SETI To Scour the Moon For Alien Footprints? 167
astroengine writes "Although we have an entire universe to seek out the proverbial alien needle in a haystack, perhaps looking in our own backyard would be a good place to start. That's the conclusions reached by Paul Davies and Robert Wagner of Arizona State University, anyway. The pair have published a paper in the journal Acta Astronautica detailing how SETI could carry out a low-cost crowdsourcing program (a la SETI@Home) to scour the lunar surface for alien artifacts, thereby gaining clues on whether intelligent aliens are out there and whether they've paid the solar system a visit in the moon's recent history."
Behind a paywall, don't bother. (Score:5, Informative)
It's behind a paywall, don't bother. disregard. A pity, sounds like an interesting idea, would have been nice to read about it.
Re:first (Score:5, Informative)
Its probably easier to get to the moon than the bottom of the deepest oceans. An unmanned space craft doesn't have to deal with much pressure in space. the difference between space and earth sea level is only about 14psi. The bottom of the ocean has pressures over 15,000 psi
Besides, with plate techtonics, the ocean floor isn't really that old. Of the 4.5 billion years earth has been around, the atlantic ocean was only around for a few hundred million years.
The moon however, is pretty much a solid rock, there no known movements of its surface
There has also been life down in the oceans for over 3 billion years leaving its own traces
Re:first (Score:5, Informative)
The moon however, is pretty much a solid rock, there no known movements of its surface
Oh, except for all the crap that has been sandblasting it since the dawn of time. Every time a new crater is formed, everything that is ejected out of the hole blankets the area around it, and the ground will quiver like a bell from the impact. While there doesn't appear to be any current tectonic activity, the surface of the moon is far from static.
Re:first (Score:5, Informative)
Its probably easier to get to the moon than the bottom of the deepest oceans.
I don't think so. It takes ~1970 technology to reach the moon, along with a monstrous budget, yet it only takes a small budget and 1960 technology to reach the deepest point in the ocean:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste [wikipedia.org]
Re:Behind a paywall, don't bother. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Our own backyard? (Score:5, Informative)
That came from low earth orbit. Nothing from a very high orbit has fallen. For instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_1 [wikipedia.org] is expected to last 200+years and has a much lower orbit than the one I mentioned or one could look at the rather large natural satellite that has been in orbit around the Earth for a very long time.