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Stephen Hawking and Russian Billionaire Start $100 Million Search For Aliens
An anonymous reader writes: Stephen Hawking is joining forces with Russian billionaire Yuri Milner to start a $100 million effort to search the skies for signs of alien life. The initiative is called Breakthrough Listen, which will pay for large amounts of access to the Green Bank Telescope and the Parkes Telescope to scan the skies for signals over the next 10 years. They say the search will be 50 times more sensitive than previous attempts, cover 10 times more of the sky, and scan a greater portion of the radio spectrum 100x faster. They add, "All data will be open to the public. This will likely constitute the largest amount of scientific data ever made available to the public. The Breakthrough Listen team will use and develop the most powerful software for sifting and searching this flood of data. All software will be open source." The project is also supported by Frank Drake, Ann Druyan, and Lord Martin Rees.
Finally some Russian billionaire who puts his money to good use. (No, I'm not joking.)
Ha.
My understanding has been that we should expect a civilization to use radio broadcasts that radiate out and which we can distinguish from noise for only maybe 100 or so years. Prior to that, they've not invented radio. After some point, all transmissions are compressed and/or encrypted so that they're harder to distingush from noise. And at some point, transmissions may be done via other media, such as point-to-point lasers and even things we haven't discovered yet. The likelihood is that all over civilizations have started at different points and progressed differently, so we've likely missed that window on all other civilizations.
What happened to my past CPU cycles?
We currently have a list of 11 FRBs (Fast Radio Bursts), two of them are almost certainly from the same source, FRB 110220 and FRB 140514, as can be seen from their detected locations.
I posted in my journal we should be on the look out for a repeat on August 6, 2017 (if from an intelligent source), however it could be any integer fraction of 1179 days and 15 hours added to May 14, 2014 if we missed some pulses.
I also find it odd we haven’t nabbed any new pulses since 2014, when we are searching more closely for them.
Letter To Iran
No one with a brain would use microwaves, optical SETI is far more efficient and the logical choice. For a picosecond, a source can out shine the local star and transmit an obvious artificial pattern. The whole spectrum from infrared to ultraviolet can be monitored at once too
At first I was going to ask the doubters why Hawking would be involved if the project was so dubious, but after RTFA it is very unclear what Hawking has to do with it. He is quoted making several comments about SETI in general but nothing specific about this project. He isn't listed as a project leader. The closes I found was this quote "I strongly support the Breakthrough Initiatives and the search for extraterrestrial life.". It seems like they stuck his name in the headline for the prestige effect.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
I leave the Physics and related math to Hawking's team because that is his area.
From a computer science point of view (my area), and find the numbers to be rather low (100 Million). Lots of software cost that much just to develop something, although I can't imagine it costing that much for this project. But he is also wanting to run things for 10 years with this money. That is something I don't think is likely. He will need additional funding.
SETI had almost no chance of finding anything because they were looking for a world with life, with the assumption the people on that world uses radio waves, and used them in the exact point of history where we would detect them.
I don't know what method this team will be using, but I am guessing they will be pointing telescopes at the earth like worlds, although I think this should be tested against planets and moons in our own solar system first.
The search for radio signals from other planetary systems may be an effort that will be in vain. The reason I say this stems from our own progress in communications technology. The era of high power radio broadcasts is on its way out in our civilization, something close to a hundred twenty years after the invention of wireless transmission. We are moving toward wide bandwidth, low power transmissions for our broadcasting. All of this milliwatt level stuff will not be bearable even a fraction of the way to next star since it will be burred in the cosmic background. (cell phones, WiFi etc). One of the problems that NASA has encountered is the tradeoff between bandwidth and signal to noise ration. Low speed data transmissions are used for deep space probes because it makes the best tradeoff between bandwidth and signal to noise ratio. Assuming other civilizations evolved much like we have; more and more information will be interchanged as their wireless technology evolves. Signal bandwidth will increase which lowers the effective distance a radio signal of the same effective radiated power can travel before that signal becomes burried in the noise. This project like others who have come before it will yield no communications from another civilization, the laws of physics, and technologies on other worlds that may have followed the same evolutionarily path as we are working against it.
