Is SETI Worth It? 806
njdube sent in this Space.com story about the money behind SETI that opens, "It's a risky long shot that burns up money and might never, ever pay off. So is searching for intelligent creatures on unseen worlds worth the candle? After all, aren't there better ways to use our monies and technical talents than trying to find something that's only posited to exist: sentient beings in the dark depths of space?"
3 million dollars per year is a pittance (Score:4, Interesting)
Worth it... depends (Score:4, Interesting)
That single part question requires a multipart answer.
First, SETI is extremely worth it, without a doubt. It seeks to answer the biggest question in history, "Are we alone?" While SETI will never prove that ET life does NOT exist, it might prove that it does. That will be the largest discovery in the history of man... BY FAR!
However, that said, we could be talking about civilizations that are millions of years ahead of us. Think about that, one million years. How far have we come in a million years? Do you think that if primate-pre-man were looking for us a million years ago, he'd know to look for radio waves? Of course not! Hell, we didn't know about radio a mere 200 years ago. So, do you really think that a civilization that advanced uses radio? I'm going to guess that they don't. I'm sure they would have perfected something else by now. Something like quantum entanglement or something (has anyone clocked the speed on that?) that we would never think to look for. Well, not for another several hundred thousand years anyway.
So, I think SETI is wasting their time looking for radio waves. Not only is a long shot to find ET life, but multiply that by finding ET life that happened to be using radio at a time that matches how far they are away (if they are 1000 light years away, they would have had to be using radio 1000 years ago). If such a civilization is 950 years ahead of us, we still would not be able to detect them. (That's still a long time in technical evolutionary terms. Think of where we were around 1050!)
First I think that SETI should broaden the search. They should be the Search for Extra Terrestrial Life... or SETL (pronounced Settle... fitting isn't it?) I feel that SETI's money could be better spent looking for any life at all, not just intelligent life. Once that is found, branch out and look for the smart stuff. They could start by looking for planets that could support life, starting right here in our own solar system. I want to see a mission to Europa and Titan that look for signs of microbial life. Europa's ice is supposed to be churning. Could we just look for some that has been churned up to the surface? Why wait for a grand ice burrowing submarine mission that cuts through miles of ice and hopes to find water. Why not put the money toward some kind of mission to land there and look around. Move from there to try to bring back a sample. (Sorry to get OT, but that's just an example.) Yes, I know that SETI is not NASA, but some of that radio renting money could be spent on lobbying and public service campaigns that could do much more that trying to see if a star in Orion is listening to BobFM (more music, less talk!)
Well, that's my $0.02, since you asked and all.
How much would you pay?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Would it be worth it then for the relatively small amount of resources we're putting into this now...
But don't answer just yet!
What if they they give us the ability to travel in space, thus increasing our resources greatly so we can solve even MORE problems we didn't know we had!?!
How much would you pay for that? Would that be worth all the effort and dreaming we do now?
Or will you take what's in the magic box?
The problem is that SETI is broken. (Score:5, Interesting)
All current SETI activity is built on the assumption that someone is trying to talk to us. Our detection capability is pretty much limited to an alien civilization already knowing we exist and directing extremely powerful, focused broadcasts directly at Earth.
Basically, given our current SETI programs, we couldn't detect Earth's civilization even if we were in the next star system over. We leak a lot of signals, but over vast interstellar distances these signals are weak, can be lost in background noise, and would require a huge antenna or array of antennas to receive. In other words, the we depend on aliens having their own SETI that is vastly more advanced than our own.
A real SETI project would cost many orders of magnitude more, and would require radio telescopes many orders of magnitude more sensitive than we have now. We're talking something on the level of making a crater miles across and making it into a radio dish. Arecibo is puny in comparison to what we need.
Blanketing an area the size of Rhode Island with a dish array might also work (though it would have to be very, very precisely controlled).
Any serious SETI effort that hopes to find someone that doesn't know we're here already and wants to talk to us will cost many many billions of dollars.
Yes, there are much better ways to spend our money (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, we should instead use our monies and technical talents to engage in devotional activities that venerate something else that is only posited to exist: our magical sky grandpa. Then, we should use our monies and technical talents to build weapons to kill the people whose understanding of the magical sky grandpa differs in various insignificant ways from our own.
SETI looks for obsolete technology (Score:5, Interesting)
One serious problem with SETI is that it looks only for obsolete forms of modulation. Almost all the SETI efforts are looking for "carriers", signals that are mostly wasted energy. AM and FM broadcast radio, and analog TV, have strong carriers. Almost nothing else does any more. There are more efficient ways to synch up the receiver. The strong-carrier systems are being phased out. In a few decades, nobody on Earth will be sending out strong carriers.
SETI is thus looking for civilizations in their first century of radio. The odds of finding an intelligent signal with current approaches is low.
The problem with looking for complex signals, like digital TV, is that they look like noise. Imagine some alien civilization receiving a DTV signal. It's quite possible that some of a a DTV signal might make it to a nearby star; terrestrial DTV is broadcast with megawatt power. But it will probably get there below the noise threshold. You can find a dumb carrier well below the noise threshold, because it's so repetitive. You may not be able to read the modulated information, but you can tell there's a carrier. But an encoded digital signal below the noise threshold just looks like noise.
