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SETI Running Out of Money
New submitter opusman writes "According to an Australian space analyst, SETI is running out of money. Despite needing only $2 million a year, a relatively small amount in space industry terms, they are facing a financial crisis. From the article: 'Getting on board a spacecraft is tricky. There are few places for professional astronauts. Even when Richard Branson and a group of other visionaries makes space tourism more affordable, it will still cost huge sums to fly. But getting a foothold in the greatest quest of all can be done for just a few tens of donated dollars. Which is why it beggars belief that the SETI quest is on its knees.'"
Sounds like they need a Kickstart project.
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Like Fox Mulder I became cynical. He and I no longer believe in alien visitors. So no more donations.
Deceive
Inveigle
Obfuscate
BELIEVE THE LIE
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
My thought is that the only reason they're not finding anything is because the aliens are using gigahertz and terahertz frequencies to communicate on. And it's only now that we have some inkling that it's even possible. Or maybe they're not using radio at all. I mean, it's kind of an inefficient slow form of communication over long distances, if you think about it.
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It's quite sad that this happens now, when with the recent discoveries in exoplanets SETI could have actual targets for the first time instead of trying to find a needle in a haystack.
He started it, he could donate 40 years' worth of new budget and never even feel it.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
Most people believe SETI to be pointless at this stage. We have a better grasp of the probabilities involved, and the odds are very high that SETI will never find anything, even if there are 100 other equivalent civilizations to ours within 100 light years.
I'm a supporter of SETI in principle, though I can't say I've ever supported it materially (other than a brief run at SETI@home when I was in university). Unfortunately I think it's simply a matter of priorities during economic downturn.
Up here in Canada, we have a program that also costs $2 million a year - the Experimental Lakes Area research station - and it's getting its funding cut by the federal government. It's upsetting to me, as I see valid science being disregarded in the name of fiscal responsibility.
That aside, the SETI program is likely to run, in one form or another, for the entirety of human existence. It may get shut down periodically, but this is not a question that's going to go away. Ever. Perhaps when our collective economies rejig themselves to be less focused on growth and more on sustainability, we can find room for a relatively cheap, pure science initiative. Until then, either donate directly to those initiatives you find appealing, or take whatever action you can at the ballot box. Or both, if you're feeling less apathetic than most of us!
After 35 years with absolutely no results to show for the SETI effort, is it really that surprising that people have lost interest? In today's world immediate gratification is king, and asking people to put money into a project whose results they probably won't see in their lifetime seems like a losing proposition.
Seti has no where large enough receiving equipment to capture anything useful.
Right now it's a waste of time and money. Either get them significantly better gear, preferably fully time access to said gear. Or just get rid of it entirely.
. . . the intelligent life will probably NOT want anything to do with us anyway.
They'll just avoid us, like tourists not stopping in a bad neighborhood.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
What does "Getting on board a spacecraft" have to do with SETI? Are we going to nip on over to recently discovered exoplanets and yell "any intelligent lifeforms down there???"
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Continuing to fund a search for extraterrestrial intelligence?
It calls into question the claims that terrestrial intelligence does exist, itself.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Make the first alien race discovered the property of the biggest corporate sponsor!
The money spent on space programs produce measurable, visible results. It also has milestones to show whether a project is on track, off track, or slipping.
For someone to support SETI, on the other hand, has to have faith that maybe tomorrow will lead to results and all those years spent waiting for something to happen wasn't lost opportunity cost.
Donating to SETI is perhaps more closely modeled on charity for religion rather than vis a vis to other space programs.
Um, reality is calling, we're running out of cheap energy... The delusional daydreams of the cheap energy Cold War sci-fi juvenile paperbacks is just that, delusional.
Continuing to fund a search for extraterrestrial intelligence?
It calls into question the claims that terrestrial intelligence does exist, itself.
Judging by our elected leaders in the US, I'm starting to wonder.
When I think SETI, I think of searching for radio signals. If that's changed, they need to put some effort into telling people what new methods they're using. Because their website still talks about signal processing and detecting alien technology. We now know that untargetted radio signals are not going to bridge the gaps between stars. The distance is just too great. We'll never pick up the Alpha Centauri version of I Love Lucy. So why is SETI still focused on trying to pick up alien radio signals?
There isn't a single celebrity, business mogul, or otherwise uber-rich person who can keep this afloat? What the hell happened to peoples' imaginations??
The seti project was always a bit silly.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Why should I, or anyone else, donate money to the SETI institute? What tangible returns can I expect for my money?
It's nice that you feel they're involved in "the greatest quest of all," but I expect that most people would not agree. Besides not having much of a chance in succeeding any time soon, even if they did find evidence of extra terrestrial intelligence it would make almost no difference to people's daily lives. And the way things are going even if we did find ETI we'll be extinct as a species long before we could ever even communicate with them, let alone actually contact/meet them.
Besides, SETI Institute =/= SETI
What else could we be spending our money on? Projects like the James Webb Space Telescope or sending to humans to Mars would have certain benefits to humanity while spending money on SETI is likely to be a waste of money. If there were plenty of money to go around then I would have no problem spending the relatively meager 2 million USD on it. However, with things like they are, let's shelve SETI and direct our resources elsewhere.
Is there life on other planets in the galaxy? Probably.
Is there intelligent life on other planets in the galaxy? Maybe. There will be a lot more planets with only bacteria than there are planets with sentient beings.
Will we be able to detect planets with intelligent life? Even less likely.
If we find intelligent life then what? Presumably we're going to try to engage in a dialog. Is that really a good idea at this point in human development?
Not to mention waste of power and limited natural resources for the many thousands of plebs running seti@home
I stopped participating (and donating) when they switched to BOINC after having some bad experiences on a few machines. Every once in awhile I get a plea from Seti to return, and each time I respond "bring back the original screen saver and I'd love to".
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Presumably you mean "getting only $2 million a year". Plainly, the existence of this story shows that it needs more than that.
SETI isn't science... science is hot chicks in high heels. The EU just put out an informative video on the subject.
> gigahertz and terahertz frequencies
Or something else entirely. Look at our own communications, which are rapidly switching to all-digital. Unless you know how the digital is encoded/modulated/carried, all you're going to hear is random noise. And who says aliens use anything like we do?
I postulate that a technical civilization would only stick with radio for approximately 100-200 years before moving to something better -- and something that we probably don't even know how to listen to. When measured against just the age of our local group, that's very narrow odds.
Be better to spend the money actually GOING to the stars than just listening to them, in my opinion. :)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Jodie Foster should be getting plans for an interstellar transport streamed to her any day now.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
They are probably not looking for direct communication signals. Activity by "intelligent" life forms will most surely create a lot of regular and odd patterns at various high and low frequencies as a side effect, and this is what SETI is/should look for.
c++;
we humans may wipe ourselves out,
which from one point of view is just fine because we can't wipe out all terrestrial life.
however, it is quite conceivable that an extinction event could make us the last space-faring species this planet will ever see.
and if you accept the principle that 'life is a good thing',
then this implies that we have a moral imperative to get life itself off-planet and into the galaxy asap.
we should be building little bio-bombs full of spores, pollen, algae and other primary producers which are capable of handling
a few hundred years or millenia in interstellar space, and launching swarms of them to the top 200 closest planet-bearing stars.
somebody point me to kickstarter.
Hopefully they will forced to stop throwing (other people's) good money after bad results.
If these people were to get a grip and deal with reality on *this* planet, they could make a difference that will actually help people!
Buy some water, food, clothes, shelter. Even a box of Ho Hos® handed out on the boulevard would accomplish more in one felt swoop than all the hoo-ha that has been created over "possible extraterrestrials out there".
It's time for people to grow up and use some common sense.
In reality seti is a waste because its all based on the "Well maybe tomorow we could find something!" idea. When their is hard evidence and belief something can be achieved but not have a real firm idea of how long sometimes endeavors are worth the time and energy and effort but seti is just a money sink because there is no proof they could ever do something worthwhile in a day or 43 years. Its all just a hunch.
SETI has always struck me as a bunch of nerds who are doing it for fun and have a job kind of like the myth busters guys where they get paid to just goof off and have fun, only seti unlike myth busters isnt informative or entertaining to anyone. They are funded to just fuck off and not actually be constructive.
I wonder if SETI could benefit from Kickstarter the same way some other folks have been successful.
I thought they did a good job to farm out little bits of data for people to run on their computers. This is the very same reason why I think it might be possible for SETI to get funding by way of kickstarter.
I am sure there are still dreamers in this blue earth that could give SETI a hand, provided the objectives and level of outsider participation (like myself) are meaningful.
ps: otherwise, just do it the archaic way: sell t-shirts, dammit. I'll buy one.
> gigahertz and terahertz frequencies
Or something else entirely. Look at our own communications, which are rapidly switching to all-digital. Unless you know how the digital is encoded/modulated/carried, all you're going to hear is random noise. And who says aliens use anything like we do?
I postulate that a technical civilization would only stick with radio for approximately 100-200 years before moving to something better -- and something that we probably don't even know how to listen to. When measured against just the age of our local group, that's very narrow odds.
Be better to spend the money actually GOING to the stars than just listening to them, in my opinion. :)
As I understand it one of the big markers that they look for is repetition, so ideally you want a signal of some kind that sends out the same stream of date repeatedly. I can't think of an earthly analogue right off the top of my head, perhaps like an alien commercial or something.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
Unless you know how the digital is encoded/modulated/carried, all you're going to hear is random noise.
Is that really true? Maybe if it's all encrypted with no headers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So uh, is it useful if we all dig up all the old Satellite dishes we can find and hook up software-defined radios to them, and share them via the internet? Or would that just be a jerkoff waste of time?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...to continue providing nothing of value?!
The question is not will all alien species use radio, neither is it a question about the relative benefits of going to the stars vs listening to them, the cost of going to the stars is currently around infinity, which means if we could afford to go to the stars we could afford to finance the seti project and still have enough money go to the stars.
The question is this: is it worthwhile spending 2 million per year listening for radio signals from other stars. I think it is, as 2 million is such an insignificant amount of money in terms of humanity's resources. We probably spend that each day on cocktail umbrellas.
The article makes an analogy with physical exploration of outer space, but that doesn't quite work. The "space race" happened because both sides in the Cold War wanted a propaganda victory. After the Cold War ended, projects like the ISS and the shuttle continued because of pork-barrel politics.
SETI is qualitatively different. If the Allen Telescope Array manages to keep going and then succeeds, it won't be a propaganda victory for any national government, and it won't put any aerospace company on the federal gravy train. From the point of view of politicians and industrialists, there's no motivation for SETI.
