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SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

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Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#31

Post by transphenomenal »

palish wrote: post #25
jackowayed wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure there's that much chance for profit even if you do find aliens, at least not directly from the information you'd get from the aliens. These aliens would be many light years away. (absolute minimum ~5, right?) So for a long time you'd just be receiving signals (because it would take at the very least 10 years for your first message to get to them and them to respond). First of all, the signals you'd recei…

I've been thinking about faster-than-light communication recently. Consider gravity. Is its effect instantaneous? That is, gravity varies as the inverse of the square distance between two bodies. If, say, the Earth were to suddenly get much closer to the Moon, would that gravitational effect be "instant"? Or does it propagate at the speed of light? If gravitation is somehow "instant", then one could imagine an appara…

Gravity propogates at the speed of light. However, using gravity to send information will allow you to send information through most objects like Earth or the Sin without any satilites to redirect it around the object.

Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#32

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

demallien wrote: post #23
barisme wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates might rather cure river blindness, malaria and cholera. He's at that stage when a billionaire thinks about humanitarian legacy. Similar to Andrew Carnegie and the moguls of that generation.

Discovering another instance of intelligent life would be one of the most profound transformational experiences that we could have as a species. I would think that there would be more than one billionaire out there that would like their name to be associated with such a discovery.

Possibly, but the chances of it happening are very very small, even with adequate funding.

Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#35

Post by xnerdr »

worldvoyageur wrote: post #2

This is sad to read, but perhaps an opportunity in disguise. It is a risk for any firm to be highly dependent on one customer for most of its revenue and SETI appears to have been highly dependent on US government funding. It is dangerous to make conclusions based on a newspaper article, but it seems they found $50 million in private donations way back when to build the network. Now they can't find $2.5 million per y…

I'd be reluctant to invest more in an investment that has never paid off. They're searching for signs of life. Signs found so far = 0. Thats a pretty bad ROI.

Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#36

Post by [deleted] »

danenania wrote: post #24
sliverstorm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is possible. I'd argue though that if 2 instances of life exist (them and us), n instances must exist, (and thus some must use radio waves) because it clearly demonstrates humanity wasn't a freak septillion-to-one occurrence that shouldn't have happened.

Interesting point, but given the amount of randomness involved in evolution, the physical complexity of cognition, and the timescales involved, is it possible that even given massive numbers of cognitively advanced species in the universe, each could have such a fundamentally distinct ontological relationship to reality and model of the physical universe that even a concept as seemingly scientifically basic as a 'rad…

[deleted]

Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#37

Post by robryan »

xnerdr wrote: post #35
worldvoyageur wrote: post #2

This is sad to read, but perhaps an opportunity in disguise. It is a risk for any firm to be highly dependent on one customer for most of its revenue and SETI appears to have been highly dependent on US government funding. It is dangerous to make conclusions based on a newspaper article, but it seems they found $50 million in private donations way back when to build the network. Now they can't find $2.5 million per y…

I'd be reluctant to invest more in an investment that has never paid off. They're searching for signs of life. Signs found so far = 0. Thats a pretty bad ROI.

Sure with that kind of short term thinking we will never get anywhere. It is far to early to call the investment a failure, in relative timescales it would be like calling a new school a failure because it had a bad first day.

Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#38

Post by MichaelApproved »

"There is a huge irony," said SETI Director Jill Tartar, "that a time when we discover so many planets to look at, we don't have the operating funds to listen."

That sounds more unfortunate than ironic. It would be ironic if funding went directly from SETI to the satellite which found the planets.

Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#39

Post by thaumaturgy »

demallien wrote: post #23
barisme wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates might rather cure river blindness, malaria and cholera. He's at that stage when a billionaire thinks about humanitarian legacy. Similar to Andrew Carnegie and the moguls of that generation.

Discovering another instance of intelligent life would be one of the most profound transformational experiences that we could have as a species. I would think that there would be more than one billionaire out there that would like their name to be associated with such a discovery.

I'm rather bullish on matters of space exploration, but I'm pretty skeptical about just how profoundly transformational a SETI discovery would be. If there were such a discovery, it would be beset by difficult-to-imagine communication challenges, not the least of which is a years- or decades-long delay between sending a signal and receiving any response.

There have also been some cogent arguments that it might be in the best interests of our own self-preservation to not broadcast our presence, for now, just because we are still technologically primitive. Being loud represents a big wager that anything else within hearing distance is friendly.

I'm mostly disappointed at this announcement because it is part of a trend in dwindling government support for exploration.

Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#40

Post by ramchip »

palish wrote: post #25
jackowayed wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure there's that much chance for profit even if you do find aliens, at least not directly from the information you'd get from the aliens. These aliens would be many light years away. (absolute minimum ~5, right?) So for a long time you'd just be receiving signals (because it would take at the very least 10 years for your first message to get to them and them to respond). First of all, the signals you'd recei…

I've been thinking about faster-than-light communication recently. Consider gravity. Is its effect instantaneous? That is, gravity varies as the inverse of the square distance between two bodies. If, say, the Earth were to suddenly get much closer to the Moon, would that gravitational effect be "instant"? Or does it propagate at the speed of light? If gravitation is somehow "instant", then one could imagine an appara…

Instantaneous gravity exists in Newtonian mechanics but not in modern theories. Gravitation is thought to be transmitted by gravitational waves, which have a finite speed of c. It is not possible to transmit information at a faster speed than light in special relativity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Relativity#Gravitationa...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity#Causality_an...

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