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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.
Now they're worried about illegal aliens from other worlds.
There were a couple of recent FLIR videos taken by F/A-18s off the coast of San Diego that were interesting. I'm not saying they were aliens, but they had the kind of aura of respectability, or at least more than your usual MUFON chapter can muster, that might interest a congressman.
OK, the idea is great, we can't find intelligence on Earth, let's search in space. And I am the first to tell you that the chance of us being alone in the universe is minuscule ("would seem like an awful waste of space" to quote one of the greats). But we say we are certain that we are not alone, because of the vastness of the universe and then we seem to forget that reasoning when it comes to SETI. The fact is, we can't pick up a "technosignature" across significant distances and yet, even for a universe "densely packed" with life, we would still expect distances to be at least in the order of thousands of light years. With our current technology, we can detect "earth like chatter" over just a couple of light years. There is hope that if the Square Kilometer Array project is completed we could perhaps detect over 100 light years. Which is nothing in the cosmic scale. So, to detect someone you need them to send you a targeted powerful emission. If you look up the literature, we haven't really been doing it ourselves - now and then we select a target and send a signal. Well, when I talked about the vastness of the universe, that includes time as well (which explains the "thousands of light years" being optimistic - it still has to be simultaneous civilizations). So you target a few star systems and you broadcast to them, you have to remember someone has to be "listening our way" at the exact time they arrive - given the cosmic time scales measured in billions of years, the minutes, hours or even days you might broadcast for, are nothing.
You can thing of it simply: if other civs are like us, they are mainly listening, so no-one will hear anyone. And it makes sense, listening is easy, transmitting is hard, why put effort on it when you won't really hear back (at least anytime soon)?
Obviously $10 million is peanuts for the US government (perhaps one set of wheels for an F35?), so pursuing such activities in this case is not damaging (and if used right it could help with radio-astronomy's popularity - although I think Contact has done that as well as it can be done already), but the little money that goes into space science could be spent better.
PS. Yes, I still think crypto-currency mining is more wasteful than SET@home...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
...have there been any credible studies that actually took a hard look at the implications of learning there is in fact intelligent life out there?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Unless some advanced (more than us) alien civilization either has faster-than-light ships, or is willing to commit hundreds of thousands of individuals on thousands of ships to invading the Earth, I don't think you need to worry too much about the latter of your two scenarios. The best outcome so far as I'm concerned is if we made contact with an alien civilization, even if it took decades for the signals to travel the distance. That in and of itself would be a game-changer for our species.
This is truth. Alien contact wouldn't obsolete religions or nation states. Those are to ingrained in our society. Religions would just find some other way to interpreter their sacred scripture to work in aliens. I believe the Catholic Church has made some noise along those lines.
As for it being a game changer for our species. I think you over estimate our species. It would be a game changer for you and I, but the rest of the species probably not so much. I'm never disappointed in humanities ability for self deception. Most humans wouldn't believe it was an alien if one shoved a probe up their ass.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Just for the record. I now have to clean my monitor, thank you.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
FTA:
'So, why now, after 25 years, do lawmakers appear willing to lift SETI’s taboo status? The short answer is that someone in Congress is into it. The provision comes from Lamar Smith, a Republican congressman from Texas, who worked with the SETI Institute to craft the language, according to SETI researchers. '