There's also no obvious reason why a success for SETI in 2020 AD is any better or worse for humanity than a success in 2120 or 3020. The ATA is designed to survey a sphere a thousand light-years in radius. If we detect a signal from a civilization 1000 l.y. away, there's no possibility of a two-way conversation. It's like discovering the first dinosaur fossil. Sure, it would be cool to be the one to dig it up, but there's no hurry to dig it up. It was there for millions of years and wasn't going anywhere if we didn't dig it up. If there are radio beacons in our galaxy transmitting "I am here" signals, then statistically such signals have probably existed for millions of years and will continue to exist for millions of years into the future. You can make up scenarios where a successful SETI gives some kind of moral or spiritual lift to H. sapiens right when we needed it. You can also make up science fiction stories where it has no big effect on us, or even a negative effect (e.g., we receive a signal modulated with super-duper scientific knowledge, which helps us to blow up the world or something).
Find free books.
It's a waste of time and money anyway.
> Unless you know how the digital is encoded/modulated/carried, all you're going to hear is random noise.
Only if you look at it from the perspective of digital 1's and 0's. If you look at it from the perspective of analog signals, you'll see square waves or sine waves on a frequency. That doesn't really occur in nature (except from pulsars). So maybe we'd never figure out what the aliens are *saying*, but we would be clear that a signal existed on a given frequency. That said, I don't really believe that we'll find anything "out there", at least not in my lifetime.
Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
If we find intelligent life then what? Presumably we're going to try to engage in a dialog. Is that really a good idea at this point in human development?
Whether a dialog is a good idea or not won't really matter to you since you will likely die of old age before we could exchange the first message.
But if incontrovertible proof of life on other planets is found, even if you can't talk to them, can you think of a more profound scientific discovery?
On theory is that the aliens will encode plans in their communications stream that teaches us how to build a spaceship that will let us reach their "planet". Of course, skeptics will claim that the spaceship is a fraud and any stories the "astronaut" comes back with will be dismissed as a dream. .
Only 35 years? That is such a small amount of time on an astronomical timescale that it barely even has an existence. The odds of seti finding anything in 35 years is about the same as getting hit by lightning 150 times in 5 minutes on a cloudless day, and this has been known by the scientists involved for quite some time. You are wildly impatient. If we develop faster than light interstellar travel and it still hasn't found us any potential destinations I will concede that it was a failure. So talk to me in 200+ years.
Perhaps they can get extra funding by searching for this Higgs Boson thingy I keep hearing about.
There's got to be one out there some where...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Nah, I trust a couple geniuses among us are pretty good at pointing at something and saying "That's Not Right". (The rest of the decoding is a different problem.)
I think it's just the crappy distance problem. As a Civilization transmitting waves, we basically have only some 125 years. For the LightSpeed Distance problem, that's a pretty narrow window. Just because *now* we're ready, is the problem. "We want it all, and we want it now." It's our bad luck (for example) a civilization held together for 1000 years but at the time we were doing the Ancient Greece - Egyptian deal.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Phone Home for some more money.
At least not right now, we don't even have the equipment to detect any signal from another civilization. Heck, right now we'd have to be pointing at exactly the right star, with the biggest radio telescope that we have, at exactly the right time, which is when some other civilization decided to hook up a much, much larger radio transmitter to enough power to warrant its own fusion reactor. Then maybe, IF they were close enough, we could actually receive that signal.
The point is, SETI has been nigh a joke since its inception. It's the equivalent of claiming you're searching for signs of extra terrestrial life on Mars with your backyard telescope.
As a race becomes more advanced their communications technology will move from being a high powered shotgun to a low powered shotgun or highly targeted rifle. This will make them very difficult to detect. However, what we will be able to detect will be the gamma ray bursts of nuclear weapons used in their space battles. This is what we should be looking for because those races that have not developed and does not practice this type of space warfare, this is is a peaceful race, is just going to be someone else's 'food' and die out or be conquered.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Unless you know how the digital is encoded/modulated/carried, all you're going to hear is random noise. And who says aliens use anything like we do?
you miss the point entirely.
it's not that we expect to overhear their personal or broadcast communications so much, but rather it's about listening for "hello, here we are" broadcasts or even directed transmissions. we can now locate habitable planets. such messages obviously wouldn't be encrypted, and would necessarily be something very simple that would have a high chance of being understood by completely alien species with different thought patterns, senses, and levels of technology.
for inspiration, check out the pioneer plaque,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque
that attempts to describe our location in the galaxy. or, the voyager golden record,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
showing mathematical and physical quantities, the solar system and its planets, DNA, and human anatomy and reproduction.
Or maybe they're not using radio at all. I mean, it's kind of an inefficient slow form of communication over long distances, if you think about it.
Ummm, ignoring the possibility that you said that statement to be funny, but do you not realize that radio waves travel at the speed of light in a vacuum, and that it is physically impossible to communicate information faster than lightspeed?
How exactly is that a "slow" form of communication when it is actually the fastest possible?
I believe Eric Idle said it best:
"Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
in all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, that's the speed of light, you know,
twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
how amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!"
-- Monty Python, Meaning of Life
--
So, can we have your liver, then?
Everything we know now about technology and technological progress says that SETI is a total waste of time. Unless our understanding of the universe is fundamentally flawed, there is nothing we will be able to find. This is why :
1. As radio technology advances, the signals become closer and closer to noise. Already, most digital radios today would be totally indistinguishable from noise when observed from lightyears away. Also, as the radios get better, the signals become more and more directional. It is reasonable to expect that in 50 years, all the radios used in most applications will use frequency hopping, very low power, ultra wide band, and will steer their signals to the locations of other nodes in a mesh network. 50 years is probably a pessimistic estimate for this.
2. If our theories about the Singularity are true, by the time our light reaches other stars, within another 1000 years or so we'll be roaring in on starships, running self replicating machinery that systematically converts all matter into more useful products. The presence of post-singularity humanity will be completely impossible to miss. Thus, the reason we cannot see other civilizations doing the same thing is because we are the first one in our region of space.
Uhh...no. Warfare is a negative-sum game. Both parties in a war usually lose far more than they gain. A successful race will have the technological and military tools needed to make sure that any potential foes face a serious deterrent against attacking, but said race will not initiate an attack themselves unless it is one of the rare scenarios where fighting yields more benefits than trading.
What if we are the first? The first civilization because our planet and solar system is fairly old as compared to many other place in the galaxy.
Maybe we need to broadcast radio waves, in a grand gesture that some unknown culture in the future will hear us. Am I worried about bug eyed monsters invading us, because we are transmitting a "We are here signal."? - No.
..........FULL STOP.
Be better to spend the money actually GOING to the stars than just listening to them, in my opinion. :)
The Mars rovers including all mission extensions have cost almost a billion dollars and lasted less than ten years, so say $100 million/year. Shutting down SETI would then give you 2% of a Mars rover, want to make a guess at how infinitesimally small it'd be of an interstellar space ship? Not that we have the foggiest idea on how to build one... Space is absurdly big, Voyager 1 is 35 years out but less than 1/1000th of the way to the nearest star. Unless somebody is about to invent the warp drive, the only realistic chance of discovering alien life in the next 100 years - possibly next 1000 years - is to build huge, huge optical and radio telescopes, find earth-like exoplanets and ping them.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I postulate that a technical civilization would only stick with radio for approximately 100-200 years before moving to something better -- and something that we probably don't even know how to listen to
That seems extremely optimistic to me. The effects of electromagnetism have been observed by humans for thousands of years. It seems unlikely that we'll discover something capable of interstellar communication apparently without having a hint of that something currently, when we've had millennia of hints in the electromagnetism case.
P.S. I should mention that, if you think faster-than-light communication will be discovered, that would require such a radically different understanding of our universe as to be astonishing. In the framework of special relativity FTL communication enables one to break causality by communicating with the past. An example is the tachyonic antitelephone, which gives rise to a paradox:
The paradoxes of backward-in-time communication are well known. Suppose A and B enter into the following agreement: A will send a message at three o'clock if and only if he does not receive one at one o'clock. B sends a message to reach A at one o'clock immediately on receiving one from A at two o'clock. Then the exchange of messages will take place if and only if it does not take place. This is a genuine paradox, a causal contradiction.
This is why no physicists I know or am aware of really believed in the recent FTL neutrino experiment.
P.P.S. Also, your use of "postulate" should probably have been "hypothesize". A postulate is a basis for reasoning, like the principle of relativity. Your usage isn't technically incorrect, but your statement is clearly a guess rather than a fundamental principle of the universe.
Well said. Even if the probability of detection is low $2mln/year is next to nothing for what could be a huge payoff.
For some reason, the narrative that's been built around it is that if we put money into it, aliens fall out.
On not seeing results RIGHT NOW, it loses funding.
You're assuming a relatively trivial form of analog encoding. That's probably not the way that an advanced civilization would communicate unless they wanted to be found out. It's likely that they would channel hop according to an extremely long randomly generated pattern (i.e. a secret key known to both the sender and the receiver) that would make their transmission indistinguishable from the background noise.
Now, I know that the SETI institute assumes that ET wants to be found so don't read this as a straw man argument against them. I think they have a valid hypothesis. (I also think that hypothesis is wrong, but that's just my way of thinking about it.)
Based on all the negative comments above concerning SETI, it sure seems like the Slashdot crowd has sure changed a lot. I base this on what the comments this topic might have engendered a number of years ago. I'm not criticizing, just commenting on my subjective observation. Now get off my lawn...
If you allow the first premise, the odds on the rest are pretty good.
An alien "good enough" to get here at all would then have good scans.For humor's sake, let's even suggest a "sloppy" infrared scan. "There's billions of heat signatures moving around. That's Not Right."
So then faced with absolute proof, why not just land the thing? Why get all freaked and stay hidden?
The ultra depressing thing is that if they actually did that, it would be some time like 4,000 BC and fuel the writings of Erich von Daniken.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Well, mankind did the lowest form of searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, aside from waiting for UFOs. Man listened across most of the sky a few times over for weird radio signals in the hydrogen frequencies. That is good enough for me. I wouldn't try to search again for another century.
Only if you look at it from the perspective of digital 1's and 0's. If you look at it from the perspective of analog signals, you'll see square waves or sine waves on a frequency.
Actually, if you're using something like direct-sequence spread spectrum modulation over a wide bandwidth, it's really going to just look like noise that's *quieter* than the noise floor at the receiver. Unless you know what you're looking for, you're not going to be able to distinguish the signal from the background noise.
Of course, if aliens are at least as concerned about battery life as we are, they aren't going to be transmitting signals with so much excess power and with so much redundancy that the signals will reach us AND that we'll be able to decode them.
I was actually just wondering the other day if this would happen soon. They didn't really seem like a very solvent operation. However I do hope that they can get funds together. Private funds that is, the Government can't even afford to operate right now. I think a Kickstarter would be ideal, I'd like to see them give it a try. However, the rewards might be a bit tough.
