SETI@Home Revisits Its 100 Best Signals 344
cmbrothe writes "The Planetary Society is running an article about SETI@Home's plan to revisit its 100 most promising signal candidates. The article also outlines the criteria for selecting the candidates."
the criteria... (Score:5, Funny)
the signal must sound like a humpback whale...
But then Kirk will ... (Score:2)
And we'll have to find the nuclear wessels.
And we'll screw up the time line by creating transparent aluminum.
Re:the criteria... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:the criteria... (Score:4, Funny)
The problem with doing it this way (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The problem with doing it this way (Score:3, Funny)
Read your Star Fleet manual ensign!
Re:The problem with doing it this way (Score:2, Funny)
Is it me ?!? (Score:2, Insightful)
formula for likelihood of life (Score:5, Insightful)
score= N*(bv-bv0)*exp(0.5*(bv-bv_sun)^2)/(par+0.01)^3
where
N is a normalizing factor, 1.65x10^7
bv is b-v color
bv0 is b-v color of the bluest star in the catalog (-0.41)
bv_sun is the b-v color of the sun (+0.65)
par is the parallax in milliarcseconds
How exactly do you test the validity of a formula like this?
Re:formula for likelihood of life (Score:5, Funny)
Re:formula for likelihood of life (Score:2)
Re:formula for likelihood of life (Score:3, Informative)
score= N*(bv-bv0)*exp(0.5*(bv-bv_sun)^2)/(par+0.01)^3
How exactly do you test the validity of a formula like this?
That's easy -- it's clearly wrong. It's saying the Sun gets the lowest possible score according to the 3rd factor, when it should obviously get the highest score. (They left out a negative sign.)
Why do journalists put formulas online when they don't have a clue what they mean?
Re:formula for likelihood of life (Score:3, Funny)
There's no life on the Sun, ya goofball!
Re:formula for likelihood of life (Score:3, Insightful)
When you get down to it this "star score" is fairly arbitrary. I outght to know, I invented it. If you take out the Gaussian term, it reduces to the number of stars in our sample closer to the sun than the star being scored that are also bluer than the star being scored.
I threw in the Gaussian term as a "we like stars like the sun" term.
But it's OK for this "star score" to be somewhat arbitrary. The "star score" represents how interesting the star is to us, not a literal interpretation of the probability of life existing around that star. A "how probable is life there" score doesn't really exist.
Re:formula for likelihood of life (Score:3, Informative)
I tried to dig up the paper, but these guys are really publishing a lot of stuff. this [harvard.edu] may have something to do with it. The author's homepage is here [berkeley.edu], you can look through a list of some of his papers.
Re:formula for likelihood of life (Score:2)
I assume you would test it by examining a large number of star systems for signs of life. Since we have only one firm data point (our Solar System) there has to be a lot of handwaving. The formula is designed to weight more heavily stars similar to our own (though there seems to be a copy error in the exponential factor--a negation has been lost and it actually weights for stars that are least like the sun.)
The first factor penalizes young, short-lived, blue stars.
The parallax term seems to bias the score in terms of more distant stars--again, this might be a typo.
The formula is just a tool to aid SETI@Home astronomers decide which stars are more likely to bear life, since they can't investigate all of them. It's a guess, nothing more.
5 Billion? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:5 Billion? (Score:2)
Playing the Odds (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, with the amount of planets out there, I'm sure there's a whole lot of life and a lot of intelligent life. It's just that we hope to find one other intelligent race and people aren't even thinking about finding more than that.
-Lucas
Re:Playing the Odds (Score:3, Insightful)
-Lucas
Re:Playing the Odds (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Playing the Odds (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Playing the Odds (Score:2)
Re:Playing the Odds (Score:2)
Re:Playing the Odds (Score:2)
Re:Playing the Odds (Score:3, Funny)
the message would probably say something along the lines of... "first post!", or "hello world!...?"
The obvious conclusion... (Score:2)
Oops, *how* far away did you say these other planets are?
Re:The obvious conclusion... (Score:2)
But then I think about how someday I'll want kids. I would want them to grow up in a beautiful world. I'm sure they will experience the same thing and that desire will carry on every generation. That's when I settle the thoughts of raping the forests, destroying ocean life, and getting a 6 lb. supercharger for my Z28.