Listening to a radio telescope in no way helps aliens find us.
he's a physicist and has never worked in finance
It's a serious point. Our own radio signals are probably indistinguishable from background noise from Alpha Centauri, and they're actually reducing with time, not increasing.
Rather than than looking for "stray radio communication" (you really think an advanced society is going to lose lots of energy to stray communications?), we should either be striving for extreme optical / UV resolution (satellite-based interferometer telescope) so that we can spatially resolve surface spectra on extrasolar planets in our area to look for signs of life; and in general look for signs of energy release that might be associated with interstellar travel, such as antimatter annihilation, directed thrust, solar sail reflection, etc.
IMHO.
"You see, Government is a system that is based on weapons." -- Timster
Being a billionaire nowadays is certainly hard; in fact, this is the main reason why I am poor. There is a tremendous peer pressure because all the other billionaires are donating lots of money to good causes.
I imagine what a billionaire might be thinking while choosing his defining good cause: “This one is not cool enough”; “Bill is already taking care of this other one”; “Is that one a scam? Will keep it on hold for the time being”; “This one is too expensive and spoiling my kids is not precisely cheap”.
Billionaires certainly miss simpler times, when they were keeping all their money to themselves. Poor men/women!
WARNING: this comment contains sarcasm.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
as to think that:
1) anonymous space aliens are radiating coherent energy in all directions (we sure aren't) and,
2) that we'll pick them up, when receiving photons from stars is so difficult.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
No chessplayer, you.
If found, the next step is to watch as govennments dump billions into sensitive listening, followed by some idiot broadcasting at them.
It is inevitable.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
A better method is likely to build better telescopes, perhaps large space arrays, and do transit analysis of many many worlds. You could, in theory with better tech and observation time, pick up on all kinds of signs of life both non sentient and sentient. These signals would be carried by electromagnetic waves, just not all in the radio spectrum. It's not as sexy as ET phoning home but far more practical in many people's eyes and is actually a main focus of research for many reasons extending beyond detecting life as you can still do analysis from earth.
if you believe some of the UFO stories out there, the aliens who have been in contact with us are vegetarians and don't like the fact that we kill other living things for food
BTW, they will couch the spending in terms of investigating the galactic neighborhood, but will in fact be in an arms race with other major powers to discern new tech -- plans or science ideally -- but just knowing some things can be built is a huge advantage to direct research.
I still favor retreat into virtual worlds as the end game, even after manipulation of reality approaches manipulation of virtual reality in capability.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.0342
"we attribute the proximity to sampling bias and conclude that they are distinct objects"
You can't really be this stupid, right?
Grass is a living thing... you insensitive clod!
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
previous article... ... If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans.' Personally, I've always thought that the indigenous people of the world really had no chance to avoid contact here on such a small planet, but is hiding under our collective bed an option for humanity in the wider galaxy?" - Stephen Hawking
'I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach.
retreat into virtual worlds as the end game
YES! I'm surprised at how few people talk about this. Why stick around in a boring hostile universe when you can live in a perfect utopia of your own creation?
is going to miss a lot. A planet full of tool using dolphins would be invisible to us. Jovian civilizations without metals to direct radio would have the same issues. A radio using civilization that had taken all of their radio digital, complete with compression and encryption would be invisible as well since all the entropy would be distributed in such a way as to make all radio traffic appear as noise. Even a zipf analysis would probably fail.
A more interesting approach would be to attempt to train current AI to distinguish natural objects from man-made objects and then point it at the universe. Mega-engineering might be quite visible, but look to us like another bright, bright, fuzzy, oddly shaped stellar thing. Ditto for the electrical "noise" of planets like Jupiter. some of Jupiter's "whistler" and other interesting radio noises might be something other than lightning. We simply can't know at this point.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Fast radio bursts: the observational case for a Galactic
origin
Letter To Iran
integer fraction of 1179 days
How could a transmitter know how long a day is? That's silly and naieve.
It's just a measurement; the units don't matter. The point is that the two were separated by that amount of time, so if they are a periodic signal then the period must be an integer fraction thereof.
Which part of Fermi's Paradox? Does your argument boil down to "They aren't going to find anything because no one has found anything so far"?
