SETI To Scour the Moon For Alien Footprints?

astroengine writes "Although we have an entire universe to seek out the proverbial alien needle in a haystack, perhaps looking in our own backyard would be a good place to start. That's the conclusions reached by Paul Davies and Robert Wagner of Arizona State University, anyway. The pair have published a paper in the journal Acta Astronautica detailing how SETI could carry out a low-cost crowdsourcing program (a la SETI@Home) to scour the lunar surface for alien artifacts, thereby gaining clues on whether intelligent aliens are out there and whether they've paid the solar system a visit in the moon's recent history."

Comments

Oh For Fuck's Sake

[hondo77]

first

[Anonymous Coward]

Look into the oceans then aim for the moon

Re:first

[MichaelSmith]

Oceans destroy artifacts on the scale of years. One year in the Atlantic is worth a billion years on the moon.

Re:first

[viperidaenz]

Its probably easier to get to the moon than the bottom of the deepest oceans. An unmanned space craft doesn't have to deal with much pressure in space. the difference between space and earth sea level is only about 14psi. The bottom of the ocean has pressures over 15,000 psi

Besides, with plate techtonics, the ocean floor isn't really that old. Of the 4.5 billion years earth has been around, the atlantic ocean was only around for a few hundred million years.
The moon however, is pretty much a solid rock, there no known movements of its surface
There has also been life down in the oceans for over 3 billion years leaving its own traces

Re:first

[twotacocombo]

The moon however, is pretty much a solid rock, there no known movements of its surface

Oh, except for all the crap that has been sandblasting it since the dawn of time. Every time a new crater is formed, everything that is ejected out of the hole blankets the area around it, and the ground will quiver like a bell from the impact. While there doesn't appear to be any current tectonic activity, the surface of the moon is far from static.

Re:first

[Grishnakh]

Its probably easier to get to the moon than the bottom of the deepest oceans.

I don't think so. It takes ~1970 technology to reach the moon, along with a monstrous budget, yet it only takes a small budget and 1960 technology to reach the deepest point in the ocean:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste

Re:first

[0123456]

I don't think so. It takes ~1970 technology to reach the moon, along with a monstrous budget, yet it only takes a small budget and 1960 technology to reach the deepest point in the ocean:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste

And how long do you think you'd take to survey the entire sea-bed that way?

I'm not saying it would be a bad idea; if nothing else it would probably find some interesting old wrecks, but I'd be surprised if it was as fast and cheap as surveying the lunar surface at resolutions high enough to spot any kind of alien prescence. That said, I very much doubt there's anything to see up there.

Re:first

[Grishnakh]

And how long do you think you'd take to survey the entire sea-bed that way?

I never said it was fast, I was just countering the earlier assertion that it's easier to get to the moon than the bottom of the deepest ocean, because we did the latter a full decade before the former, with a much smaller budget too. And our moon missions didn't exactly cover a lot of territory on the moon, either, they just landed at a pre-selected spot, walked around a bit (drove around in some later missions), collected some rocks, planted a flag, and left.

With modern ROV technology, I doubt it'd be that much harder to survey the entire sea-bed than to survey the entire moon (it'd be slower because of the medium, and also because the earth is much bigger than the moon even if you only survey the underwater parts).

Re:first

[viperidaenz]

24 people have been to the moon, 2 to the bottom of the ocean. There are currently satellites orbiting the moon, there is nothing man made swimming around the bottom of the ocean right now. The first unmanned vehicle to go down there was in 1995, the last in 2009.

You can communicate with the moon in less than 2 seconds using radio waves. It takes 7 seconds for sonar to reach the bottom of the ocean.

There's apparently a $10,000,000 prize if you can get there twice

Re:first

[Grishnakh]

There's apparently a $10,000,000 prize if you can get there twice

To the bottom of the ocean? Doubtful, and citation needed. If some guys in 1960 can build a craft that takes actual humans down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and go down there successfully, it would be pretty trivial for someone to do the same thing now twice in a row.

As for nothing swimming around down there, how do you know? There's lots of private companies that operate ROVs for various reasons, such as treasure hunting. They don't publicize every time they send an ROV down to explore shipwrecks looking for Doubloons. There's other researchers using larger ROVs for deeper dives for research purposes, but again, those things don't make the news the way space exploration does.

You don't need sonar to communicate with the bottom of the ocean; you can just string a wire down there from your surface vessel and get lightspeed communications. How do the ROVs communicate?

Re:first

[Baloroth]

The problem is most of the ocean is dark. Like, really, really, dark. The depth alone isn't a problem. The darkness, combined with the extremely limited visibility, is. You can see the entire surface of the moon from, well, just step outside on a night with a full moon. The bottom of ocean? Not so much. You can even make a precise survey of the lunar surface's height using laser rangefinding. Down to about 40m (vertical, 100m horizontal), which isn't bad at all. The closest thing for the ocean is sonar, and that is nowhere near as precise.

Don't remember where I heard it, but some scientist once commented that we know more about the surface of Mars than we do about our own ocean. It is surprisingly difficult to survey the ocean. According to the NOAA: "Yet for all of our reliance on the ocean, 95 percent of this realm remains unexplored, unseen by human eyes." (source). There is a reason we are still discovering new life in the ocean (and a lot of it too).

Re:first

[0123456]

I was just countering the earlier assertion that it's easier to get to the moon than the bottom of the deepest ocean, because we did the latter a full decade before the former, with a much smaller budget too. And our moon missions didn't exactly cover a lot of territory on the moon, either

Lunar Orbiter surveyed pretty much the entire moon in the mid-60s. The resolution wasn't enough to see alien footprints, but that was limited by the camera technology of the time.

Re:first

[viperidaenz]

I didn't provide a citation because it was one click away from the link you provided previously.

Cables aren't very robust. The first unmanned vehicle to go down there is MIA after its cable broke in 2003. Its replacement hasn't ventured to the bottom of challenger deep yet.

Re:first

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the images for signs of data falsification. The new Photoshopped images algorithm detects fakery.

Re:first

[rubycodez]

but all those craters were made over the last four billion years. There's only two inches of dust (on average) accumulated in that time!

Re:first

[rubycodez]

that's silly, we're already in the gravity well. Approaching from space, which is easier to reach and return? remember a starship could have a fusion drive that works for months or years to get to near light speed at less than one gee acceleration, but that won't get you off Earth, but could well get you to and off the moon.

Re:first

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you haven't noticed, those "all the crap that has been sandblasting it since the dawn of time" have been hitting the Earth harder and faster. (We're bigger, so we tend to attract more rocks, and when they do hit us they're usually faster.)

The fact that we see those crap almost nowhere in the earth tells something about the comparative magnitude of all the *Earthen crap* that sandblasts its own surface all year around.

Re:first

[RockDoctor]

With modern ROV technology, I doubt it'd be that much harder to survey the entire sea-bed than to survey the entire moon (it'd be slower because of the medium, and also because the earth is much bigger than the moon even if you only survey the underwater parts).

You wouldn't use ROV technology - or at least, I wouldn't use ROV technology.

Note : an ROV, as the term is conventionally used in the industry for which it was invented, is a mobile, self propelled platform capable of carrying both sensors (cameras, lights, sonar, ultrasonic distance finders ...) AND actuators (grippers, cutters, turning devices, sometimes welding equipment) and moving them around in the sea, being powered and controlled controlled by people on the surface.

The actuators for a start are unnecessary for survey work - which halves the individual complexity of a machine. Much of the steering equipment is also unnecessary ; another substantial saving. Lights and cameras ... produce pretty pictures, but only have depth-of-view of a few 10s of metres, limiting the spacing you can apply between machines.

I'd start from a different place : take an old, off the shelf seismic survey boat. Replace the 4-16 streamers of geophones, each up to 10s of km long, with an array of 10s-of-km long cables, each towing a relatively dumb side-scan sonar sonde with some side-to-side and up-and-down steering capabilities when under tow (this, so far, is an existing suite of technology ; it's used for surveying pipeline routes, existing submarine equipment, etc).

Side-scan sonar can have an effective range of up to a kilometre or so, depending on distance from seabed. For that, you need the up-down steering and some logic (on surface or in-water ; "meh"). To space the sondes laterally (compared to the route of tow) you need the lateral steerage ; you might also need to dedicate the most lateral strings of the boat to sondes that have GPS/ GLONASS/ whatever receivers above-water and positioning sounders under water (again - this technology already exists in the seismic industry) ; by triangulation form the sounders, you can have very-fine grained positioning of the side-scan sondes and position them where you want them.

