As long as no one tries to contact anyone, why not.
Astronomers want public funds for intelligent life search
51–60 of 107 posts
Re: Astronomers want public funds for intelligent life search
#52I think some commenters are forgetting how science is done. Just because you are researching X does not mean your only output is X. An investment into SETI is an investment in science and technology. All the arguments on this forum about why we should not allocate funds to SETI can be used in the same manner for why we should not investment in pure mathematics or any other potentially "useless" human endeavor. SETI r…
Additionally, of all the pure science research we do with public money, the discovery of alien intelligence would have probably the greatest impact on human day-to-day life.
Many of the other commenters seem to believe the research would fail. .... something we obviously cannot possibly know without doing the research.
The only thing prior SETI research has demonstrated is that no one is purposely beaming a signal right at us. ...which is actually pretty informative. ...after all, being totally alone in the universe seems somewhat less plausible than the opposite.
Re: Astronomers want public funds for intelligent life search
#53I often imagine there is something like "subspace" or faster-than-light communication, and species across our galaxy are a bunch of chatterboxes chatting away. The only problem is we don't know how to tune in to join the conversation. I still think we should keep trying to find them, though.
My suspicion is that they are communicating at frequencies we can't modulate/demodulate yet. Look how short of a time it took us to get from KHz to GHz. Since there's a trade-off in that the higher the frequency- the more data can be transmitted in a given time, it makes sense that intelligent species would try to increase their transmission frequencies as a matter of course- like we did.
The downside trade-off is that transmissions become more and more strictly line-of-sight at higher frequencies.
Re: Astronomers want public funds for intelligent life search
#54The US hasn't even stabilised its environment, healthcare and any number of other important areas of basic human needs. Money for finding extra-terrestrial life would be better spent on earth fixing the mess. Or use it to get us to mars. At least that fits with a "plan B" since humans existing "only on earth" is still a bad idea. Same goes for moon exploration / asteroid mining. Good ideas. Raw resources shouldn't be…
If this were the bar for doing pure research, we'd never do any pure research ever.
The average quality of life in the US has never been higher.
Re: Astronomers want public funds for intelligent life search
#55As long as no one tries to contact anyone, why not.
SETI has demonstrated that no one is beaming a signal right at us.
There might be a reason for that, other than them simple not existing.
Re: Astronomers want public funds for intelligent life search
#56I think some commenters are forgetting how science is done. Just because you are researching X does not mean your only output is X. An investment into SETI is an investment in science and technology. All the arguments on this forum about why we should not allocate funds to SETI can be used in the same manner for why we should not investment in pure mathematics or any other potentially "useless" human endeavor. SETI r…
> High risk with the highest reward. What could fundamentally change humanity more than definitively finding intelligent life out there?
That's kind of ridiculous when you look at the odds. It's like saying playing the lottery every single day is a good investment because it's potentially high reward when in fact you are just basically fooling yourself.
There is probably close to zero chances that there is any kind of intelligent life living in our proximity (i.e. anything that could be reachable by human means), and even if there is any kind of life out there, what do we do with it if we can't travel there and directly observe it? Also, the reason the odds are against it is that galaxies are violent places and the Earth has been lucky to have been relatively stable climate for a very long time, enabling the development of life. I would bet that Earth-like planets may have the seeds for life elsewhere but get routinely massively disrupted in some fashion by external factors.
In any case, resources are limited, and there's sufficient abundance of projects with more tangible real-world applications that will be prioritized for good reasons.
> Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu
Science-Fiction is just that: Fiction. I hope we don't make investments or bets based on fantasy novels.
Re: Astronomers want public funds for intelligent life search
#57I crunched for years on seti@home at the turn of the century and have always been a fan of the project. It makes sense to increased research funding now that they have a long list of newly discovered planets to target, but what other scientific endeavors do they retire to open up any meaningful government funding? With trillion dollar deficits in the forecast, earmarking new money does not sound like an easy task to…
> I crunched for years on seti@home at the turn of the century and have always been a fan of the project. What I told people was that Seti@Home was a waste of time, but Mersenne Prime finding was a useful idea: "GIMPS, founded in 1996, has discovered the last 17 Mersenne primes." https://www.mersenne.org/
Has the discovery of these 17 primes been useful in any way for further mathematics analysis? Are there any hypotheses or theorems about Mersenne primes that have used the facts about these 17 particular numbers in any way?
Re: Astronomers want public funds for intelligent life search
#58I'm all for it. Poverty and inequality will "never" be solved and a tiny fraction of our GDP going to this, will not be be felt. On the other hand, it may change our life, maybe even short term...money on research can bring results.
While i agree that shooting down any research with "think about poverty" is a bad argument, I think there are still much more important ways to spend money than this: anti-aging drugs developed by sens.org, gene drive to kill mosquitos, any technologies to build colony on mars etc . This is why it is important to have many people deciding for themselves on what to spend their money. If there are enough people who are…
The government has been in the business of basic research since science was a thing. Funding from taxes is a more fundamental component of the scientific process than peer review (a more recent development).
Re: Astronomers want public funds for intelligent life search
#59I think some commenters are forgetting how science is done. Just because you are researching X does not mean your only output is X. An investment into SETI is an investment in science and technology. All the arguments on this forum about why we should not allocate funds to SETI can be used in the same manner for why we should not investment in pure mathematics or any other potentially "useless" human endeavor. SETI r…
Fundamental physics or esoteric math are funded for several reasons, one of which is that they engender humbleness in society. These fields are among the most intellectually demanding of all, and by trying to do these difficult things, what we should learn as a society is that we are not done and we don't know it all, and can't do it all.
SETI particularly has this extra humbleness benefit, because it reminds us as a society that the journey that began from earth at the center of the universe, and is currently halted at, humans are unique in this universe, is not over. If we stop doing SETI, as a society, our egos will flare. If don't stop, we will forever be in the shadows of possible alien intelligences who could be far more intellectually advanced than us.
By doing SETI, we also are reminded that our science, and our viewpoint of the world is from a very human point of view, a very limited view, that could bear expanding.
Re: Astronomers want public funds for intelligent life search
#60We have already found alien species. Right here on this very same planet: Dinosaurs. We would have never even known about their existence if we had not chanced upon their remains. So it's not just the vast distances of space that separates species from each other, it's also incomprehensible stretches of time. Just from the amount of variables involved and their ranges (the number of planets, the extreme environments…
Dinosaurs are just beakless ducks. If you want to blow your mind, take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_biota