Well....while they may be encouraged to invade us because of the babes, one look at David Hasselhoff should deter them.
OTOH...if they got the hots for David Hasselhoff, perhaps they'll abduct him.
It's all good, then.
It is interesting to note that, despite running for 11 seasons, there is not one single "memorable quote"...
gnome
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2001
- Messages
- 14,862
In fact, if they do it right, they're going to try their hardest to prove it can be natural, and if they fail, then maybe we're onto something.
Hellbound
Merchant of Doom
Actually, SETI has already found one anomalous signal, and discovered a natural source. See post #143.
They found an apparant regular signal, that repeated at precise intervals. If they followed the ID methodology, they would have immediately trumpeted it to the world"Look! It can't be explained!! There's alien life!!"
Instead, SETI took the scientific road. They had no explanation, so they looked for natural models. And they found Pulsars.
And, wanna talk about coincidence, to make sure I remembered right that it was Pulsars they found, I did a google search on "LGM signal SETI". And guess what came up?
This:
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_intelligentdesign_051201.html
An article about the difference between ID and SETI, written by Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute.
They found an apparant regular signal, that repeated at precise intervals. If they followed the ID methodology, they would have immediately trumpeted it to the world"Look! It can't be explained!! There's alien life!!"
Instead, SETI took the scientific road. They had no explanation, so they looked for natural models. And they found Pulsars.
And, wanna talk about coincidence, to make sure I remembered right that it was Pulsars they found, I did a google search on "LGM signal SETI". And guess what came up?
This:
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_intelligentdesign_051201.html
An article about the difference between ID and SETI, written by Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute.
davefoc
Philosopher
Does MESchlum or anybody else have a source for the calculation this was based on? What was the frequency of the carrier for the signal?
I have just read through quite a bit of this very old thread. I especially enjoyed the comments of drkitten and euromutt, but there were many other interesting comments.
For what it is worth I am not particularly optimistic about the possibility of SETI detecting an extraterrestial signal created by other life forms.
Scientific American several years back published an article that suggested that life was only possible in a fairly small band in our own galaxy If this is the case then the number of stars that are likely candidates for life is much smaller than expected.
There have also been other theories that suggest that some of the particular features of our solar system (such as Jupiter and the moon) may have played an essential role in the formation of life on earth. So if there is something to those theories then the number of solar systems that life might arise in could be much smaller than expected.
And of course there is the fact that SETI's been listening for quite awhile now which is at least a suggestion that SETI might not succeed at all.
And then there is my own, pessimistic, theory which is that there is a kind of natural law that limits the lifespan of technological civilizations so that the lifespan of a technological civilization that we might communicate with is much smaller than might have been expected. The idea behind my pessimistic theory is that the development of nuclear weapons is an aspect of all technological civilizations at some point in their life and that once nuclear weapons have been developed the destruction of the technological civilizations become inevitable. A possible alternative pessimistic theory is that it isn't necessarily nuclear weapons that do technological civilizations in but rather some other aspect of their technology which eventually destroys them.
Also, for what it is worth, by my definition of science, SETI is absolutely a scientific endeavor. Parasychology investigations can be but often aren't for many of the reasons listed by the previous posters.
rwguinn
Penultimate Amazing
Evidence?
And perhaps you meant interstellar?
Yep
Hellbound
Merchant of Doom
Well,
If not using EM signals, what's the alternative?
Too slow? There's the fastest we can get (baring the existence of exotic matter, which we've found no evidence of).
Interference, yes, on some frequencies. But directed beams (i.e.-laser type, using light, radio, microwave, whatever) solve some of this by increasing power and cohesion. And even with interference we've found them useful.
Also, remember that SETI is looking for intentional signals, not routine traffic. They are looking for a species that is intentionally sending out signals to be detected, which is part of the reason they chose the radio frequencies they are looking at.
IN any case, besides EM radiation, what alternative would there be for communication?
If not using EM signals, what's the alternative?
Too slow? There's the fastest we can get (baring the existence of exotic matter, which we've found no evidence of).
Interference, yes, on some frequencies. But directed beams (i.e.-laser type, using light, radio, microwave, whatever) solve some of this by increasing power and cohesion. And even with interference we've found them useful.
Also, remember that SETI is looking for intentional signals, not routine traffic. They are looking for a species that is intentionally sending out signals to be detected, which is part of the reason they chose the radio frequencies they are looking at.
IN any case, besides EM radiation, what alternative would there be for communication?
Can you hold a meaningful conversation, if the time between sending a radio signal and getting a response takes more than a decade? Heck it might takes centuries.....
Hellbound
Merchant of Doom
AWPrime:
You really would have issues holding a meaningful dialogue, but I don't think this necessarily implies that there's something faster and/or better. It seems to be assuming the conclusion.
