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US Air Force Pays SETI To Check Kepler-22b For Alien Life

Posted by Soulskill on from the best-defense-is-a-strong-offense dept.

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'."

2 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. nice...sub orbital hypersonic missile tracker. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Explore, conquer, colonize. by captainpanic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.