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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 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
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.
People need to study orders of magnitude [youtube.com] before they get on SETI's case about not finding anything exciting.
Better not: they'd know that SETI is useless and a waste of money.
Looks like ET's spam filter is working just fine ;)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The Fermi Paradox is woefully shortsighted. How long did it take modern human to actually explore other continents and find out that other intelligent human life was inhabiting a large patch of land on the same planet? Decades? Centuries? Whatever the plural of millennium is? It took ages for humans to even begin to explore our own planet. Every single day we find new species, new small islands, new pockets of underwater ocean life.
If we can't even complete a species list on our own planet how can you expect us to even begin to understand how to contact (theoretical) alien life that exists far outside of our immediate grasp? For all we know a planet just like our earth, or earth in its infancy, or like our earth but at its end cycle, may exist somewhere out there. We have no way of being able to immediately confirm that though. And we might not ever.
Carl Sagan even wrote that we should be open to the idea that an intelligent life form could have visited earth in the past.
url:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_astronauts#Scientific_consideration
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 just knew you would say that, you dick.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
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."
SETI is a detector, not an emitter.
If you're worried about any possible aliens' intentions, then SETI is precisely the right approach. You'd want to know if something is coming our way, and get at least some idea of what it might be like.
It also seems unlikely we can affect our visibility much. On one hand, we're absolutely tiny compared to other things happening in the universe. Any amount of energy we could send into space for instance is a drop in the bucket compared to what the Sun outputs. Anything we emit is unlikely to be received unless somebody is already looking in our direction for some other, more visible reason. But, on the other hand, if somebody is really looking, and capable of getting here, they almost certainly can figure out there's something here, and there's no way we can become quiet enough to pretend there isn't.
At this point we can barely get off this rock. If anything shows up, they almost certainly vastly surpass us just from the fact that they can travel all the way here. So if there's anything to do about that the best plan would seem to be to try to figure out if anybody is coming, and if they are use that information to come up with a plan.
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.
Can you justify that it isn't?
It's more fun than the lottery. Your turn.
You miss the point of the Fermi Paradox entirely. Given that humans have only been in existence on earth for 200K Years, why is it that no aliens have colonised Earth *before* we got here? It would take only one expansionist alien culture to exist in the billions of years the galaxy has existed before us and the Earth and the entire galaxy would have been well and truely colonized already.
I mean some relatively straight-forward extrapolations of humans shows *us* colonizing the galaxy in a few million years.
Basically the Fermi paradox says, they are *no* other intelligent civilizations in the galaxy otherwise we would have had dramatic evidence on Earth.
Still I see no particular harm in continuing to look. If something were found it would be a monumental breakthrough.
Why couldn't an advanced civilization try to ping us every 1000 years or so and see if anyone responds? It's not like it has to be stray TV signals. To me it seems a reasonable thing to do if we start discovering Earth-like exoplanets, sure we'll try more often at first but it's not like we're going to ask "Has intelligent life evolved now?" every five minutes. Narrow beam, high power, simple signal, the kind that should be easy for SETI to detect if there's a big enough antenna pointing in the right direction at the right time. But if they're run by people like you, I suppose nobody will be there to listen...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
It's taken us this long to be here. Who's to say there's not another intelligent species out there who is just now coming into space travel, but is already depressed because the Xorblat Paradox says searching for alien life is probably a waste of time. The Fermi Paradox is still incredibly short-sighted. It's very hard to draw meaningful conclusions from negative evidence, otherwise we'd have put this whole "God" thing to rest a long time ago.
--Obyron
> We are the First Ones.
No, actually, we're the Last Ones Standing.
See, humanity was the first race to develop time travel, in the late thirty-seventh century by your calendar, during the Third Great Intergalactic War. We knew that if we didn't act it was only a matter of time before one of the other races would develop or get ahold of the technology and use it against us. So we went ahead and sterilized the other races' homeworlds in the distant past, before they developed any significant technology. War over. We win.
Once the word of what we'd done started getting out to the civilians, there was hell to pay, of course. But as far as I'm concerned there's no question. I don't have to worry that my grandkids will be wiped out because a Xenthasi Accelerator generates a supernova and wipes out their home star system, or that some Rtulmrachan Overlord will drop a galaxy-sized black hole in their immediate neighborhood, or that the Uiola will tear down our whole local group and re-use the matter to build the Largest Entertainment Mall in the Universe. We won.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
or perhaps; they are intelligent, out there, have sufficient grasp of the huge distances/difficulties involved and decided not to waste their energies on 'travel' to focus on their own planets and civilizations...
