If you read the Technical news section you'll find that the developers are understaffed and overworked just to keep things humming with donated equipment which often does not work. They have no time to give us more information, I have read two recent articles on Nature magazine about SETI and the Allen Telescope Array. Neither made any reference to SETI@home, which is no longer a science project but a social phenomenon, with its million users. Some Tracy Kidder should write a book about it.
Tullio

---

I picked up on this thread because I haven't seen much talk of the purpose since the early days. Yeah, BOINC is a smart piece of engineering, but it still just means to an end.

Probably because most of what can be said about the purpose has been said, and there won't be a whole lot of new discussion until we also have a new search.

... and most of the news really is "engineering."

For the rest, we probably over-emphasize the forums because we all live here, but that doesn't mean they mean all that much.

... and all of that said, there really won't be much until they start decoding intergalactic re-runs of "I Love Lintilla."

---

I wonder if the run-of-the-mill ET, in it's Never to be Found World, is over-worked, under-staffed, under-funded, but well-engineered? Gosh, let's
hope so, for a basic commonality would go a long way in our understanding
of each other. And would drive the fear quotient lower.

There is no reason in the World to believe sentient life is not on Europa.
C'mon, all the water and some of it warm/hot? Could their signaling of each
other be picked up by us? I know work is being done on submersibles, but
wouldn't a hydrophone or even a pheromone type detector dropped through the
surface with a flexible antenna sticking out of the refroze, constantly
moving ice, also be a good idea.

Didn't the Europeans in the movies 2001/2010 have a weapon of mass destruction
to back up their warning?

I don't expect any replied thoughts on issues as described above. I'm just trying
to keep the thread on top. Is that a no-no to do?

Inquiring ETs want to know.

I wonder if the run-of-the-mill ET, in it's Never to be Found World, is over-worked, under-staffed, under-funded, but well-engineered? Gosh, let's
hope so, for a basic commonality would go a long way in our understanding
of each other. And would drive the fear quotient lower.

Haahhh...getting tired...

just want to grant CS's wish to remain this thread on top!

---

N = R x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L

I would never post to a thread just to get it back on top. I would only post if I had something meaningful to say.

---

[quote]Went over 100,000 and I donated. ET is going to abduct me tonight and have
a slap-on-the-back party for me.

When sent back I won't be naked as usual. ET will have kept me clothed so
I can fully enjoy the ET wedgie when I pop awake. [un-quote]

Oh, I forgot to mention: The party ET gave me must have been great. Don't know
through remembering since they wipe The Visit out of memory. The reason I believe it went great is: when I did my usual 3-way mirror and video inspection of my body, I found a tattoo on my left buttock(facing forward) in which the word WOW! is visible and on my right buttock is the tattoo of some sort of Star Chart coordinates. Hmmmm.

What a bunch of Jokesters!

A highly advanced and peace loving ET would have a beacon blocker/suppressor on
any of their signals.

After invasions from other ETs throughout many millinia(possibly millions of years), and many archeological discoveries of other ETs who have perished, they
thought it prudent to develop these anti-beacon devices.

Also, because they have evolved to peace lovers, these/this ET would(upon detecting becons from ETs like us), would put blocks on our beacons to prevent
the still nasty(to them) ETs from invading us/others.

So, although SETI Science is wonderful and produces great achievements in many
Scientific Disiplines, it could be likely our attempts to discover signals and
our signals themselves are dissolving into the great Blackness, with the help
of our Invisible Friends, IFs for short. Or not.

CS...

I see that green star light on beside you. So much thank you then *pleasing long*

---

N = R x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L

A highly advanced and peace loving ET would have a beacon blocker/suppressor on
any of their signals.

After invasions from other ETs throughout many millinia(possibly millions of years), and many archeological discoveries of other ETs who have perished, they
thought it prudent to develop these anti-beacon devices.

Also, because they have evolved to peace lovers, these/this ET would(upon detecting becons from ETs like us), would put blocks on our beacons to prevent
the still nasty(to them) ETs from invading us/others.

So, although SETI Science is wonderful and produces great achievements in many
Scientific Disiplines, it could be likely our attempts to discover signals and
our signals themselves are dissolving into the great Blackness, with the help
of our Invisible Friends, IFs for short. Or not.

