Is SETI a Silly Effort To Investigate?

[mike]

Yes i think its a good idea regardless of the result.
It represents a subtle acknowledgement of the probability that we are not alone.

We may or may not get results from SETI, but it says something about, and to us that we are looking.

And like the lottery you have to be in it, to win it

 

[nameless]

plus it keeps people in jobs doing stuff that doesn't involve making me want to smoke meth.

 

[pduchesne]

if they have war films then we are toast, ya didnt reckon on that did ya.

I thought of that, but I assume aliens won't be able to get to us. If they could, I would want to go radio silent. I don't think a meeting with a superior species would go well for us.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

Yes, they are just watching old "Star Trek" episodes in search of "historical documents" on which to base their civilization.

Oh, wait! Didn't they do a movie with a similar plot line? "Galaxy Quest."

 

[Heidi Lemmer]

What if the there are civilizations equal to our own but handicapped on travel just like us that hear us?

 

[Gene Steinberg]

They'd have to be fairly close to be able to receive any signals, right? But 48 light years or less would get them "Star Trek" material. Or maybe, at longer distances from us, they'd be deeply involved in the Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast, or perhaps "The Shadow." When they visit us, they'd believe they can cloud our minds so we cannot see them.

 

[manxman]

they may think those star trek originals are documentaries, and be shittin themselve's.

 

[RU_Insane]

It's definitely a good investment. It's possible we could be receiving signals we mistake for background noise.

 

[PCarr]

The chart you referenced said 750 light years was the maximum distance.

How many planets like I described above are thought to exist within 750 light years of earth?

I am not sure, but its' got to be on the order of 100,000 stars. I'm not sure if there is a star catalog you can query by distance.

 

[PCarr]

You obviously understand this on a deeper technical level than I do, so let me attempt to "dumb it down" a little in hopes of clarification. Radiated electromagnetic energy can be, to some extent, focused and beamed in a particular direction. One example is the ubiquitous parabolic radio dish. Perhaps The best example of which most of us know is the laser, which "spreads" only slightly as a function of distance--all relatively speaking.

Clearly detecting a signal is not so much a function of signal strength, as it is of the ratio of the signal's strength to whatever noise competes with it, whether the noise is inherent in the receiving device or arriving along with the signal. Am I close here?

Re Seti; Considering the tiny percent of overall resources it costs us, it's a fine investment. I would fault it only for its being predicated on a kind of linear thinking: That civilizations more advanced than ours will have no better means of communication than the electromagnetic spectrum. Or that they would care to be known at all. This may or may not be true. At any rate, I think our best efforts to listen are well worthwhile.

The noise inherent in the receiver is usually what dominates, but the signal's strength depends on the size of "ear" - the bigger and more efficient the dish or array, the more signal energy gets intercepted. That is why the important parameter is "G over T", written G/T and is usually specified in decibels per degrees Kelvin, or" dB/degK". This parameter depends on the wavelength of the signal.

 

[PCarr]

Re Seti; Considering the tiny percent of overall resources it costs us, it's a fine investment.

In the United States, "Us" are private donors. Unless you have donated, it costs you nothing, but it is less. Fortunately people like Paul Allen and Jodie Foster have stepped up.

 

[Tony B.]

It never ceases to amaze me, if you think ET is way out there with a two-way boom box then you can talk people (and Congress) out of amazing amounts of funding, but if you think it's possible that they're already here, getting laughed at is most often the response.

Just because we don't have an interstellar method of travel does NOT mean others do not. However, I think Dr. Hawking has a point and maybe we ought to quit advertising our presence until we get our collective s**t together (I do not mean our stopping radio and TV signals, for example, we'd have a hell of a time picking those up from, say, Alpha Centauri. Inverse square law and all that).

 

[kanakaris]

In the United States, "Us" are private donors. Unless you have donated, it costs you nothing, but it is less. Fortunately people like Paul Allen and Jodie Foster have stepped up.

Why no public funding ?Is it so bad ?And what is the cost of SETI ?

 

[Tony B.]

Why no public funding ? Is it so bad ? And what is the cost of SETI?

This was taken from a website run by a group calling itself "the SETI League" SETI Petition:

(Horseshit in bold type)

...Inaugurated on October 12, 1992, NASA’s SETI program ranked as the most thorough effort ever made to search the skies for radio signals from nonhuman civilizations. Because there are so many stars - several hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone - astronomers calculated that years of searching would be required before a signal was acquired, even if hundreds of worlds are emitting radio beacons that our equipment can detect. For that reason, NASA had planned to fund the SETI program through at least the year 2002. At a cost of only $12 million per year, SETI was a scientific bargain. But, sadly, funding was cut to zero in September 1993, when the SETI radiotelescopes had been listening for less than one year. Since then it has run at a reduced level, under the auspices of Project Phoenix, Project Argus, and other privately funded searches.

I don't necessarily agree that the SETI proponents are 100% wrong. I do however think that any money spent on SETI really, really needs to be split with serious UFO researchers - I'm talking about people of the caliber of Peter Sturrock, Stanton Friedman, and Bruce Maccabee, as well as the late J. Allen Hynek, Leonard Stringfield, Richard Hall, and James MacDonald.

Of course, we'll never get the money - that was one of the many bad things the Robertson Panel, and the Condon "study" did to ufology. People like Steven Greer, "Disinfo" Doty and some of the charlatans who got caught didn't help. Besides, it would be a drag if people like Dr. Seth "They just can't get here from there" Shostak and his colleagues actually had to work for a living.

N.B. Did you know that Dr. Shostak has been on the guest list of the annual 'Bohemian Grove' shindig in the redwoods north of San Francisco? Food for thought. Bohemian Grove

You're welcome.

 

[DaveM]

I'm curious... why do we think that an advanced civilization able to travel vast distances would be checking radio or television transmissions? What would they make of I Love Lucy or better yet, Howard Stern? Maybe it's best to prepare the bunker after all.

 

[Tony B.]

I'm curious... why do we think that an advanced civilization able to travel vast distances would be checking radio or television transmissions?

My point exactly. For all we know, long distance communications are by gravity waves, or something. Besides which, the U. S. government does not have to ignore silly or inconvenient questions about alien transmissions. Just saying.

I recall reading that you would have a very hard time finding meaningful EM signals out around 1 light-year from Earth, due to "noise" - anyone recall this?

 

[PCarr]

I'm curious... why do we think that an advanced civilization able to travel vast distances would be checking radio or television transmissions? What would they make of I Love Lucy or better yet, Howard Stern? Maybe it's best to prepare the bunker after all.

A non-sequitur. Why would the two things be related?

Remember the SETI hypothesis is primarily based upon finding civilizations that WANT to be found. From this point of view, radio makes a lot of sense, although people are also looking in the optical and infrared.

 

[DaveM]

A non-sequitur. Why would the two things be related?

Remember the SETI hypothesis is primarily based upon finding civilizations that WANT to be found. From this point of view, radio makes a lot of sense, although people are also looking in the optical and infrared.

An advanced civilization just happens across a narrow band of radio or television frequencies sent from a remote arm of the galaxy and manages to find our planet? Sorry, I'm not buying that bill of goods. Fund SETI to your hearts content.

 

[Randall]

It never ceases to amaze me, if you think ET is way out there with a two-way boom box then you can talk people (and Congress) out of amazing amounts of funding, but if you think it's possible that they're already here, getting laughed at is most often the response ...

 

[Tony B.]

Oh my Ghod... where DID you get that UFO, Billy Meier's barn?