Re:Playing the Odds (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm telling myself that it's not going to happen, but what if more than one of those 100 candidates turns out to be the real thing. What a shocker that would be!
In fact, that could be quite beneficial for humanity. Humans tent to identify themselfs by what they not are. In other words: If a group of people has some kind of "enemy" or "opposite", it usualy becomes more united. That does allways happen and on any scale. So hopefully, when we discover extraterrestial civilizations, people may begin to define themselfs more as "humans" and less than citizens of different countries.
Thinking that over... if they don't find any signal, they should make up one! Anyways, nobody will be able to validate it, if it comes from some 1000 Lightyears away...
Re:Playing the Odds (Score:3, Funny)
c'mon (Score:2)
would i get modded up for that?
Wait a minute.... (Score:4, Funny)
I have to wonder... (Score:3, Funny)
The "Wow" Signal (Score:5, Informative)
This blatant karma whoring is brought to you by the letters "ET".
Re:The "Wow" Signal (Score:5, Funny)
1. The 'Hey, Bob, look at this!' signal
2. The 'Jesus Christ!' signal
3. The 'Fuck me!' signal
(97 others)
Re:The "Wow" Signal (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The "Wow" Signal (Score:2)
Some crazy speculation… (Score:2, Insightful)
This is because we might actually find a CONFIRMED signal of intelligent life!
But it most probably will be nothing (the chances of us getting a hit see slim to none based on the probability )
Sorry... No. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, if the SETI project gave conclusive proof that there was alien life, It would be a day that would go down in history.
But, it has to be rock solid proof. Not just a signal, we need a communication from another world. Otherwise CNN will have someone on there within the hour making up 50 other possibilities for the signal.
--ST
Obligatory comments here.... (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory comments here...
Did I miss any?
Re:Obligatory comments here.... (Score:5, Funny)
- beowulf clusters
- something about hot grits
- something about natalie portman.
- something about all your base belonging to us
- links to goatse.cx
- business plans that end in Profit!
- offtopic rants about the DMCA/RIAA
- informative posts about how this works in soviet russia
Re:Obligatory comments here.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Obligatory comments here.... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, I'm sure they are looking at this list harder than anyone. What if the aliens are broadcasting music without a license?
K-Tel Compilation (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, I was thinking that SETI@Home should not only "revisit its 100 most promising signal candidates" but burn them onto a CD-ROM set and make a deal with the record company whose name is synonomous with compilations, K-Tel, to sell them. The perfect gift for the geek who has everything...
GMD
Re:Obligatory comments here.... (Score:3, Funny)
Obviously any evolved civilisation must have a
counterpart of the RIAA. Once we catch some alien
music, we'll broadcast it on TV, worldwide. Then we
only have to wait for their lawyers to make the first
contact.
That's the plan, isn't it?
Re:Obligatory comments here.... (Score:2)
Just the one about people spending time itemizing all possible comment types.
Would they detect themselves? (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider the past efforts at Arecibo to send a message to other stars. We focused on one star for a couple of hours, and sent a message. Perhaps we repeated it over the course of a few days.
Now, let us suppose that a civilization with a similar technology to ours was located on a planet around Proxima Centauri, and let us suppose they did exactly as we did in our transmissions at Arecibo. Would that signal have been found by SETI@Home?
Given how the SETI receivers might not have been looking in the right places at the right times to see more than one transmission, might that signal have been discarded because we did not see more than one instance of it?
Re:Would they detect themselves? (Score:3, Insightful)
SETI isn't looking for a person-to-person call necessarily, just for some scrap of evidence of intelligent life. By that criteria our planet has been spewing out transmissions like crazy for the last 70 years or so. If we find someting like that, then we at least know where to start looking for a "Hello, World!", or where to start sending our own.
Re:Would they detect themselves? (Score:3, Interesting)
the nearest stars.
To pick up their TV signals, I think we need a dedicated SETI radio
telescope on the far side of the moon - something a couple of hundred
miles across maybe.
So we are listening for a definite "Hello Earthlings!"
type of signal from a pretty powerful transmitter. Something
containing the prime numbers, the first 100 binary digits of PI,
something like that.