There are digital signals designed for reception below the noise threshold; GPS is encoded for that. But the data rate is low and the redundancy is high. That's not true of DTV.
One can imagine an alien civilization finally figuring out they're getting something from Earth, building a big receiving antenna in their outer system to get a clean signal, and then trying to figure out how to decompress the thing. At least they don't have to crack DRM encryption first.
Re:3 million dollars per year is a pittance (Score:1, Interesting)
If we ever do receive a radio signal, it will be from a pretty dumb lifeform and the message will be a few thousand years out of date.
Viable SETI will only be possible once we have a full understanding of gravity.
SETI as it stands now (radio astronomy) is a complete waste of time.
Re:The gods must be crazy too (Score:3, Interesting)
Compare the costs (and formatting!) (Score:5, Interesting)
SETI costs us, at most, $5,000,000 a year to fund.
The war against Boogiemen, in Iraq alone, is costing us ~$116,750,000,000 a year to fund.
SETI's lifetime cost thus far has been 115,000,000 (assuming 5million/year. 5mil is the most it costs per year, 4 million the least)
Mathtime! 115,000,000 / 116,750,000,000 = 0.000985010707
Yes, the lifetime cost of SETI has been but 0.000985010707% of the cost of ONE YEAR in Iraq.
Hell yes.
Hell
Yes
Hell
Fucking
Yes
Sources:
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_faq.html [space.com]
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Cost-of-War/Cost-of-War-3.html [nationalpriorities.org]
Oh, come on, you're missing the big one. (Score:2, Interesting)
Weather satellites. You know, the ones that can give you many days' advance warning of hurricanes, so that the death count is in the tens instead of the thousands.
Re:Worth it... depends (Score:3, Interesting)
Just because another intelligent race is 1,000,000 years more advanced than us, doesn't mean they stop using the fundamental properties of the universe, like electromagnetic radiation.
How long ago did Humans discover fire? When do you expect us to stop using it because we are "too advanced" ??
Sentience Quotient (Score:1, Interesting)
If we have trouble "talking" to animals (which are close to use in Sentience Quotient values) or plants (a bit further out) and making them comprehend us, think of how much trouble aliens would have "talking" to us.
Re:S.E.T.I (Score:4, Interesting)
Essentially nothing for a few million years, since they can't get to us and we can't get to them.
In the mean time, we'd rid the world of xenophobia practically overnight. "Well, they may be darkies, but at least they're human..."
So is the idea of research completely worthless? (Score:2, Interesting)
SETI yes, but not arecibo's way (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:S.E.T.I (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, in all likelyhood... yes.
Any advanced alien race must be a pack-forming species. The reason is simple: a race of loners would never manage to get culture going, since that requires communication between individuals. It would never reach the stars; in fact it would never even reach metal-working.
Living in a pack puts certain demands on psychology. Pack members can't just pursuse their own interests, but must take each other into account, if the pack is to function. In other words, pack-forming animals have an evolutive pressure towards morality. This pressure is made ever stronger the higher technology rises, because any misbehavior is likely to result in far direr consequences when the misbehaving person has access to bombs than if he only had access to stone clubs. That is the real reason why the current society is nicer than, say, the Roman Empire: we aren't nicer people, we simply don't have a choice.
People always go on about how aliens can be totally incomprehensible to us, but that is just plain untrue. They operate on the same reality, under the same laws of physics and logic, as we do. If they are succesfull enough to reach the stars, then their psychology must conform to those laws; and that makes it similar to ours. Self-preservation, reproduction, social interaction: those are the things any succesfull intelligent species must base their psyche on. There may be more, of course, but these are the absolute minimum concepts all alien minds must have.
Re:S.E.T.I (Score:3, Interesting)
But why would he? He's probably in fits of giggles watching us do it to our own puny software simulations of reality.
Re:S.E.T.I (Score:1, Interesting)
Ah. Optimism. You are assuming that they would be of the same mind. Why would you do that? We only know of one technologically intelligent lifeform and it certainly is not of the same mind. _I'm_ very much worried about what other intelligences might want with us, and yet _we_ keep sending signals out there.
But you do have a point, just the other way around. All we are receiving is silence so maybe the first thing we will receive from them will be their relativistic missile strike. At which point it is too late. It might already be too late. Relax, sit down, and watch the impact. =]
Re:S.E.T.I (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't worry. Nothing we've ever sent by accident is likely to get to another star system in receivable form. If we want someone to hear us, we're going to have to send a lot more powerful and directional signal than anything we've done so far, and that includes OTH HF radar, probably the biggest signal RF we've ever made. It'll take an antenna built in space with a gain like we've never even come close to, in order to make a radio signal arrive ten light years from here in a form that is still intelligible to something pointed right at us with the intent of hearing it. Never mind a few hundred light years, which is a more realistic distance.
