if they are 1000 light years away, they would have had to be using radio 1000 years ago). If such a civilization is 950 years ahead of us, we still would not be able to detect them. (That's still a long time in technical evolutionary terms. Think of where we were around 1050!)

First I think that SETI should broaden the search. They should be the Search for Extra Terrestrial Life... or SETL (pronounced Settle... fitting isn't it?) I feel that SETI's money could be better spent looking for any life at all, not just intelligent life. Once that is found, branch out and look for the smart stuff. They could start by looking for planets that could support life, starting right here in our own solar system. I want to see a mission to Europa and Titan that look for signs of microbial life. Europa's ice is supposed to be churning. Could we just look for some that has been churned up to the surface? Why wait for a grand ice burrowing submarine mission that cuts through miles of ice and hopes to find water. Why not put the money toward some kind of mission to land there and look around. Move from there to try to bring back a sample. (Sorry to get OT, but that's just an example.) Yes, I know that SETI is not NASA, but some of that radio renting money could be spent on lobbying and public service campaigns that could do much more that trying to see if a star in Orion is listening to BobFM (more music, less talk!)

Well, that's my $0.02, since you asked and all.

Re:Worth it... depends

[Alascom]

The whole point of SETI is that they are listening for INTELLIGENT life, not any life. How would you detect an amoeba 1000 light years away? If its intelligent, no matter how advanced beyond us, they almost certainly use electromagnetic transmissions for something, even if its not communication. The 'signal' we might detect might be radiated from any number of types of devices that an advanced race may have. The whole point is radio emissions ARE detectable over long distance, whereas life in general is not.

Just because another intelligent race is 1,000,000 years more advanced than us, doesn't mean they stop using the fundamental properties of the universe, like electromagnetic radiation.

How long ago did Humans discover fire? When do you expect us to stop using it because we are "too advanced" ??

Re:Worth it... depends

[ArcherB]

How would you detect an amoeba 1000 light years away?

The same way you detect an intelligent civilization that does NOT use radio. You literally look for them. What if you took... I don't know, say 50% of the resources that SETI uses and invest that into planet finding telescopes. Eventually, provided more discoveries lead to more funding, we will be able to actually SEE planets from other solar systems. We can see the signs of life on earth from space. Given the technology, why couldn't we see if life exists elsewhere. I think we have a much better chance at finding a planet with oceans of green algae than one that watches TV.

Or, like I said, we travel in our own solar system and check here. There is much more life in the universe than intelligent life.

How long ago did Humans discover fire? When do you expect us to stop using it because we are "too advanced" ??

Not all at once, no. Currently, we use fire to heat water that turns turbines and produces electricity. It is inefficient and dirty. It is slowly being replaced by wind, solar and nuclear. So, eventually, we won't use fire to generate electricity.
We currently use fire to drive the internal combustion engine. Eventually, we'll all have electric cars (or something) that doesn't use fire to make it go.
Many years ago, we used fire to heat our homes. Many homes today use electric heat. GWBush's house uses geothermal heat to heat and cool his house.

So yeah, eventually fire will be replaced, one use at a time, and be seen and a naturally occurring menace.

How much would you pay?!

[the_skywise]

Let's say we not only find intelligent life but that we can communicate with them and they have the answers to all our problems...

Would it be worth it then for the relatively small amount of resources we're putting into this now...

But don't answer just yet!

What if they they give us the ability to travel in space, thus increasing our resources greatly so we can solve even MORE problems we didn't know we had!?!

How much would you pay for that? Would that be worth all the effort and dreaming we do now?

Or will you take what's in the magic box?

Re:How much would you pay?!

[scottv67]

Let's say we not only find intelligent life but that we can communicate with them and they have the answers to all our problems...

What if that "intelligent life" looks at us the same way we look at cows grazing in a grassy field ("Beef...it's what's for dinner!")?

Excellent logic

[mohjlir]

If Christopher Columbus followed the same reasoning (don't look for something that might not exist), where would you live today? The most rewarding of all discoveries are found by exploring the unknown, with no guarantee of reward.

The problem is that SETI is broken.

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

The truth of the matter is that we have no serious SETI effort.

All current SETI activity is built on the assumption that someone is trying to talk to us. Our detection capability is pretty much limited to an alien civilization already knowing we exist and directing extremely powerful, focused broadcasts directly at Earth.

Basically, given our current SETI programs, we couldn't detect Earth's civilization even if we were in the next star system over. We leak a lot of signals, but over vast interstellar distances these signals are weak, can be lost in background noise, and would require a huge antenna or array of antennas to receive. In other words, the we depend on aliens having their own SETI that is vastly more advanced than our own.