My question is whether any aliens would send such a signal. You'd
be taking one heck of a chance that it won't get picked up by more
advanced civilisations with a penchant for destroying upstart
planets.
It seems to me that most civilisations will be sitting - quietly
listening just like we are.
Re:Would they detect themselves? (Score:2)
Live just under 60 ly away? You'll no doubt be hearing tails of DDay being a tremendous success as the BBC world service waves hit you.
Thats the signals we are looking for.
Window of contact (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't believe that people are still looking for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, hooing to make contact one day.
Stanislaw Lem once described the window of contact as the tiny amount of time in a planet's life that an intelligent life form has to evolve far enough to create enough noise around their planet that will be picked up as non-static background noise, until its civilisation dies the entroy death.
Even if we picked up something now, it would only be a tiny flicker of something that existed millions of years ago, with no hope of us ever meeting whoever created this glimpse of order in the chaos of the universe.
We are alone out there. Confined by the same rules that hold our universe together into a tiny section of space and time. The best we can hope for is to become nomads, travelling to near systems in the hope of making them inhabitable when this sun gives out. If we haven't fallen into the ashes until then.
Re:Window of contact (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Window of contact (Score:2)
The closest star to Earth is only 4 light years distant. Isn't it at least remotely possible that a detected intelligence would be somewhere nearby rather than millions of light years away?
Re:Window of contact (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, lets think about the problem from another approach. Using current/existing scientific beliefs to restrict scientific dreaming/entreprenurship is useful and proper some times and found to be inaccurate other times. I would say three things can happen by going against that braking effect:
1) the people involved waste their time and money, and no results can be concluded.
2) the original scientific beliefs are proved more thoroughly.
3) the original scientific beliefs are proved inaccurate, and new ideas and beliefs are available.
I would also say that persons in the field of R&D are not so concerned about 1 and 2. 3 is their major motivating factor, and they do the best they can with what they've got. If they have a dream, then that only helps them work.
So, in summary, I'd say that since your point is valid, that those people interested in doing this research need to weigh their dream with existing scientific beliefs.
Just opinions.
Re:Window of contact (Score:5, Insightful)
Even knowing there was intelligent life somewhere else millions of years ago--and if the signal was millions of years old, it would necessarily represent an extremely advanced civilization, powerful enough to transmit a signal to another galaxy--would be extremely interesting scientifically and philosophically.
Finally, it is only conjecture that the "Window of Contact" is brief. For all we know, once civilizations get to a certain point of development, they last forever, and slowly but surely colonize all the inhabitable parts of their galaxy.
Re:Window of contact (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Will the shortness of the lives of civilisations reduce the
probability of our detecting a message by so much that we won't
ever see one?
2) If we recieve a signal from a long dead civilisation - then
how will we ever talk with them?
In response to (1): The Drake equation (which estimates the number
of alien civilisations that ought to be out there) takes this into
account - and taking our best guess at that number, we should still
expect to see a significant number of civilisations out there at the
right stage in their life-span to talk to us. Of course there are a
huge number of wild-ass-guesses in that equation - so making any
concrete statements about the result is dangerous.
However we can never know what the typical lifespan of a civilisation
is - because the only planetary civilisation we have any data on hasn't
died out yet!
In response to (2), I have to say that if we could ONLY detect signals
from long-dead civilisations, it would still be worth listening.
Firstly because the mere knowledge of the existance of intelligent
life elsewhere in the universe would justify the search.
Secondly, it's also possible that the transmission would include the
entire Encyclopedia Galactica - so even though the civilisation is
dead, it might pass on knowledge that would pay for SETI a million
times over.
So, whilst the shortness of the lifespan of civilisations is a concern,
it's not a reason not to search.
Don't they watch Star Trek? (Score:2)
But what about the Genesis Project? That planet came to life in just a few short years. Oh what horror to think that the reborn Spock might be left behind!
Is this really realistic? (Score:2, Insightful)
While this is as good a plan as any, i suppose, given the find-a-possibly-nonexistent-light-switch-in-the-d
I mean.. why would an intelligence compensate for doppler shift? The only reason i can think of that they would is if they were trying to beam "hello out there" signals into outer space. Do *we* (i.e. humans) compensate for doppler shift when we broadcast those random signals into space trying to find aliens? Or are they hoping to find interstellar communications between an alien race and its own starships?
