SETI Predicts We'll Find ETs by 2020 780
FTL writes "Based on the Drake Equation, Moore's Law, and the Allen Telescope, a new prediction has been made that Earth will make first contact with aliens within 20 years. Of course once we find the first aliens there's the question of can we decode their signals, would they spot our reply, and what's the lag time."
Other predictions (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Other predictions (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Other predictions (Score:5, Funny)
Not enough signal strength (Score:5, Insightful)
We can't currently pick up ET signals equivalent to what Earth is broadcasting to space, even if they were coming from Alpha Centauri; they're just too weak.
This is an analog problem of signal to noise ratio, far more than anything else, so faster processing won't help a bit.
A cryogenic Allen array (to minimize thermal noise), especially in space far from Earth, or on the far side of the moon, would help a tremendous amount.
Usually discussions about SETI itself don't bring that up, because of issues of optimism and such, but it was easy to find web hits on the eseentially identical question: can ETs pick up Earth signals?
"No", says this Seti League guest editorial "ET Detection of Earth TV Unlikely" [setileague.org] that goes into a little technical detail.
Similar comments [madsci.org] by John Dreher, Staff Astronomer, SETI Institute, although he goes on to assume that ETs would be able to pick up weaker signals than humans are able to -- assuming implicitly that ETs will have better analog technology than we do (maybe they do, but that doesn't help us to do the same).
What about ETs actually beaming a signal at us? Maybe they do so to all nearby stars, one by one. Maybe...would we do that?
"...it has been agreed by all relevant groups that we should not be actively sending out messages to try to reach other civilisations", says another page [setileague.org]
Ok, so we would not be so foolish as to attract undue attention from an unknown and possibly hostile galaxy, but maybe ETs will be more naive than that. Or a lot more confident (play ominous music here ;-)
So, bottom line, this is a cool topic, but are we planning to build a cryogenic Allen array in space in the next two decades?
I think we should, but any predictions really should be based largely on that one issue.
P.S. the recent lab verification of photons having orbital angular momentum, able to carry arbitrary amounts of information per photon, implies a new medium we'll need to check for ET signals. Maybe that's what all advanced civilizations use.
See e.g. Photons Spin More Data [photonics.com]
Re:Not enough signal strength (Score:3, Interesting)
That may be true now, but not necessarily in 20 years. Heck, in 20 years we may discover a more practical way to transmit over vast distances... and suddenly discover aliens are already trying to communicate with us.
Or maybe not. A lot can change in 20 years though.
Forget it... (Score:4, Funny)
Top Ten Questions about these aliens (Score:4, Funny)
1) Will the aliens be allowed to backup media that they legally own?
2) Do they have oil? Maybe we can go to war with them...
3) Will the aliens be hit with DirectTV threat letters from their Uranus for intercepting a crappy signal?
4) How will the $3,500 DirectTV blood money be converted into their currency?
5) Will the patent office be flooded with new alien claims to gifs, automatic software download and Linux? Maybe aliens created ELF?
6) Will they be covertly tagged with RDIFs when they arrive, so they can be tracked by Walmart?
7) Are these the same aliens that are on Opra and Jerry Springer, which thrive in our trailer parks?
8) Will jobs be outsourced or "co-sourced" to their planet? Will I have to wait on hold for 6 hrs for someone to translate my problem?
9) Can they work 14 hr days? You know, because they would be salaried employees of course.
10) Are they democrats or republicans? You know we don't really like independants
int27h
That's a coincidence (Score:2)
To Serve Man (Score:5, Funny)
That's some serious lag time (Score:2, Funny)
Re:That's some serious lag time (Score:2)
Re:To Serve Man (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To Serve Man (Score:3, Funny)
Re:To Serve Man (Score:5, Funny)
Re:To Serve Man (Score:3, Funny)
The aliens are canadian?
Re:To Serve Man (Score:3, Informative)
To Serve Man [amazon.com]
Spoiler: The Joy of Cooking [amazon.com] , with only one main ingredient.
From the link:
"To Serve Man" (March 2, 1962) adapted by Serling from Damon Knight's short story, is one of the most famous Zone episodes with its "Soylent Green" ending. A 9-foot tall Kanamit (Richard Kiel) has come to earth to create a golden age with the advanced technology of his race. However, Michael Chambers (Lloyd Bochner), a government decoding expert, learns to learn the true meaning of th
Re:I don't get these kinds of predictions (Score:2)
Re:I don't get these kinds of predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get these kinds of predictions (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Alien Phobia (Score:3, Funny)
But we might be an abberation. The rest of the universe may be all "peace-groovy, brother" and we got saddled with the wingnuts. Probably not though.
