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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'."
It's the military having foresight, produence, and due diligence. Their main job is to defend us, and one of the major part of that is accessing new threats wherever they are.
If we were to find life on this planet, would you rather us to in completely blind about them?
The military's job is fighting wars. Securing peace is the people's and governments' job.
And the military is the only who does it's job.
In love, war and slashdot discussions, everything is allowed.
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
>Blame natural evolution or god for creating us that way.
Nah. Obviously, any human action depends on god/evolution to allow it, but often "blame" should lie more directly on for example culture/ideas than on the underlying plumbing that facilitates them.
In this case of violent human exploration it is true that genes are probably pretty directly involved as the humans explore in states of fear and greed, but ideas and culture is still a bigger factor, and also the one we can do something about.
While we have the capacity for violence and feelings of fear, anger, revenge and greed, we are also capable to marvel and feel sympathy, to be righteous and to share. The higher plane of ideas and culture is where we can work, building on a foundation of the genetics of a social, loving animal and overcoming the scared greedy brute within.
So, no, don't blame god or evolution, even if they're visibly present in the state of things, because also the malleable ideas and culture of fear, greed and ruthlessness are there, shaping the order of things at least as much. Ideas and culture we can work on more readily.
Don't surrender to what is hardwired. Work around it in the software.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
Of course, if they've figured out how to efficiently travel between stars, i'd lay money that no weapons we have are going to do a damn thing to them. These movies where the backwoods hicks with a hunting rifle take down the interplanetary killing machine is just about the biggest grasp at unbelievable as possible.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's