SETI@Home 2nd Look at Possible Hits 438
cpk0 writes "This article from MSNBC discusses how data returned from SETI@Home users is beign retested by the Institue for a possibility of alien radio signals being included. At just over 4 years old, I think this would be the first big break for SETI@home."
This is a followup to a December Slashdot story. Apparently this is getting some major attention in the mainstream media lately.
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:4, Insightful)
and bring them democracy and liberty!!
Re:Hack (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
You're assuming they also have Bushes as leaders. That's unlikely.
what if what we think of cosmic background noise is in actuality encrypted data transmissions, meant to be indistinguishable from background noise?
Then it wasn't meant for us. We're not trying for a man-in-the-middle attack, we're looking for life explicitly trying to contact another civilization.
The late great Carl Sagan once wrote (Score:5, Insightful)
We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Four year window (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone that contributes to SETI, from Paul Allen [seti.org] to Team Lambchop [teamlambchop.com], is spending their own resources of their own free will. They obviously think it's not a waste.
So, what exactly are you complaining about?
And if they find ET? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now what?
Any transmission there and back will have a 6k year life span. That's far to great of a distance for us to explore yet, and far to much of a time to comprehend between signals. So how will we deal with another society 17,597,088,000,000,000 miles away?
My pessimism says we let it divide us even more. Some will claim it as Atlantis, others will see it as home of the Aliens that have abducting them. The religious zealots will condemn, and our government will try and ignore it.
My optimism hopes that it will inspire us to space. Give us a goal worthy of sending Humans to, and something that will also inspire kids to get more involved in Science.
I know that there has been much written about what a positive result in this search would mean to society, but I'm wondering if anyone else has their own thoughts?
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
Sound good? Alllllllllrighty then.
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know we've been sending signals pretty much continuously for over 50 years. They could be sending something but we just haven't got it yet.
The distances they'd have to travel are enormous, and that civilization is probably long extinct, and the spectrum we are looking at is very narrow, and our definition of intelligence is also very narrow...
I'll give you the first point, the second is doubtfull since they could only be a few hundred away, they've probably changes but extinct? doubtfull. Even if they are extinct does it really matter? We kind of got a speed limit already so chances are we wouldn't have much meaningful communication anyways. The fact is that all we need is a confirmation of their existence, and if we were able to distinguish their signals we might get some interesting TV programs. Which brings we to you narrow spectrum comment. The fact is that we've pretty much saturated the spectrum for quite a region. If the aliens did used radio waves for their communication as well they would be likely to use up a fair region also meaning all we need is one hit from that portion. And I'm not sure what you're getting at with def'n of intelligence. Either thier sending signlas or their not. Maybe that they've found a better means of communication?
what if what we think of cosmic background noise is in actuality encrypted data transmissions, meant to be indistinguishable from background noise? Too many assumptions are taking place, it's really a waste of resources.
Well hopefully they didn't feel the need to encrypt everything. So what if they did maybe someone else didn't. I really don't see anything here to convince me that your assumptions that we won't find anything are any more convincing than the assumptions that could lead us to something. As to a waste of resources perhaps if you consider the cycles that people actually do donate to be a small resource that could better go to curing cancer than perhaps. On the other hand in real economic costs it's almost trivial! Really when it comes down to it we're drilling for oil. We probably won't find anything and it costs a bit to do it but if we ever find something...
Re:And if they find ET? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a plausable scenario and a good point. A signal lag time which represents most of the whole of human history is obviously not workable, and given the size of the universe (big), it's not hard to see it happening.
But that hardly means such contact could in any way be considered a failure. As I see it, we as a species stand to gain a lot from it:
A data point for the Drake equation. Hey, if *somebody* else is out there and within 3000 light years, there are quite probably a lot of other somebodys out there.
Potential research value. Their science may be more advanced and would certainly be different from our own. We could almost certainly pick up insights into our universe just by interpreting and communications (or, at least, Fox could steal their reality shows and produce them on earth).