I think that's about it. The technology to do (about) a 10km swathe at some 10knots, to nearly arbitrary depth (cable length, topography roughness being the main constraints), with better than 0.1m resolution and few-metre accuracy is more-or less off-the shelf.

Who's going to pay? That's the big question.

The next step up, if it was worth going there, would be to get rid of the towing/ data storage vessel by using autonomous vehicles. Unfortunately, that means that either you only measure where the currents take you, or you have to regularly retrieve and re-fuel (re-charge) your "autonomous" vehicles. Which renders the "autonomous" idea a bit moot.

I know people who do sea-bed surveying for a living. It's mostly horrendously tedious.

It's also not cheap.

Looking for "interesting stuff" ... you can do coarsely from the surface, where "stuff>10m" might be a target, using a long-range, low resolution sonar combined with magnetometry (assuming that "ferruginous" = "interesting"), but again the days-at-sea are not cheap. And that's why it's only covered a relatively small part of the oceans.

You could, I guess, put a sonar sonde on a cable, and trail it behind an aircraft (with a magnetometer, why not?) ... but flying hours are not cheap either. Though you may get larger area/ lower resolution surveying done faster. (Didn't the military do this when sub-hunting in the past?)

How does that old joke go? Resolution, coverage, low cost - choose any two.

Re:first

[Anonymous Coward]

You can see the entire surface of the moon from, well, just step outside on a night with a full moon.

You think you're seeing the entire surface of the moon when you look up?! Evidently you've forgotten that the Moon is a sphere and you've never heard this

.

Re:first

[craigminah]

I've wondered if those odd looking creatures in the ocean are aliens...they look so different and in such a wide variety maybe they are all aliens from different regions in space.

Behind a paywall, don't bother.

[vlm]

It's behind a paywall, don't bother. disregard. A pity, sounds like an interesting idea, would have been nice to read about it.

Re:Behind a paywall, don't bother.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're interested: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6D85NAQZ

Re:Behind a paywall, don't bother.

[da8add1e]

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/12/26/aliens-moon-acta-astronautica-seti-nasa-_n_1170217.html?ref=mostpopular alternative link

Re:Behind a paywall, don't bother.

[vlm]

Hmm unless I'm reading that link wrong, thats not "the paper" its a press release about the paper after being run thru a journalist filter.

Re:Behind a paywall, don't bother.

[mcgrew]

http://zeenews.india.com/news/space/soon-seti-to-search-the-moon-for-alien-artifacts_749128.html

http://www.slashgear.com/seti-to-check-moon-for-signs-of-aliens-28204769/

http://news.discovery.com/space/seti-to-scour-the-moon-for-alien-tech-111227.html

I wonder if they'll find Daneel there?

Our own backyard?

[Mikachu]

I appreciate the idea of searching for extraterrestrial artifacts, but the moon does not seem a logical place for aliens to drop off their stuff. If anything, it seems far more likely that the earth would be such a place, seeing as it has life already (and has been far more active over the course of its history) so if it makes sense to search anywhere, it's here. I'm not sure what could really be accomplished by scouring the moon...

Re:Our own backyard?

[Anonymous Coward]

How likely is it that any extraterrestrial traces on Earth could survive to be unambiguously identified?

Re:Our own backyard?

[wooferhound]

Skip the Rock and Head for the Water

Oh Crap, captured by the intense gravity and burned up in the dense atmosphere

Re:Our own backyard?

[TheRaven64]

If you wanted to leave a lasting indication of your existence, the moon would be a good place for it. It's unusual in our solar system (the only large moon around a rocky planet). If they visited in the last few billion years, then it would have been in orbit around a planet with life. It also lacks the surface erosion that you get on Earth (no water freezing and melting, no atmospheric effects), so an artefact left there would last for a long time. The stuff the Apollo crews left there is still in good condition - imagine what state it would be in if it were left almost anywhere on Earth (with the possible exception of Antarctica) for the same length of time...

Re:Our own backyard?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were an alien, I wouldn't want to "drop something off " to the earth instead of the moon, ever. The earths potential well is much larger than that of the moon. It wouldn't make sense to drop of something on the earth. If anything, it would probably be even better to drop it on Phobos, rather than our own moon.

Re:Our own backyard?

[perpenso]

I appreciate the idea of searching for extraterrestrial artifacts, but the moon does not seem a logical place for aliens to drop off their stuff. If anything, it seems far more likely that the earth would be such a place, seeing as it has life already (and has been far more active over the course of its history) so if it makes sense to search anywhere, it's here. I'm not sure what could really be accomplished by scouring the moon...

The argument in the SETI paper is that the lunar environment can preserve surface artifacts and alterations for millions of years. Plus the search only involves looking at satellite imagery be collected for other reasons. No one is claiming the moon was a more likely destination.

Re:Our own backyard?

[LWATCDR]

Why on the moon? Why not in a high orbit around the earth. No need to land anything and it would be easier to spot for any technologically advanced society. Put a really big shinny metal ball in orbit at say 70,000 km and it will stay in orbit for geological time scales and if big enough be visible with a telescope from earth. How bit it needs to be will depend on how shiny and how bit of a telescope you are using. It doesn't have to be heavy just big.

Re:Our own backyard?

[tverbeek]

OK, maybe aliens are more likely to have visited the Earth than the Moon.

So: Where on the Earth are we likely to be able to see undisturbed footprints (or pawprints or tentacleprints or whatever) dating back more than a few days, weeks, months, or (if we're lucky) years? It would have to be some place without other living things that would obscure those footprints by walking all over them, and a place without air or water to erode them. It would also have to be lacking in indigenous lifeforms (ever) that could have created those prints themselves.

Sorry, but I'm coming up blank.

But if we look at the next closest planetoid.... Hey! It's a moon with a dry, lifeless, tectonically inert, vacuum-surrounded surface that's been visited by only a dozen ambulatory organisms, which disturbed only a tiny and well-documented fraction of the surface! Maybe we could look there?

Re:Our own backyard?

[Pharmboy]

Why on the moon? Why not in a high orbit around the earth.

You mean, like this one? ;)

Re:Our own backyard?

[da8add1e]

Unless they know something they ain't telling us? Strange perhaps but; all in all i can see their point, the moon has remained fairly static whilst the earth has undergone some fairly radical upheaval, also the moon would make an excellent base and observation post for alien anthropologists and biologists.

Re:Our own backyard?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

The stuff the Apollo crews left there is still in good condition - imagine what state it would be in if it were left almost anywhere on Earth

It would have been stolen and fenced on eBay . . . along with those Moon rocks "lost" by NASA . . .

Alien Earth Visitor to his Captain: "I have violated our Prime Directive. I left our technology on Earth. That will influence the development of their culture."

Captain: "Don't worry about it. Someone will steal it and sell on eBay, where no one will believe that it is authentic anyway. These Earthlings are a thieving race."

Re:Our own backyard?

[Grishnakh]

But if it's visible with a telescope from earth, then those earth lifeforms would be able to see it long before they developed the means to go look at it up-close. Maybe the Aliens want to wait for us to naturally develop both the desire and the ability to go into space and explore other celestial bodies before we stumble across an artifact from them.

Re:Our own backyard?

[Jeremi]

the moon does not seem a logical place for aliens to drop off their stuff. If anything, it seems far more likely that the earth would be such a place, seeing as it has life already

Precisely why the lifeless moon is a better place. That way the local riff-raff is less likely to steal your stuff.

Re:Our own backyard?

[twotacocombo]

You assume extraterrestrial life would be interested solely in investigating other life forms. Perhaps we're just one of millions of planets that harbor life, and they've already been there, done that. The moon does have uses other than just looking up at it. I remember the possibility of large amounts of Helium-3 up there..

Re:Our own backyard?

[NEDHead]

Hmm, they travel a minimum of 4 lightyears to get here, and they are worried about the earth's gravity well? I don't think so.

Re:Our own backyard?

[NEDHead]

Exactly!! And make it look like a disproportionately large moon! No one will ever miss the obvious alien gigundous moon orbiting Earth! Oh, wait...

Re:Our own backyard?

[Anonymous Coward]

THe motherfuckin dark side of the moon.

Re:Our own backyard?