A real SETI project would cost many orders of magnitude more, and would require radio telescopes many orders of magnitude more sensitive than we have now. We're talking something on the level of making a crater miles across and making it into a radio dish. Arecibo is puny in comparison to what we need.

Blanketing an area the size of Rhode Island with a dish array might also work (though it would have to be very, very precisely controlled).

Any serious SETI effort that hopes to find someone that doesn't know we're here already and wants to talk to us will cost many many billions of dollars.

Entertainment vs. SETI vs. Coffee vs. whatever

[justsomecomputerguy]

There are soooo.... MANY other things we could could spend three million a year on.

And in fact WE DO!

HUNDREDS of Millions a year on Video Games, Movies, Sporting events

HUNDREDS of Millions a year on "Gourmet" Coffee.

Not to mention how much is spent on Drugs, Sex and Rock and Roll.

Instead of that we could be spending that on medical research, feeding the poor, funding education, etc...

BUT we don't. So, as long as we're "letting" truly HUGE amounts of money be spent by society on "mindless pursuits", why not let a small section of society spend a RELATIVELY SMALL amount of money on a totally useless, wasteful, studid, wonderful, amazing search for life on other planets.

So, unless and until the majority of society is willing to de-fund ALL the sports, entertainment, gourmet coffee, (keep inserting names of more "non-essentials" here) hands off SETI!

Yes, there are much better ways to spend our money

[nazgul000]

After all, aren't there better ways to use our monies and technical talents than trying to find something that's only posited to exist: sentient beings in the dark depths of space?"

Yes, we should instead use our monies and technical talents to engage in devotional activities that venerate something else that is only posited to exist: our magical sky grandpa. Then, we should use our monies and technical talents to build weapons to kill the people whose understanding of the magical sky grandpa differs in various insignificant ways from our own.

Reminds me of....

[edwardpickman]

This reminds me of a running argument I have with my retired father. He complains about NASA being a waste of his tax dollars while he sits in front of a satelite TV. Refuses to see the irony.

I'd say it depends on who you ask...

[Swift Kick]

The article is a nice attempt at arguing that 'investing in SETI' can prove to be useful 'down the road' by using some examples of how the curious and inquisitive minds of the past yielded immense discoveries and scientific progress that benefit us all, but it's akin to comparing apples to oranges.

The pragmatist in me says that SETI is a curious way for a few people to spend their time looking for signs of life 'somewhere out there' in the Universe, but it has no practical use.
I mean, honestly, let's assume that tomorrow, we capture a signal from an alien civilization. Finally, the answer to 'Are we alone in the Universe?' is answered, great. Then what? Chances are that the transmission is (by the time we received it) hundreds or thousands of years old. During that time, the civilization that sent it could have vanished for a number of reasons, of which we'd have no clue about.

If anything, such a discovery would only lead to more problems, since in one single swoop, a number of major religious beliefs would be shattered, therefore leaving a bunch of pissed-off fundamentalists in a tizzy. The best and brightest would be infinitely pleased with such a discovery, but unfortunately, they're a nearly insignificant minority compared to the idiot masses.

The bottom line is that if the SETI folks want to spend their time listening to space static or looking up at the stars, let them. It's their project, and if they can find the people to fund them, more power to them. If someday they find messages from 'little green/alien men', great. I'd be willing to wager that none of us will be around to congratulate them.

SETI looks for obsolete technology

[Animats]

One serious problem with SETI is that it looks only for obsolete forms of modulation. Almost all the SETI efforts are looking for "carriers", signals that are mostly wasted energy. AM and FM broadcast radio, and analog TV, have strong carriers. Almost nothing else does any more. There are more efficient ways to synch up the receiver. The strong-carrier systems are being phased out. In a few decades, nobody on Earth will be sending out strong carriers.

SETI is thus looking for civilizations in their first century of radio. The odds of finding an intelligent signal with current approaches is low.

The problem with looking for complex signals, like digital TV, is that they look like noise. Imagine some alien civilization receiving a DTV signal. It's quite possible that some of a a DTV signal might make it to a nearby star; terrestrial DTV is broadcast with megawatt power. But it will probably get there below the noise threshold. You can find a dumb carrier well below the noise threshold, because it's so repetitive. You may not be able to read the modulated information, but you can tell there's a carrier. But an encoded digital signal below the noise threshold just looks like noise.

There are digital signals designed for reception below the noise threshold; GPS is encoded for that. But the data rate is low and the redundancy is high. That's not true of DTV.