And anyway, would this really work? I mean, everything in the universe is moving away from each other, but they're all doing it at different speeds. One would think that the signal the aliens put out would have to be specifically targeted at earth itself in order for its frequency to stay constant, if the signal was targeted at something else the frequency wouldn't drift at quite the right rate (assuming the way you compensate for doppler shift is, in fact, to vary your frequency) to be constant from earth.
Is any of this right?
Re:Is this really realistic? (Score:2)
If they are trying to make the signal stand out and shout "I'm intelligent" then yes.
The only reason i can think of that they would is if they were trying to beam "hello out there" signals into outer space.
That's a good reason for doing it.
Do *we* (i.e. humans) compensate for doppler shift when we broadcast those random signals into space trying to find aliens?
To my knowledge, nobody regularly and deliberately broadcasts into space so that some space aliens can pick it up. I can only remember it being done a couple of times for publicity purposes and I doubt anybody bothered to adjust the signals for doppler shift.
If our planet is a good model then the chances of finding another plant deliberaterly transmitting a signal so that it can be picked up by another planet are slim. However, if you are going to transmit, then sending a barycentric signal will make it stand out from all the other natural radio signals and say "I'm intelligent".
Or are they hoping to find interstellar communications between an alien race and its own starships?
I see that as being unlikely.
if the signal was targeted at something else the frequency wouldn't drift at quite the right rate (assuming the way you compensate for doppler shift is, in fact, to vary your frequency) to be constant from earth.
If they transmit their signal so that it is barycentric to their solar system and we correct the signals that we receive so that they are barycentric to our solar system then there will be no doppler shift due to planet rotation or motion around the sun. There will still be a doppler shift due to the relative motion of our solar system to their solar system but this is likely to only change very very slowly (and changes are what is important) and be of orders of magnitude smaller than a non corrected signal.
Number One on the SETI "Top 100" Hit Parade: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Number One on the SETI "Top 100" Hit Parade: (Score:2)
I suppose you could have the equivalent of stellar system "camping" - hopping around from place to place and sending out signals...
Are we broadcasting, too? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not talking about all the regular satellite communications. Are we intentionally broadcasting any messages for the universe at large?
And would regular satellite communications appear barycentric? It doesn't sound like it. So, if we're not broadcasting barycentric signals, why would we expect other lifeforms to broadcast them? Or are we braodcasting something barycentric? Can I tune in?
Re:Are we broadcasting, too? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not talking about all the regular satellite communications. Are we intentionally broadcasting any messages for the universe at large?
Short answer is no - apart from at least one PR message sent out from Aricebo in the 70's IIRC.
And would regular satellite communications appear barycentric? It doesn't sound like it. So, if we're not broadcasting barycentric signals, why would we expect other lifeforms to broadcast them? Or are we braodcasting something barycentric?
The current SETI efforts assume that we will be receiving signals from a beacon aimed at least generally in our direction and which will be very high power. This is obviously a big assumption, but the problem is that we don't have the technology at the moment to detect "alien TV"-strength signals. Those signals would be utterly missed by the Aricebo effort, as they are too weak to resolve against the background noise. The Square Kilometer Array [usska.org] radio telescope might be able to pick up alien TV signals out to a dozen or so light years.
Re:Are we broadcasting, too? (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, we are - but you don't want to tune in [manilow.com].
Re:Are we broadcasting, too? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a pretty reasonable approach, actually. Barycentric signals imply deliberate action. Further, they imply that the signals are intended to be received by someone or something (not necessarily us) beyond the immediate space about the transmitting planet.
SETI@Home is certainly not ignoring non-barycentric signals, they are only prioritizing the (literally) billions of potential 'hits' they have accumulated. I'm quite sure that if we started seeing large gaussians every time Arecibo swung past Proxima Centauri, nobody would ignore them even if the peaks Dopplered a bit from planetary orbital motion.
On the flip side, no--we are not broadcasting any barycentric signals right now. An alien SETI@Centauri project might assign us a slightly lower priority because we're not making a deliberate effort to be noticed. Nevertheless, continuous radio and television signals across multiple frequencies would probably make us quite an interesting target to any race with good enough detectors and large enough dishes.