[LWATCDR]

That came from low earth orbit. Nothing from a very high orbit has fallen. For instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_1 is expected to last 200+years and has a much lower orbit than the one I mentioned or one could look at the rather large natural satellite that has been in orbit around the Earth for a very long time.

Re:Our own backyard?

[Anonymous Coward]

What possible use does a 1 ppm concentration of He3 on a lifeless rock with no infrastructure have? I mean there are large amounts of gold dissolved in our oceans, I don't see any mad rush to extract it, and gold is worth a lot, AND everything you could possibly need to do it is right here.

Re:Our own backyard?

[devilspgd]

If this were the case, the opposite side of the moon would be a good candidate, as might putting it in Earth's orbit, but located on the opposite side of the sun from us.

Re:Our own backyard?

[LWATCDR]

Until we where very developed we would have no idea that it was not natural. Frankly our extremely large moon already surved that function very well. Not to mention that the very act of developing larger and larger telescopes shows a desire to explore other celestial bodies.
Simple truth is that trying to decide what is hidden enough for an alien race that is capable of interstellar flight is a fools errand. But then again it is also most likely a fools errand to look for artifacts on the moon. My choice is based on what is the simplest to do that will most likely achieve the same goal. At least this will be a cheap project and we may get some better maps of the moon from it.

Re:Our own backyard?

[rtb61]

This does kind of have the smell of a big secret about to brake and rather admit to lying for years and years, they just say, ohh, look what we found, surprise, surprise. Apparently some countries heading into space aren't into this whole let's keep it a secret deal, it might affect the whole power base.

Re:Our own backyard?

[rubycodez]

they may well be, you could launch a starship from a planet's orbit and slowly get to good fraction of lightspeed just accelerating at less than a gee for months or a few years, but that kind of drive won't get you off a planet.

Re:Our own backyard?

[cavreader]

If clear evidence of extraterrestrials is ever found can you imagine the gigantic shit storm it would create? Just watching all the various religions running around in circles trying to fit the fact into their sacred canons would be hilarious. Back in the day anyone claiming the Earth was round and not flat were labeled heretics and killed. Galileo's observations of the basic structure of the solar system almost got him killed.

Re:Our own backyard?

[rubycodez]

They bring their infrastructure with them? He3 is worth roughly 100x what gold is, to us humans. Despite what Cowboys and Aliens taught us about the Big Green Men, He3 is worth a LOT if you're riding a fusion powered ship around

Re:Our own backyard?

[HornWumpus]

Check your ego human.

I can believe aliens quarantining/visiting earth if it's not a huge effort. But traveling for generations just to anal probe a bunch of noofies, hippies and rednecks?

Re:Our own backyard?

[Grishnakh]

Exactly, just like the monolith in 2001.

Re:Our own backyard?

[mikael]

The conspiracy theorists that believe that the moon landings did occur, also believe that the astronauts saw underground installations in the sides of the larger craters (lots of lights), as well as rather large "menacing craft" watching them as they walked on the surface.

Fascinating concept for a sci-fi story at least . Not sure if living in the edge of a crater would provide that much protection from stray asteroids, because they could still coming in at an angle. Perhaps shielding from solar radiation would work.

One thing that does fascinate me is why animations of the libration of the moon show vertical stripes in the mid-center. Is that an effect of photography composition or something on the moon?

Re:Our own backyard?

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

Here's the appropriate soundtrack for reading these comments.

Re:Our own backyard?

[NEDHead]

On to a planet, not off. Much easier that way.

Re:Our own backyard?

[Anonymous Coward]

If clear evidence of extraterrestrials is ever found can you imagine the gigantic shit storm it would create? Just watching all the various religions running around in circles trying to fit the fact into their sacred canons would be hilarious.

I've studied quite a bit of comparative religion, and I think you're just wrong about this.
Can you name a single religion that would really have a big problem with it, and explain why?

Re:Our own backyard?

[cavreader]

Most main stream religions seem to pontificate about how God created man in is own image. The main religions of the world which are Christianity and Islam were created are to serve as a control mechanism that allowed the people at the top to gain power and wealth. Organized religion is responsible for unspeakable acts of cruelty that have more more to do with maintaining power and wealth for it's leaders than it does for providing comfort for the regular worshipper. Islam is especially good example of how to keep people on their knees far better than any monarchy or similar political system could. The religious leaders through the ages have used their power to extract subservience to the church or mosques using "God" as the control. I have always believed that the religions think in small terms. In order for man or any other lifeforms to exists first requires the creation of the entire universe before it can be populated with lifeforms but the major religions on Earth define it as the center of all creation. Politicians of all types mouth religious proclamations to gain power. The US leaders who mention God do so knowing they really have nothing to lose and pandering to religions to obtain votes from the religious blocks of voters. To me religious faith is a personal and internal state of mind that does not depend on practicing man made made rituals and relying on books written by man. In my opinion discovering that humanity is not alone in the universe can lessen the religious power that know is used to control people.

Re:Our own backyard?

[RancidPeanutOil]

Exactly. Any such new information would be integrated so fast... well, really fast. Blink of an eye. "Of course there is life in the stars, just as prophesied by our spiritual leader in verse blah-blah-blah." The only people who would be labelled heretics would be any earthling who would suggest that the aliens could possibly be atheists.

Re:Our own backyard?

[Man On Pink Corner]

Just watching all the various religions running around in circles trying to fit the fact into their sacred canons would be hilarious

In a sense, the whole idea behind any religion is to assimilate various contradictions and conundrums and take ownership of them. A religion that didn't rely on inexplicable weird stuff wouldn't last long.

With Christianity, for instance, nothing we'll ever find in the Universe is going to be harder to retcon than what's already written in the Bible, but that hasn't kept the Christian faith from being very successful.

Re:Our own backyard?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it has more of the smell of "we want money, so we're going to propose something that highly vocal fringe groups would buy into."

Re:Our own backyard?

[bruce_the_loon]

If it's spider-like critters that look like rocks, I'll literally scream

Re:Our own backyard?

[ericartman]

I'm reminded of that X-files show and the cockroaches, aliens everywhere, using swarm tech, lol. If the Panspermia theory is correct aren't we the aliens?

Re:Our own backyard?

[Man Eating Duck]

as might putting it in Earth's orbit, but located on the opposite side of the sun from us.

Nitpick: actually L3 is unstable, and anything placed there would need station-keeping. It might also be visible from Earth due to the Jupiter/Sun barycentre being located above the surface of the Sun.

Re:Our own backyard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who uses the phrase "dark side of the moon" and isn't referring to a Pink Floyd album is – by definition – an idiot who doesn't understand what he's talkign about. There is no such place any more than there is a "dark side of the earth". But thanks for contrtibuting.

Re:Our own backyard?

[equex]

It would make sense to drop off extra weight at the moon, to conserve energy, before landing on Earth. Then again it is stupid to assume they got this far and THEN try to conserve energy. But you never know. Maybe there's an empty gas can or two left up there? That would be the only reason to land on the Moon for them. I'm sure their instruments already determined that the Moon is just a dead rock. They may travel by means where energy conservation is to no purpose. But as the parent post says, the worst that could happen is a better map of the Moon. Why not?!

Re:Our own backyard?

[Quanticfx]

Exactly. Any such new information would be integrated so fast... well, really fast. Blink of an eye. "Of course there is life in the stars, just as prophesied by our spiritual leader in verse blah-blah-blah." The only people who would be labelled heretics would be any earthling who would suggest that the aliens could possibly be atheists.

While I agree that this would probably happen it would be interesting to see what happens to the whole God created us in his/her image idea. If there are extraterrestrials found at some point and they are vastly different from us then whose image did God create them in?

Re:Our own backyard?

[elrous0]

Alien Earth Visitor to his Captain: But we can still anally probe them, right?

Captain: Of course. Set your course for the nearest trailer park.

Re:Our own backyard?

[uigrad_2000]

Actually, that mystery was solved back in 1991 when the first one fell. Here's a really in-depth article about it:

http://fernlea.tripod.com/tank.html

Re:Our own backyard?

[CosineHamster]

cavreader,I agree with much of what you posted.but...aren't you digressing rather wildly from the topic at hand? Just saying...maybe you should post a new thread.

Re:Our own backyard?

[devilspgd]

Understood. Still, station-keeping is a solveable problem for any civilization wandering the cosmos placing such things for space-faring species to discover.

Re:Our own backyard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gradual Erosion (rain). Sudden Erosion (tsunami). Volcanism, Mining, Agriculture. Burrowing Animals, Burrowing Humans, Vegetation. These are the first eight reasons I thought of to rule out Earth. All within a minute. I notice the Moon lacks ALL OF THE ABOVE.

