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SETI Is 50 Years Old; No Sign of ET
EagleHasLanded writes "The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is 50 years old next month, and still no sign of intelligent alien life. Paul Davies of the Beyond Center (also Chairman of the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup) says it's time to re-think and expand the search for ET."
We are in far too short a window in cosmic terms. A million years here, a million years there, adds up.
We are trying to find signs of intelligent life off the Earth. Give it some time, people. And try to become civilized yourselves.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
It's already hard enough to live on this planet without being irritated by terrestrial life. What makes you think we'll find intellient life on other planets, if we can't even find it on our own?
Just remember the most irritating person you've ever come across? What if we come in contact with aliens, only to find out they're even worse? Maybe they don't have decent indoor plumbing on their planet, and put the used toilet paper in the trash cans instead of inside the toilet?
I'm thinking that we should stay hidden.
As we ourselves transition to all digital-communications and the associated low-transmission-power-levels we will fall off the radar for other civilizations detecting us too. That little blip of 100 years of analog full-blast will not been seen by anyone else either. This is in addition to the numbers associated with space: it is big, fricken' big and long in time. The last civilization anywhere near enough to us to be detected probably went extinct around 100 million years ago and in another 2 million years until humanity goes extinct the next civilization close enough to pick us up probably won't develop technology for another 60 million years... Missed in the night. But imagine in your mind an alien on an alien world because those same numbers say that it is a logical certainty that they exist.
Shh.
Focusing their search for intelligent life on Washington DC was doomed to failure.
50 years out of 13.75 ±0.17 billion years? People need to study orders of magnitude before they get on SETI's case about not finding anything exciting. As with most scientific institutions of our day, the general populace/government's don't seem to care unless they see whizbangpops REAL-SOON-NOW.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
You were looking in the wrong place. I've been here on slashdot!
Seriously? We can't handle the various cultures we live in relative close proximity too, do we really need to bring other races here to see the embarrassment we call Earth?
"... says it's time to re-think and expand the search for ET."
SETI obviously is not using enough XML. What you need is...
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Maybe any civilization that's made it through the industrial and electronic ages and all the social, military, population, and environmental upheavals that come along with it, has learned that you don't, like, broadcast your presence information to everyone in the friggin' universe.
But what if the ET's are just a bunch of hillbillies?
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Damn I thought the title said YETI is 50 years old;no sign of IT.
I need new contacts.
Looks like ET's spam filter is working just fine ;)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Look how difficult it was to get here in the first place. We are the First Ones.
I see lots of posts that seem to miss the point. The mere _finding_ of an ET would be _dramatic_ for our civilization. Think of all the things that would change (not all religious).
If we can ever _prove_ we're not alone out here, I honestly believe it could sway the attitudes and priorities of many governments. I mean, honestly, if we know there is another alien life out there, that we could potentially communicate with, how many stupid squabbles would end?
Right now, we only worry about ourselves because, well, that's all there is to worry about. The prospect of learning from another civilization, or even just being afraid and try to "defend" ourselves from them (sad, but you never know what spin governments would put on a finding like that) could be utterly revolutionary.
Then again, so many people would dis-believe due to religious and/or conspiratorial reasons would probably be mind boggling.
I'd settle for some signs of intelligent life here on Earth! Deciding not to destroy the planet we depend on would be a great start. So would refraining from killing people for believing in a different fairy tale.
They're using subspace communications, or ansible, or ultrawave.
or semaphore...
"I'm an old-fashioned type of guy. I worship the Sun and Moon as gods. And fear them."
Given that any intelligent god that wasn't born on earth would be (by definition) an extraterrestrial intelligence, do any religious people expect SETI to one day contact one of the gods or find evidence for their existence?
"It took ages for humans to even begin to explore our own planet. "
I agree. I think it will take a long time of searching, and a large region of sky surveyed, before we find anything.
I hope we do find something that is confirmed as 100% made by ET in my lifetime, because maybe it would help people, globally, to find better ways to coexist and direct their energies.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
We generally view the Stone Age tribes still lingering in the world as worthy of monitoring from a distance. Perhaps we occasionally intervening with some sort of sustenance or relief if it won't really mess them up, but all in all, we leave them alone rather than turn their world upside down.
With that in mind, how would a civilization sufficiently advanced to travel here from Alpha Centauri view our civilization?
"Mostly harmless."
"We'll give them a little longer. When they manage to visit the rest of the neighborhood - maybe when they're able to travel to another planet in their little solar system - we'll say hello. As long as we use short words and simple sentences, we might be able to help them understand speed-of-light travel."
"Okay. But if they start shooting those cute little firecrackers at us, I'm throwing a marble [read: black hole] into the middle of their little planet."
Is this akin to having a Myspace/Facebook friend request ignored?
:)
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Question, what kind of antenna would we need to build in order to detect a TV or FM radio transmitter on another planet with similar strength and radiation pattern as common commercial radio TV and Radio transmitters on this planet, if they were located on the other planet. What about other common transmissions of ours as well?
I think at some point that SETI assumed that a ET civilisation would eb generating a signal stronger than we normally produce in day to day activities and pointing it at this solar system. It could be that there may be lots of civilisations out there but simply none are doing that. S
So how big of an antenna would it take for, lets say, a civilisation on a remote solar system planet to detect the day to day RF activity on this planet?
