SETI Founder Outlines Ambitious Future Plans 281
Lanxon writes "'In the universe there is intelligent life, I'm confident about that,' SETI founder Dr Frank Drake (of the Drake Equation) affirmed earlier today during a talk at the Royal Society in London, 50 years after SETI was founded. One of his visions to prove this, and to show that the last five decades were not a waste of time, is to station a radio observatory not in near-Earth orbit, but on the far side of the moon. He also suggests that another craft could later be stationed 500 times further away from the Sun than the Earth, using the Sun itself as a giant magnifying lens to resolve alien worlds."
Ambitious Plans (Score:5, Funny)
Part of the ambitious plan is to TRIPLE the number of sentient life forms discovered by SETI with five years.
Intelligence in galactic context means extinction (Score:5, Funny)
The problem with intelligent civilizations is that a few decades after they achieve a technological level where they can make powerful radios to talk to galactic neighbors, they also invariably build particle accelerators. These accelerators soon make micro black holes that eat up the planet and the not-so-intelligent civilization with it. Only 0.1% of intelligent civilizations survive by colonizing a nearby planet before the particle accelerator is turned on.
So instead of finding a strong community of star systems in a 50 lightyear radius, we will probably have to look 500 l.y. away and wait 1000 years with the hadron collider turned off.
Re:Ambitious Plans (Score:3, Funny)
SETI's filters 100% effective against ET spam. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Laudable, but misguided (Score:4, Funny)
From "Life of Brian"
Suicide Squad Leader: We are the Judean People's Front crack suicide squad! Suicide squad, attack!
[they all stab themselves]...That showed 'em, huh?