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SETI@home Science :
Do you really think SETI(@home) will succeed?
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PKII Send message Joined: 28 May 07 Posts: 165 Credit: 2,729,646 RAC: 0 |
100% positive. ;) |
Misfit Send message Joined: 21 Jun 01 Posts: 21804 Credit: 2,815,091 RAC: 0 |
Given that no real data analysis has been done it was already at that point from the very beginning. I forgot to thank you for asking such a wonderful question. Better late than never. Because you are such a fan of newsletters I want you to compare this (specifically the end of the sentence containing the number 100,000) with this and then answer your own question. I'm confident you'll contextualize it in the most positive light possible. I don't think NASA would have anything to do with SETI, for political reasons. After all, it depends on public money, not private money, like the SETI institute and the Allen telescope. And Arecibo is doing a lot of astronomical research. Quite the opposite. Watch the above video clip. me@rescam.org |
tullio Send message Joined: 9 Apr 04 Posts: 8797 Credit: 2,930,782 RAC: 1 |
I am glad to learn that NASA is financing SETI@home. Meanwhile, from a Nature article, I have learned that the Allen Telescope Array is financed by the US Air Force which uses it to track satellites and space debris. Does this mean that the ATA can work as a radar? Also the Arecibo role in watching Near Earth Objects has been stressed in a report by the US National Research Council. Tullio |
bigyaks Send message Joined: 5 Sep 03 Posts: 5 Credit: 57,353 RAC: 0 |
The current search is quite narrow in that it (arguably) is only able to detect simply modulated and relatively powerful signals (Spikes etc.). I.e. a deliberate "hello there" from ET. Minimising energy wastage is likely to be important to ET, if only to minimise problems dealing with waste heat, their ET to ET coms are therefore likely to be highly compressed and indiscernable from noise. SETI has so far told us that the universe is not brim full of ET's eager to make contact with new emerging civs, I find this, in of itself, rather interesting. |
OzzFan Send message Joined: 9 Apr 02 Posts: 15691 Credit: 84,761,841 RAC: 28 |
The current search is quite narrow in that it (arguably) is only able to detect simply modulated and relatively powerful signals (Spikes etc.). I.e. a deliberate "hello there" from ET. Minimising energy wastage is likely to be important to ET, if only to minimise problems dealing with waste heat, their ET to ET coms are therefore likely to be highly compressed and indiscernable from noise. I don't think you're thinking 4th dimensionally. Sure, an alien civilization could be using advanced forms of communication, assuming they have advanced beyond us. It's just as likely there are other civilizations that are not as civilized or equally civilized as we are. Even the more advanced civilizations would have to go through a period of learning, just as we have/are, and it's highly probably they would have used "primitive" methods of communication at some point in their history. Since these waves of communication take many thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years or more to reach us, the signal we receive will actually be from their past. The signal we detect will not be in real-time showing what they are using now, rather what they used at some point, just as the sunshine on your face is not instantaneously transferred from our Sun to you, but a "history" of the power the sun has let off and you feel the effects of it approximately 8.3 minutes later. |
bigyaks Send message Joined: 5 Sep 03 Posts: 5 Credit: 57,353 RAC: 0 |
Oh agreed agreed, but if civs are only detectable for a short time as they progress on to lower power, more efficient, coms methods (compare this e-mail conversation for example to a satellite linked telephone conversation) then this will reduce the number of civs that you could expect to detect now. (CF Drake eqn). The Drake term for the length of time a Civ remains detectable (L) should realy be taken as the greater of two terms; the time that a Civ's leaked signals are distinguishable from noise or the time the Civ chooses to pursue an active SETI (SE?I) programme. People say SETI hasn't found anything, this is not true. It puts an upper limit on the number/duration of "leaky" civs and shows the number/duration of signals beamed at us is also limited. Both these limits are way way above Zero but this is still a fascinating observation and one that has been gained for a trivial expenditure. Back of envelope calc shows that Aricebo working 10% of the time and viewing 1% of the sky would have a 95% chance of detecting at least one detectable leak/message in 3000 (assuming one chance per signal). That's a detection limit of about one signal every 21 days measuring from 1994 to 2009. Opinions as to the likely outcome of SETI@HOME are not very useful, all we can do is look at the data. This of course has no bearing on the actual number of ETs, maybe they're all shy, paranoid or religiously committed to using semaphore. |