Mote in God's Eye (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah right.... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, wait.
Re:Yeah right.... (Score:3, Funny)
So now the monkeys are getting V1AG.RA spam, too?
Re:Yeah right.... (Score:4, Funny)
I predict... (Score:3, Funny)
I could be wrong.
Re:I predict... (Score:2)
Positronic Eon Copyright Act
Unfortunately, we only have observers in the Galactic Senate with no voting rights, and they're all farmers abducted from the 1950's and wouldn't understand the intricacies of Galactic Law.
Re:I predict... (Score:2)
ET (Score:2, Funny)
Just one problem. (Score:3, Funny)
Within 20 years? (Score:2, Insightful)
Problems (Score:3, Insightful)
And is their primary goal "To Serve Mankind?"...
Re:Problems (Score:2, Funny)
2020 eh? (Score:3, Funny)
Hate to tell ya, dudes... (Score:2, Funny)
What's to say... (Score:2)
Deadline! (Score:3, Funny)
Better wording (Score:4, Informative)
A better way to state this story is that within 20 years, SETI will have the capacity to detect transmissions from across our galaxy, rather than just a small slice of it. Whether or not there's any signal to pick up is another matter entirely...
Re:Better wording (Score:2)
That episode has always made me wonder if we could be in the same predicament. It could be that we're just "first". I'm sure that it would be wishful thinking for some people, but I would find it unfortunate.
Re:Better wording (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Better wording (Score:2)
Crowded galaxy (Score:2)
The Drake Equation is just a fancy way of saying SWAG (silly wild-ass guess). Personally, I find this SWAG to be wild high by several orders of magnitude.
Personally, my guess is that our galaxy has 0-5 other species actively transmitting.
Not misleading (Score:4)
It is another matter, but Shostak also addressed it in his prediction:
So not only doese he think we'll have the capacity to detect the transmissions, he also predicts that the transmissions are just waiting there for us to pick up, based on the Drake Equation.
Re:Better wording (Score:3, Interesting)
Prediction, or Guess? (Score:2)
I guess I'll go read that fine article now. :)
Re:Prediction, or Guess? (Score:2)
Re:Prediction, or Guess? (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/SET
If we consider only our galaxy:
N = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL
of which we have answers for
N* = number of stars in galaxy (~100billion)
fp = fraction with planets (at least ~20%)
ne = number planets per star that can spawn life (???)
fl = fraction on which life evolves (??? but if we discover life evolved on mars and earth separately we'll have to assume this is reasonably large, so this might be settled soon)
fi = % where intelligent life evolves (???)
fc = % which communicate (???)
fL = % of planetary lifetime during which communication takes place (currently we can assume this is a small non-zero value, and the longer we use radio waves the larger we can assume this value is).
fp is rising rapidly as we discover more and more extrasolar planets.
fL is rising steadily as our radio emitting civilization persists.
ne may be more accurately guessable once we find out if mars, venus or europa harbor or ever harbored life.
The key to the drake equation is that N* is a very very big number. And now that we know fp is not small (up to a few years ago many people argued that fp would be close to 0) we know that the other fractions need to be quite tiny to avoid having radio communicating civilizations other than our own around.
The big question is ... (Score:2)
What about the lag on THEIR end? (Score:2)
Consider this paragraph:
Within a generation, radio emissions from enough stars will be observed and analysed to find the first alien civilisation, Shostak estimates. But because they will probably be between 200 and 1000 light years away, sending a radio message back will take centuries.
Ok, if they are on roughly the same time line we are, they'd have to have sent the messages 200 to 1000 years ago for us to
I, for one,... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I, for one,... (Score:3, Funny)
You must be new here. Nothing is early on Slashdot. Just repost the story when you want to talk about it again. :)
Sounds like... (Score:2, Interesting)
Seems to me (Score:2)
We could stumble across a repeating, non-natural signal tomorrow, and granted this would be one of the top 3 (if not the greatest) scientific discovery ever, but it is unlikely we would be able to do anything with this discovery for a very, very long time. Understanding the message would probably take decades, sending a reply would take light years, and holding any kind of meaningful communication would requ
We know from the Movies... (Score:2, Funny)
Bigger Deal: Singularity or Discovery of Aliens? (Score:2)
Re:Bigger Deal: Singularity or Discovery of Aliens (Score:2)
Breaking News on Alpha Ceti 5 (Score:4, Funny)
Top Greeblorg scientists have determined that an alien species located on Sol 3 have discovered our civilization!
