Why Not Fund SETI With a Lottery Bond?

KentuckyFC writes "The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence or SETI is one of the highest profile projects in science. And yet its biggest challenge is in generating the funds required to scour the skies for signs of intelligent life. Government funding agencies generally ignore SETI so most funding comes from wealthy patrons such as Paul Allen who has donated $30 million for the construction of a radio interferometer designed to scour the skies for signs of ET. But the lack of other donors means this facility is still incomplete and only partially operational. But one astrobiologist has a solution. Why not create a lottery bond that allows investors to buy shares that yield a fixed rate of interest but also generates enough cash to fund ongoing SETI projects? To add an element of spice, this bond is also a lottery: when the search finally succeeds, a subset of the shareholders will receive a payout from the kitty. This is a fund that is likely to have global appeal but will need a financial institution willing and capable of taking it on. Any suggestions?"

Comments

Well

[Chrisq]

SETI is a lottery already!

Re:Well

[ddtmm]

Probably better odds of finding ET than winning the lottery

Re:Well

[FlyHelicopters]

I would disagree. The idea that aliens are nearby, using the same freq we are, are transmitting something we will picky, and that we are looking in the right place in the sky... The odds are so very long...

I am reminded of an episode of ST Voyager when they found evidence of an older civilization and someone finally figured to check the RF bands, which hadn't been used for centuries.

I would suggest that such aliens have something better than radio to use. Yes, they might have used it for a few hundred years, but that is a thin slice of time to catch it, without being ahead of or behind the transmissions in space.

Re:Well

[xetovss]

That was in the "The '37's" episode of the 2nd season of Voyager if I am not mistaken. What they found was evidence of rust in space (which by ST logic should not exist) and when they tracked it down they came across an old 1930's Ford pickup truck floating in space. After they pull the truck onto the ship they start messing around with it, get it started (though I doubt it wold have started the gas would have long evaporated through the fuel system especially in the vacuum of space, or if it was somehow hermetically sealed inside the gas tank would have gone bad and had terrible varnish issues if it wouldn't have been frozen solid by the cold of space) then turn the radio on and find a signal on the AM band and trace it to a nearby planet and find a 1930's era plane sending out a SOS signal (though with a "modern" power source powering it).

Why make it that complicated?

[argStyopa]

Why not just a SETI lottery?

I'm absolutely serious - I've bought precisely ONE lottery ticket my whole life (knowing statistically that my likelihood of winning is the maximum at that point*). So I'm not really a "lottery player".

But I'd cheerfully buy SETI lottery tickets - one-third of the gross goes to a the pot-winner, 2/3 goes to SETI funding. Hell, it's better return-odds than many Kickstarters.

*I didn't win.

Re:Why make it that complicated?

[Hatta]

I've bought precisely ONE lottery ticket my whole life (knowing statistically that my likelihood of winning is the maximum at that point*).

How do you figure? Each ticket has the same chance of winning, the more you buy the more likely you are to win. But the odds are such that the expected return over the long run is less than what you would pay in.

Re:Why make it that complicated?

[MysteriousPreacher]

How do you figure? Each ticket has the same chance of winning, the more you buy the more likely you are to win. But the odds are such that the expected return over the long run is less than what you would pay in.

That's why smart gamblers buy multiple tickets. Buy two tickets - double your chances? Buy ten tickets and you're ten times more likely to win! How could you lose?

Re:Why make it that complicated?

[geekoid]

Don't confuse winning with highest payout.

If maximizing payout is your goal* the yes pick all you numbers over 31.

*cause winning 100 million is worth my time, but splitting 100 million? bah

Re:Why make it that complicated?

[grimJester]

I've bought precisely ONE lottery ticket my whole life (knowing statistically that my likelihood of winning is the maximum at that point*).

How do you figure? Each ticket has the same chance of winning, the more you buy the more likely you are to win. But the odds are such that the expected return over the long run is less than what you would pay in.

I find it pretty funny that people who never gamble are completely clueless when it comes to statistics and probabilities, while those who waste loads of money gambling know exactly what they're doing.

Mars life sciences payload

[Latent Heat]

My plan is to buy lottery chances for a mega Powerball drawing.

In the off chance that I win, my first phone call will be to Gilbert Levin, the Principal Investigator on the Viking Labeled Release (LR) experiment that gave ambiguous results.

LR was developed by Levin as a way to assay sewage treatment plant effluent without having to wait days for streaked culture plates to show anything. By using a radioactive tracer, organisms can be detected at exceedingly low levels and very quickly by the radio-traced metabolism products.

Levin has been claiming that the Viking LR indeed detected life on Mars, and he has been pleading and scheming to get a "Chiral LR" life-sciences payload onto the surface of Mars to follow up. With NASA, it is nothing doing on this score since the Viking controversy -- they simply don't want to touch another life detection experiment for some reason. I thought the largely British Polar Lander was supposed to have a Levin experiment on it, but it crashed.

On the off chance that I win at Powerball, on the chance that this is enough money to fund a Mars mission, especially after the gummint gets its tax payments, and the chance the rocket works and the payload lands softly on Mars and everything else, and maybe on the remote chance that there is life on Mars and that Gil Levin's improved Labeled LR convinces people, Gilbert Levin will be awarded a Nobel Prize and become and immortal historical figure.

As for me, maybe I will go down in history as the chump who gave up his Powerball winnings?

Bad idea, I think

[Weaselmancer]

If you make a payout if SETI finds alien life, you suddenly give a financial motive to finding it. It could taint the results. Next Wow Signal we find and suddenly you'll have people who paid into it saying it's proof, and scientists saying it isn't. Lawyers will become involved.

Too messy if you ask me.

Is hearing transmissions actually feasible?

[Marrow]

We use radio telescopes to listen for stars and other celestial objects. One would assume these produce massive rf emissions. Has anyone done the math and determined if the transmitters currently used on this planet could be heard in other solar systems? Would our equipment detect them if installed there? Are our transmissions able to overcome the radio interference that would be common out there? Is there even a point to SETI?
Are we expecting alien races to use transmitters as powerful or more powerful than our own? And what subset of known space is actually a viable source at the power levels we use for communication?

Do these idiots not know what a bond is?

[nedlohs]

Did they forget the part where they have to pay out those interest payments, and the principal, and the stupid lottery at the end too?

What revenue are they planning to pay those payments with? More bonds? Do they think they are the US government or Madoff?