Making astronomical observations plblic access and the algorithms used open source can fuel all kinds of research at the corporation, university, and amateur levels. That alone is a laudable effort. Too much science today is pay walled and locked up behind restricted access.
If it's obvious to you, then maybe take 10 minutes to write down the proof. The billionaire will be happy to buy your proof for 50 millions if it's gonna save him 100 millions.
Remember that this is why "they won't find proof".
1. The circumstances for life are pretty darned unique here on Earth. While there are *possible* duplicates in other solar systems, the chances of getting a planet that is habitable in another solar system is pretty slim. It's more than just being the right distance from the sun, but the planet size, the orbit of the moon, the molten Iron core, the amount of water, carbon, etc. I'm not saying it's impossible, only that there are going to be very few that fit all the narrow margins that allow known life to evolve and exist here. The odds of finding all this on one place are pretty small.
2. The nature of "proof" would be a huge question. How would you. light years distant, observe something that proves life exists on a planet? Having water is not enough, being in the "zone" isn't either. Both would be a good start but how are we going to observe something that is undisputable proof of life? I have a few ideas, but all of these would be incredibly rare...
2.1. One way would be to observe radio signals and find ones that are not naturally made. This would be incredibly difficult. There is a LOT of very noisy things out there in nature which make some very loud and unnatural looking signals. Even if the beings at the other end where trying to send us something, the chances of receiving enough information to determine FOR SURE the transmission came from other life and not from natural causes would be nearly impossible. They would have to point a very narrow beam of energy in exactly our direction and we'd have to be listening when it arrived with a very high gain antenna pointed in exactly the right direction with the ability to listen on the right frequencies at the right time. Where this *could* be proof, should it really happen, I don't see where this is even remotely possible. And given we don't have much understanding of how RF energy flows though deep space, even if we did hear something, it's very likely we wouldn't notice it in the noise. It would be like trying to hear a pin drop on a train platform as the express was running through.
2.2. Another way we might get information about life on other planets is to observe the light spectrum reflected by or transmitted though the atmospheres of a planet of interest and look for things that only life would cause. This activity would be extremely hard and require very long observations of extremely distant objects as they orbit their suns. The only way I can imagine this working is to find a planet that is in the habitable zone and happens to have the right circumstances to allow life, but further, in order to observe it's spectrum, it will have to orbit on a plane that our solar system happens to be on, so we can observe the spectrum changes as the planet passes in front and behind it's star and calculate the differences. This will need to be done over a very long period of time because the portion of the spectrum we can observe from the planet will be TINY compared to the star and we will need to have many observations to get to a statistical assurance that we are not just seeing noise.
So, in short, Not only is alien life (Like ours) obviously going to be pretty rare because the circumstances that lead to it are pretty rare, the chances that we can observe anything approaching proof is going to be even more difficult... The chances of stumbling onto proof, even if we knew where and when to look for it, would be nearly unimaginable, but given that we don't have much clue where to start the search, and the classical "needle in a haystack" saying doesn't even begin to convey the difficulty of the task, I find this "investment" interesting, but pointless for it's stated goal. They will not find proof of life outside of our solar system.
But that's not to say there won't be good things that come of this... It just won't accomplish their stated goals..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
"When I told him we'd be 'hunting for alien life', I should have been more specific.", said Hawking.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Outside the singularity nuts, you don't often find people advocating for a video game afterlife.
Besides, your mom will probably just unplug your universe to run the vacuum cleaner in your basement "apartment", fulfilling the prophecy: The great Filter Queen will being an end to all existence.
Required reading for internet skeptics
They won't confirm anything. That's why the hunt is still on for people to burn money. All they need is to believe because the absence of proof will never be enough confirmation. See: Any religion ever.
Funny you bring up religion, because Mr. Hawking is decidedly atheist. For him, the search for alien life would be vindication of his religious beliefs, at least on some level. So is it a wonder that he wouldn't jump at a chance to waste his benefactor's money for this? I don't think so. Surely he knows that the chances of successfully proving alien life are literally zero, but religion causes a lot of money to be spent on stupid things so off we go. I guess some scientists and astronomers will be kept off of welfare for a time, that's something at least...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
most initial propagation will be hemispherical in 1/r , so even our initial broadcast would be lost after a few AU, well beyond a light year. Our radio broadcast and tv with their power *never* reached alpha centauri before disappearing in the intergalactic noise at those frequencies. The only broadcast which may have reached some other star are the one semi directional sent intentionally (toward M24 IIRC?). And they were only of a few minutes total. Maybe 1 hour top.
The only things pretty much they would be detecting are intentional signal sent by ET "we are here!". But here is the food for thought : beside that 2 or 4 broadcast totaling about 1 hour or so, we would not be able to detect ourselves.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The prime flaw in the Fermi Paradox is, we don't posses technology to communicate between stars (all but the nearest) or travel between them. Therefore, we have no reason to suspect we know what to look for. For all we know, alien communication is everywhere, all we know for sure is flying saucer haven't landed, followed by demands to see our leaders, which is dumb because they would really ask to see Elvis!
The circumstances for life are pretty darned unique here on Earth
Got me laughing out loud right there.
Do you have proof otherwise. Sorry but Scifi show episodes or rantings of people with Greek last names and funny hair on the History channel do not count as proof.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
A sucker is born every minute.
There's a pretty big difference in listening for aliens, and actively sending out messages. He was advocating not to do the latter; he never said the former was bad.
At the very least it's a 1 in 8 "Planets" do not support life, or if you count Pluto and the other "dwarf planets" you have a 1 in 13 chance. If you count ALL the bodies that orbit the sun, then the numbers jump into the millions to 1.
Remember, if any of the following where different, earth would not support life:
1. Molten Iron Core
2. The amount of water
3. Our atmosphere's depth and it's general makeup needs to be pretty close..
4. Earth's Magnetic Field
5. The size of the planet needs to be within a narrow range with earth being near the smaller end of that range.
6. The orbit and size of the moon has made life possible, some system which is similar would be necessary.
7. The kind of star we orbit is important.
8. The distance we orbit this kind of star is important.
9. The life cycle of our star verses the situation on earth that allowed life is important... (If you go much older in the star's age, earth is not habitable by anything..
10. The rotation of our planet is important to life, having day/night cycles which are not too fast or slow is important to our existence.
Earth is pretty unique and if you believe in evolution, then you have to realize that life as we know it is very, very, dependent on much of this uniqueness for it's very existence. As I understand it, even on earth life has very nearly been eradicated multiple times though the ages, even here. Not to mention that we already KNOW that life will cease to exist on this planet in the future as the sun cycles though it's life, uses up it's existing hydrogen fuel and switches over to fission of heaver things, which will put earth INSIDE the sun's outermost layers.
No, what we have here right now on earth is pretty unique, and that is not really debatable.
May I suggest that you try the "Life adapts and the situation on earth might fall in a large range of acceptable environments" argument... It's better than you laughing at what's obviously true, we live on a unique planet... ;)
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Proof of what, non-uniqueness? Water is ubiquitous. Planetary formation is ubiquitous.Look at the damn universe crosseyed and you get biological-building-block soup. Just the life forms we we've seen made with that stuff _here_ can live on anything from water superheated by volcanic vents, in the complete absence of oxygen and light, to straight gamma radiation to sulfuric acid.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
One of the reasons it was bad for the native Americans is that they were both competing for the same resources. What resource is there on Earth, that an alien race can't get from a million other planets instead? Life? Easier to grow it locally.
Who ordered that?
As best I can tell, and I've been studying it all my adult life, there is nothing in the Bible to preclude the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life. It is not mentioned as such, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and all that. The universe is a big place. I find it unlikely that we would find extraterrestrial life, even if it were reasonably common, for reasons already amply stated by others. However, it would in no way call any part of the Christian faith into question if we did.
Nonaggression works!
Atheism isn't a religion, you moron..
Says who? Hawking? Somebody else? Just you?
Where I understand Atheism doesn't want to think of itself as a religion, it meets all the requirements of one as far as I can tell. It even has it's zealots out trying to poke other "religions" in the eye and giving it a bad name.... Then there is the resorting to name calling....
Lighten up and accept that many consider Atheism a religion... In many ways it is...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Personally, I quite agree with you. The Bible is silent on this question and is written from the human perspective of one creation and one Creator. I see no reason to limit the Creator to just one creation or limiting that creation to just one planet, He could have more if He whished.