"$1000 level - Dibs on a meet and greet with the first Aliens we find."
~theCzar
> As I understand it one of the big markers that they look for is repetition
But it would (at best) be a "complex" repetition. If you're handy with files, use a hex editor to look at a .WAV of some audio, then look at the equivalent in an .MP3. The latter looks like pure random gibberish (even though it's not). In a sense, the repetitions have been *removed* to achieve compression.
Our own HD Radio carriers are similar. They're highly compressed and sound like hissy white noise on an analog radio -- regardless of what we're broadcasting. I'm not saying that it can't be decoded (if it couldn't, there would be any point!). But you have to *know* how to decode that bitstream. What in the world makes anyone, SETI or otherwise, think that they can determine the format of any alien signal? They're just assuming that an alien people would use something that we would recognize and understand.
I have to be honest ... as much as I'm a booster of space exploration in general, I've never been a big fan of SETI. I think it's a marvelous waste of time. Just my opinion, and you know what those are worth, but rather than throwing money at them, I'd rather see everyone donate to an effort to, say, build a permanent colony on the moon or in an asteroid.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Ya because 2 million dollars will get us to the stars. Over 1 thousand years thats only 2 billion.
Its a drop in the bucket, and is money well spent. There is real science being done as well. It takes practice to figure out how to filter out all the terrestrial interference and get a good "listen" to faraway stars. Also, much of the research is simply analyzing radio signals already being recorded for astronomical purposes.
Perhaps some civilization is beyond radio now, but what about a few hundred years ago? Since messages from a star a few hundred light years away takes that long ya know.
It will cost the world trillions of dollars to visit other stars. Many many trillions. 2 million a year is a bargain. Plus, when you get there, you are only visiting a single star system. Better hope there's aliens there! Else thats many thousands of years wasted. Visiting the stars would be great for other reasons, but not to find intelligent life. THAT is a MASSIVE waste of resources, sending space ships to find intelligent life is pure folly. You have to know WHERE to send them. Not just blindly search around on a time scale that is absurd.
I used to have one of those SETI @Home programs running day and night on my computer. After a few months, I read up on the methodology and realized that the program purposely ignored some of the most significant types of structured signal spikes. No reason was given in the literature. I uninstalled the program and haven't paid them any attention until today. If SETI ever hopes to survive, they need to show us they know what they are doing for a change.
Stay skeptical, my friends.
Or at least the Allen Telescope Array. Which was divested from UC Berkeley in April.
What they did was spend that money on equipment *now*, rather than investing part of it as an endowed fund in a trust to provide ongoing funding for the operation of the equipment, and, on an as overage available basis, additional equipment.
Maybe they can get him to kick in the funding again, to avoid it being renamed the AT&T Telescope Array or the Oracle Telescope Array, and this time set it up as an endowed trust so that they will have funding in perpetuity.
I've said this for years, but it makes diehard seti fanatics angry.
SETI is looking for the wrong things.
Your argument against radio communications is dead on. interstellar flight capable aliens would almost certainly not be using radio waves as their primary way of making calls.
Instead, look to hard science and physics to get an idea of something that an FTL capable species would have to be creating, if they travel regularly:
Gravity waves.
More specifically, we need realtime analysis of the CBR. An alien ship zipping across the galaxy at FTL speed is going to leave a gravity shockwave behind it, like the wake on an ocean liner. Realtime measurements of the CBR, cross-referenced over time will highlight the major "shipping lanes", if any exist.
It would also be a major boon to cosmologists, in and of itself.
So... Seti should stop fighting the cosmologists. They should stop trying to compete for money. They should agree that they both need better tools, and collaborate to make those tools real, than share the data feeds.
This "but ..but..... radios!" Nonsene has to end.
Well said. Even if the probability of detection is low $2mln/year is next to nothing for what could be a huge payoff.
And what actionable thing would that "huge payoff" be exactly? That we are not alone? How would that affect or change anything?
Like the colonization of the Americas, the subjugation of India and China .....
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Even compressed data has recognizable patterns in it, they just are generally harder to find.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Absolutely! Then again, SETI isn't that big of a waste. And who knows, maybe the horse will learn to sing. But in the meantime, you're right, I'd love to see a lunar colony in my lifetime. In 1969, as I watched the first human touch booted foot on the moon, I was imagining in my mind that in 20 years it would be possible for me to buy a ticket to visit that place! But that jerk Nixon, even as he was congratulating Neil Armstrong for his historic achievement, was already plotting to gut the space program. I want to mine Jupiter for hydrogen to fuel our industries! I want to end smelting of iron ore here on earth in favor of doing it in the asteroid belt! But the short-sighting IDIOTS in politics can only see as far as the next election (if that). It makes me sick to think about it.
"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."
Unfortunately, it would cause an extremely large ruckus. Lots of short-sightedness in the way several holy scriptures are interpreted cause them to be directly against alien life, and that alone will cause a big mess.
Whatever you personally believe, not being alone makes a LOT of difference. Whether it will be good or bad, we will only know when it happens (and I suppose it depends a lot on how it happens).
How is our understanding of physics "very limited? You mean reality isn't matching up with the delirious daydreams in sci-fi? That's what you really mean, right?
P.S. I should mention that, if you think faster-than-light communication will be discovered, that would require such a radically different understanding of our universe as to be astonishing. In the framework of special relativity FTL communication enables one to break causality by communicating with the past.
Sigh. No, it doesn't. You fail to understand observation versus reality and so you fail to understand poor FTL communication metaphors. Every time you talk about FTL and causality you make everyone around you that actually has a clue instantly know that you don't have a clue.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Just because you think you know everything about the universe and there is nothing left to discover doesn't mean the rest of us are that silly.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Stories like this contribute to my growing generalized cynicism and pessimism. I have no connection to SETI, but it seems to me like an honest, modest effort at discovery which could change humanity's perspective forever - one way or the other. And it's starving for funds that represent less than the annual property tax bills of Larry Ellison, Steve Ballmer, and Bill Gates on their homes. To me, this is a bright red flashing light on the societal annunciator panel that something's wrong with our priorities. If I had a $10 million net worth, I'd include $10K to SETI in my annual donation program. As it is, it will be much less. I hope that those of you who can do more, will. Thanks.
Cheers, I learnt a new word today - inveigle. :)
Most surely? How do we know they'll use radio at all? We have exactly one example of intelligent radio communication. Us.
The Earth -the only place we know for sure has life- has somewhere around a few hundred million other forms of life, none of which use radio. Just us.
So it's pretty ballsy to extrapolate the entire universe's radio habits from a sample of one. We really have no business assuming aliens would communicate anything like we do or would use some signal that we could detect and understand as communication.
Sig for hire.
I think an advanced race that wants to be known, would place a marker where there should be no life, perhaps indicating where they are.
Where would we put one, if that was the case?
As I understand it one of the big markers that they look for is repetition,
Not going to happen: the alien intelligent life migrated to encrypted/dark-nets/behind-7-proxies long ago... you see where MAFIAA is pushing the intelligent life towards?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Be better to spend the money actually GOING to the stars than just listening to them, in my opinion.
Going to the stars is *expensive*. We haven't even been to Mars, and that's a hundred thousand times closer than the nearest star. And even supposing we get to Alpha Centauri, that's only one star. For a millionth of the cost, we could build a radio telescope to survey every star in the galaxy.
I (broadly) agree with you about radio communications - we're unlikely to spot an alien civilization that's in the narrow gap between discovering radio and making it efficient enough that it looks like noise. But there's a chance that somewhere in the galaxy there exists a civilization that's deliberately beaming simple signals at us - certainly a better chance than that there are intelligent aliens around one of the few stars that we could conceivably reach in our grandchildren's lifetimes.
If we found there was intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy, even "close" and assuming they could come here, we might not want them to come here. Remember the Twilight Zone episode where some very tall aliens came, cured cancer, prevented destructive weather, and showed us how to grow food in great abundance. Tourist trips to their planet were arranged. Then we finally translated a book of theirs that turned out to be a cookbook. Earth became a large cattle ranch with humans as the cattle.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Unless you know how the digital is encoded/modulated/carried, all you're going to hear is random noise.
Is that really true? Maybe if it's all encrypted with no headers.
Sure, but decoding that stream would still be a violation of the Digital Milkyway Copyright Act, punishable by destruction of your home planet.
C'mon. What has SETI actually accomplished in all the time that it has spent scouring the static for patterns? NOTHING. When/If aliens decide to present themselves it probably won't be because they accidentally blurted out some frequency that was picked up by SETI. It will probably be either by delegation or by an armada of Earth scorching death ships. Why don't we save a buck and let SETI drift off into the romantic imaginary world of what could have been... There are more possibilities for it in that realm than the real one.
------- "I must create my own system, Or be enslaved by another man's" -William Blake
I don't think you need to decode a signal to determine that it is not of natural origin.
Let's say that the alien broadcast was repeated 10 times. We may not decode it, but the fact it happened 10 times is an indicator of something.
I certainly get your point, but I think even with proprietary encoding known only to the aliens that it could still show up as not natural, and not just pure random noise.
Persistance of effort is certainly a key in the search for intellegent life. While the likelihood of finding an interesting signal is small for this year it greatly improves over time. Compare SETI to the annual revnue and tangeble results of the movie or video game industry. Why not kick in at least the price of a movie ticket or game app? We can't win if you don't pay. Economically we are talking about a small fraction of the budget of a single hollywood production. Arguments that we can't afford this effort as a society are seriously laughable. An interuption in the SETI instutue effort would not be at all logical despite "limited resources." I am cyical about nearly everything. I still believe strongly that a continued and refining effort is likely to find an interesting signal at some point and from this invalueable lessons will be learned. We can't really determine the probability since we don't know how many signals there are in our space-time neigborhood but we will never know the answer to that if we don't look.
You're making a few fairly large assumptions:
- FTL is even possible. This one's still a pretty wild theory in general. Everything we know about physics says that its impossible. So if its going to happen, it would require something so fundamentally outside of our known physics that we've not yet even glimpsed it.
- These "shipping lanes" would be detectable. If for example, FTL comes in the form of some out-of-dimension travel, the only gravity waves we may see would be a small blip when the ship leaves our dimension and another small blip when it arrives again. It would be like poking a pinhead in Tokyo harbor and again in San Francisco and then trying to detect their waves amidst the usual churning of the Pacific.
Not to say realtime monitoring of the CMB would be bad if it could be done -- I'm sure there's all sort of fancy things we could learn about the history of our universe with such a tool.. but in relation to SETI projects, hoping to discover FTL events in the CMB is even more unlikely than discovering EM transmissions.