I'm too lazy to look up the links, or the names of the projects, but I understand within the next few years focus is being placed on locating earth like planets (close to our same size, orbiting a similar star at roughly the same distance we are ours, etc.). I just assumed when I read about this the first time that SETI would be very interested and excited to be given locations of planets that actually have a decent chance of supporting life (as we know it) rather than just randomly focusing on a particular area. This should be exciting times for SETI and their followers but I'm surprised there isn't any mention of it in the interview.
I hope SETI is going to be all over this as locations of earth like planets are announced and that that is what Paul Davies means by "time to re-think and expand the search for ET"!
Perhaps the existence of intelligent life is just not compatible with the laws of physics in this universe.
After all, after billions of years there still isn't any on this planet.
do you really think that et will use radio waves to contact one planet to another no they will use something called quantum physics to communicate to each other instantly instead of years what i think we should do is to wait for the technology to come out and create a telescope using that technology
I am 58 years old and still looking for signs of intelligent terrestrial life.....
If we can't even find Osama bin Laden, why do you think SETI would be able to lead us to ET?
The Search
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The problem's basically one of time. Think about this: the first radio transmission on Earth was in 1866. That's 144 years ago. That means that any alien civilization more than 144 light-years away from Earth can't see us in the radio bands. They'd have to be inside the bubble formed by our first radio transmissions to even have a chance of spotting us using the methods SETI does. And that bubble isn't a sphere either, it'll eventually have an inside surface as well as an outer one. We're getting more and more efficient, wasting less and less power beaming radio waves off in all directions. Eventually we'll be broadcasting so little that we won't be detectable at any reasonable distance. Anybody inside that inner surface won't be able to see us either. That'll leave probably a 250-300 light-year thick zone moving steadily outwards that any race looking for us will have to be in to see us by looking for radio transmissions. They won't have to just be looking for us, they'll have to be looking for us during the 3-century period when they're in that zone. Look too early or too late and we're invisible to them.
And the same applies to us: we can look all we want, but if we're not in the radio-transmission zone for another species they'll be invisible to us.
At the most, a SETI search could have detected intelligent, broadcasting in cleartext life at a range of 50 light years. That's not terribly far. And halve that if we're sending out a message and waiting on a return.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
is there space fade that is like rain fade? or other stuff that makes some stuff show up as something that is too broken up to be any thing that looks like something from ET.
Or are we just looking at the wrong band?
We've been at it for 50 years with no results, the solution is obvious; expand the program.
A significant number of the population doesn't even believe we landed on the moon. Should SETI ever detect artificial radio transmissions then the arguing, debates, and conspiracy theories that would abound are unfathomable!
We can't even agree that we landed on the moon. How are we going to convince the world when we discover an ET version of 'Star Trek'? ;)
I've got E.T. right here. What's that, you want to go home?
-Elliot
I think it much more likely that, after monitoring signals from Earth, they'll specifically decide to leave us alone to our own destruction. Yes, we have some very good qualities, but seriously, we're a short-sighted, narrow-minded, self-absorbed, fucked-up primitive species.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Octopus.
They use tools, disguise themselves, and other things that display intelligence.
And people EAT THEM! And yet, they have no problem saving dolphins, and stupid mean nasty creatures that have fur.
In other news, the Untied Ants of the Cupboard have checked the entire kitchen for the most common types of pheromone trails for the last 50 seconds and found nothing. Clearly, reports of mutilation and abduction by "Humans" is just wild fantasy.
We know that a pre-condition for intelligence is simply life, right? Life should be far more common than intelligence, though possibly harder to detect. So instead of looking for intelligence, why not look for life? Call it SETL. The search would consist of looking for things that only life produces. (Certain chemicals are one example).
So.. what would it take to be able to detect the signs of life on other planets? Highly sensitive spectrometers? What is it that life produces that's distinguishable from long distances?
AccountKiller
It's a search that's expected to take tens of thousands of years. Don't worry about the lack of results yet.
To find better meaning for your life, Mr. CEO.
I often wonder why seemingly great minds get involved into some unrealistic endeavor like this. Some do it for power and money, but not all do.
"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space."
The other animals would have eaten the food from the trees before the food reached the giraffe's height. So giraffes should be extinct.
Unless ... all giraffes are aliens pretending to eat food.
The closest star, Alpha Centauri is about four light years. It is likely that the nearest technological civilization is quite a lot farther than that.
He said that we were counting on detectable civilizations being lot more advanced than us, and so radiating a lot more power than we do. But I'm not so sure that that would help - possibly when a society gets more advanced, they develop more efficient communications technology and so radiate even less. An example is our own technology in which we now use undersea optical fiber rather than beaming so much power out at satellites.,P>
Request your free CD of my piano music.