However, I don't think the existence of other worlds or creations matter to the relationship between the Creator and life here on earth for a number of reasons. One, the Bible is silent on the subject, so the Creator didn't think it was important enough to mention. We are highly unlikely to find another planet with life and if we do there will be zero interaction with them because we will all be dead and gone before any communications could be established....
But as you say, we are not going to find anything of import here..Certainly not life on another planet...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
This isn't a proof, but the Drake equations are actually wrong. You can never add huge amounts of time to a probability statement. Otherwise you end up with monkeys typing Shakespeare. Multiplying odds by enough time guarantees shit happens, such as life.
For a better approach, still full of swag, start with today's number and count and assume.
If there are 10 to the 11th power stars in the Milky Way, then all I need are 11 events in a row with a 1 in 10 chance of occurring. Life doesn't seem so inevitable now. Rocky planet (1/10) in the right zone (1/10) in a stable orbit around a stable star (3.5 billion years of evolution requires stability 1/10). A big moon so water life can spread to land. 1/100 (having a moon is a biggie). Assume cyanobacteria happen. You still need eukaryotes and prekaryotes to evolve and combine, multicellular life to occur, life to move out of the ocean, a magnetic core to save land life from cosmic rays.
I think life is a lot more unlikely than folks assume. Regardless of what assumptions you do make, remember that multiplying probable odds by enough time is as invalid as dividing by zero. You can claim whatever results you want.
Points 6 and 10 are pure hokum, an attempt to get zero terms into the Drake equation, to yield a zero result.
Having a large Moon has given us higher tides, but even if tides were essential to life, the Sun alone would give us 40% of the tide we see today. The Moon has an effect on reducing the Earth's axial tilt, but latest estimates are that the Moon contributes only about ten degrees of stability.
And while some rate of rotation is essential for evening out weather, there is nothing sacred about Earth's specific rotation rate.
Yes, clearly Earth is the best place to get resources. They certianly would want to venture down it to our gravity well to get out water ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) and our precious metals ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ). They may want to eat us ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ). But maybe these are all the stupid ideas of stupid primates. They are just as likely to visit for our political and religious ideas.
The most likely explanation for lack of contact is that there is nothing but pain to be experienced by dealing with us. We still degrade form old age and die from cancer. We murder each other over stupid plants and petty territorial squabbles. If aliens know us they wouldn't want contact.
There is also speculation that the Moon is important in maintaining the dynamo in the Earths core that generates our magnetic field and plate tectonics that help manage the amount of water and carbon in our biosphere. That said, these are arguments that support the argument that complex multicellular life requires unique conditions, but many of these aren't required for life in general. That said, even if these conditions are horrendously unique, estimates on the number of planets out there are "astronomical". There may be upwards of 100 billion habitable planets in the Milky Way alone.
"How about improving intelligent life here at home instead? "
You mean building better humans?
The politically correct orthodoxy would have you burned at the stake if you announced a $100M initiative to create stronger, more intelligent and more disease-resistance strains of homo sapiens.
Points 6 and 10 are pure hokum, an attempt to get zero terms into the Drake equation, to yield a zero result.
I'm glad you recognize the argument.. But the point here is that habitable planets are, by definition, exceedingly rare. There may be millions if you look far enough, but you have to start with BILLIONS of solar systems to get to that number... The chances of actually finding a star at the center of a solar system with a habitable planet orbiting it are pretty slim. But that's NOT all I'm saying...
The problem of finding "proof of alien life" is much more complex and even more unlikely than there actually being life someplace else (and is what I'm discussing the impossibility of). Having life elsewhere and FINDING PROOF of it is a totally different kettle of fish and adds a whole lot more to the equations. The needle in a haystack doesn't go far enough to illustrate the impossible task this is. We are looking for a needle in a haystack of haystacks from light years away using a pen light at night..
Anybody can construct hypothetical arguments that *could* be possible actual events. Something being "possible" in your imagination does not make it possible in the real world. It's possible Emalia Earhart is alive today and I can imagine many implausible ways this could be true, but that doesn't mean it's worth looking into or that I can prove my nutty theories.. Such is the case with "finding proof of alien life" on other planets. Not going to happen in my lifetime....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Optical SETI also allows for far higher gains with a much smaller antenna.