Now that said, I don't know how wide a spectrum they're actually looking at for EM bands. As they widen the frequency range that they can detect, the chance goes up significantly (which is not to say it will ever become a significant overall chance of course.)
There's probably some limits they can place on their searches based on frequencies they're just not likely to detect even if they're there (for example, frequencies that are absorbed by our own atmosphere would make for a useless search from a ground-based telescope.) But the EM band is damned wide and there's no reason that the same set of wavelengths humans find useful (based on our biology, atmospheric conditions and building materials) would be the same set used by any random alien species. As we widen the spectrum, we widen the possibilities of success.
> the fact it happened 10 times is an indicator of something.
Not necessarily, not unless you assume that aliens think as we do. Youngster, I'm old enough to remember when pulsars were first discovered (back in the 60's) and there was all sorts of speculation that they might be a signal from a distant intelligent race. After all, the pulses, while containing no discernible information, were as regular as clockwork! And the frequencies were PRECISE and invariable! :)
So, let's contrive an example. Somewhere out in space is a weird binary stellar system, one in which a big, gaseous giant with strange elements in its outer layers is spilling this stew onto a dwarf. (In other words, similar to the rig-up for a nova, but with key differences.) The dwarf regularly fuses this stewed garbage, cranking out a hash of very complex signals. Between that system and earth, though, is another binary system (maybe even dark matter; who knows?), rapidly rotating, that periodically occludes it. Thus, we meet your criteria: for all we "know," it's a signal containing information, and it's being repeated!
OK, so that's not terribly likely, but it illustrates the point: even if SETI should detect a signal that sounds for all the world like it's an extraterrestrial intelligence, how will we know for sure? Even if it IS a signal from aliens, why do you assume that they think as we do? Maybe their idea of "communication" is something completely and entirely different.
Nah, let's put the money in actually going OUT there.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
So it's pretty ballsy to extrapolate the entire universe's radio habits from a sample of one.
Perhaps the narrow band of spectrum we call "radio" specifically, but its not such a bold move to assume EM usage in general. Its the only easily producible long-range force/signal that seems to exist. The weak and strong forces are extremely distance-constrained.
Gravity waves are very difficulty to detect, and even harder to produce in a controlled manner, but I suppose its technically a possibility. Maybe once we've figured out how to detect gravity waves with any significant precision we can start looking there as well, but until such time, EM is the only really useful and interesting place to look.
Of course, there's always the possibility of some force we've managed to overlook throughout the history of science. Such a thing, while unlikely, isn't terribly unfathomable when you consider all the stories of ghosts, magic and other such supernatural goings on mentioned in stories throughout the ages and around the world. Who knows.. maybe there's a grain of truth amidst the fancies and it just happens to be a force that we can't easily perceive directly.
If you want to bring Holy Scriptures into this discussion, please keep in mind that Jesus Christ told his disciples that in his Father's house are many dwelling places and that he is going to prepare a place for them that they may also be where he is. (John 14) It is most likely that heaven and hell are not even part of this time–space limited dimension. The idea of a heaven and a hell have however had a large effect on humanity.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Good seti running out of money, waste of time & prob. random made up data.
Ps. Justin Beiber is aliens
Your example says absolutely nothing about violation of causality due to a change in the maximum speed at which information can propagate. You are either describing a situation in which there is improper time coordination, or you are assuming time travelling signals to start with.
While there are no known methods by which information can propagate faster than light...
If something were to be discovered which could do this it would not necessarily violate causality, it would merely prove that relativity is either incorrect or incomplete (even if it were to allow instantaneous travel to any point in the universe, and the new maximum speed is therefore infinite.)
In order to violate causality you would need to be able to receive a message you sent before you sent it.
Instant propagation of information would likely allow a universal clock across all space, and you could coordinate time by that. You would need to adjust for the faster travel time if you are synchronizing your clock based on the speed of light, but it would be trivial to do that anyway.
Under relativity it is undefined what would happen if you could travel faster than light, as the theory does not allow this. It is basically not usable in this case, and trying to do so would be foolish (it simply does not cover what you want to do, and you obviously have information that Einstein did not when he came up with it if you are communicating FTL.)
If I could send this post beyond the edge of the known universe and back with zero travel time I still cannot read it before it is written, and causality remains very much intact.
The only thing that would change is that if you are three light hours away, I could get a message to you three hours before an electromagnetic signal would be capable of. We would be able to converse in real time instead of with the delay, nothing else.
If you could produce the post I just wrote before I wrote it, you would have a causality violation. No rate of travel allows this, no matter how large it is.
I am not sure why this is so hard for many people to understand.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
"This is why no physicists I know or am aware of really believed in the recent FTL neutrino experiment."
We really don't know very much about gravity, but the earth and the sun have to “know” where they are with respect for each other NOW, not 8 min. from now. The sun and the center of the galaxy must “feel” each other's influence near instantly rather than 35,000 years or whatever from now. Gravity is the weakest force we know about, but it makes up for by being unbelievably fast.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Mmmm,
I've always had problems with SETI's assumptions ... about frequencies, communications modes and the like.
Bottom Line: the radio broadcast model is a pretty primitive one, even for a society like ours. I mean, we only use it for SETI because we have nothing else that spans the stars. That doesn't apply to high tech candidates that could be out there.
For example a serious technological civilization could use quantum entanglement, or singularity/wormhole based channels, or any number of real-time alternatives to maintain contact between its members which aren't subject to lag and are immediate and useful for maintaining contact between star systems of a major candidate. Hell, they could have discovered (tachyons?) FTL communications in any number of ways, or they may simply be using directed high intensity beams (e.g. lasers) to permanently connect users/star systems et alia.
We are just shifting to ubiquitous fibre, after which our radio emissions will drop off like a stone ... why would this not have happened in SETI candidate civilisations in remote systems?
We, and SETI, assume our level of technology to be the bees knees ... when in reality it is likely to be considered as primitive tech typically adopted by races long long before they even hit Candidate status to the Club.
SETI really needs to rethink its assumptions and methodologies if it is to proceed with any confidence ...
No, you're simply wrong. You're probably trolling since aside from telling me to "understand observation versus reality", your post is content-free. The rest is obviously provocative trash.
It is most likely that heaven and hell are not even part of this time–space limited dimension.
So true. Ditto Narnia.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Well, for starters it would divede the humanity into believers and deniers. Denier would keep on going as we have, believers would futher be divided into at least two camps on how to proceed. One camp would ramp up space war technology and try to hide, while the other would try to let the aliens know we are here. That's a huge payoff, right?
I think it is, as 2 million is such an insignificant amount of money in terms of humanity's resources. We probably spend that each day on cocktail umbrellas.
Well said. Even if the probability of detection is low $2mln/year is next to nothing for what could be a huge payoff.
And what actionable thing would that "huge payoff" be exactly? That we are not alone? How would that affect or change anything?
How does a cocktail umbrella affect or change your cocktail? I'd give them up for an answer to whether or not intelligent alien life exists.
Surely those quacks at Scientology HQ (Scientology Centre? Scientology Church? Scient-O-Rama?) would love to donate some of their gobbets of money given to them by easily led muppets?
Oh, that would require them to actually believe what they preach, instead of making up bullshit about the world ending once a decade. Or twice.
Oh, so you're trying to destroy the cocktail-umbrella industry. I see how you are (anti-American).
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
SETI is having trouble because people watch the news, realize that if the known universe, there is in fact, ZERO intelligent life. We looked at ourselves a while ago, figured we were an intelligent species, and extrapolated that if Earth had intelligent life, then perhaps there is intelligent life out and about in the broader universe.
Then we remembered that most human beings are stupid, in one way or another, with the majority still believing in the existence of the Creation Fairy, and a substantial number believe the Earth has only orbited the sun about 6000 times since its creation, many even think that the dinosaur bones found imply that humans and dinosaurs once lived side-by-side, like in the Flintstones, and others believe dinosaurs never lived, and that the bones were put there as a part of a joke or a hoax by the aforementioned Creation Fairy, or his lackey "Satin" (or Voldemort, or whatever,) to trick people into thinking they existed, because... (deep breath...) that's the MORE LIKELY SCENARIO.
People buy shit they see demonstrated on TV for which they have no use, no need, and which of course don't do what is claimed, people go to "Vegas" and bet their earnings in the hopes of beating people who are professionals at relieving morons of their hard-earned cash, imagining that they'll "get lucky"...
So realizing there is no intelligent life on Earth, they despair of finding it out in the broader universe, and have stopped squandering their money paying people to listen out for "Hit's of the Vrablagnas!" which is what you'd actually hear if intelligent life did exist out in the universe... if they're anything like us, we'll see and hear their popular entertainment (distractions) and conclude we really don't want to meet them. Similarly, if anyone were out there picking up radio transmissions from Earth, saw MTV and CNN, (which admittedly have never really been broadcast, as such...) but you take my point, I think they'd decide we were all crazy psychotics who they should be careful to ensure we never learn of their existence and location.
human anatomy and reproduction.
So our first message to the rest of the universe is porn. Gotcha.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Lets see - looking for patterns in nature that indicate or infer an intelligent cause. Where did we hear that one before? Oh yeah, Intelligent Design, that discredited idea (can't call it a hypothesis) that life just might be the product of design rather than a natural result of the laws of nature.
Our broadcasts have become more efficient (thus less detectable to anything not on earth) and it seems likely the same is true of of other developing civilizations. They'd probably need to be at a certain point early in their broadcasting career for us to detect anything not specifically meant to go a long distance through soace.
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
We're not listening for their voices, we're listening for patterns. Even using digital signals - patters are there
-- I Dont Deserve A Sig I Have Bad Karma
"They'll just avoid us, like tourists not stopping in a bad neighborhood." - by PolygamousRanchKid (1290638) on Tuesday July 03, @07:27PM (#40535633)
See subject-line - It's not so much the wars, & killing either (sometimes, that needs doing) but more the MASSIVE DECEIT our entire civilization seems to "thrive" on (1/2 truth bullshit is told us, but the REAL motivations are for greed & power - witness 9/11 & the ENTIRE "WMD" bullshit fiasco!).
* I don't know about the rest of you, but I've lived nearly 50 yrs. on this planet... & I've NEVER seen the bullshit foisted on us as bad as the last 20++ yrs. or so (& neither has anyone 10++ yrs. my junior I've spoken to of it, NOR my elders, who agree with me).
APK
P.S.=> Sometimes, it's SO BAD? I am ashamed to be a human being... & lastly, were I some "alien superior civilization"? I'd say pretty much what Klaatu said in "THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL" from the original 1951 film:
"As long as you were confined to your own planet with your primitive aircraft, tanks & guns, battling amongst yourselves? We were unconcerned. However, you have discovered a rudimentary form of atomic power, & soon, one of your nations will develop spaceflight - that we cannot allow!"
