SETI: Good science or a crackpot waste of time?

[Lance]

What do you think of SETI?

And I mean specifically, the passive monitoring of certain radio frequencies for artificial traffic from an Extra Terrestrial source.

I personally think SETI is bad science as it is currently being done. The methods being used will only detect a specific type of signal intentionally sent by an ET civilization in an attempt to make contact. The current SETI project could not even detect the Earth from the nearest star.

[Lonewulf]

I say it's a good science, until you can show me a better solution.

As-is, we're sending probes to other worlds, so it's not like we only have one avenue; plus, we're continuing to look out at other planets, so that avenue is still there. Searching for radio signals seems to be the best option SETI has. What else is there?

[umop ap!sdn]

Keep in mind that we ourselves have sent such intentional signals out into space (e.g. the one sent from Arecibo). If life is anywheres near as common as planets in habitable zones, and if technological civilization is anything more than a fluke, then we should pick up something sooner or later.

AFAIK the "wow signal" has yet to be explained. It may have been an as yet unknown natural phenomenon, or maybe some alien kids somewhere thought it would be cool to hook up a 21 cm maser to a high gain transceiver dish. But if nothing else, it's a direction to look for targets of interstellar probes once we have them.

As far as picking up Earth's radio noise, IIRC our current technology is incapable of detecting it at distances where we might expect to find other civilizations. I say with what little we've got, we keep looking and advance our technology so that we eventually could pick out other Earthlike radio sources. :D

[Lance]

Keep in mind that we ourselves have sent such intentional signals out into space (e.g. the one sent from Arecibo). If life is anywheres near as common as planets in habitable zones, and if technological civilization is anything more than a fluke, then we should pick up something sooner or later.

But I'm pretty sure we only did it once, and for only a few minutes. That is an awfully tiny needle in a vastly huge haystack. Though we are going to try again soon.

AFAIK the "wow signal" has yet to be explained. It may have been an as yet unknown natural phenomenon, or maybe some alien kids somewhere thought it would be cool to hook up a 21 cm maser to a high gain transceiver dish. But if nothing else, it's a direction to look for targets of interstellar probes once we have them.

As far as picking up Earth's radio noise, IIRC our current technology is incapable of detecting it at distances where we might expect to find other civilizations. I say with what little we've got, we keep looking and advance our technology so that we eventually could pick out other Earthlike radio sources. :D

But we're not looking for just noise. We're looking only in one specific quiet portion of the EM spectrum. In a range that we, ourselves don't radiate in. That's why I say the current SETI program couldn't even find "us" 4 1/2 lightyears away. What if the galaxy is teaming with life, and they're all just listening because transmitting takes far more resources?

[The Beer Slayer]

Ordinarily I love space science, but I think it's too much of a long shot to be worthwhile.

[Lonewulf]

Ordinarily I love space science, but I think it's too much of a long shot to be worthwhile.

Mmm, I will have to agree with you that it is a long shot. Leaving an ear open is good and all that, but we could put that funding towards advancing our technology first.

Still, keeping that ear open is rather important. We don't want to have an "OH SHIT YOU'RE GOING TO DIE!" signal sent towards us that we miss.

[Lance]

Ordinarily I love space science, but I think it's too much of a long shot to be worthwhile.

Mmm, I will have to agree with you that it is a long shot.

Then why isn't there a 3 in the second poll option?

Hmmm???

[umop ap!sdn]

Because long shot != impossible. ;)

[Lance]

Because long shot != impossible. ;)

Good point. I am going to change the second choice.

I don't think it is impossible, but I don't like it the way they're doing it now. And I don't claim to have a better solution to offer.

If anyone wants their vote changed, let me know.

...

I guess my point is that I would rather see resources spent on developing better ways to search than wasted on a search that will almost doubtlessly be fruitless. Does that make sense?

[Bill_Thompson]

Sure "Augument from Authority" is not proof. But in this special case we should consider the sources of where we get our information

Enrico Fermi was born in Rome on 29th September, 1901, the son of Alberto Fermi, a Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Communications, and Ida de Gattis. He attended a local grammar school, and his early aptitude for mathematics and physics was recognized and encouraged by his father's colleagues, among them A. Amidei. In 1918, he won a fellowship of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. He spent four years at the University of Pisa, gaining his doctor's degree in physics in 1922, with Professor Puccianti.