All radio and digitized light arrays should be temporarily taken off-line and back-ups of all data secured.
A phenomenon the Solerians refer to as Slash-Dotting is certain to disable all arrays with less than a direct quantum connection to the central data core
Greeblorg drones have assured the prime council that appropriate measures are in place to protect the central data core from damage, though interruption to communications to and from the central data core are likelyThat is all
16 years of radio lotto (Score:5, Insightful)
Making the large assumption that an alien race will go through a similar radio transmission curve, and considering the fact that we don't know how far away said alien civilization is, the chances of us finding them between now and 2020 seems very remote.
SETI Predicts? Erm, no. (Score:5, Interesting)
From the first sentence of TFA:
If Intelligent life exists elsewhere in our galaxy, advances in computer processing power and radio telescope technology will ensure we detect their transmissions within two decades (my emphasis)
Even if ETs do exist, there are a host of long-standing doubts about whether they'll be using "transmissions" (questionable), or whether those transmissions will be distinguishable from random noise (OK, probably).
Sensationalist, moi?
What if... (Score:5, Funny)
- Enlarge Your Penis
- Make $$$$ At Home
- A Letter from Npambara Ngamba: My Dear Friend, I am trying to move a large quantity of money out of my country...
True if... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Looking in the wrong place? (Score:2)
SETI brings to mind a picture of some remote tribe looking for smoke signals as a sign of intelligent communication while standing next to a satellite dish.
That sounds safe (Score:2)
Now that sounds like a safe prediciton. Rather like the we'll have flat-screen televisions that we just unroll and hang on the wall in 5 years that I've been hearing for the past twenty.
Seriously though, the idea that life must exist elsewhere, and will communicate in a method we can detect across interstellar distances, is still just that -- a theory.
RE: Wrong...I (Score:2)
I know this becasue I wrote it.
Finding lag time (Score:5, Funny)
ping -s -R -A inet6 -a aliencivilizations
Duh.
Is SETI Even On The Right Track? (Score:5, Insightful)
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
Re:Is SETI Even On The Right Track? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is SETI Even On The Right Track? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe because radio emissions aren't necessarily a result of communication? Lots of machinery generates RF, that's why the FCC has to approve electronic stuff in the USA before it's released.
"Also assuming that all intelligent life evolves along a similar timeline, we can assume that these other planets will emit radio signals for only a brief period of time."
We can't assume anything, we haven't met anybody else. Besides, even if we invent sub-space inverse tachyon communicators, who's to say radio would ever die out? It'll always be useful for something.
I agree it's a long shot, but what's the harm in looking? Dismissing stuff is a lot easier than searching for what might not exist. Life would be more primitive here if the former happened routinely.
Re:The Harm In Looking (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't quite agree with this logic. I mean, there's a matter of priorities. However, today, those priorities still seem to allow for the existence of Seti. (It'd be stupid to run it if we were fighting an army of Terminators, for example.)
T
Re:Is SETI Even On The Right Track? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is SETI Even On The Right Track? (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically he said it was naive to be listening to radio signals, and his reasoning was like yours (how long will we continue using such a techology?). He wanted to explore other alternatives, such as telepathy. Now, I don't believe in telepathy, but I thought his point was good.
Ironically, the man who wanted to explore telepathy is a found
BOINC (Score:2)
why lag time is significant (Score:2)
Good God Man! (Score:2)
BWAHAHAHAHA (Score:5, Informative)
Museum tour guide: This fossil is two million and nine years old.
Surprised visitor: How can you tell the date so accurately?
Guide: Easy. I've been working here nine years, and it was two million years old when I joined.
My point is, the Drake equation has so many variables that we can't even get a ballpark estimate of that any prediction based on it could easily be off by a couple of orders of magnitude.
Contact protocols (Score:2)
Reply? (Score:2)
find ets' by 2020 (Score:2)
Social Implications (Score:2)
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats, living together... mass hysteria!
What if... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, has anyone considered the possibility that the only intelligent life-forms in the universe maybe humans in past, present and future form ?
Next year's April 1st RFC (Score:3, Funny)
A Lightweight Extraterrestrial Intercommunication Network Transmission Protocol. ALIENTP
Now, ALIENTP is a protocol for transmission of data through high bandwidth - high latency (anywhere from 5s to 500 million years) networks....ALIENTP is composed of three basic components:
The HUMAN, the SPACE and the EXTRATERRESTRIAL. The HUMAN (Huge Uber-Manlike Android Noisemaker) sends a type of EM AM signal through SPACE (Some Place Allocated for Cosmic Entities) to the EXTRATERRESTRIAL (Ex-Xenophobia Technical Race of Aliens Trying to Extract Ridiculous Rural Eccentrics Solely for Tests Requiring Initial Anal Lubrication).....
