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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?
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.
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.
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.
This. Even though I don't want go to war with aliens (and it currently seems illogical to do so) I have no problem with funding dual-purpose research just in case.
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.
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.
Yeah, right, deep space radar... Maybe Kepler-22b doesn't have a Stargate?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Well as luck would have it monitoring *one* planet is very reasonable and not overly resource intensive.
SETI's problem was always that they tried to monitor a *lot* of planet/star/whateverthefucks
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'...
Do you have any idea how far away these "possible threats" actually are?
Really, it's a serious question.
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
You'll end up just as jaded as you are here on Earth. All I see is Orange, Greenette, Purplehead...
The possible threat is from mass panic and/or social unrest. Take somebody's whole lifetime of religious belief and pull the carpet out from under it and they'll react irrationally. Do that to the majority of people on the planet and you potentially have big problems.
I mean our fundamentalists already go crazy over basic science like evolution or climate change or conception, just imagine what they'd do if we weren't the Chosen planet, let alone how people in some place like the Middle East would react. You know for a certainty people would at least try to blow up the radio telescopes and cover up the knowledge. What else? Who knows, but the government having some time to plan and prepare before word got out would be valuable preparation.
You can't find any *human* motives for harming us. Alien lifeforms may have completely alien way of thinking and incomprehensible motivations. Even their definition of 'harm' may be different than ours.
We may finally achieve the dreams of our ancient ancestors, who gazed up at the stars and thought, "I wonder if there are any bangable chicks up there?"
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
I've got news for you; if the aliens have the technology to come here, and they wanted to kill us off, there is nothing that we could do. All of the movies you see are a total joke; we would be the proverbial fish in a barrel to them. Actually, we wouldn't; it's way harder to kill fish in a barrel than it would be for them to wipe us out instantly. Just imagine the United States military going to war with a tribe of hunter gatherers, and the hunter gatherers have nowhere to hide.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
We have had 2 world wars within a century because European pacifist douche bags like you sit back and watch every time the next Hitler crops up while the US goes out and smacks them upside the head.
Actually, World War 1 started because Europe was full of militaristic (and mostly aristocratic) douche bags who wouldn't even take the offer not to start the War, because they already had all the plans made up and their little toy soldiers moved down from the attic to play with them.
Now, World War 2 was a direct consequence of the winning militaristic idiots deciding that peace means giving the other militaristic dimwits a huge reason to start another war. In that climate, being a pacifist only saved peace for roughly 20 years (even less if you count Spain). After that, the militaristic and obscenely patriotic/nationalist side decided it'd be jolly good to start playing with toy soldiers again.
The only reason we didn't have a Third and Fourth World War was that the militaristic idiots in all participating countries didn't get another chance to fuck the post-war peace up again. It may have been the military that won the war, but it were the pacifists that ensured that peace would last more than another 20 years.
And what was the end result? The United States led one bloody war after another, whereas Europe saw continuously progressing unification and over 60 years of mostly peace ... up until an US-American, patriotic fuckwad decided a full blown war in two countries with hundred of thousands of dead would be the best response to a small group of confused people killing some 3000 US-Americans.
Yeah, the military is great, isn't it? And for good measure, a big hooray for the war-mongers of the future!
Still a long way to go before we call it even for ending the two world wars.
The US wasn't really responsible for ending WW1 and even if it had been, the resulting "peace" was not something that anyone would be proud of, leading inevitably to WW2 as it did. If I was American, I'd let the UK and France have WW1.
As for WW2, the honours would have to be shared between the USSR and the US.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
That stupid phalanx killed three of my tanks so I am not so sure about this.
Here's an interesting bit of trivia: What did King George the IV of England, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, and Tsarina Alexandra (wife of Tsar Nicholas) have in common? Answer: a grandmother. These were all the spoiled grandchildren of Queen Victoria, and all first cousins. Austria is represented in this inbred family tree as well. Victoria's husband, Albert was a Hapsburg. One single family represented the initial primary belligerents in a conflict that led to the massacre of sixteen and a half million people.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno