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Space

United Nations Brings You ... A Telescope 122

Posted by timothy from the since-they've-done-all-they-can-down-here dept.
StDave writes: "It looks like the United Nations is going to set up a SETI listening station of their own to find Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. Catch it here. " Says the article: "The £800m machine, called the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), will be the most sensitive astronomical instrument yet built. ... An agreement to build the new telescope was signed last month at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union in Manchester. Scientists will spend the next few years designing the technology, with completion due in about 2015." I hope the aliens are at least amused.
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United Nations Brings You ... A Telescope More

United Nations Brings You ... A Telescope

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  • Well thats the whole point of this...

    Typical Government thinking: Why build one, when you can build two @ three thousand times the price.

    By the time 2015 rolls around there will have been billions and billions of dollars spent, millions of (wo)man hours wasted on beauacracy and politics, etc etc...

    but at least the UN will have bragging rights when it comes to who can outspent who... Maybe when Leonardo Dicraprio is elected president of the US in 2016 he'll up them one and sink this ship straight into the ground
  • It struck me as somewheat strange that the UN is investing in a telescope for the sole purpose of fining extra terestrial life. I've never heard about the UN taking an interest in outer space affairs aside from Star Wars technology and other nuclear proliferation affairs. The Preamble to the UN's Charter reads as follows:

    <UL>

    WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

    -To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

    -To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

    -To establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other
    sources of international law can be maintained, and

    -To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom

    </UL>

    I suppose that this telescope would fall under promoting social progress. I don't see the immediate need for it though. Imediate issues like East Timor and long term issues like building infrastructure in undeveloped countries would come before a satelite, I would think.

    On the other hand, this might be an expanding branch for the UN. Maybe forming a specific committee to set policies for every country's space research is something that might happen. Forming an international organization for the sole purpose of space exploration might be a possibility too.

    It's anybody's guess though.
  • I don't think this is really going to happen. They are just going to build larger telescopes and use new methods. If you don't find a signal, how do you know it's really because there is nothing and not because your antenna is too small or your signal analysis isn't sensitive enough or you just used the wrong wavelength?

  • It advances our society as a whole by answering an incredibly deep question about our universe: are we alone?

    Obviously, unless we actually find someone, or check every planet in detail, we won't get a final answer to that.
  • ***META-RANT***
    I'm so sick of textbook responses like yours to the mind-numbingly obvious point brought up by the original poster.
    In this case I feel it is a little different to the usual space-exploration-vs-third-world-help because this is the U.N. we're talking about. In this case, *surely* they have better things to spend their money on (disclaimer: I have not read enough to know where the U.N. SETI funds are coming from, flame away).
    A few dignitaries read some Carl Sagan and now they're suddenly ready to set up some pricey 'scopes and start watching "My Favorite Earthling". Bah, it's late, I don't care

  • Also, what's redundant here? Redundant *across* slashdot stories? That's a new one...

    No it's not. Is there something confusing about the words ... "every time someone mentions SETI (or anything related to it), some tedious cretin pops up to comment that he can't find any intelligence on slashdot."

    I guess first post would be redundant under that reasoning. Or bitching about someone else's comment... Or just about anything, actually...

    Oh sorry, I dropped off halfway through that. Logic chopping pedants bore me close to tears. Look, it's simple ... try to think of something funny and original (or something that hasn't been mentioned a thousand times at least) and post it. Otherwise fuck off and die,

  • .. The only real solution would be to go in with an army, kill/imprison the dictators, impose a democratic government, ..

    Can you really impose democratic government?

    .. It advances our society as a whole by answering an incredibly deep question about our universe: are we alone? ..

    The Answer is No ... other than the Humans there are dolphins and elephants ... oh and some Parrots are as inteligent(reasoning+vocab) as small children

    .. If we never pass on parts of our knowledge or culture to other civilizations, is there any point to our existence as a species? ..

    Is there a point? what an odd question, does there need to be a point? Why are we here is a different question to how did we come to exist. is there a reason that we are here, a Great Plan for Humanity ? is that what you mean ?

  • But there's no danger that an Australian would be mistaken for intelligent life :)

  • Re:Better use of funds (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    oh and some Parrots are as inteligent(reasoning+vocab) as small children

    The best part is where the small children grow up some, pass the Parrots in intelligence, then subjugate the Parrots. Often the small children will imprison the birds in small cages. The elephants and dolphins are just slaughtered, they are too large to effectively store at home. Welcome to the real world Parrot, I 0wn j00!

  • Your flippant attitude just gives away the fact that this seemingly innocent factual faux pas is indeed part of a deliberate slander campaign against the organizations like the UN, that oppose, albeit timidly, the arrogant, merciless power of today's world: the military-industrial-media complex of the inadequately named United States of America.

    Whenever I hear things like military-industrial-media complex it just makes me smile. For some reason it makes me think of a quote I enjoyed in a recent suck.com article: "With all the sweaty assurance of a faculty-lounge communist..."

  • It's alsolutely rediculous to scan the sky listening for pre FTL civilizations. If your going to broadcast from or hear a signal it makes sence to find an unusual region of space. What better place to broadcast than from say near a black hole. Build a transmitter probe and send it at a relativistic speed. Listen to places you would spend millions of dollars sending a probe to. But really it's a waste of money. If you want to spend money all that badly then invest in research to discover new and more practical ways that a civilization might communicate along the stars.

  • Sol should be good for a bout a billion years before it gets too hot for Earth's biosphere to adapt. (Yes I know the red giant stage isn't due for at least 3-4 more but Sol will be expanding slowly allthrough that time and after the billion it's estimated it'll be too hot for Earth's biota to adapt. If we actually last that long, we should be able to handle the problem when it actually becomes acute.

    For right now however it's the things that can kill us off in the next century that need top priority:

    1. Pollution we're making this a dirty poisoned planet and we're running out of time to rethink our habits. Not just the obvious ones like spilling oil tankers on to beaches, and dumping acid rain onto Canada, but thermal pollution as well.

    2. The uggunning of the resource rush. Right now less than a quarter of Earth's population consumes 80% of the resources and fuel. How do we handle bringing more of the Third World into the 21st century? What do we do about China, for instance?

    3. Spacewatch: Granted the chances of us facing something comparable to the KT event are fairly remote but we do need to finish mapping all the significant flying mountains out there. Compared to the first 2 and just about any others we can think of, it's a relatively easy task to accomplish by throwing enough resources at it without going into the red.

    There are probably more but you should get my point. Rather than worrying about Humankind surviving the next million years, let's take care of the next couple of centuries first.
  • There's no point in spending money on something that there's not even a theory for. Right now, every conceivable scientific model on how the universe is actually built has that unbreakable speed limit of c. There simply isn't anything to spend money ON.

    Radio is still the most practical method for SETI and will probably remain so for millenia to come.

    Right now, we qualify as a unusual piece of space. A radio astronomer who happens to find earth will note at first glance a binary radio source with an unusually small mass component emitting in the radio spectrum. Our best chance at proving tthe existence of ET is too look for civilizations that are.... much like us, at least in this technological area.
  • Wrong, we paid them last year. Plus, its great knowing that all 5 soldiers of Canada's army is at the disposal of the UN. By the way, did you guys get your military back yet? Last I heard it was on a cargo ship that refused to give it back to you guys because you wouldn't pay the bill....
  • If you're interested in this, try reading "Manufacturing Consent" by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky.

    I just did, and it was quite the eye-opener.
  • Wow, you really must feel special by trying to put down Canada's millitary. Whatever floats your boat. Just remember that our fighter pilots routinely beat yours in excercises, and your soldiers also routinely train with ours because our personnel are some of the best trained in the world.

    We don't have many (much more then 5, rofl) but what we do have is extremely well trained.

    As for that ship invasion, we took it back, the dispute was between two companies, not a company and the government. The ship carried millitary equiptment and refused to dock because it was trying to extort MORE money out of the second company, so we just took it.

    -- iCEBaLM
  • The privately-funded SETI project will be far ahead of them, by then

    SETI has no money! They've been reduced to using spare CPU cycles because they don't have enough cash to get a supercomputer. Not like any of that is worth it.

  • I believe the cut and paste below is yours...is it not? And the link inserted in damn near every /. article....

    Not good at counting are you fuckhead.

    Yeah!

    Yeah!

    I know responding to you is just what you want,

    Thanks man. Knobs like you make this job easy.

    But just in case you have 2 pieces of grey matter to rub together..THIS BIT IS BEYOND OLD & BOREING.

    Memo to loser: Chek speling in self-righteous flaymes.

    Seek out new annoyances before you cast your next stone!

    Coo. Pompous, stupid, windy and thinks he's profound too ... you're quite a catch. Come on man, insult me some more.

  • 1. Pollution we're making this a dirty poisoned planet and we're running out of time to rethink our habits. Not just the obvious ones like spilling oil tankers on to beaches, and dumping acid rain onto Canada, but thermal pollution as well.

    All of these things may be important to some people, but are they really at the level where they affect the viability of the human race? The global population of humans currently exceeds 6 billion. Kill all you want, we'll make more.

    I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to do something about the problems that you listed, just that they do not have the species killing potential of an asteroid impact.

  • Actually, thats exactly right, thats why so many nations dislike us for imposing democracy on them. Oh well, se la vi. Either way, life is good for me here in Corpus Christi, Tx.
  • Im sorry i really am feeling the need to rant on this one.
    "At a time when the nation state is becoming irrelevant, you have to wonder why anyone would applaud the creation and maintainence of a body that really has no useful mechanism to responding to the people who are paying for it"
    How ignorant a thing to say is that? Im assuming your american/canadian/british/ect.)and i want to ask you if youve EVER been to a country like Haiti? Or even the continent of africa? the middle east? Samolia? Cambodia?

    Trust me, how the nation state in those parts of the world conducts its self is directly linked to your survival or death.

    Technology has not changed the hopelessness of poverty, and the UN is THE forum for the introvention and comminication with such nations.

    The UN will continue to be important as long as there are country's that don't look like our own.
  • i want to ask you if youve EVER been to a country like Haiti? Or even the continent of africa? the middle east? Samolia? Cambodia?

    These places would and will continue to suck with or without the UN.

    Trust me, how the nation state in those parts of the world conducts its self is directly linked to your survival or death.

    And that is exactly why the UN is unable to alter the course of these dismal places - they refuse to deal with the politics. The UN is the last agency I would want working in an area that requires drastic change, because drastic change cannot happen without someone's toes being stepped on, and the UN does not step on toes.

    Technology has not changed the hopelessness of poverty, and the UN is THE forum for the introvention and comminication with such nations.

    The UN has not changed the hoplessness of poverty either. If the UN was audited as a charitable organization like Care or Oxfam, their scorecard would be all F's. The amount of bureaucratic waste evident in UN operations is likely unequaled by any other aid group.

  • So, the US does a bit fewer of those and seems to be doing them for the most part alright. I guess it evens up since we really dont have the look out for the rest of the world as our primary focus.
  • I was working at the CSIRO Australia a couple of years ago with a few of the people that were helping design this thing. At the time they were thinking of using 'Luneburg' Lenses or white spherical objects, as the antenna elements so that they didn't have to angle the antennas to track the source. The artist's impression looked like a bunch of eggs sitting out in the desert. I also think that the computing power they expected the SKA to use in processing the raw signals is not practical/available today, but should be by 2015.

    Anyway it's all on their website at:
    http://www.atnf.csiro.au/1kT/
  • You may wonder why the hell I'm replying to my own post. I could reply to every response to my post and response to that... but this is easier. Also, whoever moderated my original post as "Troll" is a complete moron. It wasn't a troll--that should be obvious. If you didn't like it, or thought it was poorly written, well, that's what "Overrated" is for. Disagreeing with the slashdot political party line is not the same as trolling. Read the moderator guidelines.

    First of all, note that I flagged half my message as a rant. That means you have to use a bit of creativity or thought to flesh out the argument--it isn't intended to be a complete philisophical proof of my views on the issue.

    For instance, somebody made the witty observation, "How can you impose democracy?". That's pretty simple: ensure the elections are fair and there's no cheating/intimidating going on.

    Someone else pointed out that not every third-world country is starving because of bad leadership. Of course not, I was making a generalization. What I said is true of most but not all third-world countries. Do I need to explicitly state that it's a generalization? Most of the time, when people discuss such things, they're speaking in generalizations, because including every specific case would be impossible.

    Someone else pointed out that we'll never get an answer to the "are we alone" question unless we find ET. True, but the longer we look with no result, the more we learn about the parameters on intelligent life. If we were to learn that Earth-type planets are plentiful, but didn't find any ETs, that might tell us that intelligent civilizations usually destroy themselves. That would be a very valuable lesson (nice not to have to learn it the hard way).

    To the poster of the meta-rant: it wasn't a textbook response--all my own (sleep-deprived) thoughts, thank you :-) Calling things "textbook" and "mind-numbingly obvious" is a cheap tactic to get out of presenting an actual argument. Please read my other post in this topic, and the article. The telescope has many purposes besides SETI (one of which may be to detect Earth-bound meteors). If contacting other civilizations and saving humanity from death a la dinosaur aren't the UN's thing, whose mandate are they? The US's? (because that's who these kind of tasks usually get dumped on). Before you flame me for that, let me say that I'm not American. I just don't subscribe to the school of thought that assumes the world's problems are the United States' fault because the US is successful.

    To the person who said parrots, elephants, and dolphins are intelligent: yes, they are smarter than [insert unpopular group here], but not really at the human level. Except for dolphins (obligatory reference to Douglas Adams). All they have to do is eat and have sex... :-)

    To the person who said going in with an army is extreme: I don't know you, so I can't say for sure, but you sound very much like those hypocrits who decry military action and propose peaceful alternatives, then accuse the US of killing 200 children a day in Iraq or whatever with trade sanctions. The only acceptable method of effecting change to people like you seems to be sitting outside evil country X's embassy while chanting "Kumbaya". Can you really justify waiting a decade for some non-military method to begin to work while tens of thousands of people are dying? And about the undermining of foreign coutries: I am by no means justifying it, but it mostly happened as part of the Cold War. I think the CIA's days of messing with two-bit governments are over. We now have to deal with the aftermath, and whining about how it got that way won't help.

    To the person blaming everything on evil "rich" countries holding third-world debt. You are free to pay off someone else's debt if you choose--have you helped them at all?\ Nobody made them buy weapons from us. If I spent all my money buying guns, then filed for bankrupcy and expected not to have to pay back the $1000 I owed you, you would rightly call me an idiot and an asshole. Only idiot/asshole governments would get a country into such a situation, hence the need to fix the government.

    To the person who pointed out that there are homeless and starving people in every country, including the US. Yes, and throwing more money at them won't make the problem go away. If you took all the money the US spends on social assistance and social programs, and just gave it to poor people, there wouldn't be a single person in the US below the poverty line. Now explain to me why there's still a poverty problem, and how more money would make that problem go away. I don't know how to fix it, but I do know more money is not the answer. We might as well spend the cash on something that has a hope of succeeding.
  • Messing with aliens is dangerous ... just look what happened to this poor chap [goatse.cx] when he suffered a particularly nasty probe.
  • I read in a real newspaper that there seems to be strong evidence of a large hit in the 600ad timeframe that has been verified by tree rings world wide.
  • It's interesting : United Nations and SETI project are two of the Wonders of the Word in Civilization !
    Now We'll have to managed a double-wonder, I wonder if it will take twice a many shields to build it...
  • After all, what other useful thing do you know that the U.N. has spent money on?

    Although another poster has dealt with the factual rebuttal of your insincerly idiotic comment, I feel I must provide the moral rebuttal.

    Your flippant attitude just gives away the fact that this seemingly innocent factual faux pas is indeed part of a deliberate slander campaign against the organizations like the UN, that oppose, albeit timidly, the arrogant, merciless power of today's world: the military-industrial-media complex of the inadequately named United States of America.

    The telescope will (at least theoretically) be looking for other planets, not just intelligent life. Finding other (possibly human-habitable) planets is a good long term goal. It should make the paranoid (who think that earth will not survive mankind) happy.

    I'll be accused of repeating myself here, but I'll say this once more: imagine that, in the year 3,000, an alien civilization were to happen upon the ruins of personkind, which had disappeared hundreds of years before, due to the consumption of all their available energy sources. They explore and research this barren planet, with its countless artifacts of civilization gone, and discover and decipher this one particular phenomenon: SETI. What would you, as one of these alien anthropologists, say? "They claimed to care for life, and to value the possibility of life in other worlds. But this claim was empty, as is evidenced by how they failed to apply those resources to discovering that the love of life must start locally, and only after it conquers the local can it conquer the remote."

    "Professor Peter Wilkinson, a senior astronomer at Jodrell Bank, Britain's renowned radio telescope centre, said that the SKA could enable humanity to protect itself from [asteriod's] impact." That should make the common man (not to mention the politicos) happy.

    Quoth your hypothetical "common man": "Yeah, now we can go back to worrying about whether we'll die nuked."

    Quoth your "politicos": "Good, back to oppressing the masses. What do we privatize next? The police, right?"

  • Its smaller (a *lot* smaller). Compared to SKA its tiny.
  • the MM Bosstones and No Doubt are NOT Ska...
    they are pop-ska at best - True Ska kicks ass

    especially if you smoke weed.
    (or so ive heard)
  • Most Australian astronomers would be offended by this. They are not ignoring the skies nor are the many other astronomers working with southern telescopes. Sure the biggest telescopes are in the north but this hardly means the rest is ignored
  • Based on the fact that the UN is usually involved with more earthly affairs and hasn't shown a real interest in the development of space or related issues, and considering that there are other groups already searching for ET (SETI) and have been so far unsuccesful, I just don't understand why they would fund something like this..

    The only logical conculssion so far for my conspiratory mind is that they know exactly what they'll be looking for...maybe they know more than we do about alien life???

  • Re:Better use of funds (Score:3)

    by tbo ( 35008 ) on Sunday September 10, 2000 @12:43AM (#791238) Journal
    ***RANT***
    I'm so sick of hearing the "when people are starving in country Z, how can we justify spending Y on X" argument. People are starving because their governments are fucked up. You can spend all the money you want on foreign aid, but it will just go to feeding the military and lining the pockets of the dictators in those countries.

    The only real solution would be to go in with an army, kill/imprison the dictators, impose a democratic government, occupy the country for the 20 years it took for things to settle down, and then hope that they got their shit together. A hell of a lot of people--both us and them--would die in the effort.

    Would you give your life for that?
    ***/RANT***

    That being said, money spent on SETI is NOT wasted. It advances our society as a whole by answering an incredibly deep question about our universe: are we alone?

    If all we ever manage to accomplish as a species is to pollute the planet and feed ourselves for a while before the next big comet hits, well, we just plain suck. If we never pass on parts of our knowledge or culture to other civilizations, is there any point to our existence as a species?

    Imagine if someone had told Columbus he was an asshole for going off on his little trip when people were starving in Europe. Exploration is vital to the advancement of human society. (Please don't get anal on me and point out how so-and-so actually discovered North America first, or how Columbus was really looking for the North-West passage to the nearest Indo-Chinese Fusion Cuisine restaurant--it's irrelevant).

    I have probably just been trolled here, but what the hell, it's late, I don't care.
  • though not necessarily capable of the highest resolution (the USA's Very Large Baseline Interferometer currently holds that record).
    Bzzz. Wrong. Typical american inward looking attitude. The VLBA (Very Large Baseline ARRAY) does VLBI (Very LONG Baseline Interferometry) combined with the European VLBI Network (EVN) to make a telescope the size of the Earths diameter. But even this is not good enough, the Japanese VSOP project does VLBI between Earth based telescopes and a radio telescope in orbit.
    http://www.jive.nl/jive/evn [www.jive.nl]
    http://www.vsop.isas.ac.jp [isas.ac.jp]
  • Welcome to slashdot
  • So, why do you have a computer instead of selling it and giving the money to the poor, hypocrite?
    /.

  • Re:hmmm (Score:1)

    by m2 ( 5408 )
    I'm sure astronomers can think of other uses for something the article referred to as being "the most sensitive astronomical instrument yet built".

    Shush! Shut up! How the heck do you think such an instrument will get funding if it's not approved by the general public... Oh... you really thought this thing is going to be build to conduct (only) extraterrestrial intelligence searches...

  • It's nice to see someone who appreciates good work.
  • I see this as excellent recognition that ET mostlikely exists. SETI is being looked at as less of a "neat toy" and more as a vital tool in discovering that maybe we're not alone.

  • UN involvement is normal...: (Score:5)

    by Uncertain Bohr ( 122949 ) on Sunday September 10, 2000 @02:45AM (#791245)
    I just wanted to comment that it is not clear at all that the UN is funding this at all. The UN is just were the international agreement is signed and registered.

    Organizarion such as ESA (The European Space Agency) are also listed by the UN, and a UN treaty between the member countries does exists at the UN. The UN itself does not contribute to ESA. You can find more information about this sort of things, which happen often in astronomy were costs are high and international cooperations are mandatory, by looking up the internet registration of the .int domain name.

    I too was surprised a while ago to find out that I needed a copy of a UN agreement in order to register a .int domain, and that places like www.esa.int HAD such a treaty. I had forgotten, as many seem to, that the UN is THE place where international agreements can be ironed out officially.

  • From the article:
    "Scientists aim to create a "radio quiet park", where nobody will be allowed to use mobile phones, TV, radio or walkie-talkies for fear their emissions could be mistaken for signs of alien life. The most likely site is in Australia."

    I would hate to see the newsflash saying that first contact with an intelligent race of life from somehwere outside our own earth would sound like:

    "Honey, don't forget to pickip johnny at practice."

  • The role of the United Nations is not confined to doling out aid to third-world nations. The creation of a telescope under the auspices and control of the United Nations means that use of the telescope will not be hampered by national interests and the information found will be available to everyone. As a citizen of a country other than the United States, it sort of gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling to know that 'my' telescope is doing the searching. Sounds like somebody doesn't want to share the fun.

    Besides, the whole "science is stupid when people are starving" argument has been proven on countless occasions to be invalid.
    ---

  • Ah yes:
    US, Europe, and Japan...
    all famed for their efficient, cost-effective bureaucracies...

    much better.
  • Paul Allen and Nathan Myhrvold (hey, the two coolest Microsoft names...) are also dumping a bunch of money into a telescope array-

    http://www.chron.com/content/interactive/space/ast ronomy/news/2000/ds/20000801.html [chron.com]
    http://www.cnn.com/20 00/TECH/space/08/01/seti.telescope.reut/ [cnn.com]
    http://srd.yahoo.com/goo/paul+allen+telescope/3/*h ttp://www.msnbc.com/news/440487.asp [yahoo.com]

    How does that one fit in?

    "What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is"

  • At 1 square kilometer, it will have a collecting area sufficiently large to actually detect Earth-sized planets 1AU away from their star, up to 100 light years away, according to the head of the SETI Institute, in a recent lecture I attended.

    This would be sufficient to collect information on atospheric composition, temperature and the presence of life. (Dead atmospheres are comparitively inert to those needed for living matter.)

    Even if no ET signal was ever detected by this giant telescope, it would be capable of mapping virtually every solar system within that 100 LY range, AND give a fairly good indication of the prevalence of living matter.

    IMHO, focussing on that side of things is far more interesting than whether you'll be able to decode ET's "Playbeing" channel.

  • You are the one who should be in a cage.
  • So long as they can keep their engineers from being eaten by dingos or koalas or whatever the heck they have down there, it's a good choice of locale.

    The best radio telescopes right now are primarily situated in the Northern hemisphere. VLA, Arecibo, that new one Senator Byrd bought. . . all of them are scanning the Northern skies. My impression is that the Southern skies have been relatively ignored. It's also nice that there are still areas in Auzzieland that are almost unpopulated (making the cellphone ban workable).

  • Hmm. maybe they should spend some money looking at near earth asteroids first... JUST A THOUGHT!

  • <SARCASM>Well, it's simple, it's because the ET's aren't doing anything to feed our millions of hungry or develop the undeveloped world. I mean, there they are up there, building their intergalactic spaceships, for themselves, in an orgy of greed, without any concern for the rights of the space dust their ships blast aside, probably spending 17-figure sums on the things, while people are down here starving. Shame on them! If those ET's exist, they owe us!</SARCASM>

    -- Sunlighter

  • Anyone ever ate money for breakfast? Not so nutricious... To keep people from starving, we need food. The thing is, we produce 1.5 times enough food to feed the earth's population. The problem is in the distribution of it. Half of americans are overweight, all of the grocerie stores and warehouses waste millions of tons of food every day insteed of sending it to the needing. There is the problem. Not spending money on such interesting projects wont change a thing. People will keep starving as long capitalism rules the earth. And if they can't get back on track by themselves, it's more because for each dollar givin by international aid, 2 or 3 must be givin back to rich countrys just to pay the interests of their debt. Debts which are mostly dued to their gouvernements buying wepons to our's. This debt was supossed to be erased a few years ago (or that is what the democrats of G8 promessed), but that never happended. So insteed of flaming on /. flame your political representents, flame the G8, flame the army, flame major grocerie stores...

  • What's even worse is when you send our military down there, imprison the dictators, disable their military, impose a democratic government, guarantee a fraud-free election, let the people vote... and they vote for the same damn dictators again.

    Some people never learn.

    -- Sunlighter

  • This is a good first step in the internationalization of space exploration... We can't have feeble agencies like NASA doing this for us, we need a strong international backbone with cash from many nations to lead us into space. I wouldn't be surprised if the UN became concentrated on space exploration.
    --
  • Lest we forget the $1 billion donation by Ted Turner to the UN, and the ensuing condemnation by Billie-G. I guess the UN finally did find something to blow the money on......
  • I hope the aliens are at least amused.

    To be honest, I'm not really sure what that comment meant...

    But anyway, it's nice to see a real large scale SETI operation like this. Even if there isn't intelligent life out there transmitting, which is entirely possible, I'm sure astronomers can think of other uses for something the article referred to as being "the most sensitive astronomical instrument yet built".
    --
  • Its all good that they are building a better device, but wouldn't the money be better put towards the existing project, rather than creating another one?
  • When Vasco de Gama and Cristopher Columbus went out to sea to explore new lands, did they go to search to see if anyone was out there first? No! They just went! That's why the U.N 800m Euros would be better spent funding the ISS.
  • "After all, what other useful thing do you know that the U.N. has spent money on?"

    This merits a reply. Start with the World Food Program, which provides subsistence meals to people who would otherwise starve to death. You can donate meals for free (corporate sponsor pays) at http://www.thehungersite.com

    Next time you ask a question like that, you might first ask yourself when you last saved someone from starving to death.

  • Let's say you've got an applicaiton that has 'maxed out' a Sun Sparc Server 1000E. Would you rather spend your $1M to try to make it better, or just purchase a Sun Ultra Enterprise 10000? In a similar matter, upgrading an existing SETI project to scale to that level wouldn't be cost efficient. Nevermind that you don't have to interface and involve yourself with the politics of even more groups when you build your own SETI.

    Although I am amused/puzzled by something. They're designing something *now* for implementation in 2015. By the time it is in place, it'll be long obsolete!
  • As far as the SETI@home search goes, we've been told that 1 of the 4 of the major spikes are caused by terrestrial radio-frequency disturbances, and the rest were merely tests to calibrate.

    "Radio-frequecny disturbances", eh? Why dont we try syncing some downtime of terrestrial-orbit satellites with SETI data extraction, a sort of "share the sky" principle... I know it is near impossible to halt the satellites, however it would be nice to keep their transmission to an idle..

    Therefore we could clean up the data to be processed.
  • Is this just a publicity grab to take attention away from the One Hectare Array [seti.org] (now known as the Allen Telescope Array, after a large contribution by Paul Allen [seti.org])?

    More SETI telescopes are great and all, but wouldn't it be nice of the SETI project had more cohesion than the Reform Party [reformparty.org]?

    Kevin Fox

  • A big telescope may even be useful... (Score:4)

    by Thalia ( 42305 ) on Saturday September 09, 2000 @11:21PM (#791266)
    Don't knock the telescope. After all, what other useful thing do you know that the U.N. has spent money on?

    The telescope will (at least theoretically) be looking for other planets, not just intelligent life. Finding other (possibly human-habitable) planets is a good long term goal. It should make the paranoid (who think that earth will not survive mankind) happy.

    It's also supposed to be useful to seek the faint radiation emitted 10-12 billion years ago when the first stars and galaxies formed after the big bang. That should make scientist happy.

    But I bet the telescope was sold to the UN by the theory that "it will also allow astronomers to plot in detail the courses of asteroids and comets that threaten to collide with the Earth. Professor Peter Wilkinson, a senior astronomer at Jodrell Bank, Britain's renowned radio telescope centre, said that the SKA could enable humanity to protect itself from their impact." That should make the common man (not to mention the politicos) happy.

    So, everyone is happy...

    Thalia
  • Wow; you've proven my point beautifully!

    Also, what's redundant here? Redundant *across* slashdot stories? That's a new one... I guess first post would be redundant under that reasoning. Or bitching about someone else's comment... Or just about anything, actually...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Well, given the average intelligence on Earth, we could always do with a little extra Terrestial Intelligence.

    Stefan.
    It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-

  • Arecibo (the current one in use for SETI@home) is very small and it is near impracical for use in the SETI project. This new unit will probably be more streamlined for the reception of what SETI is actually looking for, which will produce more better results. Also, different frequencies may be approved for use by the SETI society on this new telescope.

  • Single Female Lawyer (Score:3)

    by CukO ( 215293 ) on Saturday September 09, 2000 @11:30PM (#791270)
    Perhaps this is just an attempt to transmit "Single Female Lawyer" with better encoding :)
  • (sarchasm/flame on)

    I can't wait until the UN imposes the one world government. When that happens conspiracy idiots like you will be the first to die.

    (sarchasm/flame off)

  • Who better to talk to ET (Score:3)

    by tbo ( 35008 ) on Sunday September 10, 2000 @01:03AM (#791272) Journal
    For everyone out there who bashes the UN for trying to get involved in SETI:

    Who better than the UN to represent humanity when we first make contact with another (or perhaps "an") intelligent species? Isn't part of the UN's mandate to bring everyone together for peaceful and meaningful discussions? Why shouldn't that include ETs?

    Also, the project has a heck of a lot of other goals. I'm not sure if asteroid detection is one of them, but, if it is, it's worth considering that a decent-sized asteroid hitting Earth would make full-scale nuclear war look like wet firecrackers...

    The dinosaurs died because they didn't have a space program.
  • Not everyone is a native english speaker (luckyly). I'm doing my best, I'd like to see you do better in other languages.

  • Even if there isn't intelligent life out there transmitting, which is entirely possible

    If there isn't anything out there, we need to know that, too.

    Finding something isn't the only measure of success for SETI.

    -

  • The Earth should be a bit more friendly for SETI now that Iridium is being deorbited. And it's certainly much cheaper than constructing huge arrays on the back side of the moon. There are all kinds of problems with that, not the least of which is getting data back to Earth. You'd need a relay satellite or two in lunar orbit to bounce the signals around the moon. You'd have lots of points of failure and it would be even expensive as hell to fix the system if anything broke.

    Perhaps in 20-50 years once cheap energy and good old capitalist competition have made access to space nice and affordable.

    --
  • Really... "operational by 2015"... these people are clueless! The privately-funded SETI project will be far ahead of them, by then. They should spend their moneys on more immediate concerns...
  • One would hope so. Seriously, I wonder whether anyone competent at the relevent calculations has ever assessed our odds of a major asteroid/comet impact versus the death of the Sun. Small odds, I would think offhand, but it _is_ an interesting question. I mean, how much time do we have to get off this nice rock? It seems important...

    If statistics give us a few thousand years, then we might make it. But the hard reality is that our Sun _will_ eventually blow and destroy Earth. (Yes, that's a long ways in the future, but it _will_ eventually happen, and we should plan to survive that event.)
  • Hey, chill... accept that you're nonfunctional...

    This will rate a "Flamebait" or other negative karma, but I don't care.

    Go back to smoking bad crack or guzzling booze, either/both of which may have inspired your post.

    Better yet, just pass out...

  • The Answer is No ... other than the Humans there are dolphins and elephants ... oh and some Parrots are as inteligent(reasoning+vocab) as small children

    No, you're wrong. It's humans, dolphins and mice.

    --

  • Moderators! Stike down this post with a solid mark of Assanine! I demand it, or your heads I will take in consequence.
    .................................... .........

  • Re:Better use of funds (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The creation of a telescope under the auspices and control of the United Nations means that use of the telescope will not be hampered by national interests and the information found will be available to everyone.

    Boy, you sure are in the dark about the UN aren't you?

  • Don't beleive the hype. Even if it is legit, they're only doing it for propoganda value, to steal the glory from University SETI projects. Of course, it's probably just a cover for a Planet Buster facility. Our immediate concern should be to finish the space elevator [slashdot.org].
  • The only real solution would be to go in with an army, kill/imprison the dictators, impose a democratic government, occupy the country for the 20 years it took for things to settle down ...

    Isn't that a defining characteristic of the dictatorships themselves? I don't think you can impose a democratic government; that's not the democratic way of doing things ... just a thought.

    -Forager

  • Straight from the IAU (Score:3)

    by martyb ( 196687 ) on Sunday September 10, 2000 @07:06AM (#791284)

    From the article:

    An agreement to build the new telescope was signed last month at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union in Manchester.

    The International Astronomical Union [iau.org] has a page providing information on this: here [iau.org].

  • "personkind"? gimme a break. Do you also say "personhole cover"?
    --
  • The UN's elite UNIT taskforce will maintain and operate the new telescope. Ordinarily, I would be wary of a military organization operating a science project, but they apparantly have the assistance of a Doctor with experience in that sort of thing.
  • I think you meant the Society for the Practical Establishment and Perpetuation of the TEN COMMANDMENTS [tencommandments.org].

    Oh man, have you read the editorials? Here is a piece from a rant against the First Amendment that is just so ironic:


    The first amendment does not allow the mentally deranged person to sharply perceive his mental abnormality but deludes him into thinking his abnormality is a normal difference. If the seriously mentally ill person can function in the society without physically harming himself or others, it is possible for him to convince other like-minded psychotics to follow his psychotic beliefs. By virtue of their psychoses, they are unable to perceive the true psychotic symptoms expressed by the mentally ill person they are following and they are unable to perceive evidence of phychosis in his beliefs. They therefore embrace his expressed delusions as truths.


    Whoops, looks like I broke his license agreement [tencommandments.org]. The fool seems to think a publisher can force his readers to waive their "fair us" [sic] rights.
  • Kill all you want, we'll make more.

    Ok, ill kill 6 Billion and 1, now try to make more

  • You're absolutly right. Start by selling your computer for food money. Then get back to us.
  • US citizens, of course, have no room to complain because Congress is so far behind on its UN dues it's ridiculous.

  • Re:A big telescope may even be useful... (Score:3)

    by bph ( 165894 ) on Saturday September 09, 2000 @11:31PM (#791292)

    I am going to include the obligatory link to the science goals [ucalgary.ca] of the square kilometer array. If you read the outline, you will see that SETI is only one of many. In fact, this is the first I had heard of using the SKA to do SETI. Most people talk about 21 cm studies out to high redshift, not LGMs....

  • The IAU is not the UN. (Score:3)

    by DHartung ( 13689 ) on Sunday September 10, 2000 @12:51PM (#791293) Homepage
    First off, this isn't Slashdot's fault (although sometimes the posts are woefully unresearched). The London Times screwed up by saying "United Nations" a couple of times when there's nothing anywhere to indicate that the UN has anything to do with it.

    The International Astronomical Union [iau.org] has been around since 1919, well predating the UN, and is headquartered in Brussels. While it's a member of the International Council of Scientific Unions, as far as I can tell, they have nothing to do with the United Nations. Well, OK, they're working with the ITU (which does) and the UN working group on peaceful uses of outer space, but neither of those institutional connections impacts the separate SKA working group. There are many international organizations that operate wholly independently of the UN.

    While the SKA project [ucalgary.ca] is still a ways from reaching the point of a firm technical plan and seeking funding, there's no evidence they're going to ask the UN for money. In fact, a lot of the funding is likely to come from participating universities (who may in turn, of course, seek grants from their national governments to support their involvement). No UN bureaucracy at all.

    The moral? Don't believe everything you read in the papers. Looks to me like the editor saw "International [Astronomical] Union" and assumed it was a UN agency. Not the case.
    ----
  • After all, what other useful thing do you know that the U.N. has spent money on?

    • Hunger relief.
    • Refugee relief.
    • Vaccinations.
    • Education.
    • Peacekeeping.
    • Election monitoring.
    • Land mine removal efforts.
    • Environmental protection.
    • Disarmement
    • Facilitating international treaties.
    • War tribunals.
    • Providing a forum for international diplomacy.

    And I probably missed some.
    --
  • Copy and paste wreaks havoc with relative URL's.

    Africa Initiative [un.org]
    Ageing [un.org]
    Agriculture [un.org]
    Atomic Energy [un.org]
    Children [un.org]
    Climate Change [un.org]
    Culture [un.org]
    Decolonization [un.org]
    Demining [un.org]
    Development [un.org]
    Cooperation
    Persons with [un.org]
    disabilities
    Disarmament [un.org]
    Drug control [un.org]
    & Crime Prevention
    Education [un.org]
    Elections [un.org]

    Energy [un.org]
    Environment [un.org]
    Family [un.org]
    Food [slashdot.org]
    Governance [un.org]
    Habitat [un.org]
    Health [un.org]
    Human Rights [un.org]
    Humanitarian Affairs [un.org]
    Indigenous People [un.org]
    Intellectual Property [un.org]
    International [un.org]
    Finance
    Labour [un.org]
    International Law [un.org]
    Law of the Sea [un.org]
    & Antartica
    Least Developed [un.org]
    Countries
    Question of [un.org]
    Palestine
    Peace [un.org]
    & Security
    Population [un.org]
    Refugees [un.org]
    Social Development [un.org]
    Outer Space [un.org]
    Statistics [un.org]
    Sustainable [un.org]
    Development
    Trade & [un.org]
    Development
    Volunteerism [un.org]
    Women [un.org]
    Youth [un.org]

  • > You can spend all the money you want on foreign aid, but it will just go to feeding the military and lining the pockets of the dictators in those countries

    this might be the truth for the vast number of third world countries, but there are lots of third world countries that have good leaders but ppl are still starving. (there are numerous reasons why ppl are starving there; everything from low incomes because of western corporations are not willing to pay more than few $/hour to low prices on worlds market for raw materials country is exporting)

    now we should not use these countries as excuse for not persuing space exploration. we can both explore space and help those ppl. imo problem is that people/govermants in europe/n. america are spending money on useless stuff.
  • s/US/Canada/ and you have a better grasp on things.

    Canada has been footing the US's UN dues since the US seems to be refusing to pay them for quite some time...

    -- iCEBaLM

  • Syndy, Australia, 2018 -- In a surprising discovery, Dr. Jill Tarter announced through her thumb-sucking male boss, who likes to hog the credit, that "they are out there." Interlaced with the bursts of RF energy that become the first 10 prime numbers when "interpreted properly", the ETs show they are watching us by inserting a subcarrier that carries a rebroadcat of the Nixon "I Am Not A Crook" speech.

    Further embedded in those signals (you'd be amazed what can be packed into those 150-ms pulses when you try!) is the construction plans for the ship Heart of Gold with its Infinite Improbability Drive, designed by the aliens when they received the BBC Radio broadcasts of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and mistook the radio play for a news broadcast.

    The United Nations has retained Scott Adams to oversee the entire "Contact For Real" project because of his clearly superior grasp of management techniques and practices. Douglas Adams has been added to the project team for his ability to brew really hot cups of tea, as well has his clearly superior ability to deal with the side effects of the Heart of Gold's drive.

    Co-operation has been rampent in this project. Recluse trillionare Bill Gates, from his private space station, pointed out that the space-borne construction diagrams make sense when wrapped around a model of the United States Pentegon building. Arch-rivel Steve Jobs, from his offices at Pixar/Disney, demonstrated using computer graphics generated by 4,000 Apple G6 computers connected via kite string and Dixie cups, that the diagrams made even more sense when stretched across a model of the Pentagon expanded into a three-dimensional model. Tom Clancy observed that a portion of the drawing is in error, in that it looks like some prankster grafted a giant hypodermic needle that would be used to kill The Galactic Overlord's giant space amoeba as described in the Hazel Stone space-opera series The Scourge of the Spaceways.

