SETI Founder Outlines Ambitious Future Plans

Lanxon writes "'In the universe there is intelligent life, I'm confident about that,' SETI founder Dr Frank Drake (of the Drake Equation) affirmed earlier today during a talk at the Royal Society in London, 50 years after SETI was founded. One of his visions to prove this, and to show that the last five decades were not a waste of time, is to station a radio observatory not in near-Earth orbit, but on the far side of the moon. He also suggests that another craft could later be stationed 500 times further away from the Sun than the Earth, using the Sun itself as a giant magnifying lens to resolve alien worlds."

Comments

Laudable, but misguided

[mcgrew]

I personally think SETI is misguided, even though its aims are commendable. There probably is intelligent life out there, but it is a possibility that earth could have been the first planet on which it developed.

But I see two very great problems with SETI.

First is the limited range; nobody more than around 150 light years away would be able to detect intelligent life on earth.

If we do find them they're likely to be more intelligent than us, they may turn out to be hostile, and they may discover that we are tasty, or good speceship fuel, etc. They may be intelligent enough that we don't even appear sentient to them. I'm not sure I want us to find intelligent extraterrestrials.

Re:Laudable, but misguided

[haruchai]

They can't be so smart that we don't appear sentient - we've put men ( briefly ) on the moon.
We might be grossly inferior, but certainly sentient and, I hope, unappetizing.

Re:Laudable, but misguided

[MichaelSmith]

If we do find them they're likely to be more intelligent than us, they may turn out to be hostile, and they may discover that we are tasty, or good speceship fuel, etc. They may be intelligent enough that we don't even appear sentient to them. I'm not sure I want us to find intelligent extraterrestrials.

You seem to share Hawking's delusion that more intelligence is an inevitable part of the progression of an intelligent species.

Which is clearly wrong. Crocodiles, for example are as smart as they need to be. I think early humans were trapped into a (say) software intensive architecture. They had these tools (fingers, eyes, etc) which could only be used for survival by a powerful brain. So there was selection pressure for intelligence, but only because our peripherals (so to speak) had previously developed into general purpose tools.

Re:Laudable, but misguided

[fiannaFailMan]

There's no reasonable explanation for why they would want to enslave us, or eat us, or otherwise exploit us.

It's conceivable that they might want to wipe us out and repurpose Earth, as it does have some useful minerals, but especially given our nuclear arsenal and the (minor) headaches that would cause, I don't see why they'd go for Earth over the many uninhabited rocks in the universe. Direct harvesting of solar energy would be far more effective than exploiting us, whatever their goals are. We're far less useful than robots.

I'm sure the people of South America, with all the environmental problems they were having, probably thought the same. But the Spaniards saw value in stuff that the Incas and Aztecs took for granted. Who's to say that ET won't come here and take a liking to our stocks of salt water for reasons unbeknownst to us?

Re:Laudable, but misguided

[LUH 3418]

>> First is the limited range; nobody more than around 150 light years away would be able to detect intelligent life on earth.

I have to agree with that one. It seems somewhat futile given the extremely low odds of detection. Furthermore, it seems hard to imagine we could really have meaningful exchanges with a civilization hundreds of lightyears away. That being said, if we ever did discover evidence of alien intelligence elsewhere in the universe, it would change alot of things here on earth. It would give a huge morale boost to many science fields, for one.

>> they may turn out to be hostile

Someone else said that "there is no reason to assume they wouldn't be hostile. I would say there is. Whenever I see the Klingon on Star Trek act in violent and barbaric ways, I wonder if it really is realistic to assume such a society could ever compete with a more "peaceful" one like the federation, on the technological level. If your society is full of violent individuals, places "being a strong warrior" above everything else, and you can get randomly killed at any time, I think that slows down scientific progress alot. In my opinion, individuals need to be "peaceful" enough for society to be rather stable in order for science to progress. Furthermore, a scientifically advanced society would probably realize that there is not much point in simply eradicating other life forms "for fun".

>> and they may discover that we are tasty, or good speceship fuel, etc.

I wouldn't worry too much about that either. If they actually are capable of getting here, it means they can get to any other nearby star. They probably have already mastered things like nuclear fusion, in which case, you know, hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. Energy itself, in this universe, is abundant. THE resource we have that is worth something is the earth itself, but it's only worth something to aliens, in my opinion, if they are biologically similar to us (breathe oxygen, similar temperature tolerances, etc.). Again, however, I would argue that if they have the capability of getting here, they are probably not "starved" in terms of energy. They would probably be capable of building themselves a new planet next to ours.