Robert B Baker Jr / John William Baker Send message Joined: 7 Aug 09 Posts: 6 Credit: 1,110,094 RAC: 5 |
YES |
Steve Send message Joined: 18 May 99 Posts: 94 Credit: 68,888 RAC: 0 |
I my opinion the possibility of intelligent life in universe are small (even it is so big). Is earth included in this opinion? :-) I think it already has succeeded (SETI alone, the message laying dormant in some bits and bytes, or otherwise waiting for a 'next phase'). Just the SETI data alone isn't going to be enough IMO - it would need decoding beyond a "these are, based on our best scientific knowledge, deliberately generated signals". I think public and private resources would have to be pooled into a new exo-"GIS" science/discipline using all available data - possibly already been moves in that direction. If SETI alone found ETI(s) - I bet there would be a 10-km line of suits ready to "partner" within the day. Finding ETI(s) could cause a pretty rough shock thru every aspect of all of earth's societies, religions, philosophies, military, politics, sciences, lay enthusiasts, average Joes and Jolenes, cats and dogs, etc. Enough of a shock that the best decision might be to "tell nobody yet - keep crunching until we figure out how to reveal it without tearing ourselves apart" (or alternatively, "before we get it patented, sealed, put into corporate/mil/gov use" or other decisions, depending on the message, but I'm venturing into conspiracy-theory la la land...<cough>) Yes, I think SETI will or has succeeded - but I'm with Fermi on this a bit - "where are they, and why haven't they already contacted us"? I think the answer is pretty simple, exo-societies under near-parallel (tech) evolution might be picked up on - an advanced, even spacefaring society, or homesteading low-no tech (by design) society, might not. It almost seems (at least with SETI) we're looking for ourselves, "out there". |
The Dreamer* Send message Joined: 15 Aug 01 Posts: 254 Credit: 672,657 RAC: 2 |
Finding ETI(s) could cause a pretty rough shock thru every aspect of all of earth's societies, religions, philosophies, military, politics, sciences, lay enthusiasts, average Joes and Jolenes, cats and dogs, etc. Enough of a shock that the best decision might be to "tell nobody yet - keep crunching until we figure out how to reveal it without tearing ourselves apart" I 100% quote you Steve, this is my opinion also! And your last words are some kind of philosophy. Good! Maybe, something BIG has already occurred here on Earth, even centuries ago, and we are not smart enough to face that. Maybe ET are much more close to us, who knows? To stay close to your words too, I can say "with SETI we're looking for someone so similar to us"... The Dreamer |
Donegal_TDI Send message Joined: 14 Nov 02 Posts: 153 Credit: 26,925,080 RAC: 0 |
4 things: 1. Current technology and resources potentially limit what we can detect. Could be camparable to an ant looking out of it's nest to try and read a newspaper on Mars. The distances are potentially huge. The deeper Hubble looks into the universe, the more galaxies it picks up given sufficient time. 2. I would gladly risk my eternal soul, if I have one, on the fact that there are countless intelligent civilisations out there, many within our own galaxy even. Can't be proven I know, but while not overly religious, my belief is that the "purpose" of the universe is to bring forth life in it's various forms, to what end, I don't think anyone knows right now. Most earthly religions are in my opinion wrong, wasteful of resources time and material, based on meaningless repetitous rituals, and some are downright dangerous and halter human development. Dawkins calls them a virus of the mind. Some may have a stabilising factor, good for community spirit, but religious beliefs can become so firmly entrenched in the human psyche that they have the potential to wipe humanity off the planet. Highly dangerous. 3. Lightspeed might be the ultimate barrier that keeps us separated from our brethren. 4. Keep an eye on progress at the ATA. *** Those who know, don't speak, those who speak, don't know *** |