One can imagine an alien civilization finally figuring out they're getting something from Earth, building a big receiving antenna in their outer system to get a clean signal, and then trying to figure out how to decompress the thing. At least they don't have to crack DRM encryption first.

money and logic

[drDugan]

Logical arguements have almost no effect on how money is distributed: federal money, internal funds in a company, or personal wealth spread broadly across society.

Meta to discussion: who is this "we" you speak of?

[phunctor]

I'm depressed that nobody is challenging the paradigm that "we" should decide whether SETI or anything else for that matter is "worthwhile". The mere effort presumes the existence of one true value system that trumps all others. Jihad, anybody?

How about Bob and Carol spend their money on SETI, Ted spends his on protein folding, and Alice spends hers on beer? Because it's their money and their choice.

"Should" expresses a moral judgement. When collectivists use it they are advocating, in the end, unlimited social violence against those who will not comply. Pol Pot wan't bugfuck crazy, he was just consistent.

--
phunctor

Re:The gods must be crazy too

[JoshJ]

I'd be one of the first in line to support a proposal to take all the profits and money that the Vatican (among others) has accumulated and direct it towards scientific research. An excellent point.

Re:Find a cure for cancer first

[clarkkent09]

You can't fix everything by throwing enough CPU cycles at it. Someone has to figure out how to apply those cycles to the problem first. Sifting through the SETI data happens to be a good problem for this kind of approach. If you can write a program that will find a cure for cancer given enough computing power, I'm sure people would be happy to donate it.

Re:Find a cure for cancer first

[scottv67]

OTOH, cancer and AIDS research appears to me to be amply funded even given the scope of those problems.

You'll feel that way until your mom/sister/gf/wife gets breast cancer, loses her hair to chemo and then loses part or all of her breast(s) to surgery. After that happens, you'll wonder why we don't have better chemo treatments (ones that don't make you go bald) or why we need to hack off big lumps of flesh to make sure the cancer doesn't come back. I guarantee that you'll think that cancer research needs more funding and that searching for aliens suddenly doesn't seem so important.

Compare the costs.

[Dukaso]

Let me put it like this: SETI costs us, at most, $5,000,000 a year to fund. The war against Boogiemen, in Iraq alone, is costing us ~$116,750,000,000 a year to fund. SETI's lifetime cost thus far has been 115,000,000 (assuming 5million/year. 5mil is the most it costs per year, 4 million the least) Mathtime! 115,000,000 / 116,750,000,000 = 0.000985010707 Yes, the lifetime cost of SETI has been but 0.000985010707% of the cost of ONE YEAR in Iraq. .001% of the cost of one year of a bullshit war to fund a search for proof that we're not alone in the universe? Hell yes. Hell Yes Hell Fucking Yes Sources: http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_faq.html http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Cost-of-War/Cost-of-War-3.html

Compare the costs (and formatting!)

[Dukaso]

Let me put it like this:

SETI costs us, at most, $5,000,000 a year to fund.
The war against Boogiemen, in Iraq alone, is costing us ~$116,750,000,000 a year to fund.
SETI's lifetime cost thus far has been 115,000,000 (assuming 5million/year. 5mil is the most it costs per year, 4 million the least)

Mathtime! 115,000,000 / 116,750,000,000 = 0.000985010707

Yes, the lifetime cost of SETI has been but 0.000985010707% of the cost of ONE YEAR in Iraq.

.001% of the cost of one year of a bullshit war to fund a search for proof that we're not alone in the universe?
Hell yes.

Hell
Yes

Hell
Fucking
Yes

Sources:
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_faq.html
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Cost-of-War/Cost-of-War-3.html

Re:Compare the costs (and formatting!)

[Tomfrh]

Is that .001 dollars or .001 cents?

Re:Compare the costs (and formatting!)

[noidentity]

Mathtime! 115,000,000 / 116,750,000,000 = 0.000985010707

Yes, the lifetime cost of SETI has been but 0.000985010707% of the cost of ONE YEAR in Iraq.

One percent equals one hundredth, so the real answer is closer to one tenth of one percent: 0.0985% (hate to correct you, since your overall point I very much agree with)

Oh, come on, you're missing the big one.

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Weather satellites. You know, the ones that can give you many days' advance warning of hurricanes, so that the death count is in the tens instead of the thousands.

Re:Meta to discussion: who is this "we" you speak

[evilviper]

"Should" expresses a moral judgement. When collectivists use it they are advocating, in the end, unlimited social violence against those who will not comply.

Making a moral judgment about how someone spends money is perfectly fine. We make moral judgments about government spending all the time.

Nobody here or anywhere else has advocated the use of force, or anything else, to STOP someone from doing so. If something is a horrible waste, publicly shaming them usually works just fine, and if not, oh well, move on to the next one.