You can't really be this stupid, right?
You must be new here.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
As best I can tell, and I've been studying it all my adult life, there is nothing in the Bible to preclude the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life. It is not mentioned as such, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and all that. The universe is a big place. I find it unlikely that we would find extraterrestrial life, even if it were reasonably common, for reasons already amply stated by others. However, it would in no way call any part of the Christian faith into question if we did.
Also, there is this tiny little fact that there are religions other than Christianity. For some, discovering alien life would actually validate some of their beliefs.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Nah they just told folks at Parkes to stop opening the microwave door before the timer went off.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.0216...
I'm sure that "simple life" will predominate, so I think our search for life should be two-pronged. First we look for gross atmospheric changes, such as a free oxygen atmosphere, that point to a "cyanobacteria plus" ecosystem, the 'plus' factor being zero or more lifeforms added to an elementary soup of photosynthesizing bacteria.
Looking for intelligence is an entirely different effort, subject to a Drake filter with several more terms, such as long-time star stability and the ability to maintain civilized order for significant periods of time. Theidea of searching for intentional efforts to communicate is deprecated because...who would call out to an unknown universe? We look for accidental leakage of radio signals, and we are starting to look for evidence of large-scale construction projects.
Well, I see in all religions, including much of what passes for Christianity, man's attempt to know God, or, at any rate, something outside of, something greater than, ourselves. However, the little bit I understand of Christianity suggests that it is something quite different: not us reaching out for God but Him reaching down to us, meeting us at our place of need, in our brokenness and fallenness. Now, I do believe what Jesus said, whether it is politically correct or not. That He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that no one comes to the Father but by Him (John 14:6). However, I do not see this as an exclusion of other religions, but, rather, an invitation to all, of any religion or multiple religions or no religion at all, to come to the Father, the only way that is possible, through Him. He doesn't exclude anyone. We exclude ourselves, by our choosing to live differently than the way He created us to. And yet there He is, reaching out and calling us anyway, all who will listen. I mean no offense to anyone by saying this, although I know from experience some will find it anyway. I hope that if in any way possible, through these words some might find hope.
Nonaggression works!
In terms of other communications technologies we are bound to the EM spectrum for the time being. There may be other mediums to communicate though using different technologies. Our ancestors back around the end of the last ice age couldn't comprehend that a refined mineral could generate heat if you piled some of that mineral together. (Uranium). They thought the only places heat came from was the sun and burning organic materials. We could be at that point in our development as a species that we simply haven't discovered other means by which to communicate. We haven't reached an understanding of how gravity actually works, we have a long way to go.
If we do receive a message that looks like a computer program, we will, of course, execute it. What could possibly go wrong?
We might not be able to find aliens, but they could find us. We have been broadcasting for 100 years, so the number of stars in that light sphere is growing.
How could they cover the vast distances of space? In star wars type space ships? Of course not. We live in an information age, so they they would transmit themselves as computer programs.
("They", of course, would not be little green men but instead be software running on tiny supercomputers.)
"You cannot prove a negative" but I can argue that it's so nearly impossible that I'm confident that they won't prove me wrong... Not in my life time, not even a microbe or radio peep will be found that proves alien life. Our search ability is too limited and the area to be searched too vast.... But go ahead, fund the research, it may yield valuable science and keep a bunch of folks employed, it just won't find anything it's looking for.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I expect that the search for civilisations could be futile as a civilisation may only remain detectable for a couple of centuries during it's development therefore when you add that small window to all of the other factors that reduce the chance of detection the probability of success is very small. However while they are doing all that scanning they could record data that offers other insights into the cosmos that are of scientific value. Remember that detectable equates to wasteful and that is not sustainable therefore civilisations should not do so for any longer than necessary.
You're awfully confident in the uniqueness of life on earth, given that we really haven't even made much effort to determine its presence or absence in other potentially habitable places in our own solar system (and there are at least a few, and they aren't all planets in their own right), and that we've only had confirmation of the existence of extrasolar planets for less than 20 years. The statistics on extrasolar planets are still skewed by selection effects of the methods we use to look for them, despite the large numbers that we've discovered. When people did start discovering real extrasolar planetary systems, the existing models for planetary system formation did a terrible job of predicting the systems that were discovered. The jury is still very much out on how common life is in the universe, and even whether life could exist elsewhere in our own solar system.