I'm sick. I know
50% in 20? Try 25% in 45. (Score:3, Interesting)
And if you don't mind a little neo-liberal dig here, the unrestrained market is a superior rational process to the scientific method for estimating likelihood of events occuring. Especially events which involve a great deal of uncertainty, divergence of opinion, and emotion.
Having said that, Mr. Shostak is boldly taking a stand by stating any sort of probability at all and I approve of it. It's very possible that this new information will change singificantly the odds on the Foresight Exchange as the traders digest it.
Flaw in Drake Equation (Score:5, Interesting)
While the equation is clearly true since it's basically redundant, it may not elucidate the problem very well. This is because some of the terms may be nonlinearly coupled.
If interstellar propagation of a technological species is possible, the rate of emergence of such species is not independent of whether such species have emerged in the past. There is an ecological competition between hypothetical spacefaring species. Unless two such species emerge simultaneously and accomodate each other, the emergence of one will essentially foreclose the emergence of another.
If the rate of formation of stable technological civilizations is sufficiently low, and the rate of interstellar spread of such civilizations is sufficiently high, there will only be time for one such civilization to emerge per galaxy. By the time the second one could emerge, the first one would have filled the entire niche.
In this scenario, by virtue of the fact that we have emerged, we can conclude that no stable competitors have emerged yet.
In fact, my intuition is that the universe is in precisely this regime, and therefore that we are very unlikely to succeed in SETI.
Re:Flaw in Drake Equation (Score:3, Insightful)
What if we ARE ALREADY part of the spread? (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Or, there could be no aliens to contact.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Similarly, perhaps said races have been checking up on us ever 1,000 years or so. When they last visited in the 1400s, we were busy trying not to be killed by our own microbes,
Re:Or, there could be no aliens to contact.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of the key results of the 20th century involve the limits of what we can do. Godel incompleteness, and the speed of light to name two big ones. There is no indication at all that any civilisation, no matter how advanced, will be able to overcome the lightspeed problem and make us look like ants.
technology to visit the entire universe at will ("c"restrictions from the current physics knowledge notwithstanding).
You want the lightspeed thing to go away, don't you? Unfortunately wanting counts for nothing, and there's not a shred of evidence for that, and plenty against. Even given nigh-infinite knowledge, physical limits are physical limits.
Many, including me, believe that within about 100 years, a civilization like our would have the technology to visit the entire universe at will
It's entirely possible that a civilisation like our will, in 100 years, have A-bombed, bio-plauged, chemically poisoned or just polluted itself back to the early stone age. Or worse, wiped itself out entirely. I'm all for progress, but dude, go easy on the prozac.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We are alone in the galaxy (Score:5, Interesting)
Proof? Easy. Look up The Fermi Paradox. One of the corollaries that convince me is the fact that, even at sublight speeds, it only takes 1-10 million years to fill up a galaxy, since a race would tend to fill up in a geometric progression. Given how old the galaxy is, it should have happened by now. It only takes one race in billions of years to have wanderlust for earth-like planets, and boom! No more intelligent life rising up.
That it hasn't seem to have happened means we are alone.
Not convinced (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not convinced (Score:3, Insightful)
Intelligence is not all that important for survival in general, but survival from other slightly "better" creatures. Is a rabbit more intelligent than a fox when it runs faster? Maybe not, but the wolf may be more intelligent when it works with 5 other to catch some rabbits.
Ants, on the other hand, have been a
Re:Not convinced (Score:4, Insightful)
No, what we lack is precise knowledge that the earth is special. That is, we don't know the probability by which a planet has a big moon, or that it is near enough a star to sustain life. We don't know the very parameters of life, except that it exists on earth in great varieties.
Absent this knowledge, it is incorrect to assume that the earth is special, any more than a lottery winner should see herself as (too) special. If you only know of one lottery winner, then you'll be misled as to how often somebody wins the lottery if you try to extrapolate based on that ignorance.
The correct approach is to assume that we are one instance of random behavior, that the earth just happened to be so far from the sun, that we just happened to have a big moon, that we just happened to not have collided (yet) with another big object. We are likely a very special planet, but we really have very little clue whether we are special enough to claim exclusivity.
