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US Air Force Pays SETI To Check Kepler-22b For Alien Life
New submitter iComp writes with this quote from El Reg:
"The Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has announced that it is back in business checking out the new [potentially] habitable exoplanets recently discovered by NASA's Kepler space telescope to see if they might be home to alien civilizations. The cash needed to restart SETI's efforts has come in part from the U.S. Air Force Space Command, who are interested in using the organization's detection instruments for 'space situational awareness'."
Maintaining scan for UFO's.
"Intruder...alert...U...F...O..."
Does this mean I'll finally have a use for my Y2k bunker? If so, I should get busy building it.
Before they're finished blowing up people and things in Afghanistan etc?
A marriage made in Heaven, and with National Security Tie-Ins and BIG Defense Corporate Sponsors and a VERY willing Congress.
Cheers All.
the USAF wants to track sub orbital cruise missiles like DARPA is developing using the SETI ATA to look at close earth objects with high accuracy during the day when their optical tracking systems are offline. SETI wants to find alien civilizations at night. should work nicely.
If there is intelligent enough life on Kepler-22b to see that our U.S. military, who can't seem to figure peace out on our OWN planet, is the first to probe theirs...they could see it as a potentially hostile first impression. Just sayin'.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Do they have a bunch of "Space Marines" ready to jump out of the trunk of the Space Shuttle, like in Moonraker? Or are they working on "Space Warrior Robot Soldiers?" . . . definitely more geekier!
Will our first contact with Alien Life be with military space drones? That ought to work out nice: "Oh, the Alien Military Drones' way of saying they like you, is to bite your Military Space Drone in the ankle!"
Well, I guess I won't have to worry about such contacts happening in my lifetime. Unless we figure out how to surf those faster-than-light-neutrinos.
Or maybe . . . "they" know how to do it?
"Alien Charlie does surf!"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Aren't these planets hundreds of light years away? Their money would be better spent looking for potential Earth impacting asteroids or comets.
Theme
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
I ran into Ms Tarter (the director of SETI) at the Oakland airport a few years ago and recognized her from her numerous bits of SETI branded gear she had.
I was very pleased to find that she was both passionate and intelligent, as well as very pragmatic. We had the chance to talk for over and hour before the flight left and discussed many of the things that are interesting about the whole project.
I certainly consider myself lucky to have seen a part of that and heard it first hand.
The funny thing is, just because our planet supports life in this so-called 'habitable zone', doesn't mean life cannot thrive outside of this zone, until we actually have interstellar travel we'll never know for sure!
Michael
http://s1.sfgame.us/index.php?rec=58163
Explore, conquer, colonize. We are humans. Resistance is futile.
There's intelligent life on our planet, and we are happily killing it into extinction for our own expansion. Looking at the way we behave at our own planet, I think it is extremely likely that we would inhabit every planet we can reach if it is inhabitable. And then take over sooner or later, with or without a struggle.
It's in the line of expectations that the military get involved early on. Humans have never explored anything unarmed.
I imagined a conversation about "situational awareness" during the Iraq war going something like this:
General: So, what's the situation?
Advisor: Sir! In the 15th century, the Aztecs defeated Azcapotzalco, sir!
General: Excellent!
Apple quietly got a grant from the U.S. Air Force Space Command to develop a virus for 'space-craft defensive measures'...
The AFSPC's vision:
"Global Access, Persistence and Awareness for the 21st Century"
Their mission:
Provide Resilient and Cost-Effective Space and Cyberspace Capabilities for the Joint Force and the Nation
http://www.afspc.af.mil/library/
How does searching exoplanets fit into either their mission or their vision?
I'm all for what they're doing and SETI in general, but it doesn't make sense.
"The funny thing is, just because our planet supports life in this so-called 'habitable zone', doesn't mean life cannot thrive outside of this zone, until we actually have interstellar travel we'll never know for sure!"
Both Tucson and Phoenix seems to be habitable zones for aliens. Life appears to thriving well as far as i can tell from space (http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=32.888813,-111.489258&spn=1.399932,1.977539&t=h&vpsrc=6&z=9).
As they have been terraforming for decades, interstellar travels seem completely redundant.
kepler 22 is ~600 LY away. At the best case even if we were sending a message today , they would not receive is at roughly christmas 2611 and even at average 20% c speed their ship would not be there before many millennium, to find either a highly advanced civilization, or barbarian from a fallen society. How would they *divine* that it was sent by our military ? Would they even *CARE* that some folk military 600 LY away has their panty in a knot ? And we are not even sending a message, as far as I can read we are only checking.
Anyway the article make it clear that space command seems to be more interested into mundane stuff.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
avatar.
I've been waiting so long to hit on purple haired women...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDzNkern1Fc
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Can we create with French 'Friends of Kepler-22b' and free them from their opressive dictators?
The Air Force pays for the research. The Air Force owns the output of the research. The Air Force suppresses report stating national security.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
I don't want go to war with aliens
Then you had better pray that they don't have oil.
Otherwise, in a flash they'd be declared part of the Axis of Evil by the same old Assholes of Evil. Then Yosemite Bush would 'lead' the charge and declare "Mission Accomplished" by the time they saw the dark side of the moon through their windows.
