SETI@Home 2nd Look at Possible Hits 438
cpk0 writes "This article from MSNBC discusses how data returned from SETI@Home users is beign retested by the Institue for a possibility of alien radio signals being included. At just over 4 years old, I think this would be the first big break for SETI@home."
This is a followup to a December Slashdot story. Apparently this is getting some major attention in the mainstream media lately.
could be just what we need... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:5, Funny)
Then I can see us taking over that race, cuz those fuckers would NEVER see that shit coming.
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:2)
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:5, Funny)
My Favorite Jack Handey (Score:3, Funny)
One day my son asked me "why does it rain?" I told him it rained when God was crying. Then he said "why would God cry?" and I told him "Oh, probably because of something you did."
My favorite Jack Handey (Score:3, Funny)
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:2)
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, THEY would probably be able to kick OUR collective asses since what they would need to gain the security of being able to have a society free of crime, war, and violence is the ability to kick anybody's ass.
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:3, Interesting)
IMO it's more like who has the board with the big nail and who has the supernova-inducing solar system destroyer.
The chances of an alien race developing at about the same time as us (thereby giving them technology that's only a bit better than ours) are essentially nonexistent. Aliens are most likely to either be way behind us or way ahead of us.
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:5, Interesting)
I wrote a short story on this subject. When they step foot off of their ship, just like any other visitors to a foreign shore we greet them with open arms. They come in peace... they don't want our oil... They don't want our water...
They want to convert us...
Makes sense if you think about it. Missionaries would be on that first ship, my friends. And if you think the whole Arab vs. Jewish vs. Christian thing that's playing itself out right now looks bad, just imagine an alien religion gaining mass numbers of converts (free technology, free alien schools, nice little carrot there)and the opposition to it...
Summary: Just because they are free of crime, war and violence doesn't mean that those buggers won't spell trouble!
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:4, Funny)
The Mormon's have already condemned me to Hell, so I might as well take the planet with me for company.
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:3, Interesting)
>I can imagine a beautiful, peaceful alien race. Free of crime, war, and violence.
The aliens land. They want peaceful relations with us.
I can then imagine some insane nutcase attacking the aliens using chemical weapons. Probably for religious reasons (they don't worship Ala or somesuch, even though the political leadership may not actually be "believers" themselves). Or perhaps for political reasons, they aren't picking sides in <favorite conflict>. Or the aliens pick the wrong side by siding against the blowing up of civilian busses, pizza parlors, etc. Or the aliens interfere with soverign powers because the aliens are against the poverty and oppression of the mass population by a few nutcase greedy dictators.
But hey, I'm being too pessimistic. I should trust in the goodwill of insane madmen not to do stupid things. The discovery of aliens would completely invalidate any possible motive (right or wrong, regardless of disagreements with other nations) for being on the brink of war.
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:3, Funny)
A/S/L Wanna?
The late great Carl Sagan once wrote (Score:5, Insightful)
We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Re:The late great Carl Sagan once wrote (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot vs UT (Score:4, Funny)
Just an idea...
Shoot AlQuida a copy please (Score:2)
Re:The late great Carl Sagan once wrote (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:5, Funny)
Aliens come to Earth and tell us that they seeded our planet years ago
World leaders feverishly work to hammer out their differences in the days before the aliens return.
When they return, they are handed a huge treaty as we stand back and proudly proclaim "Peace in our time."
The alien laughs.
"No, you misunderstood. We breed warriors."
Either that (Score:2, Funny)
"Hey...that data sounds just like a....Higgs Boson!"
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:3, Funny)
"This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council. As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less that two of your Earth minutes. Thank you."
You left out the most RELEVANT part! (Score:4, Funny)
What do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centuri?!!!
If you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, then that's your own lookout. "
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:2)
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:5, Interesting)
In general, there's two ideas of how a civilization will growth over time. One is that civilization may rise, but at some point in their technological advancement, events occur as to bring the fall of the civilization, thus the civilization's time in the universe is a mere blip relative to the time scale. The other idea is that a civilization can continue to expand technologically to some nth degree, but they will continue to remain in the universe indefinitely, thus meaning that they're civilization time is long on the order of the universe time.
Now, if civilizations were stricts of the first type, then the chances of two civilizations ever finding each other would be extremely, extremely low, while in the latter case, chances will continually improve with time. Thus, if SETI works and finds some alien signal, then there's a reasonable chance that our civilization will follow the latter model, which is a good thing. Of course, it's impossible to proof the difference between the two models until it's too late, but it's a starting point...
