| Personal background |
|
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
The first hard limitation that SETI has to deal with is the fact that it�s looking for �intelligent� life � specifically life that can communicate using light waves outside its own planet. Civilizations around 0.7 on the Kardashev scale would meet this criterion. Amoebas, or even humans during the industrial revolution would be excluded from the sweep of a SETI type search � specifically because it would be very hard to detect the presence of such life 100 Mega parsecs away. If a civilization gives off no signal that it exist outside it�s planet or solar system, and even outside it�s galaxy, there is no way to find it using our current technology. We�re just now conclusively concluding that there is no life on intra-solar planets like Mars and at this point we can only speculate about exobiology that cannot, or wishes not to, communicate its presence. Although extra-solar planetary hunters have found possible planetary candidates with Earth like features, their observations of these distant planets are tenuous and based on inferred, rather than direct data.
With that in mind and putting the limitations of the Drake equation in perspective, especially factors fl and fi , the avenue that is likely to produce best results would be to start sweeping the skies for intelligent, or artificial, signals in the radio spectrum. Further issues that compound the limitations of the Drake equation is an assumption that civilizations would want to be communicative, that is they are a curious civilization like ours, and have decided to broadcast some kind of signals into outer space. Certain critics have even postulated that radio silence would be true the hallmark of an intelligent civilization, since it could potentially prevent a silent civilization from being identified and possibly exterminated by other predatory species in the universe.
It is hard to escape, at least from a hard phenomenological perspective, our Carbon chauvinism and postulate how other �life forms� may communicate or even what form other life may have. Our assumption are limited by the corpus of laws we understand through science, especially physics. It would be premature to eliminate the existence if �life� on gas giants, like Jupiter, or even in the HII regions which are sparsely populated with molecules. Futurologists have even imagined life existing as pure energy or in other dimensions of space-time . On a even more wild train of thought, some science writers have postulated that humans (or life forms in general) are the genesis of extra-terrestrials themselves � somehow transported from other worlds. Although these ostensibly unbelievable theories are tenuously based on science it would be presumptuous for anyone to dismiss them out of hand since we don�t have complete models of how the universe functions based on existing scientific knowledge nor have we gathered enough empirical data to disprove these seeming outlandish propositions.
So the search for life is more precisely the search for life as we know it, namely carbon based life that has most likely evolved from amino acids and proteins that fermented on an Earth like planet. The chances, as framed in the Drake equation, vary wildly precisely because we do not have enough information to calculate these equations within meaningful discrete statistical distributions. On one had we have supporters of the Fermi paradox who believe that if intelligent life was out there it would be trivial to discover and the fact that we haven�t suggests there is a infinitesimal chance that there is life on our galaxy. On the other hand, we have individuals who look at the billions of stars and galaxies and suggest it would be arrogant that only our solar system was privileged enough to evolve life. What we know for sure is that no astronomers and scientists, or for that matter even seers, science fiction writers and even occultists, have been fully prescient to the discoveries we have stumbled across both here on Earth and out in space.
Hence, for SETI not to be bogged down in questions of phenomenology or distracted by Roswell conspiracies, scientists must focus on concrete and discernable objectives that can be analyzed by scientific means. Cocconi and Morrison first suggested that interstellar communication would be most efficient between 1 and 10 gigahertz, since frequencies outside this range are subject to synchrotron radiation emissions and quantum noise effects, respectively. While human kind has tried on a few occasions to transmit a message to a distance galaxy, namely the Arecibo message to Globular Cluster M13 in 1979, most of the efforts have been aimed at finding a message hidden in the thousands of radio channels.
One SETI@home user has justified the search for extra terrestrial intelligence with the following adage: �Our chances of finding aliens may be low. But if we don�t search our chances are zero.� Although this may seem an elegant rebuttal to SETI critics this line of argument does have parallels with a commercial for a lottery product that points out, with a touch of jocularity, that if you don�t play the lottery you can never be millionaire. However, as most sociologist point out, the majority of people that play the lottery are usually in a lower socio-economic class, not as educated and usually less hopeful than the general public.
So is SETI@home a refuge for the mathematically challenged or those searching for some miracle of finding ET? Or, are SETI@home users cleverly utilizing CPU cycles that would otherwise have gone to waste anyway? I would suggest that being a scintilla away from completely wasting computing resources is better than wasting computer resources completely as long as there are no negative secondary effects, such as SETI@home users who misappropriate company resources. In games of chances the odds of winning are well defined. For example, in a traditional sweepstakes the chances are precisely quantified, e.g. one in five million, so that the purveyors of these gambling products can always make a profit. With SETI, we are playing the �truest� lottery game of all � where we don�t know what the odds are of winning or even if we�re playing the game correctly.
|
| Feedback op dit profiel |
| Dit profiel voordragen als 'Gebruiker van de Dag': | Ik keur dit profiel goed |
| Meld dit profiel als aanstootgevend aan de administrator: | Ik keur dit profiel af |
|
|