For that matter, SETI really needs an antenna array built in space with tens of thousands of miles between antennas to do a decent job. Make a great space telescope (in the RF portion of the spectrum) too.
Re:S.E.T.I (Score:1, Interesting)
Distributed computing worked before SETI. Hope? What a crock. I assume we are not alone, but I also assume it doesn't do us a bit of good unless we can communicate. No one is going to divert military money to fund SETI, but people will divert science grants and telescope time to it.
Re:S.E.T.I (Score:4, Interesting)
Other civilizations produced different ideologies, many of which we might see as humanistic in their own way, and often for similar reasons. Buddhism and Islam were also, in their ways, "leveling" religions, appealing to masses of people by removing social strata.
The instinct to confuse the ideology of humanism with any and all expressions of goodness and kindness is only a demonstration of its pervasiveness as a value system in the west.
Re:S.E.T.I (Score:4, Interesting)
It provides an upper bound for the number of civilizations that fit in those criteria and an unknown number of others, because we only have one example of such a civilization to extrapolate from. An idea of how unlikely it is that there are more than a certain number of things in a category whose definition is unclear isn't knowledge. Let's say we know there's a less than 1 in 20 chance that there are any civilizations within 1000 light years of us that are enough like us that SETI could detect them (noting that we have no idea what the range of possible civilizations is, so we know nothing about number civilizations total). Is it all that useful to get that down to a 1 in 50 chance? Because then we would know... still nothing.
"In addition, SETI is cheap, often piggybacking search onto the back of other funded projects,"
Wait, I thought other astronomical events were being detected by SETI? Real astronomy is a fine thing; I'm all for it.
Let's just focus on analyzing signals for evidence of intelligence; that's the stupid part to spend money on. As you point out, it's not my money, which is why I just rail about it on slashdot, not lobby to cut off it's funding.
"Who knows. Maybe SETI will spot an inbound asteroid 30 years in advance of impact and give us time to nudge it."
Asteroids don't broadcast radio signals, and certainly not ones encoding intelligently produced data.
"They're the only ones trying to look at the whole sky."
What an idiotic claim. Before engaging in' defense of SETI, there's a topic you should have some familiarity with. It's called Astronomy. It is studied by people called Astronomers. You should look into it.
Well, Yeah it is Worth It. (Score:2, Interesting)
1. If you can build a receiver to pick up a faint transmission from the depths of outer space, you can also build a receiver to pick up faint transmissions from Mars, or the Moon, or orbit, or on Earth. This leads to advancement in receiver technology, which means lowered energy costs for transmitting messages here, which leads to lower prices for consumers, and a win for everyone!
2. If you can build a transmitter powerful enough to reach the depths of space, you can do it here on earth as well. Leads to the capability for long distance communications at low costs, win for everyone here too!
3. Searching for signals in the noise of space requires some serious Digital Signal Processing capability to pick out a real signal from the crap. This can be utilized on Earth to increase the range of wireless transmissions outside normal bounds, reduce costs, etc etc etc. Win for everyone!
4. Radio dishes that powerful require some serious engineering to ensure they can survive stress from the electromagnetic forces and physical forces acting on them. This means better engineering techniques for building radios on earth, plus the structural elements too. Win for Everyone!
5. There is a massive amount of data being fed through SETI computers that needs to be analyzed, correlated, and extracted into a usable, readable, and verifiable format. The techniques for doing this are adaptable to large scale computer simulations. Not to mention it gave birth to the first distributed grid computing and networking, which was the direct inspiration for many of the distributed math, science, and statistics programs we see now (think FoldingAtHome or the search for Mersenne Primes).
6. The kind of antenna design needed to pick up a large range of communications can be harnessed on earth to build multipurpose antennae for transmission and receiving. Think cell towers, tv stations, GPS. Win for Everyone!
Now, I'm not going to say that SETI has been the sole driver in a lot of the previous pieces, but research into SETI related projects has provided catalyst into other areas. Computational methods, digital signal processing, radio transmission and receiving are only few that I could think of. Fact is, the scientists and engineers who participate in SETI do so because there is money available for use, they use this money to make advances in science that all of us enjoy today.
Maybe we should compile a list of researchers involved in SETI and see what else they have contributed to. I bet we would be surprised at some of the advances that have come out of it, much the same as the space program has provided leaps in aerospace technology.
~Sticky
/Oh, and finding aliens is important too...
//Hope they don't mind us beaming signals into space...
SETI won't find anybody (with current tech) (Score:3, Interesting)
Even our own example shows that the more advanced your communications gets, the less wasteful it gets in transmitting where it isn't meant to go, and the more and more it looks like noise or is simply undetectable to the technology of just a few decades ago. And the more compressed and encrypted it is, the more it looks like noise even if you can intercept it. It's really unlikely we'll do an accidental wiretap on advanced beings.
But if they are trying to reach us, well, they're very advanced. Way more advanced than we are. If they wanted people at our level to see their signals, they could do it.
So looking harder and into the noise with current tech won't do it. Each time we invent a new technology of communication, we should look, but when we hit the right one, it will be blaring and clear, not subtle.