If you assume an interstellar civilization exists, then yes, they'd need something faster than radio waves (if they were more than a few light years apart). However, my view is that it's much more likely that any insterstellar civilization we see will be more like a collection of civilizations, rather than a single one. Species A might colonize system B, but A and B would be independent civilizations after that (perhaps they'd send status reports to each other occassionally, or trade scientific data every 12 years or something).
I think it's more likely that the lack of any faster communication places a limit on the possible size of any interstellar society.
You really would have issues holding a meaningful dialogue, but I don't think this necessarily implies that there's something faster and/or better. It seems to be assuming the conclusion.
If you assume an interstellar civilization exists, then yes, they'd need something faster than radio waves (if they were more than a few light years apart). However, my view is that it's much more likely that any insterstellar civilization we see will be more like a collection of civilizations, rather than a single one. Species A might colonize system B, but A and B would be independent civilizations after that (perhaps they'd send status reports to each other occassionally, or trade scientific data every 12 years or something).
I think it's more likely that the lack of any faster communication places a limit on the possible size of any interstellar society.
That's not really a problem. We have a number of interstellar probes out there that have been launched years (or a decade) before they are supposed to report back. For example, Cassini itself was launched nearly ten years ago. As long as the data that they give back is sufficiently valuable to justify the effort, that's not a problem.
If we could contact another civilization, let's see if they'll send us a copy of their Encyclopedia Vulcanica. Yeah, the data will take fifty years to get here. It will probably also take five years to transmit/receive and another twenty to analyze. But by the end of that analysis, we'll have literally priceless data....
If were lucky enough to have an alien civilization within 15 LY...... The problem is that human civilizations aren't build for such long term projects.
Also the value of any received information is highly debatable. We might not be able to decode it, they don't want to share knowledge (I won't) (they have no reason to trust us) or we might be harassed by interstellar 'Jehovah witnesses' for the rest of time.
Also the value of any received information is highly debatable. We might not be able to decode it, they don't want to share knowledge (I won't) (they have no reason to trust us) or we might be harassed by interstellar 'Jehovah witnesses' for the rest of time.
We don't have any yet.
But if we do find a way for FTL communications to work, then I would support a SETI type effort.
This is an odd statement, given that the medieval cathedrals took centuries to build.
Or we might. Doesn't hurt to try.
Or they might. Doesn't hurt to try.
Or we might not. If they try to "harass" us, there's not much they can do at 50 LY distance. We just don't listen.
There is a world of a difference between building something tangible and waiting............
Or we might focus all that effort on finding a better way for communication. For what we are doing now can be compared to using smoke signals to communicate with another continent.
All what effort? The primary resources that SETI uses is otherwise-unused computer time.
rwguinn
Penultimate Amazing
First of, I was hoping maybe AWprime had a newer,faster way of sending signals.
As far as signaling goes, what SETI will pretty much have to find is a deliberate attempt at communicating with unknowns. I read an article recently-don't have a link, but will try to find one--that there is literally a 50-100 year period in civilization (ours, anyway) where we blast the universe with radio waves.
The day of the 50,000 Watt "clear channel" AM radio is pretty much dead, now--and most of those signals stayed within the wave guide that is the ionisphere and Earth's surface.. FM is lower power (no sense blasting out power when line-of-sight is your range limit) and thus limited in detectability.
Even our exploratory probes signals are low-power, and we rely on precise aiming and a big dish to recover them. So, unless we are in exactly the right place and time in a civilization's history, the likelyhood of detection of general broadcast is very, very small.
All SETI can hope for is that some civilization is booming out gigawatts of signals on 11 M wavelength, intent on attracting attention...
Hellbound
Merchant of Doom
Hey, if you make enough smoke...
I'd think the chances are a bit better than that. We can detect radio signals from natural objects millions of light years away. All depends on the signal strength. In any case, even within just 20 light years or so of Earth there are hundreds of stars, and this number grows exponentially with each additional lightyear of radius (until you hit the sparse areas between spiral arms, not sure about that).
Anyway, I'd be all for the idea of finding something better, if we had any idea what direction to look in. Trying to do that now would be kinda like being dropped in the middle of the Congo with no map, no compass, and no trails, and told to find Tokyo. We just don't have much of a direction to go in right now. Everything we have discovered has pointed to the conclusion that there is no way to send information FTL.
And, as drkitten said, considering the minimal resources used by SETI, I have no problem with it.
As to information, just knowing there is another sentient race out there would be a big boost. Whether or not we were able to converse with them, or whether or not they wanted to share knowledge, we'd have already learned something.
Dcdrac
Philosopher
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2006
- Messages
- 5,141
As to information, just knowing there is another sentient race out there would be a big boost. Whether or not we were able to converse with them, or whether or not they wanted to share knowledge, we'd have already learned something.
I second that
I second that