Meaning (& that's not an "exact quote above") basically, you keep your mental poison down there, confined to YOUR mudball... or else. Bring it out to the places our children play, and we WILL 'waste' you... we don't want your lunacy contaminating our lives!
I think it's already BEEN done in fact (laugh all you want) & as far back as 1946 over Washington D.C. in fact, but, the point is - until we can live honorably amongst ourselves? Nobody will want ANYTHING to do with us, looking at us as insane deceitful savages to be shunned...
... apk
I just donated $10. I have two thoughts that might help:
1. Put a prominent donate button on the homepage. It took me a while to find how to donate, and this will reduce donations greatly.
2. Offer a donation subscription. I'd happily offer $2 per month for instance, which would be a lot more than $10 over time.
No. Or at least, your view is extremely non-standard today. In general relativity gravity travels at the speed of light. There is even some experimental evidence for that view.
didn't einstein allow for this via wormholes?
I'm not going to check, but I think I've already replied to you elsewhere.
No, I'm afraid gravity propagates at C, which is the same as the maximum speed of light. If the Sun randomly vanished, no effect from that would reach us for 8 minutes- Earth would continue to orbit around the spot where the Sun had been for 8 minutes before the change in the gravitational field reached us. In Relativity, there are no cheats to get around C- it is the maximum speed for any form of matter, energy or information to travel, full stop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_gravity
http://youtu.be/lkswXVmG4xM
If what these people say is true--many of whom have been among the most trusted individuals in the world, even working with nuclear launch authorization codes--then SETI is truly a tragic waste of time and money.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
I was referring more to the alcubierre metric based theory, than the wormhole based theory.
Both require fantastic (and likely non-existant in any real sense) energy or matter to operate though.
The alcubierre metric requires an "expansive" negative energy field to inflate spcetime, and a contrictive, gravity-like energy field to compress it. Putting both around the ship (aft and forward, respectively) creates a little patch of space that gets taken for a ride, that the ship surfs in. It has no fixed velocity limit. The ship itself is stationary, the spacetime around the ship is what moves, and it doesn't have a speed limit. However, unlss we suddely master the higgs boson in a radical way, so we can fundementally alter the masses of the virtual particle flux in front of a space ship, and also master dark energy to cause runaway hubble expansion behind it, the alcubierre metric falls flat. (But if you can do that, its a perfectly valid solution to general and special relativity that permits effective FTL transport.)
The wormhole method requires exotic matter with antimass (possibly existing as exotic particles, at least in virtual form if hawking radiation is real.) To hold the bridge open, or it will slam shut before even a single neutrino can transit. It also requires retarded control over gravitational effects to create the event horizon, and I can't think of any reliable way to ensure the stable formation of the bridge between controllable locations in spacetime. (I certainly don't know any theoretical ones at least.)
The alcubierre method is at least plausible, and it would also have a very detectable signature.
I'm sorry, but your discussion is largely incoherent and you have little to no idea what you're talking about. You should be down-modded.
Your example says absolutely nothing about violation of causality due to a change in the maximum speed at which information can propagate.
My example says that if one can produce particles that travel faster than the speed of light, then causality paradoxes arise. I said nothing about a "change in the maximum speed at which information can propagate".
You are either describing a situation in which there is improper time coordination, or you are assuming time travelling signals to start with.
That you even discuss "improper time coordination" suggests that you do not properly understand the relativity of simultaneity. My assumption was clear--the existence of tachyons, which are by definition particles that travel faster than light.
If something were to be discovered which could do this it would not necessarily violate causality, it would merely prove that relativity is either incorrect or incomplete
I don't know why you're repeating my conclusion back to me as if it's new. However, you underestimate the severity of the change. Special relativity would have to be wildly incorrect to make room for FTL particles. We're not talking about a minor change or a part of the theory that has some "room", like the small distance limit where quantum "sits".
Instant propagation of information would likely allow a universal clock across all space, and you could coordinate time by that.
Indeed, but this is completely irrelevant.
You would need to adjust for the faster travel time if you are synchronizing your clock based on the speed of light, but it would be trivial to do that anyway.
This makes no sense.
Under relativity it is undefined what would happen if you could travel faster than light, as the theory does not allow this. It is basically not usable in this case, and trying to do so would be foolish (it simply does not cover what you want to do, and you obviously have information that Einstein did not when he came up with it if you are communicating FTL.)
You have no idea what you're talking about. The theory of relativity makes predictions in this case. I have not found a single source (reputable or otherwise) that disagrees with me. The first relevant Google Books entry I found on the subject of course agrees with me--see section 11.1 for a derivation.
If I could send this post beyond the edge of the known universe and back with zero travel time I still cannot read it before it is written, and causality remains very much intact. The only thing that would change is that if you are three light hours away, I could get a message to you three hours before an electromagnetic signal would be capable of. We would be able to converse in real time instead of with the delay, nothing else.
You clearly have no understanding of the actual content of special relativity. You seem to be using a naive Newtonian view of the universe where it just happens that light travels at a maximum speed. This is wrong on many levels--how does one account for the fact that the speed of light is constant in all inertial reference frames, and that no inertial reference frame is privileged?
If you could produce the post I just wrote before I wrote it, you would have a causality violation. No rate of travel allows this, no matter how large it is.
Strictly speaking, you are correct in that no accepted, observed rate of travel allows causality violation. That is not at all your meaning, which is incorrect as noted above.
I am not sure why this is so hard for many people to understand.
Considering the numerous gaping holes in your own understanding, perhaps you should not consider it so difficult to see why grasping relativity is difficult for many people.
Thank you for your reply. Every other reply stemming from my post has been idiotic and deeply ignorant.
It would probably kickstart the world's space industries into high gear. Aliens are scary. We would be wanting systems to protect Earth and the solar system, and also put more research into things like bending spacetime, so we can get somewhere before light does.
The argument is that at 2 million a year to run it is basically free compared to the cost of building rockets and actually going into space.
Not to mention the fact that you'd probably spend a few lifetimes searching from star to star to even find the most basic life forms.
If there is another civilisation out there, within "shouting distance" and they are broadcasting in a way we will recognise then this is the most cost effective way to find them.
For those who may remember, back in September of 2004 a signal with the designation: SHGb02+14a was announced by SETI in New Scientist magazine as possibly being of non-terrestrial origin, and the very next day a statement from SETI basically said: "Signal? What Signal? We didn't pick up an anomalous signal and we're not investigating it further"
A possible signal from another intelligence doesn't merit further investigating?
Well with that "announcement" it confirmed my belief that the entire matter had very likely been covered up and thus SETI couldn't be taken seriously as a trustworthy actor in this endeavor.
So at this point there are 2 main ways we'll ever know the actual truth about such things:
1. Have an opensource SETI where the data is shared among a large group of people so that a coverup is impossible
or
2. If other intelligent beings exist beyond our solar system they would have to make overt unmistakable contact with humanity.
"space industry" they are not. And "Getting on board a spacecraft" ?? When you're looking for shit Brazillians of miles away what difference does getting another 200 miles or even 200,000 miles closer make? Waste of precious funding I'd say. Stick to antennae and supercomputers.
... I think I catch the gist of it.
The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence begins to draw to a close? I don't think many people are all that interested, today.
The Entertainment industries draw far more budget these days than almost anything. I'm thinking SETI probably only saw the history of funding they did, simply because people WERE spending it on entertainment.
A fairly brainy, highly interactive, open-ended form of entertainment, but entertainment nonetheless. How many times can you watch your favorite film? Eventually you get bored of it being the same thing from beginning to end. Well, nobody found any aliens, yet, so for a kind of passively-entertained (we could say movie-goers) crowd, the thrill has worn out, already. It's like having watched the same movie for each year SETI has been active. "What nothing this year, either? // Honey, that's how it ends. That's how it ALWAYS. Ends. Let me get you your pills."
Some of the crowd have been attracted to dedicated processor time to more active pursuits, like the folding protein thing where you actually interact with it to get little jobs done, like a game. So the gamers / computerized-forms-of-entertainment crowd is off to some other park, as well.
The Sci-Fi geeks probably never donated a single dollar, ever. They're the ones suffering the most in this because to them, entertainment is free because you just go to the library and check out an ever-older series of "Best Of" or other anthologies and voila, endless, free entertainment. But if Seti charged them a late-fee for failing to find E.T. each year, that wouldn't really be fair, would it? So they're bumming.
Hard-core science nerds and are probably still paying almost as much as ever, but you have to admit the decision between a $10 bottle of scotch and $10 on something that drives most women away screaming is a hard decision during these hard times. Meanwhile the philosophers and philanthropists are shit-out the window because being right all the time or seeing your monies do good in the world has little to do with the sort of "nope, nothing happened again, care to insert another quarter?" that adherence to SETI demands. The philosophers already know "nothing happens" and for all we know philanthropists might consider this sort of thing to be wasteful almost to the point of buying snake-oil. Again, hard times. It's not like it really IS the most important thing in the world, after all, you wouldn't beg for $10 from a starving Sudanese or an angry Muslim, would you?
So of course there are numerous reasons why people would flee SETI support. Maybe they should work on their marketing, or something. You never hear about SETI any stores you go to. No "A dime of every purchase goes to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence". There's no SETI-endorsed event cross-sponsored by NASA, no SETI seal of approval on video games, no SETI really anything except the actual, scientific endeavour. Meanwhile the average person is inundated with brand imagery across the spectrum, most of it foul, rotten, grammatically and ethically incorrect mind-toxin.
That's what makes the money, these days, destroying peoples' minds.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Hmm, antigravity, warp drive, improved construction technology, beamed energy, fusion power, antimatter storage. A more advanced civilization may have several shiny toys we would find useful. Maybe they broadcast a select subset of technologies as a bridge to other civilizations?
But look at how the MP3s are stored or transmitted. They're in much more redundant streams of bits.
Consider an MP3 on a CD. 8 bits are converted to 14 bits in order to minimise the maximum run length (to enable self-clocking), and maximise the minimum run length (to reduce interference), and then 3 glue bits are added to maintain those extrema across words. So 8 bits has become 17 bits. When forming those into frames, they increase by more than a third. So that's 8 bits to 24+ bits already. This is highly redundant data.
Any communication on noisy channels (wifi, for example) will have redundant physical encoding too, even if transmitting unity-entropy-rate data. If you're perceiving it as noise, you're not looking at it the right way. The fact that you can find the HD radio carriers in the spectrum already implies that they don't look like background noise, their spectral footprint should be obviously artificial.
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Suppose the aliens evolved on the dark side of a tidally locked planet and are busy braodcasting light signals at us?