We've been switching to satellite and low power transmission systems as well as cable TV. In a 100 years Earth itself may seem dead quiet from interstellar space. That's not even a 200 year window to detect Earth and that's if you are using far more powerful collectors than we are. Unless Aliens have an active program to contact other planets, something we have yet to do, the odds of detecting them within a 50 year window are nearly zero. We need to try but the whole point is "no result" is meaningless. We could have a detector aimed right at a planet a 1,000 years ahead of us and odds are we would detect nothing. We aren't talking about what are the odds of an alien species being alive we are talking about what are the odds of the same species being alive in that same 200 year window, and actively trying to communicate with another world and we happen to have equipment aimed at them. In practical terms it may be impossible but the sad thing is most people can't wrap their heads around the scope of the problem enough to not simple draw the conclusion that we are alone. In truth our only hope of contacting another world is if they not us want to make contact. We aren't looking for random radio signals from alien TV we are looking for attempts to contact other worlds. That's what people need to understand.
Governments are inherently corrupt, and all the "science" they fund is corrupted along with it. Real science comes from free experimentation, free competition of ideas, and financial accountability that can only exist with free market capitalism. Only the free market can allocate resources so that scientific research takes place at the right time, in the right place, in the right way, and by the right people. Sure, the government can build the pyramids or fly a mainframe to the moon, but at what cost? If not stolen by the government, that money would have done a lot more good in the private sector instead, and when the private sector would have expanded into space it would have been much more timely, cost-effective, and economically sustainable. Think mining asteroids for earth-rare elements and building gigantic zero-liability nuclear power plants in space instead of of planting useless flags on the moon and number-crunching space static from galaxies far away - something that we'd be able to do exponentially cheaper (i.e. Moore's Law) just a few decades from now!
(Signed: Alex Libman's sock-puppet.)
Lately I've been thinking that the natural progression of any intelligent life form all follows a very similar path. We all do the stone age, bronze age, industrial age, and whatever you call our current age until someone gets the bright idea to try and recreate the 'big bang'! Eventually, curiosity inevitably compels each race to speculate that they can find their "<insert name here> Boson" by hurling particles at each other at damn near the speed of light! Before every race's top scientists can even say 'oops', those minute little black holes that were 'supposed' to degrade don't...and another giant black hole is born. Some day, some race may have a person like that German woman last week who got her lawsuit thrown out actually win in her bid to stop the experiments. That race will be the first! I'll bet that they will go on to find that black holes aren't actually created from stars collapsing in on themselves but that they are the remnants of yet another civilization whose German high court rejected the bid from the only sane person on that planet that only wanted to exercise caution and prevent Armageddon!
As history repeats itself, SETI will likely never discover an artificial radio signal due to the fact that every ET only becomes capable of transmitting the noise we could detect less than a century before their own 'big bang' ;)
Might have been Charles Pellegrino who said that intelligent life would not long stay on a planet if they had a better option such as living on space constructs. Space constructs might most likely be found near proto star systems where a true star never formed and never blew away all the clouds of organics and heavy elements. Nanotech harvesters, fusion power, communication by point to point laser. Or communication by something we have not even the power to conceive of yet. Only real signature would be heat and we do not have the space borne technology to do a significant survey for something as subtle as that. Fred Hoyle and Arthur C. Clarke also provided alternatives that would make intelligent alien life almost impossible to detect, even if they were actually here! The odds we are facing with our present technology resemble finding a needle in a haystack, where it could be hid in any one of all the haystacks on earth during harvest season but no way to tell which it might be.
All they heard was the sound of "snow" when they first turned it on, so they hit mute on the remote before it fell between the couch cushions. Now, 50 years later, they're still looking for it. Not aliens; the remote. When they find it, though... oh you'll see. We'll find aliens in no time!
I looked in a drop of ocean water and found no life. There must be no life in the ocean.
*DrugCheese rants*
Yes, thats why I added the "...wasn't born on Earth clause".
There is already enough evidence for a foreign intelligence, here on earth. Yes, it is no so-called "hard evidence", but in its entirety the evidences are just overwhelming.
You want to see it? There you go:
But before you say that all UFOs can or could be explained as natural phenomenons or secret aircrafts or any other explanation besides a foreign intelligence, you really should read these documents. I don't know anybody who has read them and still says "UFOs (as in "foreign intelligence") are not real". Every person who did deep scientific investigation into the UFO phenomenon comes to the conclusion that there must be a foreign intelligence behind some of the mass of UFO cases.
Documents:
Archives and data bases
The evidence for a foreign intelligence is here on earth. This evidence is overwhelming. Yes, there is no "hard evidence", but still: Everyone who has done deep *scientific* investigation of the UFO phenomenon won't deny the fact that there is a foreign intelligence on earth.
Documents
If you haven't read those papers, please don't assert to know that UFOs (as in "foreign intelligence") don't exist.
Our technology is too primitive, our cultures are backward. Our population is xenophobic and militaristic in varying degrees. One would have to be insane
to give cultures like that faster than light travel or even travel at near light speed. On its face it would seem we have nothing to offer these aliens, youd be wrong.
At first the idea of slaves but robots can do the job cheaper and faster.
Then the idea hit me...soldiers. If youre a wealthy interstellar civilization with enemies or just really bad pest problems...why not use humans,
they breed themselves, cheap to feed and lets humans see the galaxy. The aliens would not have to enslave humans, theyd just offer ultra
tech toys and cool ray guns and youd have plenty of volunteers.