>> They may be intelligent enough that we don't even appear sentient to them. I'm not sure I want us to find intelligent extraterrestrials.

I find that idea rather ridiculous. We are sentient. Do you think there is something such as being "supersentient"?

Re:Laudable, but misguided

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Look at what has happened in the past, when two cultures of the same species met on our planet. Group A sails over the ocean, and discovers a strange culture B on another continent. Despite the fact that this was a meeting between members of the same species, group A doesn't recognize that group B is even human. Group A proceeds to enslave, kidnap, kill, and steal the land and resources of group B.

This pattern has been repeated a bunch of times in our own history. So, when humans meet aliens, the inferior group will be lunch.

Re:Laudable, but misguided

[s0litaire]

Ah Nukes ourselves!! The good old "Judean People's Front crack suicide squad" Manoeuvre, they'll never see it coming!

From "Life of Brian"
Suicide Squad Leader: We are the Judean People's Front crack suicide squad! Suicide squad, attack!
[they all stab themselves]...That showed 'em, huh?

Re:Laudable, but misguided

[Chris Burke]

The difference here is that we have nukes, which function well as a sort of universal trump card. It's likely that our arsenal would at least inconvenience them, but it could do much more. Of course, it could also do much less.

Our arsenal as it stands now would be pretty useless for repelling aggressive space invaders. They could just lob chunks of rock at us from high orbit or the moon while being essentially immune to retaliation. Hypothetically we could design rockets designed to carry nuclear warheads that far, but we'd still be at a crazy disadvantage versus the opponent who could just drop things down our gravity well.

But it wouldn't do much less to our planet. If we saw an unstoppable alien aggressor, we could threaten to nuke ourselves. Sure, we may all die, but it'd still be a major bargaining chip.

Only if what they wanted was us, or some other aspect of life on earth rather than other resources. But yeah, in some cases threatening suicide can be a useful gambit.

Scientific discovery generally does much better in an open, cooperative society. I'm not saying that it's impossible without one, just that it proceeds much slower. Space-faring species would very likely have nearly species-wide cooperation in their past.

Possibly, but that doesn't mean they automatically think of any other species as equals that should be cooperated with, rather than exploited. The scientific advancement and open sharing that characterized The Enlightenment was not extended to the people of places the empires of Enlightenment Europe went and colonized. They could just as easily see us as a bunch of hairless primates who don't deserve to take part in their glorious undertakings.

Also, the universe doesn't quite seem to be teeming with life, or we'd have seen it by now.

Way premature to say that. Our solar system isn't teeming with obvious life, but we've only just begun to be able to find exoplanets, and spectroscopy of such planets to find basic aspects of their chemical makeups is in its infancy. We're quite a way from being able to say these planets aren't teeming with life.

The intellegence needed for space travel almost has to imply a sense of the beauty of the universe, and from there, life.

Or, the sheer determination and practicality required for space travel -- especially if it's multi-generational sub-light-speed interstellar travel -- could imply a complete dedication to their goals and disregard for any of our silly philosophical objections like "but life is precious!"

Look at it this way -- sea travel requires quite a bit of intelligence, yet after months of travel people landed on the other shore and their first thought wasn't "wow, look at the beauty of life!", it was "wow, these savages have lots of gold, let's take it!"

I'd like to think the Golden Rule applies. Maybe that's naive, but interstellar travel is one of the milestones of scientific acheivement. I hope that that implies some moral strength.

Societal advancement gave the Spaniards a sense of moral strength too.

I don't think it's at all the case that achieving some milestone in science implies any measure of morality. So in that sense I do think you're being extremely naive. However I may be naive too in that I hope that we can develop moral strength alongside our technological strength, and that we will see beauty in the the universe and in life ourselves. But I don't think it's a given for us, and certainly not for any alien race.

Re:Laudable, but misguided

[thesandtiger]

Often, but not always. And it is possible that some of that may be attributable to our genetic legacy and one of the primary drives for evolution on Earth.

But, what if life on another planet started off with a different scenario, and rather than massive competition for resources, cooperation was the overriding measure of fitness? Any species there that attempted to consume another might quickly go extinct, while species that were cooperative might thrive.

I'm not saying aliens couldn't be hostile, just that there may be other paradigms out there than the "red in tooth and claw" one that is *usually* the case with species interactions and evolution on Earth.

