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SETI Needs Your Help to Resume Search for Extraterrestrial Life

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Re: SETI Needs Your Help to Resume Search for Extraterrestrial Life

#31

Post by cryptoz »

hugh3 wrote: post #28
jackpirate wrote: post #13

Has SETI actually found anything scientifically useful? (This is an honest question.)

Yes, it's found a wealth of evidence that there aren't currently alien radio signals being beamed at us. At least, in the directions we've looked, at the frequencies we've checked, within our feeble human understanding of what a signal should look like, we haven't seen any signals. That's useful information. But the returns rapidly diminish. The first thirty seconds you use checking to see if your car keys are under…

SETI has scanned the tiniest fraction of the nearby places to look. We're still in the first 30 seconds of couch-looking. It'll be centuries before we're at the 2 hour mark.

Also, as the exoplanet hunt gets better and better, SETI gets more and more data about which stars are the best ones to look at.

Re: SETI Needs Your Help to Resume Search for Extraterrestrial Life

#32

Post by cryptoz »

hugh3 wrote: post #29
ceejayoz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has SETI actually found anything scientifically useful? Would you also reject a research grant for a potential cancer cure based on the fact that the researcher hasn't cured cancer?

No, but if the hypothesis were "lemons cured cancer", and decades of evidence had failed to show any evidence of lemons curing cancer, and the researchers are still saying "Hmmm, maybe we need to cut the lemons up in a different way" then I'd be disinclined to continue funding it.

What if your researches had been looking at only 100 cells of the billions/trillions of cells in the lungs (for example), and they said they'd like to expand to 200 of the maybe 100,000,000,000 cells available.

Do you still want to discontinue the search? It seems a bit premature at this point.

Re: SETI Needs Your Help to Resume Search for Extraterrestrial Life

#33

Post by dkersten »

jackpirate wrote: post #13

Has SETI actually found anything scientifically useful? (This is an honest question.)

Personally I wish the resources were put into folding@home and other similar projects. SETI did at least create the technology for this, which is great, but I personally don't find the project itself as anything useful.

Re: SETI Needs Your Help to Resume Search for Extraterrestrial Life

#34

Post by icefox »

blhack wrote: post #21
farnsworth wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren't the Pyramids an expression of ego, and the Colosseum a sports arena? That said, I love the Sagan Series and agree with the spirit of your post.

Wasn't the Apollo program just a show of force against the Russians? Wasn't the shuttle the same thing? Wasn't SETI just a pointless project by a bunch of those pesky nerds? Do you think that the Pyramids or the Colosseum were a waste of money?

The space program was a way to get photographic intel on Russia something America didn't have much of. By letting the Russians get into space first we were then allowed to have photographic satellites that went over them without having legal issues which was worth the trade off of letting them get up their first.

One of the features of the Shuttle was that it provided a way to carry large items to and from space while safe and hidden inside of the vehicle.

Re: SETI Needs Your Help to Resume Search for Extraterrestrial Life

#35

Post by davidhollander »

blhack wrote: post #3

If you haven't yet seen the wonderful "Sagan Series" on youtube, start with this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHuve33yOVY or this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxsJeND_D-k&feature=relat... Honestly, watching this chokes me up a little bit. Watching the last shuttle flight, then seeing SETI have to realistically think about parking all of their listening equipment is just...sad. Too many people get caught…

>It's disgusting that we can spend as many billions of dollars a year as we do on blowing each other up, but things like "Let's see what's on the other side of that proverbial mountain" get defunded because they're "pointless".

?? The SETI institute is a California non-profit organization. The government cannot defund it, because it receives no government funding. It is financed entirely by private contributors.

Re: SETI Needs Your Help to Resume Search for Extraterrestrial Life

#36

Post by botker »

blhack wrote: post #21
farnsworth wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren't the Pyramids an expression of ego, and the Colosseum a sports arena? That said, I love the Sagan Series and agree with the spirit of your post.

Wasn't the Apollo program just a show of force against the Russians? Wasn't the shuttle the same thing? Wasn't SETI just a pointless project by a bunch of those pesky nerds? Do you think that the Pyramids or the Colosseum were a waste of money?

The Pyramids and the Colosseum were both build by slaves. With a tax rate of 100%, it's easy to believe that money was wasted.

Re: SETI Needs Your Help to Resume Search for Extraterrestrial Life

#37

Post by blhack »

davidhollander wrote: post #35
blhack wrote: post #3

If you haven't yet seen the wonderful "Sagan Series" on youtube, start with this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHuve33yOVY or this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxsJeND_D-k&feature=relat... Honestly, watching this chokes me up a little bit. Watching the last shuttle flight, then seeing SETI have to realistically think about parking all of their listening equipment is just...sad. Too many people get caught…

> It's disgusting that we can spend as many billions of dollars a year as we do on blowing each other up, but things like "Let's see what's on the other side of that proverbial mountain" get defunded because they're "pointless". ?? The SETI institute is a California non-profit organization. The government cannot defund it, because it receives no government funding. It is financed entirely by private contributors.

Think bigger.

We as a species devote a tremendous amount of our resources to killing each other. Why don't we devote more to exploration?

Wars are justified by governments as an investment in the future. We want to "secure the middle east", etc.

Why isn't science looked at in the same light? It's an investment in the future.

Re: SETI Needs Your Help to Resume Search for Extraterrestrial Life

#38

Post by hugh3 »

cryptoz wrote: post #32
hugh3 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but if the hypothesis were "lemons cured cancer", and decades of evidence had failed to show any evidence of lemons curing cancer, and the researchers are still saying "Hmmm, maybe we need to cut the lemons up in a different way" then I'd be disinclined to continue funding it.

What if your researches had been looking at only 100 cells of the billions/trillions of cells in the lungs (for example), and they said they'd like to expand to 200 of the maybe 100,000,000,000 cells available. Do you still want to discontinue the search? It seems a bit premature at this point.

No, but I'd want to see a better methodology than the one that can only check 1e-9 of the available search space every few decades.

Re: SETI Needs Your Help to Resume Search for Extraterrestrial Life

#39

Post by davidhollander »

blhack wrote: post #37
davidhollander wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's disgusting that we can spend as many billions of dollars a year as we do on blowing each other up, but things like "Let's see what's on the other side of that proverbial mountain" get defunded because they're "pointless". ?? The SETI institute is a California non-profit organization. The government cannot defund it, because it receives no government funding. It is financed entirely by private contributors.

Think bigger. We as a species devote a tremendous amount of our resources to killing each other. Why don't we devote more to exploration? Wars are justified by governments as an investment in the future. We want to "secure the middle east", etc. Why isn't science looked at in the same light? It's an investment in the future.

My point was simply that SETI isn't related to the NASA funding debate, and the OP wanted to connect the two via an emotional space shuttle reference.

>Why don't we devote more to exploration?

Maybe because people are failing to communicate its benefits clearly? For instance, the OP:

war==bad + assertion of disgust --> X==good

X could be anything. ANYTHING. Why aren't we investing more in wooden shoes? Didn't you know war is bad? Even if X==good, I hope people are inoculated against these type of arguments.

Re: SETI Needs Your Help to Resume Search for Extraterrestrial Life

#40

Post by stuhood »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #7
heyrhett wrote: post #2

Do they accept bitcoin?

Can you buy anything with bitcoins other than drugs right now? edit: I know someone will roll their eyes at this comment and proceed to defend bitcoin, but seriously - what can SETI buy with bitcoins that's useful to them? And "anything people are willing to sell, man, it's just a currency!" is a trivial answer.

Hardware. http://www.memorydealers.com/
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