Re:Our own backyard?

[mcgrew]

Simple truth is that trying to decide what is hidden enough for an alien race that is capable of interstellar flight is a fools errand.

Especially since according to everything we know so far, interstellar flight is impoossible.

Re:Our own backyard?

[Anonymous Coward]

You assuming the contra-example wouldn't occur. What if the aliens that make first contact with us land in Jerusalem and are looking for the tomb of the savior, merely being the first of a huge wave of alien pilgrims? The shitstorm would be on the other side of the coin, wouldn't it? Would that Hitchens would have survived to see it happen. Now THAT would be funny.

Take it a step further. What if they land demanding to be admitted to see Zeus?

Re:Our own backyard?

[LWATCDR]

No manned interstellar flight is currently impossible. No real reason that robotic missions are impossible.

Re:Our own backyard?

[mcgrew]

If clear evidence of extraterrestrials is ever found can you imagine the gigantic shit storm it would create?

I'm a Christian, and I think the liklihood that this rock is the only one one bering life is improbable. On the other hand, there are so many here at slashdot that are 100% certain we will find ET. Such faith! Me, I think it's unlikely we'll not find ET sooner or later, but it's not unthinkable that this is the only place with life.

Back in the day anyone claiming the Earth was round and not flat were labeled heretics and killed.

Incorrect; Galleleo was persecuted for saying the earth wasn't the center of the universe, not that it was round. I have herad of no incidents where someone was stoned for not thinking the earth was flat, do you have a citation?

Re:Our own backyard?

[Anonymous Coward]

there were very few heretics, unfortunately. the mainstream scientific consensus was that the earth was the center of the universe. to say otherwise was to be a skeptic and an anti-science the-earth-is-the-center-denier. these were pretty serious charges for any scientist who wanted to be taken seriously. it wasn't just the church, the scientific community itself resisted challenges to consensus.

Re:Our own backyard?

[mcgrew]

Most main stream religions seem to pontificate about how God created man in is own image

Only if you only count Abrahamic religions as "mainstream". There are millions upon millions of Bhuddists and Hindus, you know. AND, if and when we do find ET, do you really think he's going to be a Vulcan? Look at the diversity of life on earth, all of which has a common evolution. The sci-fi idea (usually in movies and TV, seldom in literature) that ET will look anything at all like us is ludicrous, even more ludicrous than the insistance that there must be or cannot be life elsewhere.

The main religions of the world which are Christianity and Islam were created are to serve as a control mechanism that allowed the people at the top to gain power and wealth.

That's just flat out incorrect. Christianity is decidedly against power and wealth; and yes, I am a Christian. It is against wealth, greed, pride, narcisism. It is for peace, humility, forgiveness (above all), and happiness. I'll lay a few passages from the Christian bible about wealth and power:

Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

âoeBlessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.

That led to his execution.

Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for

Re:Our own backyard?

[mcgrew]

This does kind of have the smell of a big secret about to brake

I think you just said the exact opposite of what you thought you said.

Re:Our own backyard?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least in mainstream Christianity, being created in God's image means being given sapience.

There are theological questions raised by aliens--can they sin? do they need to be saved? If so, how?--but none of those questions are the ones village atheists think of.

I'm not going to argue about whether some religions have served as control mechanisms at some times. But to say that Christianity was *created* by the people *at the top* as a control mechanism is loonier than Ron Paul. The Caesars weren't in the catacombs.

Re:Our own backyard?

[mcgrew]

If there are extraterrestrials found at some point and they are vastly different from us then whose image did God create them in?

Whose image were squids and starfish and platypuses and kiwis created in? And how is a mockingbird any different than an ET life form in this respect?

Re:Our own backyard?

[Anonymous Coward]

As another day passes with your personal "humanity is not alone in the universe" hypothesis remaining unconfirmed, do you feel yourself succumbing to the control of an ever-growing "religious power"?

BTW, Catholics agree "humanity is not alone in the universe." The universe God created is not only populated with human beings but also with angels - unfallen and fallen.

Re:Our own backyard?

[cavreader]

Yes, my reply exceeded the posted topic but my response was how the discovery of exterrestrial life would impact religion and the original post was about people searching for signs of exterrestrial life.

Re:Our own backyard?

[cavreader]

"That's just flat out incorrect" Pick up a history book and you will find plenty of examples of people using religion to coerce and control a subject population. Better yet they have even created a system that even governments hesitate to act against. The Spanish Inquisition is one of the more prominent examples of the church saying obey us or face a slow and agonizing death. The actions of the Catholic church during WW2 is another example of egregious behavior. Just recently they have discovered a hoard of valuables that was confiscated from the Jews during the war. They also refuse to address the frequent molestation incidents seriously. Hell the Roman Catholic church based in Rome has an observer seat in the UN. Why? It is just another example of the power they have. The problem today is that a small minority of Islamic practitioners are destroying their religion. Surely the majority of the law abiding and true Islamic believers can whip up the same amount of public opposition they use to attack Isreal,the US, and even their own native populations. Why do they not do this against those distorting and using their religion to justify violence? They make vague statements and then claim they have did every thing they can do and then get back to loudly denouncing others for both real and imagined slights they feel are targeted against them. This inaction is destroying the respect people have for the Islamic religion. The behavior and actions of the Islamic extremists are daily front page news and that negatively effects the entire Islamic religion in other peoples eyes. The word terrorist and Muslim have become synonymous and this will continue creating conflicts in the world. The leadership of all religious orders can be just as corrupt and controlling as the leadership of any government in a secular system. The leaders in the middle east using their religion to manage their populations is a perfect example. I am not against any religion but when a religion starts trying to control or manipulate those who believe differently or those who do not believe at all they should be exposed and the charge of blasphemy should not be an acceptable excuse for their behavior.

Re:Our own backyard?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the best explanation of religion I have ever read! Thanks!

Re:Our own backyard?

[f()rK()_Bomb]

Actually, if you can't understand what dark side of the moon means you are the idiot. Look at the moon at night from earth, light always shines on one side from our perspective, hence the other side is dark. It doesn't mean light never shines there.

Re:Our own backyard?

[Dracophile]

Read "The Sentinel" by Arthur C Clarke.

Re:Our own backyard?

[mcgrew]

No real reason that robotic missions are impossible.

Voyager has been travelling for forty years and is just now at the edge of the solar system. If it were headed to Proxima Centuri it wouldn't arrive for millinea. It takes ten to twenty minutes, depending on where the respective planets are in their orbits, for a radio signal to reach the Mars rovers.

Re:Our own backyard?

[Anonymous Coward]

An oft repeated and incredibly shallow tome by those who count themselves among the "so smart as to smirk at anyone who subscribes to "snort!"... a religion!" crowd, it is simply untrue. You need a bit of historical context on your preconceived notions. Why not read up on it all? You'll be surprised on how deftly the affair with Galileo was handled, once the troglodytes (and they are always a factor) had decided he should pretty much be burned.

In any case, your larger assumptions about religions flying apart at the seams is also hogwash. Certainly it is untrue of most Christian religions, and the Catholic Church has in fact given it serious theological study. Also, this idea of "Man created in God's image" being based on physical form, which seems to be a major (and almost pathetically juvenile) "we are intellectually superior, Woo Hoo!" point among the aforementioned crowd... again, you have it ass backwards. Even most Medieval Catholic philosophers were clear eyed on the idea that this was about sentience. Indeed, looking even at the earliest passges from the OT, many theologans believe that the post creation story involving the Tree of Knowledge implies that language and self awareness were key elements of the concept of "Man-versus the rest of creation" even as far back as that. There are far too many clear allegories for this not to be the case (skulking and fear filled little "Literalists" notwithstanding)

Yes it feels awfully good to pretend that everyone who has walked before you, and even those still walking but who do not walk within your tight little tail chasing circle... were and are astoundingly ignorant compared with you. Unfortunately for the wankers of the world (and the amusingly self labelled "Brights" are prominent among such groups), it ain't so.

More boringly... your self indulgent position represents something that is not a new phenomenon. It is pretty much one of mankind's greatest weaknesses, and generation after generation, clever sophists have managed to dress it up in fashionable pseudo-intellectuals lingo, and deceive the weak minded but arrogant... who are just smart enough to pretend they are readily associated with a somehow "innately superior caste". Its quite sad really.