More seriously though it's about timing. The longest a human civilisation has survived is a few thousand years. Assume the aliens broadcast "hello universe" for a few thousand years, what are the chances of SETI listening at the same time their broadcast reaches us? If the earth hadn't been hit by a random event 65 million years ago, SETI would be not be here now. SETI may have happened thousands or millions of years ago or may be millions of years on the future.
Art is the mathematics of emotion
You make a valid point, nevertheless it is flawed. First of all let's address your example, digital radio that sounds like white noise. You are under the incorrect impression that what sounds like white noise on an analog radio, will look like white noise when examining the signal in detail. This is wrong, the digitial "white noise" is littered with transport protocol markers so digital radios can jump onto the compressed stream at any point in time with about a half second delay. As you might guess, these "markers" are repetitions.
Now I know that you're going to object that Alien protocols could be different, and truly look like random to us, after all, if you're looking at an asymmetric encrypted message, which has been carefully constructed to look at much as noise as possible, it just looks like white noise too. However, again you're mistaken.
Suppose you have a stream of encrypted/compressed white-noisy signal. You can't start reading that signal at any point in the message, because you'd get garbage out. You have to start reading that signal at some point in time that has a defined "state" and record up to the next point in time that the state is complete. For convenience sake let's pretend that these two states you're looking for are the start and end of the message. So there are three questions: 1) how do you recognize the start 2) how do you recognize the end 3) how do you recognize that after the end you have the complete correct message (even tough you have not yet decrypted/decompressed it)?
Ordinarily say in TCP/IP this is acomplished by two means: SYN/ACK/ACK/SYN which is a message acknowledge protocol to ensure you've got the bytes, and a checksum on the message to ensure that you got the bytes right. You can't do SYN/ACK at stellar distances, because that would take forever, a situation not unlike digital radio.
In digital radio streaming and the like you substitute SYN/ACK by a repeatable sequence of signals that are extremely unlikely to occur randomly, hence giving you a perfect "marker" to identify a message. You would also usually include a checksum at the end of a message, that you can use to verify that you got the whole message. Now in case of streaming radio, lost messages are not that important, you just skip to the next half second. But let's introduce our aliens now:
Like in digital radio the aliens would send a message enclosed in a pair of markers and probably with a sort of checksum to ensure that you can actually capture the message. Unlike in digital radio, they would repeat that message a lot of times, after all, it'd be a shame if a message took 100 years to arrive somewhere and you couldn't use it because the checksum indicated that you got it wrong. Redunancy is key. So here you have a single message repeated N times each time capped by repeatable sequences of markers. And that is why SETI looks for repetitions, because it's the only viable way in signal theory to make sure you can pick out a message from white noise.
But you're forgetting channel coding. 8 bits of data is never sent as just 8 bits. It's always expanded into something that is resilient to the noise on the channel. I.e. made error-correcting and hence redundant.
E.g. DTMF sends 4 bits out by using only 2 of the 8 possible frequencies. You could send a random-looking signal with an entropy-rate of 4-bit-per-symbol, and it would be very quickly obvious that out of the 255 possible non-empty combinations of 8 frequencies, 16 of them occured much more frequently than out of pure chance, and 239 of them occured much less frequently (never at all, unless the noise level is very high). If you were sending a random-looking stream of digits 0-9 rather than the full 0-15 range, then it would look even more redundant, even if the digit stream itself was from a provably random source
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Traveling faster than light *does* violate causality, if relativity is correct. If a message travels from A to B faster than light, but still forward in time, in one frame of reference, then you can construct another frame of reference in which the message is traveling backwards in time. If a second message is then sent back from B to A, using the same procedure but in the second frame of reference, then in the first frame of reference it travels backwards in time, and arrives at A before they send the first message.
Relativity assumes that physics happens the same way regardless of the frame of reference in which you analyse it. In your post, you've made the common mistake of assuming that there exists a privileged frame of reference. With your assumption, it is possible (as you suggest) to have "a universal clock across all space" - but with the assumption behind relativity, this is explicitly impossible.
The problem with your entire post is that you advocate looking for one single (theoretically possible) thing, that Might make a kind of fingerprint that we might be able to detect, but that since we have no idea how to actually make it happen, might also not be anything like we currently imagine it would be because it would require knowledge and capabilities we do not have, do not even know how to get, and MIT be completely wrong about
Over
Looking for MANY different things we not only know are possible, know how to detect, but we have done many of them ourselves and they would absolutely be trivial for a more advanced species to do. we don't know if any of those species *will* do those things, and we don't know if any of those species will do them intentionally designed to be detected, but at least we know those things are practical to do.
Further, let's say there isn't a way to do FTL, period. Let's say that our universe is one in which the detection method you are advocating is simply not physically possible. We might be searching for something absolutely impossible and getting nothing from it. At least with radio based SETI we are searching for things we know are possible and we are basing any optimisim on the idea that maybe one species won't communicate in that way, or maybe a billion will not, but maybe one in a billion will and maybe we will find it.
It's basically the difference between hoping to get super powers from toxic exposure (might not even be possible) vs. hoping to win the lottery (incredibly improbable for an individual but almost a certainty in a large population for at least one to occur)
Further, the tools and techniques developed for SETI are also useful for other problems, and has lead to discoveries in other fields. The tools developed for it are getting more and more sophisticated while still on a budget, which is certainly good.
Further, SETI is so damn inexpensive its silly not to do it, even if it didn't produce any of those added benefits.
Personally, I doubt that SETI will find what it's looking for, and even if it did find a sign of another civilization, it wouldn't get us the encyclopedia galactica or space wiki. But that isn't the real value of SETI, and that isn't why I choose to support it (financially and politically).
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
You seem to have entirely missed the point of most of that... but as I noted a lot of people have real trouble with it, and I have free time to explain it better as it is a holiday.
You cannot use relativity to predict what would happen in an FTL scenario, because it is not possible within relativity. Not possible as in there is no way to do it, it does not exist. You are making a conclusion based on a theory which absolutely prohibits the scenario you are describing.
You cannot get to the speed of light with a massive particle (never mind exceed it), and energy without mass cannot travel at any other speed (although you can affect the speed of light in a certain medium, so let me be clear that we mean "speed of light in a vacuum" as the limit.)
The prediction of relativity is that FTL does not happen, not that time travel exists when it does. To restate it again (man is this horse dead) relativity says that tachyons do not exist. They are not an aspect of relativity, they are prohibited by it. Any method of FTL communication is necessarily outside relativity.
Let us define some of this better, so that the argument may make some sense to you:
1) Improper time coordination:
One or both parties are willing to put their finger on the hour hand and move it to suit their needs. Their exchange does not violate causality because they bent the rules to make the scenario possible. This is not what you are talking about, but is a valid way the exchange you described can happen.
2) Assuming time travelling signals:
If you assume a signal can arrive before it is sent, you can obviously violate causality. This is exactly what you are talking about with that argument, but the outcome is taken as a given before the argument... It is however another valid way the exchange you described could happen.
3) A change in the maximum speed at which information can propagate:
Under relativity the maximum speed at which information can propagate is the speed of light. I am speaking of any method which allows you to send information such that it arrives at the destination before a light speed signal would (FTL.) This changes the maximum speed at which information can propagate.
How this occurs does not really matter in this context. It could be a completely unknown at this time fundamental force which does allow acceleration beyond this speed without greater than infinite energy, a way of sending something without it actually passing through the space separating the two points, whatever.
And now that definitions are out of the way...
The argument here is over what would happen in a situation in which there is a way to pass information such that it arrives before a photon could under relativity, more specifically if it must allow a causality violation.
You say it must necessarily allow effect to happen before cause, I say that is not assured.
The clock synchronization statement is to get rid of the first scenario I listed, as I mean to assume that both clocks are stating the same thing. If they are in motion relative to each other you must account for this (such as we do with GPS.)
It is easier to assume they are at rest with respect to one another (and does not detract from the argument to do so.) This lets us do away with relativity and use a Newtonian view of the universe with respect to the status of their clocks.
I suppose I can clarify this further by saying two points three light hours away from each other, but also with no relative motion with respect to one another (or anything else that would cause time dilation for either observer with respect to the other, such as gravitational forces.)
This leaves us with only the causality implications of the signal traveling faster than light (which is the discussion.)
This signal does not need to allow a causality violation, as no matter how "fast" it gets there the signal will never be received before it is sent (even if the time on both clocks does not change between wh
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No, no. The message is that we are weaklings, carbon instead of silicone-based, mostly consisting of water, and produce a ridiculously low amount of offsprings with each reproductive cycle. In brief, we are no match to any member of any decent intergalactic warrior caste.
My thought is that the only reason they're not finding anything is because the aliens are using gigahertz and terahertz frequencies to communicate on. And it's only now that we have some inkling that it's even possible.
I believe you have been misinformed. We have had consumer electronics operating at single-digit gigahertz frequencies since at least the early 80's. (Microwave ovens and wifi routers operate at about 2.4 gigahertz.) Short-range radars often operate at frequencies betwee 24 and 40 gigahertz.
Radiation in the terahertz range is infrared and visible light.
I am aware of this. Again, FTL communication is prohibited by relativity.
FTL communication would allow the imposition of a single frame of reference for all observers in the context of that communication, in order to allow communication it would be a requirement.
In this situation cause and effect must be viewed in that frame of reference. The timing of events may differ in your local frame of reference, but the order would be preserved in the frame of reference used by your communication.
To preserve causality all that would be required is that all observers use this frame of reference to determine cause and effect.
You would *not* be able to observe an object traveling faster than the speed of light without violating causality.
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As I understand it one of the big markers that they look for is repetition, so ideally you want a signal of some kind that sends out the same stream of date repeatedly. I can't think of an earthly analogue right off the top of my head, perhaps like an alien commercial or something.
Like a time beacon?
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
He did, it is also known as an Einstein-Rosen bridge.
I do not believe that he made a statement one way or another as to if he thought it would actually allow causality violations though. In some cases it would be a definite no, but it may be possible in others.
As it is entirely theoretical at this point we obviously cannot determine that.
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Sure, why not. Or just the same message sent over and over again like the neutrino letter from the stars as seen in His Master's Voice
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
$2 million for next year's results or $2 for the next Larry Reloaded 2?
Seti@Home is unrelated to the Seti Institute. Seti@Home continues unabated.
It's just that a time beacon has terrestrial uses -- namely, it's an excellent way to test propagation in various radio bands in real time while also sending out some information of value. This means that any civilization that uses radio probably also uses something comparable to time beacons, where the content is not strictly repeating but is quite predictable nonetheless.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Unfortunately, SETI is doing the exact same thing you demonize.
Specifically, it's looking for just one thing: easily determinable artificial radio wave signals.