How old are you?
Chance favors the prepared mind.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
"And while some rate of rotation is essential for evening out weather, there is nothing sacred about Earth's specific rotation rate."
I concur. According to the documentary "First life" when evolution started the day on Earth was merely 6 hours long.
What made me an impression though, was the speculation of how "snowball Earth" promoted the evolution of oxygen secreting microbs and kick-started the whole multi-celular life as oxygen gave more energy available to the future organisms [aerobic metabolism]. That event seems to me to be kind of "lucky" - I wonder if on other planets pure chemical reactions without life being involved can lead to free oxygen and promote similar evolutionary path...
An interesting argument and many good points. I do just want to mention this though:
3. Our atmosphere's depth and it's general makeup needs to be pretty close
Yes, for intelligent life such as we know it, such an atmosphere is almost certainly a requirement. But don't forget that Earth didn't start out with the atmosphere we have today, it was initially very hostile and required a lot of time for life itself to 'Terraform' the Earth to this point.
No, we won't be doing crossword puzzles with the lifeforms we find on such a planet - but it will still be a form of alien life we're very interested in finding. Assuming life is as prevalent as I suspect it may be, we are likely to find many more such examples than we will spacefaring alien races.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Which part of Fermi's Paradox? Does your argument boil down to "They aren't going to find anything because no one has found anything so far"?
Isn't Fermi's paradox more like "they aren't going to find anything because if anything was going to be found it would have been found already"? It's not quite the same thing.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Listening to a radio telescope in no way helps aliens find us.
That's what they want you to think, sure.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Outside the singularity nuts, you don't often find people advocating for a video game afterlife.
Apart from teenagers who enjoy video games but have no skill at reality.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
In order to find alien life using this project, it's going to have to be intelligent life with advanced technology which is similar to ours. They are trying to use radio telescopes to listen to inadvertent radio signals coming our way. So I think the "habitable" zone which leads to this project producing "proof of alien life" got very narrow indeed.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
How old are you?
Old enough to know better, young enough to not care....
Assume I have another 100 years to live...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Could this data be used for something other than searching for ET?
Clearly this is something to do with the NASA and KGB collecting personal information for use in brain-washing experiments.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yes, I'm really confident that finding habitable planets, capable of supporting intelligent life at a high enough level of technology that this project can hope to find something is vanishingly rare. So confident that I can easily say "They won't find proof".
The jury, if it looked at the evidence we now have, would have to say that while it sure seems possible for life to have evolved elsewhere, we have exactly zero proof of such an assertion. All indications are that in the observable area of our solar system, only earth has been shown to carry life and all the places which have been proposed as possible sources of life have proven to be barren, even Mars. The hard evidence we have says that only earth has ever contained life.
We do have some interesting theories and thought experiments, but these do not imply hard evidence. Where I can invent a whole range of "possibilities" in my head, you cannot make such ideas into fact without some observations... In this case, observations are few, and the opportunity for making observations extremely limited due to the great distances involved. We will never be able to go there and see first hand, and our ability to directly observe a planet which is tens to hundreds of light years away is nearly nonexistent and that is unlikely to change.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
"In My Father's house are many dwelling places". ...John 14:2
You need to carefully distinguish "life", "intelligent life", and "habitable", as they're not interchangeable.
Only one experiment has explicitly looked for life on Mars: Viking. No other experiments have been successfully flown to other bodies in the solar system to detect microbial life. A number of the places proposed as possible places for life have never actually been investigated in detail (e.g. Europa, Enceladus). Venus could easily have had life in the past and we'd never detect it with anything we've done (the environment there is admittedly much harder to explore than the icy moons of the outer planets)
The types of things that people use to "look for life" on other planets would in many cases have trouble finding life on earth-- there's a great deal of debate about virtually all "fossil" evidence of the origins of life on earth.
