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UK Steps Up the Search For Alien Life
An anonymous reader writes "If aliens are out there, the United Kingdom is determined to find them, as seen in the recent launch of a network called the UK Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (UKSETI), which combines the efforts and know-how of academics from 11 institutions from across the country."
When they could just watch The Jeremy Kyle Show and find conclusive proof that aliens do exist.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Why doesn't NASA try to find alien life? Finding alien life could lead to huge technological advances.
Finding alien *intelligence* could lead to even huger technological advances. Merely finding alien life (for example, on Europa), at least in short term, would most likely lead only to sensational first pages in newspapers. Or a trespassing lawsuit and restraining order.
Ezekiel 23:20
As I am typing this, hundreds of thousands of people around the world are hanging out at UFO-related sites. Some believe firmly in the existence of UFOs. Others are more sceptical but fascinated nevertheless. There are millions of people who would LOVE to find out "what the truth on UFOs/ETs is". ------- Except that no government with the necessary facts/knowledge ever comes forward and says "Yes, there genuinely are UFOs visiting earth" or "Sorry to disappoint, but none of the UFO sightings on record have anything to do with genuine UFOs/ETs". ------- It doesn't matter that the UK now wants to "hunt for other life in the universe". As long as nobody steps forward and gives people the straight dope on UFOs/ETs, a tech project like this is pointless. ---- I sometimes wonder: How can it be THIS DIFFICULT for a government to address ordinary people and give them REAL FACTS on UFOs? A simple YES or NO answer would suffice - are there real UFOs? YES or NO? ------ My 2 Cents
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
If the British used all the available computing and storage power of its secret data snorkeling, they might actually put the equipment to a more promising use than illegally spying on the rest of Europe.
Gosh - you can do ANYTHING with the 27 holes of an Arcturian ! "
Play an extended course of golf?
Ezekiel 23:20
I look at history and see many cases of more advanced ones annexing less advanced civilizations, so the end result is a mixture of both
The question has been answered many times by several governments, NO there is no credible evidence of alien UFOs. You just don't want to hear the answer, instead listening to wingnuts.
A simple YES or NO answer would suffice - are there real UFOs? YES or NO?
The answer is NO. This question has already been answered thousands of times, but people refuse to accept the answer.
You want the truth? Here's the truth. No aliens have visited the earth, and they never will. Not ever.
The idea of aliens coming to earth has been the subject of countless novels, movies and televison shows. Even though those stories are entirely fictional, they have greatly influenced the way we think about the idea of someday encountering beings from another world. Unfortunately, all of these stories illustrate just how small our thinking is on this subject, and we should be thinking bigger. Big enough to consider that if there really are any aliens with the ability to come visit us, they almost certainly would not care to.
Stephen Hawking once said that aliens visiting us would be similar to Christopher Columbus first landing on North America (not good for the inhabitants). His idea being that they would come for our resources, not with any particular purpose of friendship. Whether or not he is right is irrelevant because I don't think the aliens are coming. Ever.
Sci-fi stories can ignore the bits that aren't very interesting. Movie aliens rarely get sick or worry about eating. Movies don't mention artificial gravity much because given our limited view, we pretty much expect gravity to just work and shooting a movie without it would be a pain. So, screw it, all movie aliens have invented artificial gravity. After all, lasers, phasers, and pew-pew energy-blasters are much more fun to think about.
In the real world, however, science tends to advance in all directions because advances in one field often accelerate many others (much like the invention of the computer accelerated all other fields of human science).
If Stephen Hawking is right, then he is saying a race of aliens has, at a minimum, perfected faster-than-light travel (or perfected a way to travel for thousands of years at sub-light), conquered the long term biological effects of space radiation, and mastered extreme long distance space navigation, just so they can come to earth and steal our water.
So why *WOULD* aliens come to earth?
Do they really want our water (or minerals or whatever)? That implies an economic model in their decision. By definition, they must need and value those resources and coming here to get them must be their most economical choice. Getting them somewhere closer to home or manufacturing them must be more "expensive" (in some sense of the word) than the cost of traveling all the way here, gathering our resources and flying them home.
While not impossible, that seems unlikely - both technologically and economically. Even we have (expensively) already mastered alchemy. We have the tech to create matter from energy. Imagine that tech in a few hundred years, or whenever it is you think we'll be able to travel several light years for a mining expedition. What would be cheaper and better, forging the plutonium at home or sending a fleet of galactic warships (with thousands or soldiers and miners) to some far off planet?
Currently, we're not even able to get to Proxima Centauri (the closest star to us besides the sun) much less a place where we think there's an actual planet. Getting us to Proxima Centauri in less than a few hundred years would require technolgy that is orders of magnitude beyond what we have now. If getting humans to another star system is a 100 on some "technology ability scale", then we're currently at about 2, which is not far ahead of poodles - who are probably at 1.