The Fermi paradox isn't just a cute bit of philosophy. Our galaxy should be teeming with life. We live on prime real estate, the Thrints should have colonised it back in the Cambrian.
So either we're unique (inconceivable), ~8.8 billion years isn't long enough for any other species anywhere in the Milky Way to have kicked off colonisation (improbable), or something is silencing them (merely unlikely and scary).
Maybe we should take a look at that third possibility, and take a good hard look around rather than shouting "Here we are! Hey, over here, life!" into the void. Paranoid? Yes, but we're gambling the species on it, and the costs are essentially pocket lint.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Our five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before so we can target them and take them out.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Incidentally, they would have pointed at Kepler 22b anyway, so the USAF probably wasted some cash (shocker).
The USAF, still flush, has decided to buy the sort of science experiment whose vain, reel-to-reel-style bookishness projects just the image they've been searching for: that of a CIA drone operative mindlessly and with great ease and accuracy pressing a particular button.
My all-time favourite TV show when I was a kid. To be honest I think it could actually be remade in the modern day as one of the new-fangled "gritty" TV shows as was done with Battlestar Galactica. If HBO did it we would get to see the moon-chicks in the nude on a regular basis :P
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Sorry to disappoint, but TFS is way off. (So unusual for slashdot...) Actual information is here.
"Space situational awareness" is not Colonel O'Neil looking out for an invading alien fleet. It means tracking satellites and space debris to avoid collisions. The USAF is renting the SETI array to track GPS satellites.
Which group in the American gov., other than those researching, backed the concept of AGW? It was the military. Why? Because they did enough of the calculations to see that it was close, if not accurate, and then went on to play out scenerios. They came up as being that there is going to be a lot of chaos in the future.
As such, I would hope that the DOD would be looking into issues of possible non-terrestrial life considering the possibility for a major impact to our nation and the world.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Just so long as it isn't too realistic. Woo Hoo! Low gravity flab! It could be hard to get good excercise at 1/6th the gravity. But then again at least there wouldn't be as much sag...
Mr. President, we must not allow a habitable exoplanet gap...
Is the big reveal due soon?
This planet is 600 light years away,. So if we do hear signals from there, they are 600 years old. Radio as we know it here on earth under 100 years old . So our radio signals haven't even travelled 100 light years from earth yet
Soooo.... does the fact that the military is funding SETI entitle them to a kill switch if the Paul Allen array (I assume this is the recipient of the funding) finds anything? In addition to the obvious socio-political implications of the discovery of ET, I have heard that the armed services are rife with religious fundamentalists who might be very upset to know that God didn't create this universe solely for them?
Anyway, perhaps we should be concerned if prominent SETI researchers suddenly start to go missing...
There is a US Air Force Space Command.
Now that's what I call a cushy berth.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
hey lets all add this client that "detects" alien life, funded by you favorite govmnt :)
Do they have OIL?
This is sort of the problem with SETI. We will actually be checking if they had an advanced enough civilization that could broadcast into space... 600 years ago. We have only had electrical power generation for 130 years.
So if Kepler-22b is 600 light years away, and artificial radio transmissions are discovered coming from it, that means they would have had to have invented and started using powerful radio transmitters at least 600 years ago. Wouldn't that mean the civilization there is at least 500 years more technologically advanced than we are?
Instead of trying to get USAF to pay the bill, why not just announce "We've found oil on Kepler-22b?"
SETI nothing, you'll have a fleet of oil tycoons on the launch pad ready for blastoff tomorrow. And if/when they finally colonize a new planet and establish a base of operations, you can tell them you lied. "No oil, but welcome to the future, bitches"
if the missile was smaller than a house and traveling fast enough to reach us in less than 10,000 years we probably wouldn't see it.
I wonder what a 100 ton slug accelerated at 1g for 1 years would do. google says: (9.8 (m / (s^2))) * 1 year = 309 257 875 m / s
Obviously Eisenstein doesn't let me do that easily, but still pretty shocking. (an impossible specific impulse is required)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
If we forever fail to re-examine the delusions of crazy people we'd still believe that the Sun circles the Earth.
Most of the major leaps forward in science and technology have at one point or another been considered delusional. You might think they nuts. It'll be interesting who is remembered by history as closed-minded jackassed when all is said and done.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
(First of all, sorry if I’m making spelling mistake, I’m French Canadian. But I’ll try to explain myself as best as I can)
Basically, I'm still surprised how people put so much belief about the existence of other intelligent alien life. I mean, take a look at our history. Our universe was born around 13.75 billion years ago. Our solar system is a good 4.54 billion years old. First evidence of life comes from around 3.8 billion years ago and the first trace of “homo” (our ancestor) maybe 2.5 million years ago. The first civilisation, probably a good 10 000 years ago. And only for the last 100-150 years, we started to evolve really fast.
My point? Let’s say we start colonizing space in the 22th century. That would mean that in 13.75 billion years, there’s maybe only two centuries that separate the time between the creation of the radio and the colonisation of space. One little change (slightly different sun, earth a little further from the sun etc.) and this period would have happened a billion years earlier, or later.