This "Jihad" you speak of is entirely in your own head.

Re:Meta to discussion: who is this "we" you speak

[donaldm]

If you RTFA the Government donation "was" prior to 1993 was approx 3 cents for every person in the US. After 1993 Government spending on SETI is "zero", so all monies donated to SETI is by private individuals. There are many ways of contributing, one would be to donate money, the other donate a portion of your PC clock cycles and therefore electricity which someone will have to pay for eventually. In some way this is like "Folding at Home" except there are more perceived tangible results to be had but you still have to make a decision to provide the service, however like SETI no one forces you. Basically it is your choice your money and the Government is not involved.

Hide Schmide

[xstonedogx]

The resources of our solar system are up for grabs. Our fledgling civilization which has not yet reached the moon can already detect water on planets around other stars. It seems likely that any civilization capable of interstellar travel is much more skilled at detecting resources across these distances. They will need this information to figure out where to go and what to expect when they get there. If they want our resources, they are coming here regardless of whether we send out a signal.

SETI costs less than slashdot

[Joce640k]

The SETI program probably costs less than the harm done to the world economy by people reading slashdot every morning.

Whose money is it....

[SETIGuy]

I'm trying to figure out why Seth wrote this... Or a least what he chose that title... Is he looking to piss people off? Is he assuming that SETI is only worth it if we find something? I think my contributions to signal processing and public resource distributed computing far exceed the pittance I have been paid for it.

SETI is not taxpayer funded, it's funded by donations. If you don't want to donate don't. If you want to donate, please do. (See link below)

Bitching about SETI seems to be the new Slashdot hobby. If you just want to bitch, then bitch about something that costs real money and returns nothing. Like, for example, the Iraq war. One week in Iraq costs more than all of the money ever spent on SETI. Feel like you're getting your money's worth?

For that matter the final two seasons of Frasier cost more than the Allen Telescope Array has. Do you think that was a bargain? Maybe that money should have got to medical research...

So is the idea of research completely worthless?

[bgibby9]

If there is no return then Business will say yes. But the journey to find the answers gives us the ability to add to the fabric of humanity as well as getting to the answer so I guess my answer is, research without end is worth it if it causes others to join the search and contribute to the community, regardless if the goal is reachable or not!

Not exactly accurate...

[mbessey]

SETI is looking for a signal from an advanced civilization that is deliberately using archaic methods to transmit. What I mean is that they're looking for a beacon signal that's designed to be easy to interpret, and that's transmitted at an extremely high power level.

On a practical level, that's the best they can do. Using the best receivers that we currently have, it'd just barely be possible to detect a megawatt-level signal from a few light years away, if it was aimed right at us. Detecting the equivalent of leakage from a TV transmission is a complete fantasy. Unless there's someone out there that's really desperate to be heard, we'll never find them.

And of course, we're not about to start a program of sending similar signals to all the nearest stars - that'd take real money. If we detect a signal, then we might respond back.

Unfortunately, the same argument holds in the other direction, too. Any alien civilizations out there would be foolish to waste the resources to send a signal we could detect, before they were sure we were there to hear it. When I think about SETI, I sometimes imagine thousands of intelligent species out there, all monitoring their antenna arrays, waiting for a signal that none of them have the funding to send...

SETI method is flawed

[Randall311]

The ideology behind SETI is great, but they're listening on a frequency that is restricted for us (an intelligent species) to broadcast on. What makes us think that some other intelligent species isn't doing the same thing. Listening on a frequency that should be "so obvious" to broadcast on, yet they themselves aren't broadcasting on it! Furthermore, the odds of any intelligent lifeforms using RF communications and we manage to detect it within the ~30 year window that we have been listening is simply outrageous. A project like this needs to go on for hundreds if not thousands of years just to have a decent sample size. Don't expect SETI to find anyone out there ever in our lifetimes. It's a nice thought, but probably futile.

Why not when...

[IkeTo]

SETI did successfully find something already!

It is the only lottery worth winning

[LordZardoz]

With respect to SETI, it is very much like a lottery with extraordinarily poor odds of winnning, and what amounts to an infinite payout.

  - We only need to find signs of extra terrestrial intelligence once to prove many assumptions wrong.
  - If we do discover something we can either choose to contact it on our terms, or try to prepare ourselves for contact.
  - If we do find evidence of a spacefaring civilization, it will let us know that certain technologies are possible and worth pursuing

And lastly:
  - Proof of extra terrestrial intelligence will at the very least force most organized religions to rewrite much of their material, if not cause them to fall apart entirely.