There is also the very real possibility that any advanced civilization will have found an alternative to radio transmission. After all radio waves travel at the speed of light. This is both a plus and a minus. A plus for us in that as we look farther out into space we are also looking back in time. A minus for an advanced space faring race due to the length of time that the transmission requires to travel the distances involved.
As for putting up signal blockers, well we are looking backwards in time. One of the fundamental assumptions of radio Seti is that all civilization will have evolved to or thru a point in their histories when they used (unblocked) radio transmissions for inter planetary communications. For example the people of Alpha Centari (and I’m not talking Lando here) are only about 5 light years away. So for us to find them they would have to be at approximately our level of technology. However, a people who’s planet is over 100,000 light years away would have had to have been at our level of technology 100,000 years ago. I would hope that they will have advanced beyond that in the last 100,000 years. That is if they have not blown themselves up yet. And as for blocking the signals they sent 100,000 years ago, spherically in all directions, well, I would hope they had better things to do.
Radio Seti is filled with assumptions that maybe way off. We assume that life will have followed a similar path to our own. If intelligent life were to evolve on a gas giant, then it might be in the form of a sack of gas instead of a bag of water like us. To deal with the density of the planet’s atmosphere they may have never develop speech or the need for radio wave based communications. They might be telepathic or communicate with light.
We are not retraining our search due to our limited understanding of what life is or is not. Rather we peer into space and listen. If the celestial rhythms of our extraterrestrial brethren are so foreign so as to escape our notice, then our search is for naught. But we know a little about the laws of physics and the abundance of carbon. The probability for intelligent life to exist is high. We therefore search in hope that someone left the light on for us.

---

After reading these, I don't know if I have the caring I used to have to
run SETI. Might have to look at other BOINC projects. Reading hard SF, and
seeing so many good TV shows and movies depicting ET has also drained
away the feeling. Seems the TV/movie thing would inspire me to run SETI,
but the shear implausibilties combined with realities draws away my
feelings for ET. I think Mulder and Sculley would agree.

http://www.setileague.org/editor/actvseti.htm

http://openseti.org/Docs/NewSETI_MT_LAKI.pdf

http://www.coseti.org/introcoseti.htm

Good luck SETI faithful.

Sure I want to find ET, Problem is the BFG GTX295 needs replacement(under warranty no less) and I'm expecting to reset the PC at some point everyday until I pull the 295 out and replace It with an MSI NX6200TC for a bit(the 6200 will stay in until I get the cable regardless of the arrival of the new 295 card), Hopefully the system will forgive Me as I'm going to do It on Tuesday during the Outage as I still have no DVI-VGA cable yet, come on amazon get the lead out as It's almost the 25th now.

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

The odds are very small that we'll ever find anything, but I keep thinking "What happens if we do..."

---

What happens if we do? Good question. Forget about the movie Contact scenario. Let's take the WOW! signal as an example. It has never been repeated. Let's say it was. Many times over. SETI announces: There has been a signal verified to be from a source at so and so location. It is a radio wave. Has to be from a being
who developed radio. No other explanation. Now what? Actually, nothing. What could
be next? Possibly other, different signals are received, repeatable, verified,
whatever mumbo-jumbo needed for proof. Then what? Again nothing. Will a bunch of
Billionaires now throw money at further expansion of ways to make contact? Possibly. Governments? Not likely. So, we'll have a bunch of Private monies
financing a bunch of PhDs for as long as the Billionaires live, possibly after
death, until their relatives can reverse it in court, and still, nothing. Except
a lot of fancy new technologies which, I suppose, will benefit mankind in some
way, as SETI has. That's good I suppose. Most of us will be dead by then and
direct communication(you know, actual ET said, ET us said stuff) will never occur.
Or maybe it will. We communicate and exchange this and that. Cool. The Chinese
when they visited Italy in the early 1430s started the Renaissance. WOW! Great!
We both become more technologically advanced and the result is in 2234 we meet
on Mars, have a confab and go from there. Okay. I guess its worth it. Still, I'll
be dead.

I started to say "you must not have much of an imagination" and that isn't it.

Right now, as far as we know, we're alone in the universe. Life, especially intelligent life, has only happened here.

The rest is fancy, imagination, and some back-of-the-envelope math based on some assumptions that we cannot test.

Proof that intelligent life existed someplace else would change how we look at most everything.

It'd be nice to talk to them, but just knowing that we're not alone would change our perspective dramatically.

What happens if we do? Good question. Forget about the movie Contact scenario. Let's take the WOW! signal as an example. It has never been repeated. Let's say it was. Many times over. SETI announces: There has been a signal verified to be from a source at so and so location. It is a radio wave. Has to be from a being
who developed radio. No other explanation. Now what? Actually, nothing. What could
be next? Possibly other, different signals are received, repeatable, verified,
whatever mumbo-jumbo needed for proof. Then what? Again nothing. Will a bunch of
Billionaires now throw money at further expansion of ways to make contact? Possibly. Governments? Not likely. So, we'll have a bunch of Private monies
financing a bunch of PhDs for as long as the Billionaires live, possibly after
death, until their relatives can reverse it in court, and still, nothing. Except
a lot of fancy new technologies which, I suppose, will benefit mankind in some
way, as SETI has. That's good I suppose. Most of us will be dead by then and
direct communication(you know, actual ET said, ET us said stuff) will never occur.
Or maybe it will. We communicate and exchange this and that. Cool. The Chinese
when they visited Italy in the early 1430s started the Renaissance. WOW! Great!
We both become more technologically advanced and the result is in 2234 we meet
on Mars, have a confab and go from there. Okay. I guess its worth it. Still, I'll
be dead.

