Do you really think SETI(@home) will succeed?

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Message 936765 - Posted: 30 Sep 2009, 2:23:54 UTC

100% positive. ;)
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Message 937271 - Posted: 2 Oct 2009, 1:37:53 UTC - in response to Message 888861.  
Last modified: 2 Oct 2009, 1:39:18 UTC

Given that no real data analysis has been done it was already at that point from the very beginning.

That sounds like personal opinion and blind impatience.

No data analysis is a FACT. Waiting 10 years is not blind impatience. Try again.

Really?

OK, I knowingly and willingly admit I was wrong because some newsletters sez so. The fact that this info comes by word of mouth from project admin, who would never say or do anything deceptive, is further confirmation of the sez so. No need for nitpicker (July 7, 2005!) to be completed because all this data is already being analyzed in due course cuz admin sez so. Admin has/will never issue a statement or new app just because of some press release or donation drive deadline. All the people who have said this-and-that app was not ready for public release were wrong. All the people who have pulled out of the project stating the lack of results were wrong. I thank the heavens for these newsletters. It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt SETI@home and project admin do not believe in keeping secrets and/or withholding information. You got me, Gary! I am a much happier cruncher now. :D

No one is forcing you to crunch. Or have you just realized if your machine is the one to find ET your name isn't going to be one of the authors? Those names will be Dan Werthimer and Dr. Eric Korpela. Or are you saying that Dan Werthimer and Dr. Eric Korpela are intellectually corrupt and are lying?

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.
Tullio

Quite the opposite. Watch the above video clip.
me@rescam.org
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Message 937325 - Posted: 2 Oct 2009, 9:01:04 UTC
Last modified: 2 Oct 2009, 9:01:48 UTC

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.
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Message 938440 - Posted: 8 Oct 2009, 21:27:48 UTC

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.
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Message 938441 - Posted: 8 Oct 2009, 21:40:53 UTC - in response to Message 938440.  

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.


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.
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Message 938597 - Posted: 9 Oct 2009, 10:01:39 UTC - in response to Message 938441.  

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.
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Message 938930 - Posted: 10 Oct 2009, 6:16:52 UTC - in response to Message 936765.  

YES


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Message 938999 - Posted: 10 Oct 2009, 15:52:24 UTC - in response to Message 888322.  
Last modified: 10 Oct 2009, 16:00:02 UTC

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".
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Message 939007 - Posted: 10 Oct 2009, 16:25:09 UTC

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>)

...

It almost seems (at least with SETI) we're looking for ourselves, "out there".


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"...

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Message 939339 - Posted: 12 Oct 2009, 9:21:18 UTC - in response to Message 939007.  
Last modified: 12 Oct 2009, 9:32:52 UTC

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 ***
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Message 939395 - Posted: 12 Oct 2009, 16:36:59 UTC

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
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Message 939594 - Posted: 13 Oct 2009, 10:00:39 UTC - in response to Message 939395.  
Last modified: 13 Oct 2009, 10:15:09 UTC

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 ***
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Message 958258 - Posted: 23 Dec 2009, 12:16:49 UTC

I heard that earth has receaved radio signal decoded reveals the message,"WOW". It was shown on NatGeo.
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Message 958259 - Posted: 23 Dec 2009, 12:34:36 UTC

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
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Message 959237 - Posted: 29 Dec 2009, 12:07:33 UTC

Ok Tullio, I loved The Little Prince but I've read it in Italian. Can U explain to all the "not-french" the meaning of your post? Sorry, can't understand... :-/
Anyway, have a good Xmas holydays!!

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Message 959344 - Posted: 29 Dec 2009, 19:47:34 UTC

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
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Message 966178 - Posted: 27 Jan 2010, 17:29:14 UTC - in response to Message 939594.  

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? ;)
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Message 967109 - Posted: 30 Jan 2010, 22:48:18 UTC

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.
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Message 967119 - Posted: 31 Jan 2010, 0:00:15 UTC - in response to Message 889028.  

I am very new to SETI so could you show me this Drake equation. Thank you
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Message 967141 - Posted: 31 Jan 2010, 1:23:47 UTC - in response to Message 967119.  

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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Message boards : SETI@home Science : Do you really think SETI(@home) will succeed?


 
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