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Congress Is Quietly Nudging NASA To Look for Aliens (theatlantic.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The search for extraterrestrial life, in general, has continued over the past decades, of course, carried out by academic institutions around the world, by people like Tarter, one of the field's best-known seti researchers (and the inspiration for Ellie Arroway, the protagonist in Contact, Carl Sagan's 1985 classic science-fiction novel). But they wouldn't get any help from the feds. "[Senator Bryan] made it clear to the administration that if they came back with seti in their budget again, it wouldn't be good for the NASA budget," Tarter says now. "So we instantly became the four-letter S-word that you couldn't say at headquarters anymore, and that has stuck for quite a while."
That could soon change. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives recently proposed legislation for NASA's future that includes some intriguing language. The space agency, the bill recommends, should spend $10 million on the "search for technosignatures, such as radio transmissions" per year, for the next two fiscal years. The House bill -- should it survive a vote in the House and passage in the Senate -- can only make recommendations for how agencies should use federal funding. But for seti researchers like Tarter, the fact that it even exists is thrilling. It's the first time congressional lawmakers have proposed using federal cash to fund seti in 25 years.
That could soon change. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives recently proposed legislation for NASA's future that includes some intriguing language. The space agency, the bill recommends, should spend $10 million on the "search for technosignatures, such as radio transmissions" per year, for the next two fiscal years. The House bill -- should it survive a vote in the House and passage in the Senate -- can only make recommendations for how agencies should use federal funding. But for seti researchers like Tarter, the fact that it even exists is thrilling. It's the first time congressional lawmakers have proposed using federal cash to fund seti in 25 years.
If you looked at the Sol system from the Alpha Centauri system, and managed to pinpoint Earth, what would you see? Not a whole hell of a lot; you likely would not know whether there was any life on it at all, let alone sentient life with a technological 'civilization' (such as it is). On the other hand if you point a very sensitive radio telescope at us from that distance, and your signal processing is well advanced, you might very well pick up the remnants of our various wavelengths of radio communications.
That's why SETI is not a complete waste of time.
Furthermore: compared to all the stupid pointless bullshit that has literally orders of magnitude spent on it annually? SETI is a bargain.
If you're going to dump on SETI, then you have to dump all over all the hideously expensive space telescope programs going all the way back to Hubble.