America is unique historically for having cultural drivers instilled in it that reflexively rejected the intellectualisation of the discourse, and as such, let common wisdom reign supreme for long enough for us to take it for granted.

You and yours represent the fall from that grace.

Re:Our own backyard?

[Quanticfx]

I'm going from a purely Judeo-Christian view here, I do not know enough about Islam or other religions to make any statements about them. Genesis states that God created us in his image and gave us dominion over all the other creatures on the earth.

20: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21: And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22: And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23: And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. 24: And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25: And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 26: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28: And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Going off of this if ETs are found and are technologically/culturally/etc.. superior then we aren't the only "chosen" ones, and from the way I see it some people may find that quite hard to stomach. So an "intelligent" ET is vastly different from a squid, starfish or mockingbird because they have been given the same or more "dominion" we have.

Re:Our own backyard?

[mcgrew]

Pick up a history book and you will find plenty of examples of people using religion to coerce and control a subject population.

That's true, but religion isn't the culprit here, any more than a chain saw is the culprit in a murder. That's not what a chain saw is designed to do, but it can be used for it.

You might as well blame state-sanctioned athiesm for the horrors of Stalin or Pol Pot. Of course, it wasn't athiesm that caused those atrocities, any more than it was religion that caused the atrocities you listed.

Surely the majority of the law abiding and true Islamic believers can whip up the same amount of public opposition they use to attack Isreal,the US, and even their own native populations. Why do they not do this against those distorting and using their religion to justify violence?

Cowardice. It takes a brave soul to face torture and death.

The behavior and actions of the Islamic extremists are daily front page news and that negatively effects the entire Islamic religion in other peoples eyes.

True, and disgusting.

The leadership of all religious orders can be just as corrupt and controlling as the leadership of any government in a secular system.

Also true. Humans are corrupt by their very nature, but it isn't religion that made Bin Laden corrupt, and it wasn't athiesm that made Pol Pot corrrupt.

I am not against any religion but when a religion starts trying to control or manipulate those who believe differently or those who do not believe at all they should be exposed and the charge of blasphemy should not be an acceptable excuse for their behavior.

I agree wholeheartedly. And BTW, blasphemy was the crime Jesus of Nazareth was executed for.

Re:Our own backyard?

[mcgrew]

I tend to think that if we do find an intelligent ET, it will be so alien to us that we won't even realize it's intelligent and may not even realise it's alive at all. It's only recently that they discovered that birds can use tools, and that dolphins and whales are remarkably intelligent.

Considering the vast distance betwen even the closest stars, and the incredibly vast distances between galaxies, that the probably that earth is the only place with life is incredibly tiny, and that we're the only intelligence ever, anywhere is also unlikely. But I doubt we'll ever find them, especially in our lifetimes.

Now, if they somehow create an einstein-busting warp drive (or find a loophole in Einstein's equations), then it's a different story.

Re:Our own backyard?

[Quanticfx]

I tend to think that if we do find an intelligent ET, it will be so alien to us that we won't even realize it's intelligent and may not even realise it's alive at all. It's only recently that they discovered that birds can use tools, and that dolphins and whales are remarkably intelligent.

Entirely agree, it does seem like we (humans) have been vastly underestimating the intelligence of all the creatures around us.

Re:Our own backyard?

[LWATCDR]

So? Voyager is not the fastest space craft we could build even then. It is not the fastest space craft we could build today. Today with an unlimited budget we could build a nuclear powered ion drive and maybe reach Proxima in a century or two. In the future we may go even faster with a laser pumped solar sail.
So no not impossible but very difficult and possibly impractical today for us. A century or so of progress and it may become practical if not before then.

Paging James P Hogan!

[50000BTU_barbecue]

I enjoyed his Inherit the Stars series.

Re:Paging James P Hogan!

[rts008]

I also found 'Inherit the Stars' to be a good read.

For the curious, 'Inherit the Stars' is available for free at the Baen Free Library, and the rest of the series is available for purchase from Baen for $4-$6.00 USD for each book.

Also check out 'Mutineer's Moon' (Dahak series) for another interesting premise, also free at the Baen Free Library.

crowdsourcing may add a lot of work here

[sl4shd0rk]

Not sure how feasible this would be to crowdsource. Wouldn't you need some reasonably trained eyeballs to avoid the cost and time of researching the "ooo I see a footprint" dead-ends?

Re:crowdsourcing may add a lot of work here

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey look, I found a flag!

Re:crowdsourcing may add a lot of work here

[Rockoon]

I'm not sure that cost/time matters as long as you have a large enough sampling from a diverse group. Generate weighting Wi for each point on the grid based on what the crowd thinks, and then start the "expert" cost/time analysis at the highest weight and work down..

At each iteration all the weights can be adjusted based on the experts input about the specific grid point he or she is looking at.

Re:crowdsourcing may add a lot of work here

[rubycodez]

*gulp* but it only has 48 stars!

Re:crowdsourcing may add a lot of work here

[mister_playboy]

Alaska and Hawaii had become states by the time of the lunar landings.

fair dinkum

[Anonymous Coward]

It's taken years to find the apollo landing sites... how on 'moon' are they going to spot.... oh wait... the monolith.... nevermind...

Send in the crowds

[Anonymous Coward]

Crowdsourcing on the Moon could solve the population problem on Earth.

Feel free to start here:

[IMarvinTPA]

This may give them a leg up on the process:
http://www.marsanomalyresearch.com/evidence-directories/7-moon/moon-directory.htm

Re:Feel free to start here:

[chichilalescu]

gave me a chuckle, thank you.

Re:Feel free to start here:

[Anonymous Coward]

This is serious evidential research. You nerds are required by human decency to give it some consideration. It's almost 2012, time to leave your arogant, ignorant and meek nieve follower thinking behind and try to get to the bottom of this matter. You are adults right? Act like it. Evaluate evidence before making smart comments and pretending you know everything.

Re:Feel free to start here:

[Anonymous Coward]

This is serious evidential research. You nerds are required by human decency to give it some consideration. It's almost 2012, time to leave your arogant, ignorant and meek nieve follower thinking behind and try to get to the bottom of this matter. You are adults right? Act like it. Evaluate evidence before making smart comments and pretending you know everything. Please

Evil communist plot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some patriotic American will probably soon claim that this is an evil communist plot hoping to reveal that the Apollo program was a hoax.

Mars

[Zalchiah]

Pffft. We all know the Prothean artifacts will be found on Mars. Lets start there.

ancient aliens

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds this will turn into a good 'Ancient Aliens' episode

Hmmm, A monolyth under the surface

[PenguinJeff]

Wow, does this sounds like Sci-fi or what?

bullseye?

[vlm]

I can't read the article, but wouldn't it be better to plant non-visual clues if we were trying to signal to an alien civilization?

Maybe... concentric rings of something weird for the moon, like an obscure U isotope? with something cool buried at the bullseye?

A bored physicist spending too much time with a cyclotron separator on a lonely posting on the far end of the galaxy could be pretty entertaining if he got a bit squirrely in carrying out his mission. How about some weird isotope that is mostly stable and can only be made in a reactor? Maybe some Tc-98? The Ru-98 decay product is stable, and a high concentration of Ru-98 laying about would be almost as bizarre as finding Tc-98 laying about.

I think driving a mass spectrometer around the planets and moons would be an interesting scientific study regardless of SETI implications.

For that matter, if "they" planted a decorative geometric care package of Tc-98 on the moon, I'm not entirely clear why "they" couldn't have done something similar here, somewhere geologically stable-ish.

Interestingly enough, more than 100 yrs ago all this Tc-98 talk would have been meaningless. Its hard to say how future techs might find even weirder stuff. If there is any real world prime directive, it might not rely on being observed, the galactic "you must be this tall for the ride" chart might be observing something really weird once we have quantum computers or a convenient portable intense hand held source of higgs particles.

I would imagine a really bored physicist could do other odd Fortean stuff, like bury a giant freaking microwave waveguide turned into an interdigital filter with passbands such that you whack it with a strong white noise source the resulting output displayed on a spectrum analyzer is a crazy morse code/rs-232 like signal saying "hi", or maybe "dig here for care package". Even just burying radar retroreflectors in a geometric pattern would totally freak out the radar guys.

Note to boss: Do not send vlm on boring interplanetary field posting or he's really going to intensely F with the native's heads once he goes bonkers, or more bonkers anyway.

Re:bullseye?