First comes "Habitable" which means that it is capable of supporting *existing* life. Mars is possibly habitable, meaning it's environment is capable of supporting life, at least for short periods of time. As you point out Venus is another possibility at the other end of the habitable zone. Being habitable, does NOT imply life exists, only that it could. A very small percentage of known planets are Habitable.
For a planet to support "life" means it is within the habitable zone and has at least *some* capacity to sustain something that's living. There is a subset of habitable planets which actually sustain life. In our solar system, 1 in 3 habitable planets are known to have life, who knows if this ratio is universally true or not, but we can assume planets with life are going to be a subset of planets which are habitable.
Intelligent life is a whole new kettle of fish. There is an exceedingly narrow window that a habitable life sustaining planet must be within or intelligent life will not evolve. It nearly didn't here on earth, I think it is very safe to assume that finding intelligent life is even more rare than finding a habitable, life sustaining planet.
Then there is the whole time frame thing... If you look at history here on earth, it is very clear that intelligent life, capable of the technology required to transmit radio energy that can make the hundreds to thousands of light year trip and be detected by this listening effort being supported by Hawking is going to be very time limited. (For us it's only a few hundred years out of a couple of billion years).
All this adds up to a very very slim chance of this effort being successful, which is my point. They are not going to find alien life this way or any other way. Not in 10 years, not in 100. The odds are just so not in their favor...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
All this adds up to a very very slim chance of this effort being successful, which is my point. They are not going to find alien life this way or any other way. Not in 10 years, not in 100. The odds are just so not in their favor...
Yes, I agree that the radio search for signals is extremely unlikely to be successful, but your posts so far have been referring to "life in general", not the specific "radio search for transmitters," which is entirely different.
The lack of known habitable exoplanets is very likely a selection effect resulting from techniques used so far to search. Rocky planets in the habitable zone are a lot harder to find than big gas giants that are either close in (so the transit a lot and wiggle the star) or far out (so you can actually isolate their photons from those of the star). Given where we find life on Earth, there are certainly many other habitable (in the microbial sense at least) environments off Earth in our solar system, and we've really barely checked them for anything, let alone microbes or the like.
To quote my *original* post in this thread...
Remember that this is why "they won't find proof".
Then we agree, this specific search will not find proof of alien life, for theirs is a radio signal search. The rest of what you've been reading is me justifying the reasons why I'm claiming they have zero chance. The locating a habitable, life bearing planet that happened to give rise to intelligent life with suitable technology to emit radio signals in our direction that happen to arrive in the next 10 years is pretty slim odds for a number of reasons.
I'm saying they won't find proof, that the $100 million will not produce proof over the next 10 years.
And I'd like to point out that I'm not making the argument that alien life doesn't exist, only that it's statistically rare and that fact multiplies the difficulty of finding proof, which is also very difficult in it's own right. All the difficulties taken together and I'm confident their task will fail, as sure as a rock dropped off a building will hit the ground.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
But the point here is that habitable planets are, by definition, exceedingly rare.
Habitable by human beings maybe. I very much doubt we are the only viable design for intelligent life.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
There may be millions if you look far enough, but you have to start with BILLIONS of solar systems to get to that number
You are aware, aren't you, that there are about a hundred billion solar systems in this galaxy? Also,
what I'm discussing the impossibility of
runs up straight against one of Arthur Clarke's more famous quotes,
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
. . . and it isn't the impossibility part I think you're up against, it's Stephen Hawking putting $100,000,000 into a SETI effort. I think that qualifies as stating it's possible, and I think he's probably got a decent idea what's involved.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Even the guy giving the money rates the chances at 1% for them finding anything credible.. I think he's off by a few orders of magnitude, but in general, even HE agrees that their chances are pretty slim, and it's HIS money being spent here.
Hawking's position is most likely more about getting big money for a research project than it is about the chances of getting the headline results. I'm guessing he is well aware that the headline making goal is virtually impossible but he goes along with this to get the money so he can use the data for other research which IS likely to advance the understanding of astrophysics, which seems more likely what Hawking really cares about.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
This search is for "intelligent life" given the way they are searching. This means that some kind of life that has enough dexterity and intelligence to produce some high powered radio transmitters... Just an observation, but that requirement and given what we know about intelligent life here, that's a pretty unique (and thus rare) evolution path....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101