So.. what would it take to be able to detect the signs of life on other planets?
You'd have to have feet on the ground. Life even as we know it can hide in oceans and caves. And we know nothing about other lifeforms that may exist, so we can't test for them. See Solaris as just one example out of thousands.
....out there as the Ancient astronauts where Ezekiel the even documents his encounter.
There are plenty of people who have seen technology in use far more advanced than what we can make, even today.
The real question is not whether there is such life out there but why have we not found them or why are they hiding?
Given the amount of stars it is estimated that we should have been able to find quite a few differ intelligent life forms or evidence of such. Its actually a puzzelment why we haven't.
You'd have to have feet on the ground.
No. Life produces things that other things don't produce. Oxygen in an atmosphere for instance. Oxygen is highly reactive with just about anything, so finding it in an atmosphere is a big tipoff of life.
See Solaris as just one example out of thousands.
Why is it people try to use science fiction to try to back things up? If you want to start talking about the life we don't know about and thus can't detect, go ahead. It's going to be either a very short conversation, or a very useless and made up one though.
AccountKiller
Did anyone think that, maybe, most hypothetical alien signals might encrypted? I'm referring here not to signals deliberately sent, but to leakage, that sort of thing. There may be a relatively short window in which any civilization uses unencrypted radio. Then they move on to digital radio, encryption, etc., at much lower power, and the chance of finding them (in the speed of light window) is lost. The thing is that an encrypted data stream will look pretty close to random. So, your odds of picking it out of the noise are low.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Seriously, what are the philosophical, theological, and scientific implications if we were to be the only planet to evolve "intelligent" (I use the term advisedly) life. Genesis is starting to look pretty good, if that were true. (Not that I think it is true.)
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
the concept behind this is too arrogant and in its ultimate consequence, stupid.
it assumes that any civilization should develop technology in the way we did, and have the same values as we do. ie, think mathematic is universal, and try to communicate over mathematical patterns and regular expressions that repeat themselves. even if they do, it is still extremely naive to expect the radio waves to reach here without losing their precise nature, or getting garbled due to innumerable sources of interference.
Read radical news here
Life produces things that other things don't produce. Oxygen in an atmosphere for instance.
Animals don't produce oxygen. Atmospheric composition is also not a good indicator; we can have 100 million people living on the Moon, under the surface, but it has no atmosphere. This is particularly relevant to intelligent life, which can create its own biosphere where necessary.
If you want to start talking about the life we don't know about and thus can't detect, go ahead. It's going to be either a very short conversation, or a very useless and made up one though.
It is most reasonable to expect an alien life to be alien to us. We will probably have machine intelligence (and life) within a century or two. Searching for lost keys only under the streetlight may be convenient but not very productive.
Why is it that when I go to the SETI scientific publications page (http://www.seti.org/Page.aspx?pid=327), the only person with recent publications (in the last four years) hasn't produced scientific publications recently (http://www.seti.org/Page.aspx?pid=555).
Most of the people on this page (http://www.seti.org/Page.aspx?pid=327) have scientific publications from years ago.
What has SETI contributed to the scientific community for the last five years? 50 years?
And what has it contributed to interstellar diplomacy?
While I think it's great that people like Paul Allen who are passionate about SETI support it, I would be dismayed if SETI is supported by the public through taxes, much like I am horrified that moneysinks like wars and bridges-to-nowhere are constantly funded by the public.
A side question: the NIH grant award rate is something like 10% (of submissions get funding). Do 10% of all contractors who submit applications for contracts receive awards from the government? more, less? Is the review process as rigorous for these applications?
just download the aliens' public key and use PGP...
Genesis doesn't teach evolution. But if there is no life that is like human in the universe to ever be found, by the time that conclusion is conclusively reached, the Bible would be proved wrong. ('The End/Armageddon is nigh' is the relevant paraphrase)
There may be a relatively short window in which any civilization uses unencrypted radio.
Most modern forms of radio communication look like noise unless you know what to look for. Nobody uses big "carriers" any more. In analog TV, 80% of the energy went into the video carrier, which was easy to detect but conveyed no information beyond "I'm here, and you can tune to this." That's history. I made this point to some SETI people about fifteen years ago, and now, with analog transmission much reduced, it's clear that looking for carriers is probably futile. If somebody within a few light years was putting out a big carrier, we'd have noticed by now.
Of course, the pessimistic view is that technological civilizations have a lifespan of maybe 100 to 300 years between first radio transmission and collapse due to resource exhaustion.
outside our world means we have given up on our world. Just enjoy your life, as technology is accelerating and soon we will move too fast and become a Black Hole which, by the way, are other civilizations enjoying the orgasm of technology and ending. The universe does not allow systems so knowledgeable that they can traverse space. A society powerful enough to travel would know all answers to everything instantly and that is its death knell. Its the Fermi paradox sorta. So looking for life is a belief system that is irrelevant like trying to beat our own lives. Might as well enjoy life, try to save the coral reefs.......