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
Is it possible that we're one of the first planets to evolve advanced technology? Maybe someone can better explain the math to me. Universe is apx 14 billion years old. The sun, approximately at mid-life is 4 billion years old. Creation of heavy (including organic) elements requires supernova of massive stars at the end of their life. It seems like there can't have been that many generations of suns before the formation of our planet. Is my math crazy?
Have you even seen what octopuses have done to Japanese schoolgirls?
Yeah. 'Nuff said.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
It costs more than a dollar.
As it has been mentioned here a few times; the people involved with SETI have no illusions of finding ET on his cell phone. It's about the concept that maybe there are civilizations sending out a signal that is meant for no other reason than to be a beacon to others. We've already done it ourselves, we just don't do it on a regular basis.
In any case, we will more likely observe life on their planet via chemical analysis of their atmosphere long before they get a signal from us. Given the leaps and bounds that extrasolar planet discovery has happened in the last decade, I'm guessing that we will know a great deal about the possibility of Earth-like life being on any planet within a thousand light years of us before our radio signals travel a tenth of that distance. If we find a planet that displays the chemical make up of life there is a high chance someone will start beaming it with radio signals but we will probably have the ability to actively observe the life on that planet long before the signal ever gets to them.
So is SETI really going to prove anything we won't know much more about in the next couple of decades? Doubtful. But if we do detect signals from another planet using the SETI project it will probably mean that they know we're here and they're reaching out to us for better or for worse.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
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.
You miss the point of the Fermi Paradox entirely. Given that humans have only been in existence on earth for 200K Years, why is it that no aliens have colonised Earth *before* we got here? It would take only one expansionist alien culture to exist in the billions of years the galaxy has existed before us and the Earth and the entire galaxy would have been well and truely colonized already.
I mean some relatively straight-forward extrapolations of humans shows *us* colonizing the galaxy in a few million years.
Basically the Fermi paradox says, they are *no* other intelligent civilizations in the galaxy otherwise we would have had dramatic evidence on Earth.
Still I see no particular harm in continuing to look. If something were found it would be a monumental breakthrough.
Even more importantly, why does everyone think Fermi's paradox is well posed?
There's also a really simple explanation: The astronomical distances separating Earth from other stars require astronomical amounts of energy and/or astronomical amounts of time cross. Maybe accessing this amount of energy and time is just too improbable for any civilization. We could play some games with the Drake equation and "prove" this, but we'd be extrapolating into bullshit-land. Of course, that is where the current Drake equation parameters are anyway.
But even if this barrier could be crossed, consider advanced aliens that develop the means access such a large amount of energy and to travel such great distances. Let's say that life is so common that they are able to come across millions of other life forms. Chances are, those life forms will be much more primitive than they are. After you have "discovered" a few million primitive life forms are you really going to visit them all? Or would you rather use your time more efficiently, and ignore the life forms that are much less primitive that you and only visit the ones that are near or above your level of sophistication? When was the last time you talked to the ants in your backyard on the way to hang out with your girlfriend?
I am guessing that even advanced aliens don't have infinite time and energy at their tentacle tips. They're not going to waste their time with us. We can barely get to low earth orbit on a good day.
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!
Technically, due to the whole speed of light thingy, often we are looking for signs that intelligent life existed thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago. Civilisations could have blinked out of existance long before our capacities to collect their signals were up to speed. Or they exist right now, but their signals won't arrive for another century or so.
Actually, we only need to look at our own example of how well we've been advertising our existence. The switch to digital and satellite broadcasting has severely cut down on the number of signals we've been sending into the void. Things like Arecibo are mere blips, in the hopes that the other radio antenna is listening at that moment and not sweeping a different sector. By the time they look at our solar system again our signals may not be discernable against the background noise of our sun.
And yes, maybe Professor Sagan was right, but on the time scale that Lovecraft used: our planet may have been visited by intelligent life, but it could have been during one of the great die-outs, and they moved on with little more than a note to check again in a few millenia, and forgot about this rock.
If there's intelligent life out there, they'll have to be within 150 light years from us for them to find us, and the reverse would be true as well. Plus, any civilizations that use technology not based on radio will be invisible to us.
Free Martian Whores!