Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

Post by 4714 » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:31 AM UTC

murbard2 wrote: post #164

Pigo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feels like too much assumption to me. The scenario described well by Michio Kaku is the only one that seems probable to me. "Lets say we have an ant hill in the middle of the forest. And right next to the ant hill, they're building a ten-lane super-highway. And the question is 'Would the ants be able to understand what a ten-lane super-highway is? Would the ants be able to understand the technology and the inten…

The only thing this argument has going for it is sounding wise by virtue of being self-deprecating. If there are structured radio signals being emitted, it matters not whether or not we understand what the aliens are up to, if it hits a sweetspot between noise and simplicity we can tell it's a signal. And no, "radio waves" aren't the equivalent of "smoke signals", if there are better ways to communicate across space,…

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:19 AM UTC

nicboobees wrote: post #103

jessriedel wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually exactly my philosophy [1]. I agree with each of your examples (water on mars, photos of Pluto, early-universe cosmology). Nonetheless, the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence is in a completely different league. The random guys on the street will not only care about this tremendously, he will care for the same correct reasons that scientists care . [1] Minus the part about it being a waste of t…

So we find out there's some creatures on Pluto that are roughly the same as frogs. How does that impact anyones life? It'd be an interesting fact, and maybe fun if we could move some over here as pets, but beyond that, it's a colossal waste of energy and money.

Post by onedev » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 7:06 AM UTC

happyscrappy wrote: post #28

melling wrote: post #14

I wish someone would instead come up with a project to really capture the public's attention about space exploration. More interest means more funding. The U.S. Budget is measured in billions. The New Horizons project, for example, only cost $700 million. The Lunar X Prize might have been that project but it doesn't seem to be making progress: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Lunar_X_Prize http://lunar.xprize.o…

I know America is supposed to lead the way but Europe is larger and richer and has a space budget one third of NASA.

Post by nicboobees » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 12:15 PM UTC

rybosome wrote: post #222

nicboobees wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. But it's a pursuit individuals should pursue. If you want to go explore mars, go ahead! I'm sure it'd be great fun. But it should absolutely not be anything to do with public money, taxes, grants etc. Leave it completely to rich people and companies to waste their money on.

Citizens of London would likely have felt the same way if they learned about Michael Faraday's experiments with electricity which were funded by the Royal Society, given that electricity was considered a party trick at the time. A government which spends public money on scientific exploration is doing its job to guard society against the cost of lost discoveries.

Post by chc » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 6:13 PM UTC

fivedogit wrote: post #228

chc wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's noisier, but it isn't a louder signal. We're talking about detecting alien species across vast distances. You can't do that by looking at a planet's light pollution AFAIK, because giving off this level of light is just not very notable — the sun reflecting off our planet is much brighter.

But sunlight reflecting off a random planet (including ours) is not useful. Sure, you can detect it, but it doesn't say anything about whether the planet has intelligent life or not. It would just be noise in the cosmos, no signal. I'm not a physicist, but my understanding is that all EM frequencies -- visible light, radio, infrared, etc -- travel away from earth at the same speed (c). Since space has (almost) nothin…