Currently, there is a tiny minority of people that are absolutely sure that aliens exist since they're convinced that they've seen UFOs. So some have already "found" alien life. Now, I assume that by "finding", you mean that a relatively credible scientific source were to claim to have detected signals from an alien life form. However, only a fraction of the population will even understand what is meant by signals, if they aren't shown a received Alien TV broadcast or something similar. Consequently, general acceptance will depend on the credibility of whoever is making the claim and their ability to defend it when some relatively credible sources are likely to refute it (unless it's absolutely clear). Would "finding" thus mean making over 50 % of the earth's population convinced that there is alien life? Or would it mean that once it's good enough to be included in science books? Acknowledged by heads of state?
I'm rather sure that even if a signal that would convince most slashdotters was detected, the acceptance would happen slowly among the rest of the population. Perhaps like general acceptance that the earth isn't flat happened over time. And even if everyone on earth accepted that we're not alone in the universe, what would we do about it? Start some intergalactic arms race just in case they're hostile? Consider contacting them? Or just carry on with life as usual since when most people have considered it plausible before without seeing a need to undertake any "just in case" actions?
Next time there is a REALLY unusual cosmic event (supernova within one's own galaxy, collision of two black holes), cast your net a little wider and train your telescopes on a region of the sky surrounding the event. Any advanced civilization will know that lots of other astronomers will be pointing their telescopes in their general direction and, if they choose to make their presence known, will send signals in a direction opposite (to them) of the event. There should be a better chance for them to be noticed.
As for the Fermi paradox, another solution is that THEY ARE ALREADY HERE, ALL AROUND US, in the form of nano-machines. Very soon, as our technology and becomes capable of discovering them, they will have to leave or announce themselves. Or they will decide that we did not pass the test and clear off the planet for the next candidate.
"We are trying to find signs of intelligent life off the Earth. Give it some time, people. And try to become civilized yourselves." - by Foobar of Borg (690622) on Sunday March 14, @07:10PM (#31476158)
"You who are reading me now are a different breed - I hope, a better one. I leave the 20th century with no regrets. Seen from out here, everything seems different: Time bends, space is boundless... it squashes a man's ego - I feel lonely... That's about it! Tell me though: Does man, that 'marvel of the universe', that 'glorious paradox' who sent me to the stars, still make war against his brother? Keep his, neighbor's children starving??" - The late, great Charleton Heston as 'Colonel George Taylor' (from "The Planet of the Apes")
Well, you can all answer that, for me... because, sometimes? I seriously wonder.
APK
P.S.=> I tell you right now, that were I aware of us, & because of that awareness + having actually STUDIED us first (& knew how WE are to our own selves even (warring for profit only, killing one another, & far more/worse))? I'd hide! That, or, IF not tell our governments this:
"YOU stay down there, in your galactic 'tamany hall district' you psychotic lunatics & don't you DARE spread your mental poison out here where OUR children play... should you disregard this, you earth will be reduced to a burned out cinder! Until you change, IF you ever change? You stay put, or else (but, my guess is you'll end yourselves, before that ever occurs)"
(Sometimes, I wonder if THAT is what the biblical tale of "Adam & Eve" is really, all about - we WE as a species kicked out of a "galactic garden of Eden", because we're SO "f'd up" at such a deep genetic/nature type level, that's irreversible, that we were banned out? Think about it...)
Now, also:
Due to satellite communications beaming "downward/inward" (vs. outward as we have been doing for a couple centuries now (soon to stop soon probably IF my ideas are correct)) Well - you only "hear" civilizations like ours, for a LIMITED TIMEFRAME anyhow (those that use radio that is).
I say that, because "loud" outbound radio transmissions eventually cease due to things like satellites & closed circuits, & go "inward/planetbound" (vs. constantly outwardly radiating sends as we have been doing), & then?
THEN, you "sent your soul through the invisible" & no longer can be "seen/heard" anymore by others in the cosmos... apk
It seems to me we're unlikely to find aliens and they are unlikely to find us. The distances between us and possible life are extreme and there's a whole universe of stars, black holes, radiation clouds, and other forms of interference in the way.
Are you seriously counting on those old AM/FM radio transmissions making a direct line through space-time to a planet 140 billion light years away? Let's look at what can go wrong. Assume the Earth has a bunch of weak transmitters which occasionally fire information into space - this will already be a weak version of a weak signal since it's gone through our atmosphere, clouds, etc.
1. This signal is subject to inverse-square law. By the time it's left our own solar system the signal is infinitesimal.
2. The earth itself will obscure more than 50% of all the signals as it rotates.
3. Signals will be shot straight into our sun or pass close enough to either bend into it's gravity or have it's course dramatically altered.
4. There's billions of other suns which will do the same thing as it passes by.
5. Signals will slowly approach chaos, and be in-detectable from background radiation.
6. Their receivers will be expecting more powerful signals and our will pass "under the radar".
There's likely a million other ways for a signal which is designed to bounce off our atmosphere to become lost in space as it tries to make it from here...to there, whereever there is. Don't expect contact any time soon.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Animals don't produce oxygen.
No they don't, but plants do. Plants are life.
Atmospheric composition is also not a good indicator;
Of what? We don't need to detect ALL forms of life. One would be a start. The idea here is to go after the low hanging fruit.
AccountKiller
So that image burn on my old 17" Samsung CRT was all for nothing ??? Damn.. what a waste!