    (more)

  • we would have nothing. Almost all of the really cool stuff that we have started as pure research. Research like art is good for its own sake.
  • At a time when radical technologies are allowing decentralization at such a rapid pace, why are we bothering with the UN anymore?

    Think Washington is unresponsive to you? Try New York. Although he is a repugnant geezer, Jesse Helms is correct in deriding the UN - its a completely meaningless debate society that has done almost nothing to really alter the course of world events throughout its history.

    At a time when the nation state is becoming irrelevant, you have to wonder why anyone would applaud the creation and maintainence of a body that really has no useful mechanism to responding to the people who are paying for it - it is a grossly elitist body that has absolutely no mandate to listen to any individuals, because it has no constituency. It has no democratic foundations at all.

    Push power down to individuals and local governments. Screw Big Brother.

  • Please, the UN is a farce (Score:3)

    by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 ) on Sunday September 10, 2000 @08:20AM (#791313)
    Hunger relief. Refugee relief. Vaccinations. Education.

    While they are arguably making an effort to deliver the goods on these needs, they can't address the political issues that keep food and medicine out of the areas needed (newsflash - most of the barriers to aid are political, not economic - see 80s Ethiopian famine for a case study).

    Why can't they address the political issues? The UN thinks it is above such things. This is why they are locked out of most of the useful change in developing nations.

    Peacekeeping.

    I'm tempted to enter a "ROTFL", but seriosuly, the UN does little to keep or create peace - mostly it puts its own soldiers in harm's way with no mandate whatsoever. As a peacekeeper, the UN is a complete failure.

    Providing a forum for international diplomacy.

    Sure - it creates elitist bodies that are answerable to no one, as they have no visible constituency. There is no real representation in any UN organization - its a loose thread of pseudo socialist ideals implemented by lifelong empolyees who respond to no one and have no notion of democratic accountability.

    Its amazing that people think of this collection of appointed dupes as the ruling ideal - at the very best it stinks of a second-world planned-economy style operation that completely defies any efforts to further empower individuals over institutions.

  • Your flippant attitude just gives away the fact that this seemingly innocent factual faux pas is indeed part of a deliberate slander campaign against the organizations like the UN, that oppose, albeit timidly, the arrogant, merciless power of today's world: the military-industrial-media complex of the inadequately named United States of America.

    Haha, nice pseudo-intellectual rant. Thank the gods that the twentieth century taught us to never trust rule to intellectuals again. Now lets get to the facts - the UN is not anti-American as you naively claim, in fact, they are the lapdog of the US. Look at the resolutions passed around the time of the Gulf War. The fact that they continue to curry favor with the US is even more amazing in light of the fact that the US regularly fails to pay its UN dues.

    As for "military industrial complex", please tell me how the absurdly elitist, unresponsive, undemocratic, unaccountable UN is supposed to be an improvement over the corporate state?? You're replacing one big brother with another.

  • Whenever I hear things like military-industrial-media complex it just makes me smile. For some reason it makes me think of a quote I enjoyed in a recent suck.com article: "With all the sweaty assurance of a faculty-lounge communist..."

    You do realize the term was first used by Dwight Eisenhower? I don't think anyone would consider him a "faculty-lounge communist"...
    --
  • Given that if this thing's built, it'll be mostly funded by the the the US, Europe, and Japan, wouldn't it be a heck of a lot easier to dispense with the UN's famous bureacracy and fund it through agreement between just those countries that want to come on board?

  • Re:Please, the UN is a farce (Score:5)

    by nomadic ( 141991 ) <nomadicworld@@@gmail...com> on Sunday September 10, 2000 @04:29PM (#791319) Homepage
    While they are arguably making an effort to deliver the goods on these needs, they can't address the political issues that keep food and medicine out of the areas needed (newsflash - most of the barriers to aid are political, not economic - see 80s Ethiopian famine for a case study).

    They have problems addressing the political issues because their actions are done through consensus, which is very hard to get in the international community.

    Why can't they address the political issues? The UN thinks it is above such things. This is why they are locked out of most of the useful change in developing nations.

    The UN has trouble with the political issues because the member states want it that way.

    I'm tempted to enter a "ROTFL", but seriosuly, the UN does little to keep or create peace - mostly it puts its own soldiers in harm's way with no mandate whatsoever. As a peacekeeper, the UN is a complete failure.

    UN peacekeeping failures get a lot of press; successes don't. Check here [un.org] for a listing of what they've accomplished. In my opinion, even if they don't succeed in a mission, I think it's important to have tried.

    Sure - it creates elitist bodies that are answerable to no one, as they have no visible constituency. There is no real representation in any UN organization - its a loose thread of pseudo socialist ideals implemented by lifelong empolyees who respond to no one and have no notion of democratic accountability.

    The UN's power rests partially with the general assembly, and mostly with the security council. Representatives are ambassadors; their job is to represent their own countries interests, and the bureacracies answer to them. Their budgets are at the mercy of the member states, and in general they're severely underfunded.

    Its amazing that people think of this collection of appointed dupes as the ruling ideal - at the very best it stinks of a second-world planned-economy style operation that completely defies any efforts to further empower individuals over institutions.

    The UN isn't meant to be a ruling body, and nobody, myself included, thinks it's any sort of ideal. What it is is simply two things; a forum for different nations to interact with each other, and a collection of what are essentially humanitarian agencies administered by it. The total amount of money spent by the UN to maintain itself and run it's operations is around 10 billion a year. This is less than half the budget of it's host city of New York. Last year a little over a dollar of your taxes (assuming you're an American) went to it. Money from the UN that enters the American economy (through expenditures, employees, etc) is more than what we spend on it. Personally, I think the work that the WHO and UNICEF does is worth that dollar a year by themselves.
    --

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