Get Rid of Those Signals! (Score:2)
This just proves the conspiracy to hide alien life from us!
migrating aliens (Score:3, Funny)
When it comes to scoring signals, however, not all stars are equal. This is because, according to SETI wisdom, some stars are more likely to host a communicating alien civilization than others. Thus, for example, only main-sequence stars are considered for signal-scoring purposes, excluding red giants and white dwarfs. Short-lived stars, whose lifespan is only a few million years, are also excluded from consideration, since complex life would not have had time to evolve in such an environment. Nearby stars, on the other hand, get "extra credit" in their scoring, since it would be comparatively easier to communicate with civilizations in our galactic neighborhood than with those in distant parts of our galaxy or beyond. Finally, the more similar a star is to our own Sun, the higher its score, since it would be more likely to host a civilization similar to ours.
and maybe this sounds really really stupid and like i should stop watching star trek - but i don't actually watch it! but surely a far advanced alien race could be migratory and move to one of these less advanced planets. like maybe for the sunshine?
The 101st signal (Score:2)
I also wonder if they are going to put the most interesting signals in the middle of their dish time, so that the operators have some warm up time... Putting the most interesting ones first might not be such a good idea if the engineers haven't had a chance to have their coffee/tea/etc. kick in.
Tycho2 vs. Hipparcos (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, the astrometry (positions) in Hipparcos are better than in Tycho 2, and Hipparcos contains more information about the stars than Tycho 2 (e.g. variability), but still. I would in fact think that Tycho 2 would be better for SETI than Hipparcos, but they may have their reasons.
What I want to know... (Score:2)
Seeing a Spread Spectrum signal is very hard (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Seeing a Spread Spectrum signal is very hard (Score:3, Insightful)
Send a simple one, so that simple people can find me.
Or, send a hard one, and run away if anyone detects it.
Re:Seeing a Spread Spectrum signal is very hard (Score:3, Insightful)
whether you are trying to hear incidental transmissions (such at the
aliens' TV and radio broadcasts) - or whether you hope to hear
a signal that they are deliberately sending for other civilizations
(such as ours) to hear.
If it's the former - then I think we are already doomed because we
don't have enough sensitivity in the Aracebo detectors to hear signals
of that power over those distances.
If it's the latter - then it's pretty doubtful that they'd send something
that's so hard to detect and decode unambiguously. Spread-spectrum
signals are a LOT like white-noise with all kinds of pseudo-random
mangling going on. That's going to be EXCEEDINGLY hard to detect - so
why would the aliens be talking to us in that way.
For signals that we are INTENDED to receive, we have to assume that they
are DESIGNED to be easy to detect and unambiguously different from
other kinds of radio signal that we might see in space. Spread-spectrum
would be an exceedingly poor choice for that.
Suspicous process (Score:3, Interesting)
So are we reciprocating? (Score:2)
Other than the accidental leakage, are we beaming out anything intentional for SETI@marklar?
SBI@home.com (Score:2, Funny)
THEN - me and the buluga will chill and have beers
More info on the top 100 (Score:5, Interesting)
First, there is a program that can convert the work unit files into a wav file. I think it would be pretty cool to listen to some of these top 100 signals. I've played with the program on quite a few work units and never been able to hear anything but static. As strong as the top 100 signals are, you should actually be able to hear something.
Second, there are a few places on seti's and related sites that show a picture of what a good signal looks like. Why don't they take a grad student and make him run through the top 100 signals and record what the graphics look like when it is processed?
I've actually emailed them before and requested both of these. I've never gotten a response nor have they posted either. If they have, then I've just missed it.
WHOOOOHOOOOOO! (Score:4, Funny)
never mind....
Making it harder for considerate aliens? (Score:4, Funny)
transmitter far away from any other radio sources (like stars
and galaxies) - we shift the frequency to compensate for the
orbit of your planet around your sun - we listen to your
transmissions and send ours back on channels we know you
must be listening to - and we get modded down for all of
those things? Damn!
So what DO we have to do to get more Karma at Seti?
