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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"
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!
. . . 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!
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.
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.
I can put my hard-earned money towards:
a) Fusion research, which might work in 30 years, or
b) SETI, which will NEVER find ET.
Guess where I'm putting my money.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
> 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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=-
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