Our weapon of war is undoubtedly a beacon of intelligence. Sounds ironic, I know. But when you think about it, detonating vast amounts of plutonium releases a tremendous amount of energy all over the EM spectrum. It also gives off a unique signature of the kind that doesn't, or could *never* happen naturally. It really takes a civilization to make and concentrate plutonium into a bomb.
Forget TV or radio transmissions. The true universe of intelligent language is THE BOMB! It all started with Trinity on July 16, 1945.
Life is not for the lazy.
Come on people. Consider that some of our nearest possible galactic neighbors are on the order of 26 light years away, With radio communication, that means that the signal will get there in about 26 years. Assuming that Einstein was right, and nothing can go faster than C, it would take the same amount of time for any signal from the receiving planet to return.
Assuming normal radio transmission levels through space, the signal would be SERIOUSLY weak by the time it got there, or reached us coming back. SETI covers like 1% of the sky with their equipment at any given time. The probability is, even if there IS intelligent life in abundance out there, we're just not well enough equipped and haven't been at it long enough to see any results.
The 'Fermi Paradox' is tough to swallow. Something as generalized as "If it was there we would've seen it" is hard to take as any science-based theory. For being such a smart guy, Fermi dropped the ball on that one.
The odds against SETI finding anything are (sorry! :)) astronomical. If the aliens are even 0.01% of the universe's age younger than us, then they're still in their trees and completely undetectable. If the aliens are even 0.01% of the universe's age older than us, then our entire observable universe is running as a screensaver on one of their computers, and the general consensus of humanity (though not, I note, of the average slashdot reader) is that we're been praying to them, in one form or another, for at least the past 5000 years. Finding aliens who's development is aligned to ours within even a million years would be like dropping lawn darts at two random points on the surface of the Earth, and discovering that they'd hit each other.
...and yet they somehow magically discovered it has intelligent Life.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
I, for one, welcome our undetectable, non-communicative, overlords.
We're all alone.
It would be better for mankind to believe this, that way, he'll take better care of the planet and one another, and all species on earth, which should all be viewed as irreplaceable.
It's time to scrap the deluded notion that we can destroy earth's habitability, and move to another place with all our cows, pigs, chickens,crops, etc.
Get over it, and take care of Earth.
Of course the folly of mankind and other species follows predictable patterns.
We will slowly overpopulate, and destroy our ecosystem with toxins and radiation.
I accept this as inevitable.
A friend of mine who is much smarter than me (I know, I know, that doesn't mean much) INSISTS that they are here now. However since he works at a very high level in a field which requires him to tell the state department 3 months in advance before he is allowed to leave the country, I pay attention to what he says in technical matters at least.
Like the dog in "Men In Black" said: "Silly Humans, why do you always think something powerful has to be big?" (or something like that, no thanks to you Mr. Google!); perhaps Aliens or rather their NANO sized machine emissaries reached Earth a long long time ago (in keeping with the Fermi Paradox) and have basically infested the entire solar system, waiting...
Now as we start dabbling with nano-technologies and begin to have the capability of actually seeing them with our new atomic-force microscopes, they have to make a decision. Do they allow themselves to be discovered? I assume they could either do this passively like letting us see some of their machinery scuttle about amongst the atoms or they might as well come out and say "We're Here!". (Kinda like "Horton hears a Who")
Or, will they 1) leave the planet and keep withdrawing just beyond the range of our increasingly sophisticated probes? 2) maybe they will actively try to remain hidden, should be easy (for awhile) to cause subtle "problems" in our equipment from finding them. Experiments will mysteriously (or not depending on how clever they are) not work and our own attempts to create nano-machines will forever be thwarted.
Or maybe they'll decide, time's up, this species is not worth keeping; let's clean the planet and start over with another (bears?).
One way or another maybe we'll find out soon!
Search for Extraterrestrial Idiocy. It will work.
Chat with other atheists http://secularchat.org
Cause they are Vulcans and not Ferengi?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...considering where we are, in relation to other inhabited patches of the universe, that is no surprise to me
If Aliens do exist, they've probably got some uber technology that lets them hide. Isn't there meant to be some kind of mountain where they live in the NW of the US? They'd have better luck with DubLi, really.
IMHO it is scary to think that we are alone in the entire universe
'yet'
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Three explanations at least to this "paradox":
Explanation 1
Aliens are everywhere but shy enough to avoid being detected by ordinary idiots like us.
Explanation 2
Evolution to a technological civilization is an extremely improbable accident. Vertebrates on earth have had enough equipment (say eyes and fingers) for hundred millions years to draw stuff on walls (which is the start of civilization) yet never "thought" of it until lately. It may well be the case that the accidental brain configuration that finally suggested that feat was absolutely improbable and normally never happens anywhere else.
Explanation 3
When technology reaches a point near where we are now, it is unavoidably destructive of the species before it has time to escape its planet. We may be approaching the point where a single individual may spread disaster over the whole planet, volontarily or by error.
This is the most likely explanation of the paradox in my opinion.