The first message will be something like... (Score:4, Funny)
I'm the ruler of Andromeda-3, an M Class Planet in the constellation of Andromeda. My father, the fifth ruler in the Pfthoskkkrkfhhdfkfk dinasty has been robbed. If you could lend me your intergalactic bank account so I can transfer my funds to Alpha Centauri...
What about our future? (Score:3, Insightful)
Many people are pessimistic. They think we're bad and getting worse. They expect that we will destroy ourselves soon, or sink into a dark age, or otherwise lose the ability to communicate with the stars. So they can imagine a galaxy full of life but not much of it communicating at any given time.
But let's suppose that things continue on as they have. Look at the grand sweep of human history. We see a continual growth of capability and power. Even a poor person today in the West has technology which would have been unavailable to the richest person in the world 100 years ago.
Imagine that this continues to happen. Technology not only advances, it speeds up. The next 100 years bring more changes than the last 1000 years. Nanotechnology, biotech, AI, physics advances; we could be living like gods in 100 years.
And let's assume that social trends continue. Racism and sexism was ubiquitous 100 years ago. Now they are recognized as great evils. As our power grows and our moral sensitivity increases, we will want to help those less fortunate than ourselves. We will end poverty and suffering among humans, because it will be easy compared to the power we have. We will turn to the higher animals, and do what we can to improve their lives as well.
And we will turn outwards. We will reach out into the galaxy with communications and explorations. It will take centuries, millennia, but as our capabilities grow we will eventually find even the great interstellar distances easy to cross. We will search the galaxy for life, ready to cherish and protect anything that we find. And if we could meet a culture less advanced than our own, we would do what we could to ease their suffering while still respecting their chosen path.
This may seem like an absurdly optimistic vision, but it's nothing different from what has happened in the past! Anyone who looks with clear eyes at the record of human history and who extrapolates it forward should see this as a very plausible and likely future path. The reason that it's not explored much in literature is because there aren't that many dramatic possibilities in a world which is as much improved over the present as our own world is over the past.
The point is that if this is the likely path for a civilization, it would suggest that other cultures in the galaxy would also be spreading outward and would probably be here by now. The fact that we don't see them, that we stumble along and still suffer great and preventable catastrophes, suggests that really life is not so prevalant in the galaxy after all.
So ironically, both the optimistic and the pessimistic view of humanity's future suggest that SETI won't work. The pessimists believe that any advanced culture will wipe itself out; and the optimists believe that such a civilization will spread through the galaxy and render aid to less developed worlds. Either way we won't find intelligent signals on our expensive radio telescopes.
Re:What about our future? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is delusional optimism. Anyone who looks with clear eyes at the record of human history (and pre-history) sees that localized human socieities follow a predictable pattern of expansion followed by dieback. Sometimes the cause is external -- war or invasion or disease or climate. Sometimes the cause is internal: stasis, political disorganization, social transformation, resource exhaustion. Every single piece of available evidence points to this conclusion -- yet you somehow manage to convince yourself of some privileged exceptionalism that will enable your society to endure? I have a bridge you might be interested in...
The various human civilizations that have energed since the Holocene were lucky to be existing in an especially mild inter-glacial period not characterized by hyper-aridity. This is a special and situational set of circumstances that cannot be exxpected to continue indefinitely.
OK... (Score:3, Interesting)
What are the odds of a random collision of atoms of a certain solar system producing life?
What are the odds of a random string of radio signals mimicking life?
If B>A, we have some problems.
Really hope they don't have an RIAA (Score:3, Funny)
Imagine some alien RIAA-like organization finds out about this SETI project that distributes their valuable inter-universal IP-protected radio signals to thousands of computers all over a damn whole planet!
Hopefully there's just a flat yearly fee we're allowed to pay to the broadcasters...
Their lawyers will go nuts if they ever find out.
Re:Suppose we get a signal... (Score:4, Funny)
sounds like your typical tech. support query.
Re:Suppose we get a signal... (Score:3, Insightful)
Who says two way communication is the only way we can take advantage of the finding? If they're more advanced than us at the time in their history when the signal was sent out into the cosmos, we'll learn a lot just by listening.
Imagine if 50 years ago, they could watch our current TV programs, listen to our current radio broadcasts, read the internet.
Hell, even if we don't advance because they're at the level we were at in the 20s, a LOT would change because aliens would be FACT instead of FICTION.