Once you accept this randomness assumption, then the probability of life (and therefore intelligent life) on another planet is entirely a matter of how many planets there are out there. The more, the likelier.
Remember that if you're a one-in-a-million kind of guy, there are more than 1,000 people in China alone just like you.
Extraterrestrial Disaster Scenarios (Score:3, Interesting)
EXTREMELY alien (Score:3, Insightful)
But the truth is, only the evolutionary history of earth could have produced humans. Slight changes at various points in our history could have radically altered what came to be the dominant life form and if that form was even all that bright.
Some stuff I was watching on the Science channel recently explained that it was an ice age that created selective pressure in favor of hominids who were smarter, because our ancestors had to adapt to a changing environment faster than evolution could adapt. Only the hominids who could IQ their way around the problems (ie. invent clothing) were able to survive.
Now, when it comes to aliens who evolved in an environment that is completely different from ours and with little or no possibility of us having common ancestors, you really can't expect much similarity.
Now, we do live in the same universe with the same physical laws, which means they probably use some of the same chemistry. For instance carbon seems to be a much better basis for building life forms than the alternatives. Also, liquid water is a much better environment than the alternatives.
We have to ask, for instance, if life can evolve in radically different temperature ranges. Can life evolve in liquid methane? How about molten iron? We do see some rather interesting "extremopholes" here on earth, but I suspect it's easier to adapt to an extreme environment than to evolve there in the first place. (That is, there may be life still on Mars from when it had liquid water, but it's a completely inhospitable environment for abiogenesis.)
We assume that their math will be similar. I mean, if their technology is advanced enough that they could do, say, quantum computation, and they have electrons whose spin they can manipulate, well, presumably, they would have a concept that allowed them to distinguish between one electron, and then two electrons, and then three electrons. That is to say, electrons are discrete quanta, so if you're going to deal with them, you have to be able to count them. So we can assume that an alien culture will have that. But can we really assume that? What about a world 100% covered in water where live evolved in such a way that there aren't separate organisms, but really every living thing is just a part of the same continuous organism, where everything is connected in some way. If you evolved to live in a world where you perceive everything as continous and you therefore have no concept of discrete objects, then can you count? (I agree that there are some lousy assumptions here, but go with me here.)
Much too much of our world seems fundamental to us because this is the environment we evolved in. For instance, predators had an effect on our evolution. Naturally, the aliens would have different evolutionary pressures... throughout all of the billions and billions of years in their evolution, completely different from ours. So, consider a world, for example, where metalic iron is sticking out of the ground all over the place. Think about how inhabitants would evolve to make use of this ubiquitous natural resource the way humans evolved to make use of wood and animal bones. (Or more fundamentally, how our cells evolved to make use of carbon compounds as building blocks.)
Alien life could be so different that we might not even recognize it as life. No matter what you conjecture about what alien life might be like, if/when we ever do discover it, it'll be nothing like what you expect.
Who is this SETI I keep hearing about....? (Score:4, Informative)
It's time for my usual rant... SETI isn't a guy, SETI isn't an organization, SETI isn't a project. Saying "SETI predicts we'll find ETs by 2020" is like saying "Political Science ate tuna for lunch today"
This prediction wasn't made by "SETI," it was made by a person, Seth Shostak. Seth Shostak doesn't work for "SETI," he works for an organization called the "SETI Institute." Some people at the SETI Institute do search for extraterrestrial intelligence, but I would guess that most do not. As a corellary to that, most people in the world that search for extraterrestrial intelligence professionally are not associated with the SETI institute.
Seth is also an optimist and to some extent a salesman. He's not going to get donations for the SETI institute and the Allen Telescope by saying that it's never going to happen. Therefore he uses an optimistic Drake equation that results in 50,000 communicating civilizations in the galaxy.
I, on the other hand, am more inclined to base my predictions on what we actually know, rather than optimism. My computation of the Drake equation puts an upper limit to the number of civilizations in the galaxy at 750,000. It also puts a lower limit of one civilization per 2 million galaxies. We don't have enough information to make a more specific prediction than that!
Re:Do we really want to meet aliens? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Except... (Score:2, Insightful)
What complicates matters is the assumption that a technological civilization that has this technology is still primitive enough to pump out massive amounts of EM radiation in all directions to communicate with other individuals around them.
Even here on primitive ol' Earth we can see where EM communication is going... directed beam, spread-spectrum, low-power wireless mesh, encrypted (ie. reandom-looking) digital, and that
Re:And I predict (Score:3, Insightful)