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:5, Insightful)
Jesus H. The world is not on the "brink of war". We are on the brink of some minor-league military action jammed down our throats by an obsessive man whose own mistakes in life were always covered up by lawyers, influence, and money and who "missed" his own chance to kill commies when the NVA refused to attack Texas by air at the same time that uberliberal Kerry was taking automatic fire from VC hidden along the Mekong and pinko Kerrey was getting his SEAL leg blown off by a Charlie grenade.
Oh, by the way, read the Constitution. We have not been at war since 1945.
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:3, Funny)
And, speaking of obsessive...
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:4, Insightful)
and bring them democracy and liberty!!
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:2)
Re:could be just what we need... (Score:2)
What a waste (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What a waste (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What a waste (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
Sound good? Alllllllllrighty then.
Re:What a waste (Score:2, Interesting)
Now this is an interesting point. Suppose we do find out that somewhere out there is intelligent life. Would it *really* change things that much?
I mean, the assumption that the discovery of alien life would radically change human behavior on an indivdual and international level is just that: an assumption. It presumes the aliens are some sort of messianic figures, the answer to all our petty Earth problems.
I don't see it that way at all. Human nature being what it is, I find it much more likely that we'll all oooh and aaah over the discovery for a while, and then go back to being the squabbling low-brow folks we usually are. Once the novelty wears off, we've still gotta go about our mundane lives.
This is the more likely scenario: if we find life, it's probably going to be very, very far away, so unless there were the possibility of trade between our planet and theirs or one of us threatening the other in some way, we'll probably just shrug, sit back, and wait for a loooooong time for the most basic information to flow both ways. Meanwhile, we'll still pick fights with one another, still watch bad TV, still have corrupt politicians, still have yokels claiming to have been picked up by UFO's and given proctological exams. Life goes on.
To be clear, I do support the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and have been running SETI@Home for a few years now- over 1000 data units processed. And I think the discovery of alien life would be way cool. But is it going to radically change my outlook on the world? Nope. And that's because I already assume it's out there--which is why I'm running SETI@Home in the first place.
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
You're assuming they also have Bushes as leaders. That's unlikely.
what if what we think of cosmic background noise is in actuality encrypted data transmissions, meant to be indistinguishable from background noise?
Then it wasn't meant for us. We're not trying for a man-in-the-middle attack, we're looking for life explicitly trying to contact another civilization.
Re:What a waste (Score:2)
Kinda like alien steganography? I hope the NSA knows about this!
Re:What a waste (Score:2, Interesting)
You have to start somewhere. Its not really just a 4 year window, since all searches for other civilizations occur one after the other building upon each other and using previous discoveries. This is just the way science works.
The distances they'd have to travel are enormous, and that civilization is probably long extinct
This is irrelevant.
definition of intelligence is also very narrow
And what is our definition?
what if what we think of cosmic background noise is in actuality encrypted data transmissions, meant to be indistinguishable from background noise?
Yes some data may be encrypted, however it is a reasonable assumption that some of it is not. In general most data that we send is not encrypted. If also including data that has been compressed (which would seem like encryption to us) we would just need to find something about it that is not a natural pattern, we wouldnt have to be able to read it.
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Interesting)
Firstly, the distance that signals from another potential civilization *could* be enormous, but then again they could be reasonably small. There are a pretty fair number of stars within, oh, 100 light years or so of our own primary. The real question there is what sort of values to plug into the Drake equation, and we won't have a good idea there until we collect some data points.
Secondly, why would you assume that an alien civilization would carefully hide their transmissions? We don't, even though we understand that we're basically advertising the location of our planet with TV and radio and radar. Besides, if you really wanted to mask your location, you'd stick to cable. Sure, we wouldn't pick them up, but for each ultraparanoid civilization (and I'll grant you that they very well may exist), there are probably others less cautious.
Sure, we could be all the life that's out there -- in the absense of any concrete proof, there's always that chance. That said, I personally have a hard time believing that in a universe as big as ours the there's a unique instance of anything. Anyhow, putting in a minimum of effort seems pretty reasonable when you're talking about making the greatest discovery in the history of history, doesn't it?