Unless the aliens are advancing MUCH slower than we are, it will take hundreds of years for a "Ping" to reach our planet, and for our reply to get there. We have been using radio waves as a medium for exchanging information for what... almost 100 years now? How long was it until we started compressing the data? 70? Do you really think, that outside SETI, we will have analog data reception equipment in active service to pick up an actively returned radio ping after our broadcast noise reaches some of the systems that Kepler has determined might be habitable?
It relies on a whole series of HIGHLY improbable things:
1) That our radio broadcasts retain sufficient energy after expanding in radius at least 50 light years that aliens can still pick it out of the noise floor. (good luck with that. Same with us listening for them!)
2) that the aliens will identify it as an artificial source.
3) that the aliens will agree to a massive project to build a high power antenna array to send us a return message.
4) that we wont have gutted our previous radio infrastructure through incremental upgrades, and will be able to detect the return signal.
5) that the return signal even reaches us in the first place.
6) that we acknowledge the signal with one of our own by investing money and manpower.
and
7) are willing to wait 200 years for all that to happen.
Here's a reminder. We went from oil lamps to rocket ships to the internet in 200 years, and we have a hard time getting a commitment from govt for even 10 years.
It isnt winning the lottery. It's trying to find tiny picogram sized particles of a rapidly decaying radio isotope from the sand on an oceanfront beach, before the isotope can decay. and that's just the reception side of the problem!
Unless SETI was listening to the whole sky, constantly, on super-wide band, the vast majority of possible signal events would slip right through their fingers.
If they managed to capture one, they would get bogged down in red tape. Take for instance, the "Wow signal". Look at the controversy behind it, because it didnt repeat long enough to satisfy everyone. Even if we *DID* detect an ET, I have serious reservations about our positively identifying. Not because I think the aliens would do a bad job sending us a signal; but because I have that little faith in our political systems, both governmental and academic. I believe we would argue about the significance of the signal, debate its origin, spin our wheels hemming and hawing over it, and generally accomplish a whole lot of nothing.
Do I think looking for ETs is a waste of time though? No.
I simply think the current methods are sufficiently unrealistic in uncovering an ET, that it makes more sense to use the search budget to research better forms of detection at this point. The budget should still be focused toward finding ET, (and not re-allocated to pregnant teen mothers, for instance) but should be spent looking for a better way to observe and process the cosmos looking for signs of artificial activity.
Rather than try to find intelligent life "out there", they are switching their focus to try to find intelligent life on earth.
Right. A war isn't a negative sum game when you have an unbeatable technological advantage over the other group. With a big enough tech advantage, you can fight and easily win with few losses yourself.
In the examples you gave, not only did the Europeans have guns, they had the written word. That alone made all the difference. (because text language lets you coordinate groups over large distances and record knowledge for the future)
You cannot use relativity to predict what would happen in an FTL scenario, because it is not possible within relativity. Not possible as in there is no way to do it, it does not exist. You are making a conclusion based on a theory which absolutely prohibits the scenario you are describing.
No. I gave a published reference for my view which uses special relativity to predict what would happen in an FTL communication scenario. You've given no such thing for yours, and this is the most important disagreement between us. I understand what the moderators see in your posts--you have many correct ideas, but you're wrong in numerous specifics.
You cannot get to the speed of light with a massive particle (never mind exceed it), and energy without mass cannot travel at any other speed (although you can affect the speed of light in a certain medium, so let me be clear that we mean "speed of light in a vacuum" as the limit.) The prediction of relativity is that FTL does not happen, not that time travel exists when it does.
That isn't even remotely the point. Certainly there is no known mechanism to get a massive particle past the speed of light, but I simply assumed a particle moving at that speed existed. Who knows, a priori maybe some particles would start out that way at the big bang, or "new physics" would allow for the infinite energy barrier to be overcome without seriously altering the rest of special relativity?
To restate it again (man is this horse dead) relativity says that tachyons do not exist. They are not an aspect of relativity, they are prohibited by it.
No! Relativity itself says no such thing. Relativity together with the assumptions that the universe is causal and consistent prohibit tachyons, as deduced in the book I referenced (and many, many other places).
If you assume a signal can arrive before it is sent, you can obviously violate causality. This is exactly what you are talking about with that argument, but the outcome is taken as a given before the argument...
You misconstrue my argument. It goes "Assume tachyons exist and special relativity is correct. From special relativity, derive time traveling communication. From time traveling communication, derive a paradoxical experimental result that violates causality. Since we also would like to assume causality works, tachyons must not exist or special relativity is incorrect. Since this part of special relativity has been heavily tested experimentally, most likely tachyons do not exist."
The clock synchronization statement is to get rid of the first scenario I listed, as I mean to assume that both clocks are stating the same thing. If they are in motion relative to each other you must account for this (such as we do with GPS.) It is easier to assume they are at rest with respect to one another (and does not detract from the argument to do so.) This lets us do away with relativity and use a Newtonian view of the universe with respect to the status of their clocks. I suppose I can clarify this further by saying two points three light hours away from each other, but also with no relative motion with respect to one another (or anything else that would cause time dilation for either observer with respect to the other, such as gravitational forces.) This leaves us with only the causality implications of the signal traveling faster than light (which is the discussion.) This signal does not need to allow a causality violation, as no matter how "fast" it gets there the signal will never be received before it is sent (even if the time on both clocks does not change between when it is sent and when it is received.)If a signal can transverse the three light hours in one second, you have FTL communication. You cannot however send the message, have the other party receive it, and send it back before it was sent. Causality would be intact, but relativity would not.
This get
Different thing. The same as you, I don't believe we've ever had alien visitors (insufficient evidence, etc etc). BUT ... I still run Boinc SETI on my home PCs. Because ..they're out there somewhere. It's a huge universe (Oblig XKCD ) and it's just a matter of time.
One thought - it's TV and radio electromagnetic waves that 'they' will pick up from us first, so that's probably what we'll pick up from them first, as well. Alien TV programs... "I Love Kodos"?
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Absolutely! Then again, SETI isn't that big of a waste.
It's easily arguable that $2million to fund SETI for a year is a lot better investment than $Billions spent every year occupying a chunk of desert in a country that doesn't want us there, killing thousands, in the lost cause of "bringing them freedom" (and if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell - cheap!).
Continuing to fund a search for extraterrestrial intelligence?
It calls into question the claims that terrestrial intelligence does exist, itself.
There must be intelligent life *somewhere* in this galaxy, right? ;-)
Just because it doesn't exist here, doesn't mean its not out there somewhere.
Maybe they should rename it from SETI to SILSIG - Search for intelligent life somewhere in the galaxy.
I actually want to sign up now but if they are going to shutdown, I might be wasting my money.
1. They removed the offline client so they removed all people that wanted to help but hadn't a DSL line.
2. They changed the client for a "pick your experiment" client, so bloated and slow.
3. They restarted the counter of units credited with the new client, so all my 35000+ units are now listed as 0 units since I couldn't upgrade to the next client.
4. They started a "competition" like a High School Graduation Queen's election.
Ya the "karma" strikes back. :3
Any recognisable pattern is potential for further encryption. Combine that with however many thousands of years of improvement in compression algorithms and spatial multiplexing/directed antennae/interferometry and you'd wind up with any incorrect position/missing piece of knowledge/missing extremely narrow band filter just giving you random noise.
Perhaps what we should be looking for instead is regions that emit nothing resembling any pattern over the entire spectrum -- but lots of it -- (rather than the expected natural patterns).
This is assuming there is continued pressure for more bandwidth in EM for whatever reason, which could easily be false for many reasons (population cap, other methods of communication etc etc).
Come to think of it, point to point x-rays would be capable of carrying far more information than any form of radio frequency EM. We already have x-ray lasers, maybe we've already found stray communication in the form of those pesky inexplicable cosmic rays?
let the aliens find us and save our money. ;-)
I think you misunderstand your reference. The line "Assume tachyons exist and special relativity is correct" is a logical contradiction, and I will attempt to explain why.
The thought experiment you linked requires a logical violation which any person of reason knows to be impossible (specifically, greater than infinite energy.) It is not predicted by relativity, it is a discussion of what would happen if you tried to apply it in a situation to which you cannot apply it.
Einstein did a lot of this kind of thing (it was probably fun for him to discuss it.) It is not part of his theories on relativity, and you should probably look at it more as a discussion of the consequences of applying his theories in situations they are not meant to cover.
You are assuming greater than infinite energy AND time travel to even put it forward as an argument...
I see the greater than infinite energy requirement as a hard physical limit to the theory, and an implied limit for the equations involved. While this limit is not explicit in relativity, I think we can safely assume that Einstein did not intend for the theory to apply in a situation which requires greater than infinite energy.
As you approach the speed of light, energy input must approach infinity. To cross it requires a greater than infinite amount of energy.
This is impossible, both in theory and practice. This is not just a "we do not know how" situation, it is absolutely impossible within relativity.
If you do not understand why greater than infinite is absolutely impossible... I am not sure what else I can do to explain it.
He was aware that infinite + 1 does not really exist, you are apparently not. It is a "what if?" not a prediction.
Relativity is a physical theory, if you take it beyond this point you are talking about a purely mathematical construct. You cannot apply this to the physical world, as infinite + 1 does not exist here.
Relativity therefore prohibits producing a tachyon. It is impossible according to the theory due to the greater than infinite requirement, not the causality violation which this inappropriate input would produce.
Trying to do so anyway makes me think of the saying "garbage in, garbage out."
Everyone who initially discussed that was aware that it is an impossible scenario when they did so, which is why they assumed it for the purposes of that argument. They determined that the already impossible scenario would also produce causality violations, which means relativity breaks down here. This does not detract from the theory, as you cannot get this result with any valid input.
It is in fact theoretically impossible to produce a tachyon within relativity. Absolutely impossible.
If FTL communication is discovered at some point we are no longer living in a world ruled by relativity, and this must be accounted for. The theory prohibits this, and relativity has no appropriate application in an FTL scenario (this is WHY you get a causality violation.)
Causality is not relativity, it is merely that cause precedes effect. I am saying that while your observation of cause and effect may not be correct, it still does not allow you to change the past.
The cause comes before the effect, despite your observation of the order of events.
Let us construct a thought experiment of our own by taking a trip to sci-fi land:
Two advanced alien species are at war, and they have the capability to move objects from one point to another in the universe without crossing the space separating these two points (FTL.)
Side A fires an FTL missile which destroys a ship on side B.
The observation in half of the relativistic light cone will be that effect preceded cause (the missile destroys the ship before it is launched.)
So what happens?
1) Causality violation means that side B can fire their own FTL missile, destroy the ship on side A that launched the first one, and "undestroy" the one on side B by changing the past.
