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'."

Comments

Does this mean...

[jtownatpunk.net]

Does this mean I'll finally have a use for my Y2k bunker? If so, I should get busy building it.

Re:Does this mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ok, you still have the best part of 89 years to build it.

Re:Does this mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your clock says December 7, 1911 too? Mine didn't handle the century flip either. The great thing about the Y2K bug is that once you have it, it'll keep coming back every hundred years.

USAF looking for new targets...

[Anonymous Coward]

Before they're finished blowing up people and things in Afghanistan etc?

nice...sub orbital hypersonic missile tracker.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:nice...sub orbital hypersonic missile tracker.

[Anachragnome]

"the USAF wants to track sub orbital cruise missiles..."

I'd say that the discovery of sub-orbital missiles on Kepler-22b would be a pretty damn good indication of alien life. Intelligent? Not so much.

Re:Military the first one, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Jill Tarter

[SecurityTheatre]

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.

Re:Jill Tarter

[FatLittleMonkey]

Yes, but did she look like

According to Google image search, a young Jodi Foster.

Explore, conquer, colonize.

[captainpanic]

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.

Re:Explore, conquer, colonize.

[migla]

>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.

Re:Explore, conquer, colonize.

[meglon]

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.

Re:Military the first one, huh?

[dokc]

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.

Situational awareness?

[Ardeaem]

Before I read that the array was going to be used by the Air Force for non-SETI purposes (something not made apparent by the summary), my thought was: "The planet is 600 light years away. Let's say we detect radio signals from Kepler-22b. That means we know that on a planet 3 quadrillion miles away, some species used radio signals 600 years ago. That's not exactly situational awareness..."

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!

Re:Situational awareness?

[Ardeaem]

Just to make clear: The Air Force does not want to check Kepler 22b. Here's what they want:

AFSPC, through the Space Innovation and Development Center (SIDC), is currently researching the possible use of the ATA to augment the already extensive sensors of the Space Surveillance Network, potentially leveraging the array to help increase space situational awareness. Initial demonstrations show promise for the ATA to track transmitting satellites in Low Earth Orbit, Medium Earth Orbit and, most promising, in Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO), which is home to the most costly, highly-utilized, and vital satellites that orbit the earth. A collision and subsequent debris field in GEO could permanently remove the GEO belt from worldwide use.

HAnd how will they know that ?

[aepervius]

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.

Re:HAnd how will they know that ?

[Ardeaem]

If they looked our way today, they would have front-row seats to the rise of the Ottoman empire.

Front row seats? If I had front row tickets to a concert, and they seated me 600 light years away, I'd be pissed. Unless it was a Disaster Area concert. Or Justin Bieber.

Re:Oblig.

[GameboyRMH]

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?"