[vlm]

I can see it already.. "I can't believe they sent me on this interplanetary posting to the far side of the galaxy with a flashlight and a can of bug spray... if they try to take my red stapler back to the home worlds... I'll ... I'll ... I'll mix up a batch of a million gallons of Tc-98 isotopically enhanced radioactive ink and use my spacecraft observation probe as a giant space based ink jet printer to spray a 100 mile wide radioactive goatse.jpg on the far side of the moon... and when the natives finally get there and graph out the spectroscopic abundance, oh they'll be trouble then... thats what they got for trying to take my red stapler ... I'll do it, I swear I'll do it"

Oh Well, I suppose this is yet another tired social media story, there goes my chance at ever getting hired by NASA...

Can they please look for this first:

[ack_call]

http://www.viewzone.com/monalisa.html

I want to believe it's real - but if this really is on the moon then I think we'd have been visiting the moon more frequently to study its construction and the technology it would hold - but we haven't so for that reason I don't believe.

Re:Can they please look for this first:

[hcs_$reboot]

Modded 5 "interesting"... ok. Fortunately it's not up to "informative"...

Re:Can they please look for this first:

[gQuigs]

That's totally the premise from the latest transformers movie.. and I never thought I would say that they actually did a more convincing job in that movie than the above site...

Re:Can they please look for this first:

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like part of this story is a somewhat unintentional hoax: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread354322/pg2

Re:Can they please look for this first:

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh good grief, did you (or they) even look at the actual photo? Just based on the direction of the sunlight, the feature they call an alien spaceship is obviously a concave (indented) feature on the surface, not a convex (protruding) one. It's just an elongated crater from an oblique meteoroid impact. The picture with the Eiffel tower etc for scale even looks like a textbook illustration of a crater.

Image of Apollo 17 landing site

[perpenso]

For reference here is the sort of image they will be looking at: http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/584640main_apollo17-right-670.jpg

lunar regolith deposition rate

[bdgregg]

This depends on the lunar regolith deposition rate, which I've seen quoted as 1 cm per 2-3 million years. Imagine Tranquility Base - which has over 100 man made artifacts on the surface (http://spacegrant.nmsu.edu/lunarlegacies/artifactlist.html) - in one million years from now, with half a centimeter of dust. This makes the lunar surface a time capsule of past activity (provided the site doesn't get wiped out by an asteroid impact), in a way that the Earth isn't. We've yet to photograph the surface at high enough resolution to really know what's there.

Re:lunar regolith deposition rate

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

Have we looked for buried magnetic anomalies? You know, the kind that are 1:4:9.

I posted in some other story about the probes gravity mapping the moon, perhaps they'll find something odd subsurface. Wonder what the resolution for those probes is. The corresponding probes that examined Earth look to have had pretty gross imaging, just going by what's shown in the infographic for that story.

Somehow this reminds me of:

[Tanuki64]

A drunk loses the keys to his house and is looking for them under a lamppost. A policeman comes over and asks what he's doing.

"I'm looking for my keys" he says. "I lost them over there".

The policeman looks puzzled. "Then why are you looking for them all the way over here?"

"Because the light is so much better".

Is this slashdot or is it...

[bmo]

Late night with George Noory?

Are we going to take the "Nazis built Cydonia" loony-tunes hypothesis too?

--
BMO

Re:Is this slashdot or is it...

[bmo]

I accidentally left out the entire word "seriously" there.

But you get the idea.

--
BMO

Re:Is this slashdot or is it...

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

Richard Hoaglund must be fired up about this. They ever figure out what that equilateral triangle in that one crater was?

Re:Is this slashdot or is it...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's probably a reason why they would post a small, blurry, noisy image of a feature that is presumably visible with a small telescope, instead of something where you could see details. Let me guess, this alleged triangle is only visible in this one photograph. Anything that's high resolution and clear would show that the feature doesn't actually look much like an equilateral triangle with straight sides.

seti@home

[Anonymous Coward]

Sign me up!

seti@home has been a part of all my pc setups since 1999.

This makes perfect sense, is doable and could work if like on a screen saver. Hopefully you'll see the etprints and not be in the loo!!!

Again sign me up!

Where did the drunk look for his keys?

[wisebabo]

Near the lamppost.

Why?

"Because that's where the light is!"

Sort of the same reasoning is at play here, we are looking for the "keys" on the moon not because that's the best way to find SETI but because well it's "easy" (just crowd source it) and cheap (as long as we've already got hi-res photos of much of the moons surface).

It should not be viewed as a replacement for other more serious efforts (that will actually cost money).

Re:Where did the drunk look for his keys?

[Anonymous Coward]

be realistic guys, they will find plenty of evidence if they choose to admit it...

Crowdsourcing is free, so why not

[joh]

I would say it's pretty much pointless, but won't do any harm.

Why do I think it's pointless? Well, I don't think that aliens visited. While I don't doubt very much there's life elsewhere, maybe even intelligent life, maybe even life with a civilisation that came up with technology, I doubt very much that faster-than-light travel is possible. Still, who knows?

IF there were aliens visiting our system, having them leave some sign on the Moon isn't that silly an idea. Things there will last a long time and if they wanted to make sure that we will find it some day, it's a good place. We would need fairly good science and technology to spot it in the first place and even better to reach it, which makes sure we won't just destroy or forget it immediately. Putting something in orbit where we could spot it even after a billion years is hard. Digging something like perfectly straight trenches forming a cross or a square on the Moon (and maybe dig in a time capsule in the center) is easy and it would last a very long time there.

Of course if you crowdsource such a search there will be no shortage of idiots seeing things in perfectly natural shadows and whatever. Better use software to look for straight lines and geometric shapes. I doubt it will find anything worthwhile, but it's surely fun and shouldn't be too hard to do anyway.

Re:Crowdsourcing is free, so why not

[devilspgd]

Of course if you crowdsource such a search there will be no shortage of idiots seeing things in perfectly natural shadows and whatever. Better use software to look for straight lines and geometric shapes. I doubt it will find anything worthwhile, but it's surely fun and shouldn't be too hard to do anyway.

While it's true that idiots will find "strange" things in natural phenomenon, that isn't necessarily a bad thing if you set the hit threshold appropriately high. Once a block is assigned as being possible, you might then schedule that same block to be reviewed by additional users (more than normal, and much faster) to speed up identification. As long as one or two idiots can't waste a ton of time, the actual scientists can then perform a review.

Software generally needs to be told what to look for while humans only need be told what to ignore, so in some respects humans will do a better job here (or at least a different job than software will do)

What a waste of time...

[Anonymous Coward]

There aren't any aliens, except in the movies. This wastes our money, time, efforts, and dashes our hopes of finding any life forms on the moon.

Just use Mechanical Turk

[wbr1]

For the low low price of $0.05 per 5 pictures, tons of poor dweebs and Indians (from India) will do it on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. :-P

Not only recent visits, but long past

[Eravnrekaree]

This is not really a bad idea, considering as well the moon has little erosion, you wouldnt just be looking for something in the recent history, but considering the moon is 4.5 billion years old, there is a possibility that someone could have been there in the past. It is sort of ridiculous to assume that if intelligent life did visit the moon that it would have done so, just in the past few years, or that, some past vist there long ago would be of no interest, of course it would be of interest. Also consider the fact that if an ET visited this area long ago, maybe 5 million years ago, any evidence on earth could easily disappear due to erosion, however, things would be much better preserved on the moon, if they had for whatever reason decided to land on the moon. Another theory is that there may be some universal prime directive treaty, where you cant mess with life on a planet, since the moon has no life on it, if you were an ET and wanted to watch and study the earth from afar withouit landing their, the moon might be a good location to do so.

Do it soon

[Rix]

The moon is no longer really out of reach of private activity. For the moment it still takes noticeable economic activity, but don't count it staying that way.

Absurd waste of time

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut down the SETI project. I know most people here will have an aneurysm at that phrase but seriously, how long has this project gone on? A little over 50 years since the first conference, according to Wikipedia. And have they accomplished... anything? At all? It's obvious they're grasping at straws now. Their time would be better spent doing basic physics research or identifying potentially harmful NEOs. Ultimately these pursuits would lead to a discovery of alien life more quickly by advancing the fields of physics, astronomy, and cosmology - instead of wasting time digging around in the dirt on the moon. It's as if Cortés went looking for the city of gold and just stayed in Barcelona dicking around in a sandbox.