Re:Laudable, but misguided

[hairyfeet]

Most likely any race that can develop FTL drives will be able to harvest fuel from any planet/asteroid/cloud they please, and will just take one look at us and go "EEEEEWWWW!" and run as far away from our messy asses as possible. Unless they decide to do a little Jane Goodall "Gorillas in the mist" style study of primitive cultures.

What will be more interesting is what will happen if/when we develop FTL drives and "boldy go where no man has gone before" because I'm afraid old Roddenberry might have wrote fun sci-fi, but when it came to the way we humans are he was full of shit. Sure they'll probably be some science vessels pisslefarting around, but more likely the military WILL be building some BSG style Dreadnoughts first and foremost. And if the first race we encounter is not at least equal to, if not more advanced than us? Well I have a feeling the "bug hunt" in Starship Troopers the movie will probably be closer to how we act.

Sadly we have a history of not playing well with others, which is why any race we encounter would have to be nuts to share tech with us. While we monkeys may one day reach for the stars, I don't ever see us ever giving up our naturally greedy and aggressive ways. Just give us some nice slogans and patriotic music and we will be "itching to whoop ET's ass sir!" at any moment. We are just wired that way.

Lasers, Xrays, etc.

[Tablizer]

I'm no expert on this, but it seems to me that radio waves may likely be obsolete to advanced civilizations. They are quite possibly using something like lasers, x-rays, gravity waves, etc. True, if they are in the same stage we are, they may be using lots of the radio spectrum, but that greatly limits the kind and number of civilizations we may detect. Looking for something like a Dyson Sphere (star-orbiting solar arrays) may be a more productive approach, or at least a good supplement.

Re:Lasers, Xrays, etc.

[JoshuaZ]

We have a decent enough understanding of the laws of physics to have a good idea what would be a useful method of communication and what wouldn't be. For example, you list X-rays. But X-rays are much higher energy than radiowaves so are impractical. Lasers, which you also list, only work if you have a very precisely aimed beam. Unfortunately, when you are talking about distance of lightyears, a tiny bit off and your laser would be useless. (Incidentally, for technical reasons a maser rather than a laser would actually probably work better for this purpose). Even if they are using precisely aimed lasers, we won't be able to detect. Gravity waves are not going to be very good to send signals because they are incredibly hard to detect so even if you had a good way of making them, (which would also potentially lead to other cool stuff like anti-grav tech and potentially warp drive like technology) they would likely be extremely low bandwith. And we would have likely detected them by now in our searches for gravity waves.

It isn't clear how we would go about detecting things like a Dyson sphere so that suggestion is out. There are some potential signs of large scale solar system construction that we can hypothesize. However, of those we could search for, we don't see any of them. Radio waves remain our best hope for finding signs of other civilizations.

Ambitious Plans

[MyLongNickName]

Part of the ambitious plan is to TRIPLE the number of sentient life forms discovered by SETI with five years.

Re:Why I left SETI...

[Bragador]

It's not because you have faith that something exists that it does exist.

Also, the SETI institute and seti@home are two different things even though they have the same goal.

Intelligence in galactic context means extinction

[viking80]

The problem with intelligent civilizations is that a few decades after they achieve a technological level where they can make powerful radios to talk to galactic neighbors, they also invariably build particle accelerators. These accelerators soon make micro black holes that eat up the planet and the not-so-intelligent civilization with it. Only 0.1% of intelligent civilizations survive by colonizing a nearby planet before the particle accelerator is turned on.

So instead of finding a strong community of star systems in a 50 lightyear radius, we will probably have to look 500 l.y. away and wait 1000 years with the hadron collider turned off.

Re:What if there is no FTL?

[Vohar]

I'd say simply answering the question "Are we alone in the universe?" would be noteworthy enough for both civilizations to make the whole thing worthwhile. It's not often you get an answer to one of the fundamental mystery questions like that.

It's up there with "What happens to us after we die?" and "Is there a God?" Sure, people have their beliefs and opinions, but to actually KNOW...

Re:Oblig quote/unrelated observation

[Sponge Bath]

Richard Dawkins wrote that not being able to prove or disprove something does not prevent you from assigning probabilities. There is observable scientific evidence supporting ET life: There is a huge number of stars, some similar to ours, some with planets like ours. We can't prove (yet) there is ET life, but we can say it is possible and even probable. Floating Bearded Guys in the Sky on the other hand, don't have even that.