Why Not Fund SETI With a Lottery Bond? 191
KentuckyFC writes "The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence or SETI is one of the highest profile projects in science. And yet its biggest challenge is in generating the funds required to scour the skies for signs of intelligent life. Government funding agencies generally ignore SETI so most funding comes from wealthy patrons such as Paul Allen who has donated $30 million for the construction of a radio interferometer designed to scour the skies for signs of ET. But the lack of other donors means this facility is still incomplete and only partially operational. But one astrobiologist has a solution. Why not create a lottery bond that allows investors to buy shares that yield a fixed rate of interest but also generates enough cash to fund ongoing SETI projects? To add an element of spice, this bond is also a lottery: when the search finally succeeds, a subset of the shareholders will receive a payout from the kitty. This is a fund that is likely to have global appeal but will need a financial institution willing and capable of taking it on. Any suggestions?"
Bad idea, I think (Score:5, Insightful)
If you make a payout if SETI finds alien life, you suddenly give a financial motive to finding it. It could taint the results. Next Wow Signal [wikipedia.org] we find and suddenly you'll have people who paid into it saying it's proof, and scientists saying it isn't. Lawyers will become involved.
Too messy if you ask me.
Re:Why make it that complicated? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've bought precisely ONE lottery ticket my whole life (knowing statistically that my likelihood of winning is the maximum at that point*).
How do you figure? Each ticket has the same chance of winning, the more you buy the more likely you are to win. But the odds are such that the expected return over the long run is less than what you would pay in.
No government funding for ANYTHING (Score:1, Insightful)
And that's how things ought to stand for everything — except the handful of things the government is explicitly charged with under the Constitution: defense and law-enforcement.
If it is a good idea, you'll have no problems finding "wealthy patrons". On the other hand, a bad idea is likely to find sponsors among law-makers, or the government bureaucrats in those "funding agencies", to whom the said law-makers have delegated their funding decisions. Not spending their own money, they'll find an excuse. Heck, some of them are under pressure to fund something — or risk being suspected of loafing...
Taxes are collected at the gun-point (implicit in all tax-collection). Spending them on anything not explicitly provided for by the Constitution — be it SETI or school-lunches or corn-subsidies — is a travesty.
Is hearing transmissions actually feasible? (Score:4, Insightful)
We use radio telescopes to listen for stars and other celestial objects. One would assume these produce massive rf emissions. Has anyone done the math and determined if the transmitters currently used on this planet could be heard in other solar systems? Would our equipment detect them if installed there? Are our transmissions able to overcome the radio interference that would be common out there? Is there even a point to SETI?
Are we expecting alien races to use transmitters as powerful or more powerful than our own? And what subset of known space is actually a viable source at the power levels we use for communication?
Do these idiots not know what a bond is? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did they forget the part where they have to pay out those interest payments, and the principal, and the stupid lottery at the end too?
What revenue are they planning to pay those payments with? More bonds? Do they think they are the US government or Madoff?
Agreed! (Score:2, Insightful)
I would suggest that such aliens have something better than radio to use. Yes, they might have used it for a few hundred years, but that is a thin slice of time to catch it
You nailed it. Not many people stop to consider this. It might be in the back of their minds, but they ignore it because the goal of SETI is just so exciting.
1. If the alien civilization is advanced enough to truly travel the galaxy (exceeding the speed of light), you can bet your house they already know about us -- and that they've decided to leave us alone, same as we've decided to create nature preserves and leave the gorillas alone. We are talking about technology we can't even imagine yet, and probably couldn't comprehend with our brains even if we had the blueprints. They can probably just "push a button" from clear across the galaxy and instantly know everything about us. They don't need or want to communicate with us, and won't for thousands of years (assuming we haven't gone extinct by then). They are probably waiting to see if we do in fact blow ourselves up.
2. If they can't yet exceed the speed of light, then (as you said) we are searching for a signal from that tiny sliver of technological evolution where they sent radio waves into space (as we do now). By the time the signal reaches us, they are either indistinguishable from gods (not wanting or needing to communicate with us), or extinct. Granted, receiving such a signal would still confirm that somebody was out there, at some time in the past.
I personally think this is something that has to be stumbled upon, rather than sought out. It will be something like one day noticing that an entire solar system has mysteriously relocated itself.
Re:Why make it that complicated? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've bought precisely ONE lottery ticket my whole life (knowing statistically that my likelihood of winning is the maximum at that point*).
How do you figure? Each ticket has the same chance of winning, the more you buy the more likely you are to win. But the odds are such that the expected return over the long run is less than what you would pay in.
I find it pretty funny that people who never gamble are completely clueless when it comes to statistics and probabilities, while those who waste loads of money gambling know exactly what they're doing.