Re:Absurd waste of time

[darkstar949]

SETI is mostly funded through private monies if people want to fund them then why shouldn't they be allowed to continue to operate?

umm

[buddyglass]

This seems like a job for computers. They don't have to recognize what an image is; they just have to recognize that it's "sufficiently anomalous to what is typical of the lunar landscape". If nothing else, use image recognition to flag "interesting" areas for further inspection by a human being.

Re:umm

[osu-neko]

This seems like a job for computers. They don't have to recognize what an image is; they just have to recognize that it's "sufficiently anomalous to what is typical of the lunar landscape". If nothing else, use image recognition to flag "interesting" areas for further inspection by a human being.

Alas, this is precisely the kind of task that, in comparison to humans, computers suck terribly badly at. By depending on the computer to flag "interesting" first, you're substantially reducing the odds of spotting something interesting.

Re:umm

[buddyglass]

Sure. But if you have limited human computing power, then using the compute as a heuristic to select the set of areas to human-inspect is probably better than selecting areas at random.

Alien footsteps?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are going to look for alien artifacts? We already know that at least one alien lifeform has visited the moon and left artifacts behind.

The aliens are humans because humans are alien to the moon!.

We all get to go to the moon and look for aliens?

[John Hasler]

Great! Where do I sign up?

(No, I didn't read the article)

Mission Impossible: Moon

[Anonymous Coward]

The lunar surface is uniquely pummeled by constant unmoderated impacts. It is the very last place to look for ancient surface features from anything other than relentless asteroid impacts.

This is the single biggest waste of time and resources I have ever heard of.

I have heard of many.

JJ

The cats out of the bag...

[jhd]

... they're covering their tracks as we speak.

-- john

All on the dark side of the moon...

[Anonymous Coward]

a pink floyd album can tell you that!

If they can cross interstellar space...

[w0mprat]

... what need would they have of anything at the bottom of a energetically expensive gravity well? Covering interstellar distance at less than light speed necessitates adaptation to micro-gravity. Covering interstellar distance faster than light would require manipulating the laws of physics in a way that artificial gravity wouldn't seem difficult. So you'd eliminate the need to cater for fleshy gravity-adapted bodies that suffer in microgravity. Either way the technological level required for these feats makes biological engineering or mind uploading etc seem trivial. It's all moot if they decide to clean up after themselves, and finally with all that technology they would also find it rather easy to stay hidden entirely, as they do all the science on us they want. (Bare in mind we do similar things with wildlife, studying them without disturbing them).

If they really needed to mine some in-system resources, they would have mined asteroids. HINT Look for asteroid mining and weird shit left behind at Lagrange points.

It's already unlikely but I seriously doubt any alien artifacts or footprints would be found on the moon, even if they had visited. At best perhaps a unexplained scoop mark or bore hole where a sample was taken by some automated probe. Hardly great evidence of ET, just weird and tantalizing. As for Earth, ET may not want to interfere. Much as these days we try not to disturb wildlife, prefer only to investigate and observe (much more scientific value in a pristine environment than one that has been contaminated). They may also be weary of leaving any unmistakable trace of anything extraterrestrial, especially on such an obvious destination (moon) for a fledgling space-faring civilization to stumble upon. Historically contact between previously isolated cultures of different technological level didn't turn out so well.

I think aliens showing up in fleshy bodies is by far the least likely ET contact scenario. Right up there with finding some of their refuse they dumped in a crater on our moon. Somewhere down the list, finding trojan asteroids mysteriously stripped of particular metals or organics. I support SETI in principal, but I'm just realistic: if aliens were here, there's little reason we'd be aware of it, even if we went looking.

It stands to reason that intelligent ETs will have a strong desire to find other life and actually send out missions to make contact, and at very least survey it's sky for other habitable worlds. I'd put money down on the fact we've probably already been observed, in great detail.

A hint for the SETI guys: don't look at the moon, start looking closely for near-earth asteroids that buzz us on unusual trajectories, because it could be staring back.

Ok, WHERE on the moon should we look?

[wisebabo]

Let's assume that the Aliens DID leave us some thing on the moon for us to find and it's pretty small and non-obvious from a distance (like a giant set of intersecting lines at the center of a huge circle). Don't ask me why, maybe they were lazy or they didn't want something that could be discovered by just looking through a telescope on earth.

Aside from the ideas previously expressed using some sort of technological marker (radioactivity, isotopes or, as in "2001" a magnetic anomaly) where would they put this artifact? Here are some proposed locations:

Assuming that the moon is tidally locked to earth for a LONG time, at the point closest to earth (or on the far side, furthest from earth).

If the moon is not tidally locked for a sufficient period but its orbital axis IS stable, how about at the pole(s)?

Any other ideas? Leading/trailing edge of the moon? In the center of a big (biggest) crater? Tallest mountain or deepest canyon?

Hell, why not just put some stuff in a Trojan or Lagrangian point.

Journal Article

[thisNameNotTaken]

Why post something that costs $31.00.

I Think It Unlikely...

[NotSanguine]

That any advanced alien race has *ever* visited the vicinity of our world. As Douglas Adams put it, "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."

That's not to say I don't think that extraterrestrial life exists. It almost certainly does. Is some of that life intelligent? Maybe. Is that intelligent life (barring superluminal space travel) close enough to our solar system to warrant sending a probe/ship/monolith? Unlikely, but possible.

I think someone was having trouble coming up with a good idea for a grant application and wrote up a proposal after watching 2001: A Space Odyssey.

All that said, if the data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is complete enough, it couldn't hurt to analyze the data to see if there's anything anomalous. In fact, I think it's a good idea. We will probably get some unexpected and possibly even interesting results that have nothing to do with extraterrestrial intelligence.

Re:I Think It Unlikely...

[Urkki]

That any advanced alien race has *ever* visited the vicinity of our world. As Douglas Adams put it, "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."

Yeah, but size of space is just n^3, which is easily outpaced by exponential population growth. In other words, if interstellar expansion of a civilization is possible, this civilization will fill the galaxy in matter of millions to hundreds of millions of years, depending on speed of interstellar travel (size of our galaxy is in the scale of mere hundred thousand light years). And assuming no available "infinite" energy sources ("hyperspace tap", "infinite zero-point energy", "portable white holes", "quark reactor", whatever scifi stuff), with that level of technology, every energy-providing star would be potential site for colonization (whatever that might mean with that level to technology). So, it'd be expected that every star in such a galaxy would have "alien presence". And maybe they do, we just don't see them (because we just don't have the technology to see whatever we'd need to see to see them, or because they're intentionally hiding).

So looking at our Moon is far from unreasonable. Even if the "aliens" wouldn't normally mess with planets (be it for cultural or technological or some incomprehensible to us reason), or if they're actually hiding, if they ever did anything, our moon is one of the best places to look for signs of past activity.

But I'm not holding my breath on this one.

I mean, holding breath in vacuum is dangerous, it may rupture lungs so easily. It's safer to just let the air go, even if it means very rapid unconsciousness and death from lack of oxygen.

This will cause great harm to science!

[Dr. Spork]

This is an incredibly stupid idea, so much so that it's making me suspect that SETI people don't really care about science. The obvious problem is that we don't know what "alien footprints" look like. Therefore, the searchers are basically supposed to report anything which looks significant or weird to them.

Here is what I predict: We won't discover an alien capsule, but we'll definitely see formations where aliens arranged rocks to look like

1. some Egyptian heiroglyph, 2. an uncanny likeness of a human face, 3. the English word "Hi", possibly with an exclamation mark after it, 3. a strangely "perfect" hexagon, 4. a site that appears "flattened" in roughly a circular are, with a strange smudge in the exact center, and reminds us of a launching pad, 5. a large collection of "depictions of human shapes", 6. something that looks like the Virgin Mary or an angel or Jesus, 7. etc.

We might as well ask people to find traces of alien-made shapes in the clouds that float overhead. Yes, we would "find" a million such traces, because of how human perception works. There is a bunny! And then, we can easily use our creativity to weave a story about what aliens are trying to accomplish by making a bunny-shaped cloud. Well, multiply this by millions and take it to the moon, and you have the makings of a fiasco. Thousands of idiots will be printing the latest picture of a "weird-looking lunar thing" in newspaper, along with giant headlines like "Is this an ancient alien archeological dig on the moon?" In the article, various experts who said "Well, it seems highly unlikely, but we can't in principle rule out that it could be" will be quoted as saying "It could be!". Then the History Channel will do a special "Aliens on the Moon?" and soon and moon alien "truthers" will organize on the internet.