Mindset. A lot of the conflict of the last 50 years or so has been centered around the fact that our technology is making the earth "smaller" far faster than our various cultures are able to compensate for. This sort of discovery could give some perspective as to what "us" means, or at the very least drive some competetive juices that drive humans (gotta get to Mars, gotta colonize the Oort belt, gotta get good at this whole space thing...)
Sure, some people'd react badly to it. We'd probably see some mass suicides, maybe a couple of new religious cults, but that'd all encompass people who'd go for that shit anyhow (Tom Cruise, etc). Seems like a fair trade-off to me.
Re:Or even better.. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, everybody's going to eventually die one way or another, and we have no problem making replacements. Curing any given disease is just a temporary stopgap which isn't that significant in the big scheme of things. Our race somehow muddled through millions of years before we had cures for any diseases.
OTOH, finding little green men would probably be the single most significant moment in human history.
Re:Or even better.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If we knew that nothing was out there, Seti wouldn't be looking for it. Seti doesn't know, none of us knows, and you certainly don't know.
It's one thing to say "medical research is more important", it's another to say that something doesn't exist when there's no proof that it does or doesn't. Space is awfully large.
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, THEY would probably be able to kick OUR collective asses since what they would need to gain the security of being able to have a society free of crime, war, and violence is the ability to kick anybody's ass.
Re:The late great Carl Sagan once wrote (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Or even better.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a waste (Score:2, Insightful)
What is intelligent to us is limited to the breadth of our experience and environment - we treat communication with very high regard... but perhaps that isn't a true definition of intelligence - it just serves our purposes well.
"Intelligent" is just a term related to our outlook - it just replaces a certain construct that we are looking for - but to match that construct doesn't necessarily fufill the true definition of that word.
I would think that one could postulate on other life forms out there with pretty close to near certainty.
But in order to think of other life forms that would communicate in a way that we would know about adds so much more complexity that I personally think SETI is a total waste (in terms of its end goal - in terms of getting people together and also in terms of a well known distributed system, it serves its own purpose).
Were there bacteria and/or viruses out there, I'd not be surprised at all.
Where there some sort of creature out there that is animal-like? Even that doesn't surprise me as much, but I still find that much less likely.
But is there something else out there that commincates via radio waves? I really don't know - but looking at the numbers, I'd bet a lot against it.
It is a wonderful thing to think that we aren't alone - whether in terms of a God or in terms of others in space - but there are so many parameters at work that I certainly don't count on it.
And for those that think of things such as the greys - that is beyond retarded. To think that something will look anything like earth - let alone us is pretty narrow minded to say the least.
And that doesn't even approach those that think the Earth was seeded by aliens landing here and we are the offspring of that...
In the end, it saddens me - I tend to put too much faith and trust in people that have strong scientific outlooks.
But those same people then frequently end up failing my idealistic view that they are somehow immune to the logical curiosities of religion or search for alien communication - two things that I group in the same.
(although interestingly the absolute discovery of one would negate the other by their current definitions)
And this thread seems to be full of the people here on slashdot that are of the "I don't agree with you, therefore you are a troll" mentality, so I don't suspect this post will last long.
Re:Or even better.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Our race somehow muddled through millions of years without finding little green men.
That said, I run SETI@home myself. According to my SETI@home user profile [berkeley.edu], I've dedicated 1.788 years of CPU time so far and I've been a user for 3.694 years. So I'm certainly not against the program.
But to say that everybody's going to die anyway, so why bother is the most absurd thing I've ever heard. By that logic, we might as well shut down all the hospitals, and repeal all the laws on murder. After all, we're all going to go sometime.
It's kind of interesting. I've been using SETI@home for years now, and as far as I know, it was the only distributed computing application when I first started. For a long time, it certainly seemed the most worthy of my spare cycles. Now, however, there are apps for cancer research and other life and death ailments. It's got me thinking...
Which discovery would have the greatest impact on us? ET or a cure for cancer? Now, nobody supports space exploration, research, etc. more than I do. And I've put my money where my mouth is on this subject. But I've thought about this.