-Lucas
Re:Suppose we get a signal... (Score:2)
Not to cavemen, but those bluprints would be obtainable a couple thousand years later and would be useful to us in the mid 20th century.
You don't like puzzles, do you?
Re:Suppose we get a signal... (Score:2)
If we do get a radio signal from 30 Mil years back you can be sure as hell whoever sent it wasn't trying to talk to us.
Re:Suppose we get a signal... (Score:3, Funny)
*sound of head exploding*
Re:Copyright violation? (Score:2)
Oh, and btw, quit turning every goddamn post into a lame ass rant or joke about the RIAA or DMCA. Thank you.
Lets broadcast Copyrighted music into space! (Score:2)
Re:Hi SETI people.... (Score:2)
FEY: Scientists have discovered a gene which makes Onions water out eyes, creating the possibility for tearless onions
FEY: Hey guys, why don't you work on that whole CANCER thing...that's a bit more pressing, just put the onion project aside and CURE CANCER
Re:Hi SETI people.... (Score:2)
The reason that SETI@HOME has been embraced by the computer community at large is that the computer community has a large segment of individuals who
- have seen every Star Trek episode aired.
- live in eternal hope that their computer will be the one that provides evidence of extra-terrestrial life.
- don't care a tinker's cuss for a cure to cancer, because it doesn't affect them.
Re:Hi SETI people.... (Score:2)
I know I'm responding to an AC, but I hope that your grandmother didn't die alone. And I even hope that you don't die alone.
Never mind about life millions of light-years away, life that's dead by the time we might hear its "Hello, world". Concentrate on the life around you, before its gone.
Re:Hi SETI people.... (Score:2)
more relevant problems here on Earth (Score:2)
While there are most likely no practical aspects (see note) to finding extraterrestrial intelligence, the psychological possibilities range from none to downright stunning. First and foremost would be the effects on religion, wiping away any vestige of a trace of Galileo's persecution, but probably kicking up a new fuss. Not to mention that religion is used as an excuse for a great number of today's world's ills. (Notice I said 'excuse', not 'cause.') Second might well be a push to 'measure up' to the other example of intelligence.
Note: As for practical aspects, what if we found they were broadcasting information. Trojan Horse stories like Cosmos and Species abound. Stories have also keyed on the problems of being handed technology rather than discovering it.
Re:Hi SETI people.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Very noble of you. Among other things, I have spent my own time, not my computer's, working on cures for cancer. (Right now I'm back at school.) I could have been earning much better money pushing paper--actually, I took a 25% pay cut to do cancer research.
You know what? I was running SETI@Home on my computer at the time. And I don't feel guilty about it. Maybe there was a better use for those cycles, but I think of it as a sort of hobby for my computer. People who spend their spare time watching football, or playing with electric trains, or painting--forget what their computers are doing, shouldn't they be working on 'more relevant' problems?
Breast cancer killed my best friend's mother this summer. I would love to see a cure for cancer, as well as for any number of other diseases--Alzheimer's runs in my family, and my uncle has diabetes. But if fear of death is to set all of our priorities, leaving no room for a sense of wonder and exploration--what's the point of living?
If you really want to help people in a tangible way, please--go out and give blood. Not just after a terrorist attack, but every two months. Or volunteer at a food bank. Not just at Thanksgiving, or Christmas, but year round. Write a cheque to a charitable organization. If you can't afford that, write a letter to your government representative--tell them what their funding priorities should be.
Re:Hi SETI people.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Better still, what if the aliens have figured out how to upload your mind out of your meat body and into something more permanent.
We could all become IMMORTAL. Bwa ha. Bwa haha. Bwahahahahah!
Joking aside, contacting aliens would be a much more significant event than curing cancer. We already have a more than effective way to replenish the population on this planet.
Re:Promising? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Running seti@home causes global warming (Score:2)
with modern high end CPU's taking up 50-70W at full load thats like keep on a lightbulb on 24/7.
That's a great idea. If everybody leaves a lightbulb on (preferably outdoors) 24/7 instead of running Seti@Home, the aliens will be able to see us (at night, anyway).
When I get home from work, I'm shutting down Seti@Home and turning on my back porch light.