"To search expectantly for a radio signal from an extraterrestrial source is probably as culture bound a presumption as to search the galaxy for a good Italian restaurant." - Terence McKenna "I once visited the world's largest radio telescope in Araceibo, Puerto Rico, and they search for extra- terrestrial life with this thing. It's so large a telescope it's basically a dish suspended in round valley. And underneath the dish there's pasture land, and white cattle, and Stropharia cubensis... It's like this amazing image of this instrument studying the centre of NGC-3622?, and yet a hundred feet from the main control booth is probably what they're looking for." - Terence McKenna
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
Ask them to pull their heads out of their asses, and they might hear something out there. I had a friend that worked for them a long time ago, and when they fight so hard all the time to get people to accept them instead of focusing on the problems of how to get
on board one of those missions to send up their own satellite, and make progress, that is where they miss all the good opportunities to evolve into a better more efficient fact finding organization.
I think this b3ta entry applies pretty well here :) (not my work, just happened across it) http://www.b3ta.com/board/9956971
SETI and Intelligent Design are based on the same principle, that certain patterns of signal are signs of intelligence. The only difference is the media they are looking at signal in.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Perhaps their technology is so advanced, they we can't see them. Perhaps they have figured out all the physics mysteries we haven't figured out yet, and those physics allow mechanisms for communication that we cannot comprehend yet. Perhaps aliens were here in the past and left.
There are so many possibilities...ruling out the existence of alien intelligent life because we only have searched for 50 years and found nothing it's shortsighted at best.
My favorite is the one where we start on Homer Simpson's bald head and change our vantage point by orders and orders of magnitude until we see the known universe, and then go further and further until we see that the universe is just bits of atoms and then molecules and then cells, and then skin, and we keep pulling back until we arrive back where we started looking down on Homer Simpson's bald head again.
...
But if there is no life that is like human in the universe to ever be found, by the time that conclusion is conclusively reached, the Bible would be proved wrong. ('The End/Armageddon is nigh' is the relevant paraphrase)
There have been doomsayers and predictors of the Christian version of the eschaton (i.e. end of the world) for over a thousand years, yet Christianity has survived them being wrong. Also there are at least a few different passages in the New Testament where Jesus basically states no one but God really knows when the end of the world will actually happen.
Costs less than a dollar. Divvy up the cost of SETI among the number of people who play the lottery and you're spending 3p a month on SETI.
>I assume we'd still be curious and want to observe them discreetly.
Why would you assume this? Man has never done this in any of his previous explorations, which are almost always adventures for profit.
When man explores someplace new, he immediately gets down to the business of business.
Of course, other space faring people might act differently, but I would not use mankind as an example of discretion in exploration.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Find out the probability of evolution to start. Life to begin from life less matter. Then subtract that with the estimated amount of planets or moons that could sustain life forms. The result is that the probability of finding life in our wast universe is none. Our Univese is too small.
Life on Earth is now 4.8 Billion years old and no one's found us yet.
> So instead of looking for intelligence, why not look for life? Call it SETL. The search would consist of looking for things that only life produces. (Certain chemicals are one example).
Headlines:
"Secretions, Emanations, Totally, Life!"
"E.T. wanna call home (but don't know the numbers)!"
"SETI SETLes for Less!"
I would be surprised if they had found anything. I highly doubt any species communicating across the interstellar expanse is still using radio waves. How were we communicating only 200 Years ago? Pony express? Steam Ship? Smoke signals? Why must a civilization likely hundreds or thousands (let alone millions) of years ahead of us technologically use radio waves? In my opinion our only real hope would be finding a society at a similar level of development (If you want a clue as to how likely this is imagine a 100Ly radius circle inside of a 50,000Ly circle, yeah) or an advanced society looking to contact a relatively new member to the "we don't live in mud huts and wooden shacks anymore" club (how much effort do we put into communicating with woodland animals). I'm not saying we should stop, I think SETI could use more funds, but we just need to understand that our chances are about equal to winning the lottery, it'll happen eventually if we keep playing, but it might take a loooonnnnnngggg time.
SETI started out with the question "Is there extra-terrestrial intelligence?" not "Where is the extra-terrestrial intelligence that must be out there?". So why to people persist in calling what they've managed so far a "failure"?
What they have shown is that there are no alien intelligences within about 50 light years...or at least none that want to talk to us. That's a useful piece of information. Finding that out is a successful outcome - not a failure.
A failure would be that none of their equipment worked - or that they kept coming up with false alarms or that we found there were aliens out there after all and SETI failed to find them. None of those things have happened - so as far as we can tell, SETI is a success...albeit a boring one. Science proceeds as much by veryifying the mundane facts that we kinda already suspect as it does by revolutionary things like evolution, quantum theory and relativity. Is it a failure of meteorology that we now have solid mathematical proof that you can't reliably predict the weather for more than a few days ahead? Was it a failure of biology to discover that the virus responsible for the common cold mutates so fast that we can't cure it? No! These things were successful outcomes of a search for the truth.
Same deal with SETI. They are doing good work - and if they finally conclude that we are the only intelligent life in the galaxy, that would be a profound and interesting outcome. We should continue to give them whatever support they need for at least the next 50 years.
Get over the human-centric thinking such as displayed in TFA, or your result criteria will be so restricted that you'd never find anything other than your selves.