What I'm saying is that a great deal of harm to science will come of this. It's exactly the sort of project that will give a megaphone to the world's idiots (because they will be the ones saying something interesting) and will make real scientists seem even more like conspirers who try to deny some deep reality that "real people" want to believe in, because they will be saying true but unpleasant things about human pattern recognition, how our perception plays tricks on us, how big interstellar space is and how slow the speed limit of our universe is. People on slashdot might not appreciate the full extent of this, but there are many people in the world who want to take down science and replace it with superstition. Some are even quite savvy with PR. It will be that much easier to marginalize the sane voices because everyone will point out that after all the real scientists who asked us to start this search, namely SETI, are a legitimate organization. So far that's more or less true, but if they really want to undertake something this pointless and dangerous, I will take this back.

Sorry, we're observing the wrong side...

[Slyswede]

...everyone already knows the aliens are hiding ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON!!!

Its about time

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's about time for a Google Moon app

Tracks on the Moon are Not Safe From Decomposition

[Froggels]

"There is compelling evidence [that] fine particles of moondust, when sufficiently charged-up, actually float above the lunar surface. This could create a temporary nighttime atmosphere of dust ready to blacken spacesuits, clog machinery, scratch faceplates (moondust) is very abrasive) and generally make life difficult for astronauts."
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/17apr_magnetotail/

If this is the case then SETI may be wasting their time looking for any kind of ancient tracks in the dust on the moon.

Christianity != Catholicism

[gottabeme]

Christianity was not created as a control mechanism to give people at the top power and wealth. You're thinking of Catholicism. They are not the same thing. Of course, the Catholic church claims to be the authorized Christian religion, and has done many things while claiming to act in God's name--but their claiming things does not make such things true. The Christianity that Jesus proclaimed is not like that at all. Catholicism is a human distortion of God's plan--the same could be said for other "versions" of Christianity.

Re:Christianity != Catholicism

[Anonymous Coward]

If God's plan is so easily and convincingly distorted by man, then how do you know that the version you practice is not also distorted?

And before you say "faith," consider that this is the same answer given by those following the versions you claim are distorted.

Re:Christianity != Catholicism

[gottabeme]

And before you say "faith," consider that this is the same answer given by those following the versions you claim are distorted.

Such an answer would really be saying that one had faith in oneself, rather than faith in God. And I know that I am full of error, so I don't lean on faith in myself.

It's impossible for humans to approach anything without any bias; we are all products of our upbringing and culture, and we all "see through tinted lenses."

This is why we don't rely on ourselves but the word of God, i.e. Scripture. One should do one's best to follow God's commands as found in Scripture--not men's commands. It doesn't matter what we think or what we want; rather, what matters is what God thinks and what God wants.

We are so blessed in this day and age to have Scripture freely available to all. We need not be beholden to anyone's interpretation of Scripture but our own, as guided by the wisdom which God gives freely to all who ask. I have faith in the word of God--not in any particular person's interpretation of it. It is therefore our duty to study and understand it as best we can.

However, given human fallibility, our salvation rests not on our having perfect understanding of Scripture, but our faith in Christ.

I don't claim to have perfect understanding of Scripture. I don't claim to practice my life completely according to God's plan, without distortion. I am trying to follow Jesus--sometimes without as much effort as I should give. Though I am no longer a sinner according to Scripture, I am not yet perfect, and I do still sin.

Thankfully, God is merciful, and the blood of Christ continually cleanses me of all unrighteousness. You see, that is what God's plan boils down to. It remains simply for people to lay claim to his gift of salvation and redemption.

The problem with "Christianity" is that people want to do what they want to do, and they want to hear what they want to hear, and they want to let others do the thinking for them. There are many false teachers who distort the truth. What's sad is that the word of God is often judged by the words and actions of those who claim to be following it, whether they really are or not.

The solution is to return to Scripture and learn what God wants. God never planned for hierarchical church organizations and the like; the head of the church is Christ, and Scripture is to be our guide.

Re:Christianity != Catholicism

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that the "Scripture" was written by the Roman government with the purpose of controlling the population, right?

Re:Christianity != Catholicism

[gottabeme]

That's an interesting idea. Doesn't make much sense though. Where are you getting this stuff? ÂAnd which Scriptures are you referring to? Oh, and which Roman government? If you're going to spout conspiracy theories you should at least be specific.

Re:Christianity != Catholicism

[hondo77]

The Christianity that Jesus proclaimed is not like that at all. Catholicism is a human distortion of God's plan--the same could be said for all "versions" of Christianity.

FTFY.

Re:Christianity != Catholicism

[gottabeme]

I'm not sure what you mean by that. If you believe that God's plan included sending Jesus to redeem the world from sin, then you should believe that God's plan does include Christianity. If you mean that no one is perfect, so no one perfectly practices God's plan, I won't argue with that--but that's not the point. If you mean that Jesus himself didn't call it "Christianity," that's not the point either.

The point is that we have God's word, and He gives us wisdom when we ask for it, so we can do our best to understand God's plan and to follow it, even if we don't do it perfectly.

USGS already has the data

[Deefburger]

The moon is heavily populated. Go look for your self. www.mapaplanet.org and have a look. I found a station the size of Alemeda there over the weekend on the farside (53.77Long x -32.28lat), and most of the craters either have buildings in them or have been domed over with what looks like ice. They glow in the UV band from whatever their power/light sources are. This whole "We are the only ones in the neighborhood" crap is just that, CRAP! They are here, leaving us alone for the most part and living NICELY on the Moon!

re: looking in our own backyard.

[CosineHamster]

This is an excellent example of how science should not be done. Let's just keep one foot on the ground,do a thorough examination of the surface of Luna,and maybe we'll find something other than a coke can and an American flag. To begin the whole process by saying "we're looking for evidence of extraterrestrial beings"...is what I call unhealthy bias. Especially,as has already been noted,we don't have the slightest idea of what we'd be looking for. (perhaps looking for aliens is the only way to get people interested in any survey at all).

Too much science fiction?

[yellowstone]

The "aliens have visited the moon" is a pretty common trope in SF (2001: A Space Odyssey, In the Ocean of Night, Inherit the Stars, and many others).

While this makes a tolerable MacGuffin, somebody probably needs to tell these guys that it's not real.

It's CGI from Philipe Kling David

[Anonymous Coward]

Other AC has it right See the ATS Thread, an interview with the author/artist.

History, take and read.

[Anonymous Coward]

The discovery by Catholic Europeans of peoples previously unknown to anyone in the Old World didn't give rise to any sort of "gigantic... storm." So why should mere "evidence of extraterrestrials" be horribly upsetting to the people of today?

Nor did knowing the Earth was not flat get anyone "labeled heretics and killed" (go ahead, try to name ten of them if you believe it was so commonplace). Ancient Greeks had figured out the Earth was spherical and had calculated its approximate circumference, something we know today because a lot of Catholic monks across Europe translated and copied those old documents again and again to preserve that knowledge. Nobody except characters in 18th and 19th century Protestant tracts claimed Columbus would fall off the edge of a flat earth, the controversy was over the distance from Europe to Asia. (Hint: Washington Irving was a storyteller, not an historian.) The Genoan supposed the distance was far shorter than it was, if the Americas didn't exist Her Catholic Majesty Isabella's money would have gone to sending men to die of starvation and thirst about 1/3rd of the way to Asia.

The Ptolemaic system that Copernicus (a Catholic monk) and Galileo (a professor at a Catholic university) challenged was itself based on the Earth being spherical. Nor did "Galileo's observations" get him (or any of the Jesuits who made similar observations with the new telescopes) into trouble, he went looking for trouble by his arrogance and insulting behavior toward others - especially superiors. Insisting on abusing his university position by teaching the Copernican system as fact when plain observation - planetary orbits are not circular - demonstrated otherwise put Galileo in the wrong scientifically as well.

not LNT?

[DriveDog]

Davies imagines some aliens who don't subscribe to the Leave No Trace ethic. Such anthropomorphic aliens suggest that he's been watching too much Star Trek. "If we can put a man on the Moon..." then we can avoid leaving tracks easily visible from miles away. Apollo was meant to leave tracks—on the Moon and in history books. Did alien observers wish their presence to be discovered later but not while they were here? Only that would explain such reckless ET behavior to me, but even so, I agree that it's worthwhile to look.