If today, while watching CNN, I saw breaking news, and it was a press conference where NASA or SETI or some other organization announced definitive proof of Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, how would it change life here on earth?
Well, most likely, the news media would immediately wet their pants, ask all kinds of stupid questions "is it likely that they're hostile?" "Could they support the terrorists?!?" etc.
But that wouldn't last long, because eventually the scientific community would be able to explain to all but the thickest skulled journalist that that they're 500 light years away, and that the message we received left their planet while Christopher Columbus was still alive. They'd also have to explain to them that it would take just as long for us to *respond* to their message, and that with a 1000 year delay, the very civilization that sent the message might not even be there any more.
So to make a long story short, if SETI finds ET, all it will do is make us *know* that ET is out there. It won't make any difference in our day to day lives what so ever. Basically what we are undertaking is the most expensive quest to find an answer to a trivia question ever. Because that's all we can hope to get out of this: trivia. Knowing that there's ET intelligence is no more useful than knowing that in another million years there will be another Hawaiian Island.
Now what about cancer research (just to name one example). Let's say that distributed computation does lead somehow (I'm nowhere nearly as well versed on how this works as I am SETI@home) to a cure for cancer... Millions of lives will be saved. Millions of people will be spared suffering. Drugs or treatment programs will come to market. This will effect economies. Our understanding of our own biology will be expanded, and that could lead to even *more* quality of life improvements. I'm sure there will be other benefits that I can't even think of.
Being the space buff that I am, finding ET would move me more emotionally. Wow, what a discovery. But it wouldn't actually *do* all that much. I have no illusions that it would. On the other hand, medical research is perhaps one of the most noble things that we can lend our proc cycles to. And it's been tempting me for several months now. I'd certainly recommend it to anyone else.
Re:a million turtles vs one hare (Score:3, Insightful)
By spreading the work around the world to the 4 million subscribers, the cost of the project really is quite low. It also allows them to pay for more time at the observatory (they have to pay to use the telescope).
Basically, it may not be faster, but it is cheaper in the long run.
-Goran
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
This is slashdot. S/he needs a reason? From SETI@home's donations page:
Yeah, it does sound like a real sinkhole for money, doesn't it?
Why is it that people whining about waste always pick on the government and nonprofit tries like SETI@home? Could their objection be to the ends, and not the means they claim to be ridiculing? Gillette's initials plans, at least, were to spend $300 million on marketing the Mach 3 razor. Their previous model, the Sensor, cost nearly $200 million to develop [skillnet.ca]. If you want to complain about waste, why is it you're choosing the idealistic scientific endeavor?
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:5, Insightful)
Jesus H. The world is not on the "brink of war". We are on the brink of some minor-league military action jammed down our throats by an obsessive man whose own mistakes in life were always covered up by lawyers, influence, and money and who "missed" his own chance to kill commies when the NVA refused to attack Texas by air at the same time that uberliberal Kerry was taking automatic fire from VC hidden along the Mekong and pinko Kerrey was getting his SEAL leg blown off by a Charlie grenade.
Oh, by the way, read the Constitution. We have not been at war since 1945.
Re:lost my interest (Score:2, Insightful)
We aren't far away from improving technology allowing us to reach other star systems within a few hundred years in some cases.
On the other hand, we aren't that far ahead in time from our recent past when we still thought the earth was flat, when we thought the earth was the center of the universe, when we thought our star system was the only one with planets, when we had to travel for months or years to discover just another land mass on our own planet, etc. etc.
I tend to actually hope that we have been visited, because that gives us a chance at longevity by being able to leave our home planet if needed should it become uninhabitable (and it will eventually).
There are certainly enough *hints* left in the past that some type of visitation events may have happened, ancient pictures and artwork have some peculiarly familiar ships in the sky for example, many years before "flying saucers" were coined as a name for them.