Soon afterwards, in 1923, he was awarded a scholarship from the Italian Government and spent some months with Professor Max Born in Göttingen. With a Rockefeller Fellowship, in 1924, he moved to Leyden to work with P. Ehrenfest, and later that same year he returned to Italy to occupy for two years (1924-1926) the post of Lecturer in Mathematical Physics and Mechanics at the University of Florence.

In 1926, Fermi discovered the statistical laws, nowadays known as the «Fermi statistics», governing the particles subject to Pauli's exclusion principle (now referred to as «fermions», in contrast with «bosons» which obey the Bose-Einstein statistics).

In 1927, Fermi was elected Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Rome (a post which he retained until 1938, when he - immediately after the receipt of the Nobel Prize - emigrated to America, primarily to escape Mussolini's fascist dictatorship).

During the early years of his career in Rome he occupied himself with electrodynamic problems and with theoretical investigations on various spectroscopic phenomena. But a capital turning-point came when he directed his attention from the outer electrons towards the atomic nucleus itself. In 1934, he evolved the ß-decay theory, coalescing previous work on radiation theory with Pauli's idea of the neutrino. Following the discovery by Curie and Joliot of artificial radioactivity (1934), he demonstrated that nuclear transformation occurs in almost every element subjected to neutron bombardment. This work resulted in the discovery of slow neutrons that same year, leading to the discovery of nuclear fission and the production of elements lying beyond what was until then the Periodic Table.

In 1938, Fermi was without doubt the greatest expert on neutrons, and he continued his work on this topic on his arrival in the United States, where he was soon appointed Professor of Physics at Columbia University, N.Y. (1939-I942).

Upon the discovery of fission, by Hahn and Strassmann early in 1939, he immediately saw the possibility of emission of secondary neutrons and of a chain reaction. He proceeded to work with tremendous enthusiasm, and directed a classical series of experiments which ultimately led to the atomic pile and the first controlled nuclear chain reaction. This took place in Chicago on December 2, 1942 - on a squash court situated beneath Chicago's stadium. He subsequently played an important part in solving the problems connected with the development of the first atomic bomb (He was one of the leaders of the team of physicists on the Manhattan Project for the development of nuclear energy and the atomic bomb.)

In 1944, Fermi became American citizen, and at the end of the war (1946) he accepted a professorship at the Institute for Nuclear Studies of the University of Chicago, a position which he held until his untimely death in 1954. There he turned his attention to high-energy physics, and led investigations into the pion-nucleon interaction.

During the last years of his life Fermi occupied himself with the problem of the mysterious origin of cosmic rays, thereby developing a theory, according to which a universal magnetic field - acting as a giant accelerator - would account for the fantastic energies present in the cosmic ray particles.

Professor Fermi was the author of numerous papers both in theoretical and experimental physics. His most important contributions were:

"Sulla quantizzazione del gas perfetto monoatomico", Rend. Accad. Naz. Lincei, 1935 (also in Z. Phys., 1936), concerning the foundations of the statistics of the electronic gas and of the gases made of particles that obey the Pauli Principle.

Several papers published in Rend. Accad. Naz. Lincei, 1927-28, deal with the statistical model of the atom (Thomas-Fermi atom model) and give a semiquantitative method for the calculation of atomic properties. A resumé of this work was published by Fermi in the volume: Quantentheorie und Chemie, edited by H. Falkenhagen, Leipzig, 1928.

"Uber die magnetischen Momente der AtomKerne", Z. Phys., 1930, is a quantitative theory of the hyperfine structures of spectrum lines. The magnetic moments of some nuclei are deduced therefrom.

"Tentativo di una teoria dei raggi ß", Ricerca Scientifica, 1933 (also Z. Phys., 1934) proposes a theory of the emission of ß-rays, based on the hypothesis, first proposed by Pauli, of the existence of the neutrino.

The Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Fermi for his work on the artificial radioactivity produced by neutrons, and for nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons. The first paper on this subject "Radioattività indotta dal bombardamento di neutroni" was published by him in Ricerca Scientifica, 1934. All the work is collected in the following papers by himself and various collaborators: "Artificial radioactivity produced by neutron bombardment", Proc. Roy. Soc., 1934 and 1935; "On the absorption and diffusion of slow neutrons", Phys. Rev., 1936. The theoretical problems connected with the neutron are discussed by Fermi in the paper "Sul moto dei neutroni lenti", Ricerca Scientfica, 1936.