SETI is searching for intelligent life on stellar systems other than this one. So why is an arbitrary number of revolutions of one planet around its star, presented as a number in an arbitrary number base (in this case, base ten; and not truly arbitrary since it is used because it matches the number of manual digits on the hands on the beings doing the searching), significant? It's not.
Nor is it directly relevant to SETI. It's the kind of thinking that makes "50 years" significant that restricts the thinking that will make it possible to detect extra-terrestrial intelligence. Once that thinking understands why it has to specifically give up concepts like "50" and "years" when thinking about this subject, it will begin to make itself able to expand its thinking outside the restrictions of its own nature and able to think in terms of all possible natures.
Consider beings with fluid bodies similar to amoeba. They will have no set number of digits, and so may use different number bases for different measures. "50" and the thinking that understands such numbers ceases to mean anything. And consider that rather than counting stellar revolutions, they instead measure time according to a variable standard, with "years" ceasing to be useful as a concept. And consider that beings 'out there' discovered very early the chaotic nature of most physical phenomena, and so when presenting numbers relating to dimensions or numbers of variables that best describes something, they give a non-integer number. Given just these few differences, it may not be possible to decode any signal relating numerical data, and it's certainly unlikely that any who maintain a "50 years" mentality would agree that the decoding is meaningful. That point may not pertain to SETI researchers, but may petain to the far larger number of scientists that must agree with the presented information in order for it to be considered accepted as scientifically accurate and a true signal indicating intelligence.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Sigh... I have been running SETI on my computers for at least 15 years.
For the last 4 months their servers have been so unreliable I am guessing even if life was found SETI would not know about it.
I am guessing that they run MS servers as UPTIME is not in their vocabulary.
Worthwhile project but any work done will be down the tubes because of their ability to keep their servers up and running (reliably)
As someone with a Ph.D. in New Testament, let me just assure you that you need to learn a good bit more about the Bible and about Christian theology. First off, it's highly debatable whether or not the book of Genesis is incompatible with evolution. The whole notion of "literal" interpretation--as used by the reformers when they called for the "sensus literalis"--doesn't mean what you think it means, because "figurative" and "allegory" are *not* the same thing. An allegorical interpretation would be something like saying, "Adam represents the church, and Eve represents the devil, and the serpent represents the Gnostics". This sort of interpretation was all the rage in Medieval Catholicism, and it's that sort of interpretation that is to be rejected. A figurative interpretation acknowledges that people, and books, don't always speak in a direct, literal way. See, for example, parables.
On the other hand, a bone-headed literalism is just as bad as allegorical interpretation, because it ends up missing the words of the text. In the words of John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1:6:
Regarding eschatology... I highly suggest you take some time to read "Revelation: Four Views", which is a parallel commentary. When you read it, consider the preterist position and how well it compares to premillenial nonsense, and consider the possibility that you've been badly deceived, because the bottom line is that chiliasts have been promising the "end is nigh" for 2000 years now and ... ahem ... it hasn't yet materialized. Maybe there's something wrong with that whole reading of scripture? You really don't have a choice: either scripture's wrong, or your reading of it is wrong. I'm going with you being wrong, brother. "End Times Fiction" is also quite good, but sadly out of print.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Unless we'd be the equivalent of netbooks, attached to some giant external hivemind, we'd be stuck with tiny brains.
First off, it's highly debatable whether or not the book of Genesis is incompatible with evolution.
Note I was careful to say Genesis doesn't teach evolution. I don't really want to get into an argument about this, but I am aware that people say evolution and Genesis Creation are compatible, but you won't find the explicit teaching of Evolution there. Really, otherwise Bible scholars would have come up with Evolution and not Darwin. I did choose my words carefully in that phrase.
As to the end of the world is near, Note I said when humans conclusively find no [intelligent life] in the universe, (remember, universal negatives are pretty hard to prove) by that time, if Armageddon has not come, I think it will not be coming. 100,000 ly across, (not area) just for Milky Way. 100,000,000,000 stars, and then we got 100,000,000,000 other galaxies in the universe. When we finish that, then we need to go to the rest of the universe, the vast part we can't see from Earth. (As an aside, the complete universe is not 13 or so billion ly in radius, that's just what we can see) And while the Milky Way can basically be measured in area, the universe is measured in volume. Are you familiar with the square-cube problem? Yeah, that fits this search.
So in summation, sure the end hasn't come yet, but will it not come by the end of the survey of all the planets in all the star systems in all the galaxies in the universe?
I was not really making a theological argument, just a 'the universe is too vast to fully chart' argument.
P.S. I do have a Theological question for you. I promise not to argue. Do you think Mt 28:19, 20 is binding upon all Christians today, and what does that mean they should be doing in practical application?
Yes, I do think it's binding. In terms of practical application, however, I think that our first emphasis should be on "teaching them to obey everything which I have commanded you." It's no accident that Mt 28.19-20 comes at the end of the gospel of Matthew, which contains the most explicit account of Christianity distinctive ethics--that is, Matthew 5-7 (the Sermon on the Mount.) The reason we fail at evangelism is because we've failed at "making disciples." The reason we fail at "making disciples" is because we've failed at being disciples. The problem is our own accommodation to worldliness, and until we get our own house in order we will fail.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1