Will SETI ever work?

Has there been any discussion on this before? If yes, then could someone please give me the username of the poster.

The search engine does not let me search by keywords alone.

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OK, I read some older threads including "Do you Seti crunch" and another started by godless about "intelligent life elsewhere".

What I was looking for was discussions re: the viability of seti.

I read somewhere that looking for alien radio signals is like searching the universe to determine if there are Taco Bell franchises in other star systems.

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DId anyone else see that?

 

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I SETI crunch. I don't believe SETI will find anything, but if we don't look it's a certainty that we won't find anything.

 

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Yes,but possibilities are less.even if they are out there they are not responding,Wow signal was nothing but our own signal reflected back...


bye!

 

IMHO, no.
Assuming there is something out there of intelligence, wouldn't it make more sense for them to find us first??

 

MO too.

The basic assumptions of seti are all wrong.

And the ultimate irony will be if there is indeed a message, and we cannot decode it.

That one we'll never live down!

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No More SETI For Me

I think the SETI project is too limited in scope to succeed.

There has been life on earth for 3 billion years, give or take a day. Whether you believe that radio was invented by Nikola Tesla or Guglielmo Marconi in 1896, Nathan B. Stubblefield in 1892, Dr. Mahlon Loomis in 1865 or John Wilkins in 1845, the time that radio waves have been spewing from our planet is infinitesimally small. Assuming similar developmental patterns elsewhere in the universe (which I do not), the window of opportunity that SETI hopes to hit seems almost non-existent.

After processing 2667 packets and donating 2.93 years of cpu time to the project, I have traded in my SETI software for a project doing cancer research. I think this has a higher probability of producing results in my lifetime.

Peace.

 

Re: No More SETI For Me

Yes. I largely agree.

Also the choice of using radio signals to communicate or seek communications is highly questionable. A radio signal degrades too quickly and has to compete with the noise of radiation in space.

Besides, how much longer will we (or another species) restrict ourselves to signals which travel merely at the speed of light.

 

I don't think SETI is going to find anything working with the current radio signals as they move too slow in comparison to what would be necessary.

A whole species could live and die in the time it takes for a message to arrive and even then you wouldn't be able to communicate back. a conversation would take generations of people to complete.

There are methods now of seeing if it's viable, but I would be using those computers out there in your homes a little differently... parallel processing the information not to see what has already been found but not ringed but to process information that could be Quantumleaped back... of course this idea would have to be researched further because of the possible gravity of universal changes.

Also the current evolution in how we communicate data (Digital) pretty much means that our communications are becoming more and more encrypted, with more and more versions of programs to decipher to lessen the information that needs to transverse, this again means from an alien perspective we are going to become harder and harder to decypher even if they did have a lock on us.

 

Even though I SETI crunch, I don't think SETI will ever find anything for a variety of reasons. One of the key reasons is the inverse square law for the attenuation of a radio signal.

At the best, a radio signal is attenuated based on the inverse square of the distance between transmitter and receiver. If you double the distance, you need to more than quadruple the power in order for the power at the receiver to be the same that was radiated by the transmitter. Even with vast improvements in receiver design or antenna arrays you will still ultimately be limited by the thermal noise floor of the antenna/receiver combination.

Think about that for a minute. It means someone would have to be transmitting one god-awful amount of power to travel so far and still be distinguishable from the thermal noise of the reciever and antenna.

 

Here is an interesting article that is somewhat off topic, but not that far, and addresses the possibility of finding a civilization only a little more advanced than ours...


http://www.sciam.com/2002/0102issue/0102skeptic.html

 

ET phone home!

Like I have said long time ago, ETs may be using a far different way of communication then we do with 'radio signals'! ET may have something better! But we may never know! Maybe thoughts or prayers? Think about it:bugeye:, there is more then one way to communicate!

I don't believe in 'ET's, but could be wrong!

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SETI probably won't find anything

The inverse square law of radiation means that only a beam transmission will be received. That beam will have to be pulsed to boost peak power while keeping the average power reasonable. The beam will have to be aimed with an accuracy of a few micro-arcseconds which requires a very large targeting mirror. A blue laser will need a 46-meter diameter mirror polished to the diffraction limit. A red laser will need a 256-meter diameter mirror. The largest mirrors on earth are the Keck I and II telescopes each with a 10-meter mirror. They are ground based, and subject to atmospheric interference.

SETI seeks to detect any kind of continuous signal whether beamed or omnidirectional. It is unfathomable why they would expect anything but a beamed signal, which means the Drake equation should have a new parameter: the probability that a beam transmission is aimed at us, rather than another star. This is on the order of 1 chance in a billion.

SETI' s only virtue is that their methods are thorough. Therefore it will still be a scientific result even if they detect nothing.

 

Alien SETI...

Here is an article on a message that is going to be 'sent' out into space.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991757

 

Can i just point something out here...... what difference will it make to anyone if there is life elsewhere??? We certainly won't be able to visit or comunicate as nothing can go faster than light.

What is the point in wasting so much money on trying to find a signal?? Why not feed the starving people on the street instead?
Should we not deal with the problems on Earth first before we try this sort of thing?

 

Unfortunately, we will never run out of problems to solve and address on the earth. Should we wait till they are addressed and fixed we will never get anywhere. We stand a greater chance of addressing those problems by learning more. Different methods and new discoveries that come from research and spinoffs of the space program have gone a long way towards making your life a different one than it would be without them. These same discoveries stand a greater chance of allowing us to finally feed those who are starving or in need. It is one of the great things about the results that come from such research and discoveries. While you never truely know what the next bit of knowledge you stumble upon will do for you, sooner or later a new use is found for it. It is one of the greatest side benefits of such knowledge. To life on earth it will probably make no difference in the long haul if SETI ever finds anything or not. In the process of exploring space and the offshoots of such needed technologies to do so is where the chance for solving earth's woes lay. We did not enviromentally damage earth overnight. The answer to fixing the problem will not be an overnight solution either. Part of the offshoot of things found in doing the space projects are the sattelites that help in the prediction of weather. Something of prime importance to those who grow the food to feed those that are starving.

 

That we know of, yet.

I, too, ask this question often, Starbow. My answer is often mixed.

It certainly seems that money used in abstract research might be better spent on earthly problems. Then the other half of my brain kicks in with a myriad of additional questions like: What if we find evidence that other intelligence exists-- might that cause a fundamental change in the way we as a species look to our own? What if we send that message and it is received by an intelligence whose patters of social problems mirrored our own and they solved them -- perhaps, in their benevolence, the would wish to share their solutions with others.

And on, and on, and on...
Tough question that you pose (for me, at any rate.)

Peace.

 

Yes, but i wasn't talking about satellites e.t.c. ; i was specifically referring to the SETI program & the Billions of $ it has cost.

 

Cost of SETI

A site that explains the funding of SETI

http://www.zeitlin.net/OpenSETI/OSCost.html

Not a high cost IMO

 

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Well, i have to say that i jumped into this one without knowing the full details, & in fact, i to enjoyed having SETI on my computer.

But, i still do think that matters on Earth need to now be addressed first (like the water supplies running out, oil going, colapse of civilization through war & dictatorship e.t.c...)