So basically, if there’s any alien form, chances are that they are either in bacterial form, or they would have found us a looong time ago.
Me thinks Kepler will end-up being one of the most important scientific instruments in the history of mankind. Too bad our president is so hostile to science / NASA and JPL (as well as private business). If I was president, there would be a massive sky survey based on Kepler to scan a much, much larger % of our neighbors for planets in the habitual zone followed by specific planet studies (looking for signs of life / intelligence). I wouldn't be surprised to see Obama cancel Kepler to repurpose the money to buy votes for the DNC. The guy makes me sick to my stomach.
I can think of at least one human-like motive that might result in super-advanced aliens coming here and attacking us: Religion. At various times, various human religious groups have decided that everyone else has to Believe As We Do Or Die(TM). If humans are susceptible to this kind of mass hysteria, I have to at least admit the possibility that our hypothetical aliens might be, too.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Hello, alien friends. Hellooooo........... Can you confirm that there is no Christian God? Not being sure if a moral and omniscient being is watching us surf internet porn is driving some of us nuts.
We await your answer... we have beer and snacks.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
After finding the God particle, scientists will say: "Hey let's find the Devil particle!"
Then we will escalate experiments till we manage to blow up Earth with one.
Fermi paradox solved, some of the most advanced lifeforms just blow themselves up.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
Say aliens do exist and I believe odds are good on that score (We are here aren't we?) we have nothing to worry about. They are either at our technological level, bellow us or ahead of us. And they either are violent, savage and psychopathic like us or pacifist and benevolent you know unlike us! If they have the same technological level or bellow us it does not matter because we can't reach them and they can't reach us. If an alien civilization that are as savage and vicious as we are reach a level of technology above us they will use it to destroy themselves you know like we are doing! The big question to ask is not if alien do exist but why are advanced benevolent aliens not contacting us? The best answer to that question come from a line on the third season of Torchwood. "Sometimes the Doctor must look at this planet and turn away in shame."
And just what is the radio signature for unobtanium?
--
I hope this comment creates a much-needed gap in the discussion.
As far as I can tell no one has referred back to SETI's most vocal spokesman... Mr. Billion & Billions himself... Carl Sagan.... who is probably twisting up a fatty IN HIS GRAVE to celebrate the reactivation of SETI.
Yo, Carl... pass de duchy on the left hand side...
Peace, out!
Shhh! Don't tell anyone but it's really the next location for Camp X-Ray
We have only made one object that has left our solar system. It took 33 years to do so. It is less than 15 light minutes away.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/12/07/2127247/voyager-1-exits-our-solar-system
Millennium refers to 1000 years.
My calculations indicate if we take known data (I would argue our space faring expertise hasn't gotten all that better since the 70's) and project it to a distance of 600 light years (and this doesn't even take into consideration deceleration), it would take about 14 million years just to smash into the planet.
or about 14,000 millenniums, which technically is many, but I would suggest that word isn't quite strong enough.
Heck, at best given we have some fantastic magic alien detection device that travels the speed of light, all we can do is say that 600 years in the PAST there was alien life.
Hell, if you can build a device that can detect if HUMAN life here on earth will still be here 600 years from now, you are probably doing pretty good!
Just think about it. Imagine sending a signal 600 years ago, and now trying to receive that result, I mean the technological differences would be immense!
So in short, the Air Force is dumb. But hey if they want to give money to SETI I am all for it! :) Its probably more useful way to spend money anyway than those F35's! ;)
600 light years... that will take a whole lot of energy to punch a ship to near light speed and then to punch is back down again... If you can get it going 299900 Km/Second you have a Relativistic time dilation effect of ~13.76241 and are going ~0.99736% the speed of light...
so 600 light years takes 601.588 Earth time years to travel... but Ship time time dilates and becomes ~43.712 years (not counting the acceleration time or deceleration time).
But the energy required would be a whole lot beyond huge so the mass of the ship would need to be small... thus it is best to send a Robot Incubator Colony Seed Ship with Instant Humans to grow if it's suitable. The humans are carried as sperm and eggs frozen till the time is right... then you grow them and educate them with androids as the first generations of parents. No point condemning existing people to misery in space unless there is a suitable home.
Also this way you can cut back on the energy requirements and let the ship take a couple of hundred years ship time instead... getting the ship up to 0.9 light speed would take less energy and take ~666.666... Earth years... and have a time dilation effect of ~2.294 and a speed of 269813.2122 Km/Second... would take about ~290.618 years ship time... robots wouldn't mind that... we might but the robots and frozen seeds wouldn't.
So every bit over 0.9 light speed really cuts down on the time but chews up a much larger amount of energy...
Our Robot Incubator Colony Seed Ship with Instant Humans ship really needs to be as small as possible... this means that upon arrival in the destination solar system it would use raw materials there, such as asteroids, to grow a space based habitat and manufacturing system from onboard Nanotechnology that we send. Then it grows the humans and scans the solar system in detail to gather information and plan the colony.
Should life exist there we have a much bigger challenge.