2) Causality
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I feel I have listened to you but that you have not listened to me, since many of your points have been repeated in each post without you addressing my already-raised objections. I begin to suspect (just suspect) that you have some developmental problem like low-grade austism that prevents you from holding this debate properly. Still, I will raise my objections one more time.
You are assuming greater than infinite energy AND time travel to even put it forward as an argument...
No, I am not (and neither is my source). The misunderstanding is yours. I (and my source) made no assumptions whatsoever about how tachyons might form. As I said before maybe they've always existed, or maybe some change to special relativity won't alter the relativity of simultaneity in an essential way while also allowing the creation of tachyons from sub-light-speed matter.
As you approach the speed of light, energy input must approach infinity. To cross it requires a greater than infinite amount of energy. This is impossible, both in theory and practice.
I agree with you here, but yet again your statement is irrelevant. I do not care how one might create tachyons, I merely assumed their existence. I would like to remind you that my original FTL travel discussion was in the context of new discoveries allowing FTL communication, so the existence of a tachyon isn't even my own assumption, but rather my interpretation of someone else's probable argument. My original point was that FTL communication would result in such a radical violation of well-tested principles of special relativity as to be astonishing.
He was aware that infinite + 1 does not really exist, you are apparently not.
You have finally begun insulting me. I insulted you in my first reply and for that I apologize; I was too angered by the combination of your misconceptions and complete self-certainty. I was better in my second reply. I am actually a mathematician, so I probably know many more ways than you for "infinity + 1" to be interpreted reasonably. None of them are relevant here though.
Relativity therefore prohibits producing a tachyon.
Your argument merely shows the impossibility for relativity to produce a tachyon by accelerating a mass from sub-light speeds to FTL speeds. Barring just one method of production does not bar them all, and I've given two other methods above (twice now; you ignored them the first time so I've repeated them).
The theory prohibits this, and relativity has no appropriate application in an FTL scenario (this is WHY you get a causality violation.)
You have it backwards. You do not get a causality violation in an FTL special relativity scenario because relativity has "no appropriate application" there. Special relativity has "no appropriate application" to an FTL scenario because you get a causality violation (and most people want to keep causality). Your implication is backwards, and this is a fundamental error.
The observation in half of the relativistic light cone will be that effect preceded cause (the missile destroys the ship before it is launched.)
This doesn't make sense. A light cone is not a collection of frames of reference but rather the set of points in spacetime with zero interval from a given point. You probably meant to say that in "half" of all reference frames (specifically, those where the velocity along the line connecting the missle's start and end points is in the direction pointing from the start to the end point) the missile destroys the ship before it is launched.
So what happens?
1) Causality violation means that side B can fire their own FTL missile, destroy the ship on side A that launched the first one, and "undestroy" the one on side B by changing the past.
2) Causality remaining intact means that while side B can fire their own FTL missile and
Suppose the aliens evolved on the dark side of a tidally locked planet and are busy braodcasting light signals at us?
i assume you mean visible light. visible light and all radio frequencies are just certain wavelengths of EM radiation. it's all the same thing. if you are suggesting that SETI won't find ET because they aren't looking in the visible light spectrum, you are incorrect,
http://www.setileague.org/askdr/light.htm
beyond that, SETI listens at what it thinks other technologically advanced civilizations would assume to be a "common" band ... for example, the molecular line frequency of the hydrogen atom. there also some practical limitations that they take into considerations. for example, certain frequencies are not passed through a planet's atmosphere. ET would certainly make the same observations. you can read more here,
http://www.radiosky.com/faq.html#freq
More seriously though it's about timing.
since we don't even know other technologically advanced civilizations exist, we have no idea how long lived they are. a billion years? that stretches our imagination but it's certainly possible. how long did it take humanity to obtain the technology to broadcast and listen for signals from space? 10,000 years?
how long have these possible long-lived civilizations been broadcasting and listening? possibly, a very long, long time. what sort of technology could a million-year civilization apply to the problem? what sort of power could be applied to a broadcast / directed transmission?
Climb off your cross - nobody's demonizing anything, and you're still wrong.
We know that radio signals can and have been sent from Earth. Some unintentionally, some intentionally.
We don't know that FTL is possible, let alone what the signature might look like.
If I'm going to look for something, I will look for something that I *know* is possible rather than something that I can't prove even exists.
Looking for FTL signatures (whatever those might be) over looking for radio signatures would be like trying to cure cancer with unicorn blood instead of treatments we once used but don't any longer since we've improved our techniques. It's at least feasible that there might be some benefit to one of them since it's been proven that in the past there *was* benefit, but we don't have any idea of what the hell unicorn blood might be.
Also, you're constructing a strawman with your other points: I'm not talking about having a conversation with ET. I'm talking about just finding evidence to suggest ET actually exists. Hundreds of years of lag time between signals isn't relevant to my argument.
And, you're still wrong about how the SETI budget (miniscule as it is) gets spent: It *does* go to refining techniques and looking for other ways to identify ET. We've recently begin to be able to detect "earthish" exo-planets and SETI researchers have *shocker* come up with ways to identify possible sources of life based on chemical instability once we get enough resolution to do real spectrometry. Others are looking for structures in the universe that are simply not reasonable to be natural (mega engineering projects like Dyson Spheres or whatever). Others are looking at optical things like stars being modified to pulse etc.
It's great to have an idea, but to suggest that your idea, which is predicated on some imaginary technology we can't confirm is possible, is just goofy. Now, I will say that the chance we actually find something with SETI as we do it now is really close to zero, but I will say that the chance we find something with your suggested technique is actually zero, since we have no clue what to even begin to look for.
Unless you're talking about looking for gravity waves which, actually, there are experiments looking for gravity waves already (albeit from "natural" sources not ET) to confirm various theories we have.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Just as the electric interactions manifest to us in the form of waves or particles, so also gravity is theorized to be manifest as gravitational waves or particles that have been named gravitons. Even though billions have been spent in building detectors which are supposed to detect gravity waves, none have ever been found. These constructs appear to be only mathematical entities existing in cosmologists and physicist's equations. Dark matter and dark energy as well as black holes are also in this category. They are inferred by mathematics, but but never directly observed.
Since the equations for gravity contain no terms related in any way to the speed of light, it is not likely therefore then that gravity is limited to the speed of light which we happen to measure today. Electromagnetic energy appears to be limited by the medium through which it propagates. Light travels more slowly through many other substances, such as glass or water. No one has ever discovered a medium through which light travels faster than through so-called “empty space”. Space is not really an empty nothing, but has certain measurable electrical and magnetic properties. No one really knows WHY light travels at the speed we observe it to do today. There is a theory that it has something to do with the zero point energy. You can read about it here in terms that the average person should be able to understand, especially someone that visits /.
http://www.setterfield.org/000docs/behaviorzpe.html
Zero point energy limits the speed at which the electromagnetic phenomena can propagate. Both moving matter and energy are electromagnetic and are therefore subject to the relativistic speed limit imposed by the present density of the zero point energy. Since gravity is not electrical in nature, the zero point energy imposes no limit on the velocity of its propagation.
It is not possible to “shield” against gravity, at least not by any technology that we know about, so by our knowledge we cannot use gravity as a means of communication. We do not really shield against electrical/magnetic phenomena, but are able to generate equal and opposite electromagnetic fields which have the effect of canceling out the incident field. If humanity ever discovers antigravity, then that would also allow us to communicate instantaneously throughout the universe. Our physical world of electrical charges is however always limited by the medium of space itself to the speed of light.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
I am not addressing your arguments because I am not attempting to argue with you. While I could certainly allow this to become an argument over the results of applying relativity in the case you describe, I am not inclined to do that.
I am instead attempting to explain something to you, which is not the same thing. I do believe I know the source of your misunderstanding, which is what I am attempting to address.
The abstract concept of the infinite cannot be translated into the real world, you must be able to come up with a finite value for any practical application (or even an observation allowing one to test a theory.)
You can represent values on paper which do not exist in the real world. Ex: I can draw a unicorn, but trying to go find one would likely be a waste of time.
You are attempting to derive a physical result from something that is unphysical. This leads you to an interpretation of the world around us which is more restrictive than is implied by observation.
The note that you are a mathematician is amusing to me, my girlfriend asked me what I was doing the other day, and my reply was "trying to convey a point to someone... probably a math student."
If the student part is incorrect I apologize, but that comes from the constant arguments along the lines of "other guy is an idiot... who eats babies." This is not something you see often from those older than about 25, as it usually hurts your case more than helping it, and that is around the point by which most people will understand this.
It is unfortunately no longer a holiday, and my time is limited. You either get what I am saying or do not.
The mods liked that initial post because it clearly and concisely explained why your interpretation of reality is not necessarily the correct one.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
I do believe I know the source of your misunderstanding, which is what I am attempting to address. The abstract concept of the infinite cannot be translated into the real world, you must be able to come up with a finite value for any practical application (or even an observation allowing one to test a theory.)
You are incorrect, that is not the source of my "misunderstanding", and I have explained why several times. Your discussion about arguments makes it sound like you want to be able to object to me without allowing me to object to you. Even if you were a Nobel laureate that would be preposterous (though in that case I would make my objections much more highly refined, for instance discussing them with a third party first).
You are attempting to derive a physical result from something that is unphysical.
The "unphysical" thing I'm discussing is a hypothetical newly discovered physical mechanism. I'm just arguing against that hypothetical discovery. I understand it has not been discovered yet, and my argument provides strong evidence that it will never be discovered. The general form of argument, "X is not physically observed so any argument Y that refers to X is fallacious", is itself flawed. It does not work eg. with the Pauli Exclusion Principle, where certain configurations of quantum particles are not observed and yet many solid arguments are based on the statistics that result.
The note that you are a mathematician is amusing to me, my girlfriend asked me what I was doing the other day, and my reply was "trying to convey a point to someone... probably a math student." If the student part is incorrect I apologize, but that comes from the constant arguments along the lines of "other guy is an idiot... who eats babies." This is not something you see often from those older than about 25, as it usually hurts your case more than helping it, and that is around the point by which most people will understand this.
You are correct. Especially in rereading my earlier points, my emotional tone very much hurt my case more than helping it--though I stand by the content of everything I said, the style I said it in was off-putting. I know I am correct in general, and I know that it does not come across that way, especially to the uninitiated, which most of the mods are. That explains why they chose you over me. In my view, you have not addressed my points (or understood many of them, I suppose?) while I have been able to understand and address all of yours to my satisfaction. I'm not sure what more to say. Good luck to you.
right. perfectly compressed content is indistinguishable from noise (which is also uncompressable). the idea that other planets are using communications in that short window between finding EM waves and discovering compression is pretty thin, frankly.