Four year window (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What a waste (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone that contributes to SETI, from Paul Allen [seti.org] to Team Lambchop [teamlambchop.com], is spending their own resources of their own free will. They obviously think it's not a waste.
So, what exactly are you complaining about?
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
This is slashdot. S/he needs a reason? From SETI@home's donations page:
Yeah, it does sound like a real sinkhole for money, doesn't it?
Why is it that people whining about waste always pick on the government and nonprofit tries like SETI@home? Could their objection be to the ends, and not the means they claim to be ridiculing? Gillette's initials plans, at least, were to spend $300 million on marketing the Mach 3 razor. Their previous model, the Sensor, cost nearly $200 million to develop [skillnet.ca]. If you want to complain about waste, why is it you're choosing the idealistic scientific endeavor?
Re:What a waste (Score:3, Informative)
So, apparently the TAC at Arecibo also thinks that a few nights for SETI are resources well spent.
Re:What a waste (Score:2)
> a waste of resources.
but it's still fun to try.
for those of us humans (ie, nearly all) who will never be granted the privilege of escaping earth's orbit, or even less taking a picture of something new, or even more remotely cruising through the cosmos, taking part in silly projects like seti@home is about the closest we'll ever get to helping accomplish something in space.
for those of us who still want to take part in space exploration, seti@home is the easiest, most reachable, way for joe schmoe to join in on it. Just because it's probably futile doesn't mean it's a "waste".
It's still fun, like playing a cosmic lottery.
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know we've been sending signals pretty much continuously for over 50 years. They could be sending something but we just haven't got it yet.
The distances they'd have to travel are enormous, and that civilization is probably long extinct, and the spectrum we are looking at is very narrow, and our definition of intelligence is also very narrow...
I'll give you the first point, the second is doubtfull since they could only be a few hundred away, they've probably changes but extinct? doubtfull. Even if they are extinct does it really matter? We kind of got a speed limit already so chances are we wouldn't have much meaningful communication anyways. The fact is that all we need is a confirmation of their existence, and if we were able to distinguish their signals we might get some interesting TV programs. Which brings we to you narrow spectrum comment. The fact is that we've pretty much saturated the spectrum for quite a region. If the aliens did used radio waves for their communication as well they would be likely to use up a fair region also meaning all we need is one hit from that portion. And I'm not sure what you're getting at with def'n of intelligence. Either thier sending signlas or their not. Maybe that they've found a better means of communication?
what if what we think of cosmic background noise is in actuality encrypted data transmissions, meant to be indistinguishable from background noise? Too many assumptions are taking place, it's really a waste of resources.
Well hopefully they didn't feel the need to encrypt everything. So what if they did maybe someone else didn't. I really don't see anything here to convince me that your assumptions that we won't find anything are any more convincing than the assumptions that could lead us to something. As to a waste of resources perhaps if you consider the cycles that people actually do donate to be a small resource that could better go to curing cancer than perhaps. On the other hand in real economic costs it's almost trivial! Really when it comes down to it we're drilling for oil. We probably won't find anything and it costs a bit to do it but if we ever find something...
Hack (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hack (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hack (Score:2)
People of earth, this is Bartron, commander of the Martian invasion force. Your planet is in our hands. Resistance is useless. Your President was delicious.
Re:Hack (Score:2)
Re:Hack (Score:4, Informative)
sei@home (Score:3, Funny)
Ob-ritualistic suicide reference (Score:2)
Issue (Score:5, Interesting)
I know a few people who actually compete over who has computed the most packets. People also try to cheat to get high stats, that is where it goes wrong...
Therefore it might be better to ditch those stats all together, or at least make them less informative...
Re:Issue (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Issue (Score:5, Funny)
I know a few people who actually compete over who has computed the most packets. People also try to cheat to get high stats, that is where it goes wrong...
Therefore it might be better to ditch those stats all together, or at least make them less informative...
Yeah, cause that worked to stop all the Karma whoring on slashdot...
bizarro universe (Score:4, Funny)
War, warrrrrr (Score:5, Funny)
He continued: "and in this case, success would mean an intergalactic war that would result in the destruction of entire galaxies. We have already begun training our astrosoldiers in the art of zero-G warfare, but chances of defeating the alien menace is slim. I for one welcome our new alien overlords... Hail ants."