We live on a funny world, a good number laugh at the notion of alien visitations and pass it off as fairy tales, yet at the same time these same folks believe in an invisible "God" like creator who apparently watches out for them and created the Earth just for our use, conveniently ignoring the fact that reptilian based lifeforms ruled the planet for millions of years before us (oh yeah, God planted these fossils there just for us to have something to do by digging them up, convenient for their storybooks no doubt).
Then again, we could be just a giant computer simulation in some huge universal mainframe, after all, just try and fathom the very notion anything exists in the first place and what it is we exist in, it's tough to come up with a how scenario, but just because we can't figure out how/why it happened doesn't mean we should start praying to a creator.
In a universe as vast as ours seems to be, the notion that who/whatever created this (if it was created) pays any particular attention to every grain of sand in our universe (apparently there are likely more stars than grains of sand on all of our beaches on earth), the chances of us being noticed, beyond passing interest in "how is my Build your Own Universe kit doing?", is to me laughable.
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, they were blessed by the Pope so long as they tried to convert the heathen they found there (and gave Rome a cut of the spoils), but they didn't make more than a symbolic gesture for that. They told the natives, in a foreign language, that they had to convert or they would be tortured. Then, they tortured them and took their stuff.
They worked the natives to death to get gold which wasn't there, then they worked the survivors to death growing sugar cane so they could sell rum to europe.
Religion was a minor factor in South America in the 16th and 17th centuries, it was all about money. Religion was a rationalization at best.
Re:Or even better.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about it - Learning that the world is round, learning that the the Earth revolves around the Sun, and indeed many other discoveries were inconsequential to the Joe Sixpacks of the time. The persons tilling the fields and squabbling, their lives were not effected by those realizations. However, those advances in understanding had very large ramificaitons years later.
Einstein's theories initially had no effect on people - who cared that time slowed down when you moved near the speed of light? Wasn't driving that fast anyway! We have yet to see the practical implications of his ideas, but the impact they have had is enormous.
Re:Or even better.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Amongst all that, contacting an alien civilization would really stand out. Maybe it would take a century for round-trip communications. That amount of time is still only 1/50th of recorded history. We might not see any benefits from such a discovery in our lifetimes, but we could still make a contribution to help shape the destiny of the human race.
Nobody's saying that we have to stop working on curing diseases. I'd be surprised if the money spent on SETI is more than 1/1000th of the money spent on medical research. All I'm saying is that demanding that that last tidbit be taken away as well is short sighted, especially when the majority of the people in this country piss away most of their spare time and resources anyway.
As far as the probability question goes, the odds of payoff for this project may be slim, but I'm sure it's better than the 1 in 50,000,000 that drive people into a frenzy over lotto tickets.
Re:Or even better.. (Score:3, Insightful)
fuck Stanford and their never-ending supply of MBA-wannabees. They can buy their own lab equipment. I'd rather waste electricity looking for aliens.
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:2, Insightful)
If you think he sounds like a Nazi, you sound just as foolish. It's not about "forcing" the end of religions or "forcing" the adoption of a single religion. The point brought up has to do with the fact we as a civilization, kill each other in name of our respective religions and we would probably be better off without it as we know it.
The answer to most our problems will arrive the day we realize religion does not make us any different from each other. Ending all religions, the adoption of a single religion, or learning how to cope with the differences is irrelevant to the extent we differentiate people based on their religious believes.
Religion, as I see it has two unrelated purposes. The first is trying to explain the inexplicable. Giving people hope and meaning to their lives in a spiritual level. The second is the corruption of this belief system in order to obtain power and control. The latter however is what we see the most across the board. From radicals in the Middle East to the White House.
Alien life shakes the very foundation of this belief system. That's why it is a threat to so many. I have no doubts we will be a very different society after the discovery of new life elsewhere. We don't ever need to contact them. The knowledge of the existence will suffice. It makes every thing else look petty and irrelevant. Only than we would concentrate on living our lives as one unit as opposed to go on as warring idiots trying to prove to each other we're better.