kasule francis Send message Joined: 9 Jul 08 Posts: 293 Credit: 104,493 RAC: 0 |
BE THE JUDGE OF THE VIDEO BELOW EVEN GODS HAVE GODS THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE ABSRACT EVOLUTION OF LIFE ON OUR PLANET We choose to go to the moon and to do other things, we choose to go to the moon not because its easy but because its hard. kennedy |
Donegal_TDI Send message Joined: 14 Nov 02 Posts: 153 Credit: 26,925,080 RAC: 0 |
I have always thought that Darwin was only 90% right, and his prodigy Richard Dawkins 95% correct. Darwin was correct in his survival of the fittest conjecture, but I never accepted random mutations as the sole reason for complexity and the sole engine that drove evolution. That's almost as wacky as the creationists. Panspermia aside, I have always felt that the genetic coding of chromosomes contained some "smarts", switching attributes on and off depending on the application and environmental triggers. Dawkins is bang on about the futility of modern religion which is a cancerous carry over from unsophisticated times wrapped around worship, rituals and hocus pocus which is a gross insult to what we have become and has shackled humanity to the dark ages for thousands of years. However Dawkins is quite content with life having no purpose, other than to bring forth more life and waxes lyrical in his proudly articulate way about Darwins observations and is a tad dogmatic on his ultimate conclusion, namely no God, no reason for being. This I disagree with strongly. Life does seem to have an intellectual purpose based on my own experience of it. We do seem to be tested morally with decisions we make day to day. I think we are just scraping the surface of the reason for being. Whether it is a Deity(for want of a better word) that is behind the cosmos, or an intelligence that we know nothing of, our journey is only beginning and we are part of something that is many times bigger than we are. *** Those who know, don't speak, those who speak, don't know *** |
Varun Priolkar Send message Joined: 13 Sep 09 Posts: 6 Credit: 5,058 RAC: 0 |
I heard that earth has receaved radio signal decoded reveals the message,"WOW". It was shown on NatGeo. |
tullio Send message Joined: 9 Apr 04 Posts: 8797 Credit: 2,930,782 RAC: 1 |
Je suis le defaut dans l'armure Je suis la lucarne dans la prison Je suis l'erreur dans les calculs Je suis la Vie Nous sommes des objects de l'incoherence general Nous sommes des morceaux d'un grande construction Dont il faut plus de temps, plus de silence et plus de recul Pour decouvrir l'assemblage Antoine de Saint Exupery, Courrier Sud et Pilote de Guerre (diacritical marks omitted) Tullio |
The Dreamer* Send message Joined: 15 Aug 01 Posts: 254 Credit: 672,657 RAC: 2 |
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tullio Send message Joined: 9 Apr 04 Posts: 8797 Credit: 2,930,782 RAC: 1 |
I posted twice an answer to your question and it did not go. Saint Ex was a dreamer, notwithstanding his skill as a pilot, so I tried to explain the meaning of his French prose, but it was not accepted. Let me see of this short note reaches you. Tullio |
Taurus Send message Joined: 3 Sep 07 Posts: 324 Credit: 114,815 RAC: 0 |
I never accepted random mutations as the sole reason for complexity ...so animal and crop breeding is just pseudo-science, I guess? And genetic manipulation is all a big hoax, right? ;) |
Shepuz Send message Joined: 11 Oct 07 Posts: 1 Credit: 88,564 RAC: 0 |
I seriously doubt we will be able to detect anything with the seti@home project as it is. As it has been stated before, we're listening to a single radio station that seti@home has been tuned to, and if our friends out there ain't playing on that station, we ain't hearing them. But I would love to be proven wrong. At least I could feel a bit proud of being part of something that eventually found proof of extraterrestial life. But technology keeps getting better, so it's only a matter of time when we start hearing some weird things from out there.. depending of course if there's anyone out there to play for us.. I sure hope there is. Being stuck in this tiny rock in the middle of the big black space.. alone.. would be kinda depressing. Protheans would be cool. |
k1agp Send message Joined: 17 Nov 08 Posts: 14 Credit: 128,051 RAC: 0 |
I am very new to SETI so could you show me this Drake equation. Thank you |
Lint trap Send message Joined: 30 May 03 Posts: 871 Credit: 28,092,319 RAC: 0 |
I am very new to SETI so could you show me this Drake equation. Thank you You can read all about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation Martin |
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