---

I started to say "you must not have much of an imagination" and that isn't it.

Right now, as far as we know, we're alone in the universe. Life, especially intelligent life, has only happened here.

The rest is fancy, imagination, and some back-of-the-envelope math based on some assumptions that we cannot test.

Proof that intelligent life existed someplace else would change how we look at most everything.

It'd be nice to talk to them, but just knowing that we're not alone would change our perspective dramatically.

What happens if we do? Good question. Forget about the movie Contact scenario. Let's take the WOW! signal as an example. It has never been repeated. Let's say it was. Many times over. SETI announces: There has been a signal verified to be from a source at so and so location. It is a radio wave. Has to be from a being
who developed radio. No other explanation. Now what? Actually, nothing. What could
be next? Possibly other, different signals are received, repeatable, verified,
whatever mumbo-jumbo needed for proof. Then what? Again nothing. Will a bunch of
Billionaires now throw money at further expansion of ways to make contact? Possibly. Governments? Not likely. So, we'll have a bunch of Private monies
financing a bunch of PhDs for as long as the Billionaires live, possibly after
death, until their relatives can reverse it in court, and still, nothing. Except
a lot of fancy new technologies which, I suppose, will benefit mankind in some
way, as SETI has. That's good I suppose. Most of us will be dead by then and
direct communication(you know, actual ET said, ET us said stuff) will never occur.
Or maybe it will. We communicate and exchange this and that. Cool. The Chinese
when they visited Italy in the early 1430s started the Renaissance. WOW! Great!
We both become more technologically advanced and the result is in 2234 we meet
on Mars, have a confab and go from there. Okay. I guess its worth it. Still, I'll
be dead.

Yeah, For all We know, There might only be primitive life out there or none at all or something in between, So far our neighborhood is rather barren outside of this big blue/white marble We all live on, But We search anyway.

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Yeah, For all We know, There might only be primitive life out there or none at all or something in between, So far our neighborhood is rather barren outside of this big blue/white marble We all live on, But We search anyway.

For all we know, they're sitting in their ships orbiting Jupiter and watching very quietly.

Life could be common and we just haven't looked in the right place.

We only know about us.

---

Yeah, For all We know, There might only be primitive life out there or none at all or something in between, So far our neighborhood is rather barren outside of this big blue/white marble We all live on, But We search anyway.

For all we know, they're sitting in their ships orbiting Jupiter and watching very quietly.

Life could be common and we just haven't looked in the right place.

We only know about us.

So true, So true. :D

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Change how we look at everything. Change of perspective. A lot of the greatest,
most imaginative and creative minds have written about it. Some of their best
thoughts were probably kept to themselves.

I've read enough Sci-fi, seen enough TV and movies and thought about it and I
don't know what would happen with contact through actual communication(radio/light/?). And surely don't know what would happen with face to face(would they have faces?).

If the contact is not disastorous, I do know the regular run-of-the-mill human would basically still be suffering with the usual(check the news).

Maybe the best thing ever is no contact. Yes, we find out there is life and intelligent life at that-out there. But never any communication between us. The no contact, but knowing for sure they are out there, would spur on even greater imagination, creativity, technological advances in the relative safety(from their possible less-than-friendly attitude) and comfort of home.

Look what happens now with not knowing about ET, God, about the quantum, et al.

Good old fashioned humanity striving. SETI on man, SETI on. But, probably(haven't decided yet) on my computer.

A day going by without a post, proves the point.

Yes, I know the Greatest Minds on Earth have already weighed in on the issue on other venues, and the point is moot, therefore, the thread should never have been started. And I appreciate the moderators letting it start and live for awhile.

It was about finding ET in The Grand Old Days, although The Great Minds knew it was fruitless(for the intended, stated objective) and wished it take on a life of its own(which it has) and provide a certain many with extra income and a purpose driving them towards such. The old adage, laughing all the way to the bank, is appropriate. Although, to be fair, laughing all the way to the Bank of Knowledge is also fair and more accurate.

The Search, mostly, is never fruitless-it always bears-for the Betterment of All, although Most of the All never knew it was/is happening, and if they did(and the ones that do) knew/know, there is a bit of a waste of human/financial capital.

Thus, it is a bitter-sweet fruit, enjoyed by some, detested by others, never tried by others, and the ones who never knew would, of course, run the gauntlet of differing palates.

So, Search Endlessly Thy Intrepids(SETI) and plant your seeds from the eaten fruit, and watch what will grow, flourish, get sick sometimes, recover, and sometimes die, and bear witness now, with your descendants later, and inspired ones of your hungers, The Invisble ET in The Blinding Starlit Black.

(c) Chicken Stacker 2009