His Collected Papers are being published by a Committee under the Chairmanship of his friend and former pupil, Professor E. Segrè (Nobel Prize winner 1959, with O. Chamberlain, for the discovery of the antiproton).

Fermi was member of several academies and learned societies in Italy and abroad (he was early in his career, in 1929, chosen among the first 30 members of the Royal Academy of Italy).

As lecturer he was always in great demand (he has also given several courses at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and Stanford University, Calif.). He was the first recipient of a special award of $50,000 - which now bears his name - for work on the atom.

Is there obvious proof that we could be alone in the Galaxy? Enrico Fermi thought so -- and he was a pretty smart guy. Might he have been right?

It's been a hundred years since Fermi, an icon of physics, was born (and nearly a half-century since he died). He's best remembered for building a working atomic reactor in a squash court. But in 1950, Fermi made a seemingly innocuous lunchtime remark that has caught and held the attention of every SETI researcher since. (How many luncheon quips have you made with similar consequence?)

The remark came while Fermi was discussing with his mealtime mates the possibility that many sophisticated societies populate the Galaxy. They thought it reasonable to assume that we have a lot of cosmic company. But somewhere between one sentence and the next, Fermi's supple brain realized that if this was true, it implied something profound. If there are really a lot of alien societies, then some of them might have spread out.

Fermi realized that any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire Galaxy. Within ten million years, every star system could be brought under the wing of empire. Ten million years may sound long, but in fact it's quite short compared with the age of the Galaxy, which is roughly ten thousand million years. Colonization of the Milky Way should be a quick exercise.

So what Fermi immediately realized was that the aliens have had more than enough time to pepper the Galaxy with their presence. But looking around, he didn't see any clear indication that they're out and about. This prompted Fermi to ask what was (to him) an obvious question: "where is everybody?"

This sounds a bit silly at first. The fact that aliens don't seem to be walking our planet apparently implies that there are no extraterrestrials anywhere among the vast tracts of the Galaxy. Many researchers consider this to be a radical conclusion to draw from such a simple observation. Surely there is a straightforward explanation for what has become known as the Fermi Paradox. There must be some way to account for our apparent loneliness in a galaxy that we assume is filled with other clever beings.

A lot of folks have given this thought. The first thing they note is that the Fermi Paradox is a remarkably strong argument. You can quibble about the speed of alien spacecraft, and whether they can move at 1 percent of the speed of light or 10 percent of the speed of light. It doesn't matter. You can argue about how long it would take for a new star colony to spawn colonies of its own. It still doesn't matter. Any halfway reasonable assumption about how fast colonization could take place still ends up with time scales that are profoundly shorter than the age of the Galaxy. It's like having a heated discussion about whether Spanish ships of the 16th century could heave along at two knots or twenty. Either way they could speedily colonize the Americas.

Consequently, scientists in and out of the SETI community have conjured up other arguments to deal with the conflict between the idea that aliens should be everywhere and our failure (so far) to find them. In the 1980s, dozens of papers were published to address the Fermi Paradox. They considered technical and sociological arguments for why the aliens weren't hanging out nearby. Some even insisted that there was no paradox at all: the reason we don't see evidence of extraterrestrials is because there aren't any.

Text above taken from the nobelprise.org and the SETI Institute. If you disagree, you disagree with them.

[Dragon Star]

Still, keeping that ear open is rather important. We don't want to have an "OH SHIT YOU'RE GOING TO DIE!" signal sent towards us that we miss.

Wait, your not suposed to be there! Earth's Demolition schedualed for next week!

lol

[Lance]

A reasonable opinion of one smart man.

Many other smart men have reasonable opinions too. Some of them disagree with Fermi.

The "Fermi Paradox" as some call it is actually a logical fallacy anyway.

[Halcyon Dayz, FCD]

So professor Fermi was a really, really smart man.
Which proofs exactly what?

As for the paradox, here are just some ways to resolve it.