The message (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The message (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The message (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Global Extraterrestrial Hunt to Revisit Old Signal (Score:3)
Guess they were right (Score:5, Interesting)
seti - acting under the auspices of the planetary society - were kind enough to ask whether I'd like my fifteen minutes now, and make my name available for interview to those legions of reporters who'd be after a human interest angle.
Of course, 'human interest' is exactly not the reason I signed up for seti@home, but there you go. Nonetheless, I volunteered, just in case they want a European perspective. However, I really, really doubt that anything will come of it. Just like a seti user should.
Useless piece of software (Score:5, Funny)
we can tell for sure that your software needs some serious revision because as it is it doesn't work well in finding alien lifeforms.
Respectfully yours,
Alf
Mork
E.T.
Chewbecca
Yoda
Spock
And if they find ET? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now what?
Any transmission there and back will have a 6k year life span. That's far to great of a distance for us to explore yet, and far to much of a time to comprehend between signals. So how will we deal with another society 17,597,088,000,000,000 miles away?
My pessimism says we let it divide us even more. Some will claim it as Atlantis, others will see it as home of the Aliens that have abducting them. The religious zealots will condemn, and our government will try and ignore it.
My optimism hopes that it will inspire us to space. Give us a goal worthy of sending Humans to, and something that will also inspire kids to get more involved in Science.
I know that there has been much written about what a positive result in this search would mean to society, but I'm wondering if anyone else has their own thoughts?
Re:And if they find ET? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a plausable scenario and a good point. A signal lag time which represents most of the whole of human history is obviously not workable, and given the size of the universe (big), it's not hard to see it happening.
But that hardly means such contact could in any way be considered a failure. As I see it, we as a species stand to gain a lot from it:
A data point for the Drake equation. Hey, if *somebody* else is out there and within 3000 light years, there are quite probably a lot of other somebodys out there.
Potential research value. Their science may be more advanced and would certainly be different from our own. We could almost certainly pick up insights into our universe just by interpreting and communications (or, at least, Fox could steal their reality shows and produce them on earth).
Mindset. A lot of the conflict of the last 50 years or so has been centered around the fact that our technology is making the earth "smaller" far faster than our various cultures are able to compensate for. This sort of discovery could give some perspective as to what "us" means, or at the very least drive some competetive juices that drive humans (gotta get to Mars, gotta colonize the Oort belt, gotta get good at this whole space thing...)
Sure, some people'd react badly to it. We'd probably see some mass suicides, maybe a couple of new religious cults, but that'd all encompass people who'd go for that shit anyhow (Tom Cruise, etc). Seems like a fair trade-off to me.
Re:And if they find ET? (Score:3, Interesting)
I highly doubt we'll be able to recieve the equivalent of "Mr Wizard" or "Bill Nye the Science Guy" (Morbo the Xenogeneticist would be quite entertaining tv though)
we might get a glimpse of what they have, that is considering we can even decide what is in the carrier and subcarriers, the modulation type, are they even 10 based? they might be a race based on 9 or 11 for their "decimal system" the periodic table may be listed backwards or sideways from their point of view.
remember EVERYTHING we have as a "standard" is only a decision made by a person or group of people for no real concrete reason other than perspective.
Re:And if they find ET? (Score:3, Interesting)
Good question. Whatever the consequences, bring it on. Yeah, we'll probably see new religions appear. They'll be radical cult like messes that contribute nothing. Our existing religions will adapt, because they're good at it, or they wouldn't still exist.
Bring it on. I've got about 30 worthwhile years left in me. I have no intention of allowing the fools of this planet to keep me ignorant. Lets have at it.
Re:And if they find ET? (Score:4, Funny)
Eh, more like 17,636,358,300,000,000, but who's counting.
Re:And if they find ET? (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, we do need to get improved reuseable launching systems in place first...
Space.com article (Score:2, Informative)
Decrypted Alien Message (Score:5, Funny)
HHGTTG (Score:2)
No big deal... It's probably just Zaphod asking if anyone has any mixers.
ET already knows all about us (Score:5, Funny)
More details (Score:4, Informative)
Just you wait... (Score:3, Funny)
Another Possible Message (Score:5, Funny)
Greetings, earthling!
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Too bad... (Score:3, Funny)
Too bad that those CPU cycles can't be used for spellchecking Slashdot submissions.
If the universe has a sense of humor (Score:3, Funny)
Advance note to comic book guy:
Yeah, yeah, I do know they couldn't have received those TV signals from Earth yet.