What about the idea that aliens might come to Earth to colonize the planet (and maybe vaporize us in the process)? You could argue that terraforming (or maybe they would call it xenoforming) could be a technology more advanced than FTL travel. With that assumption, you could imagine an alien race that can travel across the galaxy but not al
There are now six systems with of known exoplanets within 10 light years. It's quite feasible to send messages in their direction on a regular basis. Should this be done?
Agreed. Bloody Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings , Normans, et al. They should all bloody well go back to where they came from and leave the UK for us Beaker People, that's what I say!
(/sarcasm - in case anyone took this seriously!)
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. - Blake
The only way to detect non-intelligent alien life would by via the spectrum of their planet showing lines characteristic of chemicals unlikely to be formed by non-biological processes. Very hard to pick up - it's hard enough to just detect extrasolar planets.
Intelligent life, if it exists, might be easier to find. It might find us first. Even easier if it wants to be found and can build a signalling beacon of some sort.
odds are they would be so advanced as to see us as lower animals. Basically what we would call "food"
You actually think that *we* will develop advanced interstellar travel (which is incredibly demanding in terms of energy) before being able to synthesize any compound or foodstuff in essentially limitless quantities? And if you don't, why do you think that the aliens would be so stupid?
Ezekiel 23:20
Nice essay.
You make a few leaps of logic, but the overall direction is mostly logical.
I have a completely different, and similarly "logical leap" filled argument on never meeting other Aliens as well.
But before I copy paste it here, I wanted to address one of your points.
"Getting us to Proxima Centauri in less than a few hundred years would require technology that is orders of magnitude beyond what we have now."
I am not sure I agree. Within 10-15 lightyears even their are life-habitable planets. Right now we have the probe Voyager that travels at something like 15% of the speed of light.
Really, given enough money and mostly today's tech I think it is plausible to imagine shipping off some sensor equipment on a 80 year journey to our best guess of a Earth-like planet. It would probably only have a 50% chance of succeeding at best, as it would necessarily have to be 100% automated, as input lag would be 20-30 years. And just getting a probe to the general area of the closest star would be very doable, given unlimited resources. Really, all you need to do is launch it pretty fast in the right direction and have a power source or a battery that lasts a century.
A thought experiment against Alien life, as depicted in Star Trek and popular belief.
Some people dream about colonizing the stars, some people draw up formulas calculating the possible billions of life filled planets, some people warn of future alien invasions.
For the purposes of this experiment, the ability to travel past the speed of light, or even just close to it is unnecessary.
I am here to tell you that these ideas are self contradictory.
The oldest solar system (potentially life bearing planets) in our incredibly small neighbourhood is calculated as being about 13 billion year old. That leaves about 10 billion years of progress above and beyond Earth. That means that they were almost certainly driving around using petroleum based fuels, and launching themselves into space similarly, 10 billion years ago.
Even if the only other life in the universe was from a single planet on the far side of the Andromeda Galaxy, or any other galaxy even 100 times further away, if it was even slightly like the culture shown in film, TV, or how we imagine ourselves, it would have already colonised Earth, Billions of years ago. (note: In a billion years even conventional human manned spacecraft could make it to another Galaxy. Space is actually quite small compared to the vastness of time)
Ignoring the incredibly small chance that our situation is special in some way.
That leaves us with few possibilities.
Life in general, or Human-like life specifically, necessarily destroys itself in short order.
Human-like life necessarily changes to become non Human-like in incredibly short order.
Colonizing planets is impossible.
The reason why we have not, and never will, discover any other alien life that we relate to is that it flashes into existence and vanishes in a blank of the cosmic eye. This is not just my opinion, this has 10 billion years of evidence to back it up. This would be like seeing a vast range of old rock that contains no fossils, and the explanation for this was that no fish or bacteria ever swam over that way in the billions of years that they could of done so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Explaining_the_paradox_hypothetically
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
So NSA wants to spy on ET also.
"ET phoned home at 11:34.47am and talked to Phlooog for 17.387 minutes."
Table-ized A.I.
I used to read up extensively on the subject, and am still not settled with a conclusion. If otherwise sane and reliable pilots and cops are hallucinating metallic objects hovering in front of their faces in broad daylight due to the "power of media suggestion", then we AT LEAST have a giant unsolved psychological mystery.
Whether the mystery is "up there", or in our heads, it's still an unsolved mystery.
Governments will generally not acknowledge a mystery because it invites questions and attention that they don't know how to deal with. "No, now get off my lawn" is the easier response.
Table-ized A.I.
You are assuming that unique civilizations are common. They might not be, as the Fermi Paradox suggests. The "study hypothesis" is still quite valid.
In fact, the study hypothesis fits with the UFO observations: usually stealth studies, but every now and then flubbing their stealth because they consider 99.9% reliable stealth "good enough" for their purposes without excess expenditures of their resources.
Table-ized A.I.
You are wrong by several orders of magnitude.
Right now we have the probe Voyager that travels at something like 0.00015% of the speed of light.
Thirty four characters live here.