Personally, I'm partial to the Percolation Theory, which jives with what I observe in nature.
Very few species spread out beyond certain geographical confines.
If they do they usually change into something else, into just as likely a less 'imperial' species as a more so.

[Lonewulf]

I'm a smart guy, and I disagree.

A reasonable opinion from an intelligent man does not make irrefutable fact.

[pmcolt]

(Sorry to stray from the Fermi discussion)

I picked 'good science'. At the very least, current SETI should give us an idea of whether there are any civilizations intentionally broadcasting radio signals that can be picked up at interstellar distances. Not exactly the same as knowing if there are any intelligent civilizations at all, and I'd be more comfortable if we were capable of detecting leakage radiation as well, but I think it's something worth knowing.

[I Am He]

Well the S.E.T.I. Program has made leaps and bound in the use of radio transmission. They're learning how to filter out Noise more and more which is passed along for use in other technologies. Their equipment is expanding their search scope to a much wider degree, which is also being put to good use in other fields.

Now if they would only change their settings away from trying contact the Grays and switch it to trying contact the Zetas, they might just get somewhere.

[Lance]

Thanks, I Am He. I didn't realize they were advancing technology too. That makes it a more worthwhile effort.

[Мастер]

So what exactly is S.E.T.I. looking for? Would I be able to moon bounce a fake signal?

[Halcyon Dayz, FCD]

They're not looking at the Moon.
And a satellite broadcast wouldn't fool them either.

One of the oldest plots in Science Fiction has
scientists conspiring to hoax a ETI-signal,
in the hope of bringing about world peace.
This idea was already done to death before I was born,
and it still rears its ugly head now and then.
In real life it would be impossible to pull off.

[Lonewulf]

My Star Trek-saturated mind forces me to think that SETI is perfect.

[Bill_Thompson]

Ordinarily I love space science, but I think it's too much of a long shot to be worthwhile.

Exactly.

Although we might be the only one of our kind in the Galaxy, I find it comforting that I am not alone here. I am among like-minded beings here that make a divide between what we want to be true and what logically most likely is.

I found at science conventions where real science is discussed I am not alone either.

SETI@HOME makes up 66 percent of the BIONIC project. I think the other 33 percent is good science and the 66 percent is sugar coating just to get people involved.

[Lance]

If somebody makes the assumption that there must be ET, without evidence, that is belief. If somebody searches for evidence of possible ET, based on the physical possibility, that is science.

There is a rather important distinction that you seem to be missing. You don't need to believe in ET to search to see if there is ET.

[Lance]

Posted here in its entirety because it supports the viewpoint of some members who may not be able to access the original:

Since we only have one data point from which to extrapolate, it's all guesswork really. The best you can do is give your opinion. Mine, in the form of odds:

<> Odds that we are the only life in the Universe - SCTZTFAPPIIZ*.
<> Odds that we are one of the first forms of life to accomplish any particular significant accomplishment - SCTZTFAPPIIZ
<> Odds that we will survive long enough to be around for a significant chunk of our galaxy's lifetime - not very good
<> Odds that over the course of our species lifetime we will make contact with intelligent life from outside our solar system - SCTZTFAPPIIZ

My thinking on this has been changing over the last couple years; mostly because of the size of the universe and the limited lifetime of species. I mean, regardless of how certain it might be that life is out there, needle in a haystack doesn't even begin to describe the challenge of 2 civilizations finding each other. Well, it does if you visualize the Universe as THE haystack.

Guess what I'm saying is that given how thinly life is probably spread out - it is incredibly unlikely that 2 intelligent lifeforms would evolve close enough, and at the same time, to find each other.

SCTZTFAPPIIZ = So Close To Zero That For All Practical Purposes, It Is Zero.

[teri tait]

I saw a show on a Roswell type event that occurred in 1897 in Aurora, Texas. At that time there was no military to swoop in and do anything. Supposodly there was a dead alien recovered and buried by the towns people and the wrecked space craft was disposed of with misc. debris tossed down a well. Since then, ufo people have tried to excavate and request to exume the alleged alien body but they were stonewalled by the townsfolk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_airship

Pretty compelling if they could actually be allowed to dig up the alleged alien.

[Superluminal]

I voted good science. IIRC, for the money they are spending, it is miniscule compaired to a space probe.