What about sending out our own space signals?? (Score:3, Interesting)
We have been sending out weak radio and TV signals into the universe for over 50 years now ( and more...) However, I doubt that any of these same signals coming from other solar systems would be detectable by us.
Instead of listening in to E.T. - Why don`t we go ahead and beam out stronger signals to `local` planets that would seem like likely candidates to harbor civilizations. For instance, http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~mwm/planet.html, these seem like they could be potentially good targets.
It could be, like SETI, a joint effort too. In order to sustain the signal on a certain timeframe, specific dishes around the planet set up by amateurs and universities could be responsible for targetting specific planets for a number of days(hard due to earth's rotation). A central team would be responsible for targets and messages sent while others executed.
I have sent this to the SETI institute as an idea, but never received a reply. If you agree that this is an interesting idea, maybe you could interest them in it too.
http://www.seti-inst.edu/email.html
Thanks.
Or even better.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Or even better.. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, everybody's going to eventually die one way or another, and we have no problem making replacements. Curing any given disease is just a temporary stopgap which isn't that significant in the big scheme of things. Our race somehow muddled through millions of years before we had cures for any diseases.
OTOH, finding little green men would probably be the single most significant moment in human history.
Re:Or even better.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Our race somehow muddled through millions of years without finding little green men.
That said, I run SETI@home myself. According to my SETI@home user profile [berkeley.edu], I've dedicated 1.788 years of CPU time so far and I've been a user for 3.694 years. So I'm certainly not against the program.
But to say that everybody's going to die anyway, so why bother is the most absurd thing I've ever heard. By that logic, we might as well shut down all the hospitals, and repeal all the laws on murder. After all, we're all going to go sometime.
It's kind of interesting. I've been using SETI@home for years now, and as far as I know, it was the only distributed computing application when I first started. For a long time, it certainly seemed the most worthy of my spare cycles. Now, however, there are apps for cancer research and other life and death ailments. It's got me thinking...
Which discovery would have the greatest impact on us? ET or a cure for cancer? Now, nobody supports space exploration, research, etc. more than I do. And I've put my money where my mouth is on this subject. But I've thought about this.
If today, while watching CNN, I saw breaking news, and it was a press conference where NASA or SETI or some other organization announced definitive proof of Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, how would it change life here on earth?
Well, most likely, the news media would immediately wet their pants, ask all kinds of stupid questions "is it likely that they're hostile?" "Could they support the terrorists?!?" etc.
But that wouldn't last long, because eventually the scientific community would be able to explain to all but the thickest skulled journalist that that they're 500 light years away, and that the message we received left their planet while Christopher Columbus was still alive. They'd also have to explain to them that it would take just as long for us to *respond* to their message, and that with a 1000 year delay, the very civilization that sent the message might not even be there any more.
So to make a long story short, if SETI finds ET, all it will do is make us *know* that ET is out there. It won't make any difference in our day to day lives what so ever. Basically what we are undertaking is the most expensive quest to find an answer to a trivia question ever. Because that's all we can hope to get out of this: trivia. Knowing that there's ET intelligence is no more useful than knowing that in another million years there will be another Hawaiian Island.
Now what about cancer research (just to name one example). Let's say that distributed computation does lead somehow (I'm nowhere nearly as well versed on how this works as I am SETI@home) to a cure for cancer... Millions of lives will be saved. Millions of people will be spared suffering. Drugs or treatment programs will come to market. This will effect economies. Our understanding of our own biology will be expanded, and that could lead to even *more* quality of life improvements. I'm sure there will be other benefits that I can't even think of.
Being the space buff that I am, finding ET would move me more emotionally. Wow, what a discovery. But it wouldn't actually *do* all that much. I have no illusions that it would. On the other hand, medical research is perhaps one of the most noble things that we can lend our proc cycles to. And it's been tempting me for several months now. I'd certainly recommend it to anyone else.
Re:Or even better.. (Score:3, Informative)
Fortunately, you did not hear it in the comment you replied to. He didn't say "so why bother" and he didn't imply that medicine was worthless - just that in the larger scheme of things it's futile.
His comment was more about the relative importance of healing one individual human vs. contacting an alien race.
Re:Or even better.. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not what I meant. I was reacting to the prevalent attitude around here that until we find a cure for every fatal disease, no other activity is worthwhile.