END COMMUNICATION

Sigh.

[SatanicPuppy]

Christianity != Ethics.

I know a lot of christians like to believe that all ethics were derived from the bible, but Plato and Aristotle were laying the intellectual foundations for modern ethics in the 4th and 5th century, BC. Before that was the Babylonians, with Hammurabi in the 19th century BC.

Christianity hasn't had a great track record for ethics in the last millenium. It's been used to justify some of the worst excesses of humanity.

Radio frequency concept

[unity100]

Why is it so certain that you can find other civilizations by listening to radio frequencies ? As we now the development of life forms entirely depends on the factors they evolve in, it is also probable that their technology would also be much more different in line with their evolution.

it is highly probable, for example,say, a civilization to directly go in developing technology based on various uses of light, and base their communication, computerization, and even transportation on such an infrastructure. we are just starting to use light concept on computing, testing crystalline storages instead of magnetic disks, on transportation, testing out beaming power with laser to a vehicle from ground, so that heated air on the capsule can be used to propel the craft upwards (nasa's famous tests with that thing on a string), testing out ion engine concept, and testing out usage of laser links in datalinks.

what if, such a civilization using such technology just remains an odd and awkward twinkle of various red light emanations in hubble ?

in short, arent we too arrogant with the concept of everyone has to use mathematics and radio waves to broadcast a signal throughout the universe, OR somehow they will use them in their tech and some odd coincidence resulting from a use of a technology will create a wave strong enough to make it here ?

Well, Yeah it is Worth It.

[StickyWidget]

It is worth it. It employs a large amount of scientists, engineers, laborers, you name it. Many advancements have SETI money as part of their base. Just a couple of things off the top of my head:

1. If you can build a receiver to pick up a faint transmission from the depths of outer space, you can also build a receiver to pick up faint transmissions from Mars, or the Moon, or orbit, or on Earth. This leads to advancement in receiver technology, which means lowered energy costs for transmitting messages here, which leads to lower prices for consumers, and a win for everyone!
2. If you can build a transmitter powerful enough to reach the depths of space, you can do it here on earth as well. Leads to the capability for long distance communications at low costs, win for everyone here too!
3. Searching for signals in the noise of space requires some serious Digital Signal Processing capability to pick out a real signal from the crap. This can be utilized on Earth to increase the range of wireless transmissions outside normal bounds, reduce costs, etc etc etc. Win for everyone!
4. Radio dishes that powerful require some serious engineering to ensure they can survive stress from the electromagnetic forces and physical forces acting on them. This means better engineering techniques for building radios on earth, plus the structural elements too. Win for Everyone!
5. There is a massive amount of data being fed through SETI computers that needs to be analyzed, correlated, and extracted into a usable, readable, and verifiable format. The techniques for doing this are adaptable to large scale computer simulations. Not to mention it gave birth to the first distributed grid computing and networking, which was the direct inspiration for many of the distributed math, science, and statistics programs we see now (think FoldingAtHome or the search for Mersenne Primes).
6. The kind of antenna design needed to pick up a large range of communications can be harnessed on earth to build multipurpose antennae for transmission and receiving. Think cell towers, tv stations, GPS. Win for Everyone!

Now, I'm not going to say that SETI has been the sole driver in a lot of the previous pieces, but research into SETI related projects has provided catalyst into other areas. Computational methods, digital signal processing, radio transmission and receiving are only few that I could think of. Fact is, the scientists and engineers who participate in SETI do so because there is money available for use, they use this money to make advances in science that all of us enjoy today.

Maybe we should compile a list of researchers involved in SETI and see what else they have contributed to. I bet we would be surprised at some of the advances that have come out of it, much the same as the space program has provided leaps in aerospace technology.

~Sticky
/Oh, and finding aliens is important too...
//Hope they don't mind us beaming signals into space...

SETI won't find anybody (with current tech)

[btempleton]

The SETI assumption has a flaw. There are two kinds of transmissions we could receive. Accidental ones, not aimed at us, and deliberate attempts to contact other races.

Even our own example shows that the more advanced your communications gets, the less wasteful it gets in transmitting where it isn't meant to go, and the more and more it looks like noise or is simply undetectable to the technology of just a few decades ago. And the more compressed and encrypted it is, the more it looks like noise even if you can intercept it. It's really unlikely we'll do an accidental wiretap on advanced beings.

But if they are trying to reach us, well, they're very advanced. Way more advanced than we are. If they wanted people at our level to see their signals, they could do it.

So looking harder and into the noise with current tech won't do it. Each time we invent a new technology of communication, we should look, but when we hit the right one, it will be blaring and clear, not subtle.