Why don't people say: "Those guys on TV in that NASCAR race are just wasting resources we could be using in the war on cancer!" For some reason they don't. They save their criticism for activities that actually have their own intrinsic value.
Re:Or even better.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Good point! Sorry if I took the wrong meaning form your first message. I do of course support SETI, but I guess the only point I disagreed with your post on was that I don't nessisarily see SETI as the *best* use of my space clock cycles, it just happens to be my *favorite* use.
But I see what you mean. It's tempting to say "let's not wast resources on x, when y is a big problem to life an limb" Keep doing this long enough (eliminate pro sports, record companies, video games, and anyother high dollar but unimportant-to-life-itself industry) and pretty soon you're living to be 280, but there's no books
Re:Or even better.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about it - Learning that the world is round, learning that the the Earth revolves around the Sun, and indeed many other discoveries were inconsequential to the Joe Sixpacks of the time. The persons tilling the fields and squabbling, their lives were not effected by those realizations. However, those advances in understanding had very large ramificaitons years later.
Einstein's theories initially had no effect on people - who cared that time slowed down when you moved near the speed of light? Wasn't driving that fast anyway! We have yet to see the practical implications of his ideas, but the impact they have had is enormous.
Re:Or even better.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Amongst all that, contacting an alien civilization would really stand out. Maybe it would take a century for round-trip communications. That amount of time is still only 1/50th of recorded history. We might not see any benefits from such a discovery in our lifetimes, but we could still make a contribution to help shape the destiny of the human race.
Nobody's saying that we have to stop working on curing diseases. I'd be surprised if the money spent on SETI is more than 1/1000th of the money spent on medical research. All I'm saying is that demanding that that last tidbit be taken away as well is short sighted, especially when the majority of the people in this country piss away most of their spare time and resources anyway.
As far as the probability question goes, the odds of payoff for this project may be slim, but I'm sure it's better than the 1 in 50,000,000 that drive people into a frenzy over lotto tickets.
Re:Or even better.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If we knew that nothing was out there, Seti wouldn't be looking for it. Seti doesn't know, none of us knows, and you certainly don't know.
It's one thing to say "medical research is more important", it's another to say that something doesn't exist when there's no proof that it does or doesn't. Space is awfully large.
Re:Or even better.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Or even better.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Or even better.. (Score:3, Insightful)
fuck Stanford and their never-ending supply of MBA-wannabees. They can buy their own lab equipment. I'd rather waste electricity looking for aliens.
Re:Fun Stuff (Score:2)
Re:Fun Stuff (Score:2)
Re:not a troll, but... (Score:2)
So, even if the gummint *wanted* to squelch a SETI discovery, they wouldn't be able to, because it's totally out of their hands now.
I was pissed when congress cut SETI spending (the way it happened was a total farce), but I have to admit in hindsight, it's about the best thing that ever happened to them.
Re:not a troll, but... (Score:2)
With the way that Seti@home works, that confirmation would effectively require that someone who has agreeded to interupt whatever radio astronomy project they happen to be working on, and happens to be pointing at the right area of the sky, to do that and do what they can to check that star.
Part of the problem is that about all Seti@home can do is identify that there may be a signal there. It is not designed to collect or analyze content.
The "results" so far provide a list of stars that have a higher probability of being a signal source.
-Rusty
Re:a million turtles vs one hare (Score:3, Insightful)
By spreading the work around the world to the 4 million subscribers, the cost of the project really is quite low. It also allows them to pay for more time at the observatory (they have to pay to use the telescope).
Basically, it may not be faster, but it is cheaper in the long run.
-Goran
Re:Like others have pointed Seti can seem a waste (Score:4, Interesting)
Ever consider how many hours a week you spend reading slashdot, watching TV, or listening to music. Practially speaking what you spend most of your spare time doing is a complete waste of time and resources.
Why aren't you volunteering your time to something that will actually help humanity? Try volunteering in a soup kitchen. Cut all power to your house in order to reduce greenhouse emissions. Travel everywhere by bicycle. Give all of your money to charity.
There are other more practical and worthy uses of the time and resources you waste on yourself. It's time to shift those resources to tasks which will actually improve the world's quality of life.
To get real for a moment, SETI@home has about half a million machines running at the moment. That might represent at most one percent of the available resources. There's plently to go around.
Granted, I'm not unbiased, since I'm working on the observing schedule right now. Next week, Arecibo...