Will SETI ever work?

Well that's great, assuming that they don't think the same thing...

 

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Nicely put.

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Of course not. Merely a personal choice that I made based on my predictions on the chances of success for each. And it seems that a few of us agree that the SETI Project's assumptions might indeed be wrong.

Peace.

 

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When you start a project,a big project,everything is taken into consideration...
Alpha stage as you know, is regarding all pros and cons of a project.numerous discussions ,polling,direction,ways to tackle a project is taken into account.
then there is actual implementation...

so when SETI was first started off it was started because it had some potential in it.but everything takes time and most of project starters today dont have nerves to wait for such long time...

bye!

 

I think what is missing here is an alien...

 

John Barrow made an interesting observation in his book, Pi In The Sky.

An alien civilization with the ability to communicate with us would be at least as intelligent as ours. An alien civilization with the ability to visit us would be considerably more intelligent than ours.

How do we humans treat "less intelligent" life forms on our own planet? We eat them. We put them in cages. We use them for medical experiements. We make fashionable clothes and footwear from their skins. What if our treatment of lesser intelligence turns out to be typical of all advanced life?

Barrow suggests that we expend our efforts developing camoflauge rather than on SETI.

Michael

 

ET, phone home!

ET well.... may not eat you!

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They..., again, may be using a better form of, 'intergalactic' communication then 'radio' or even 'lasers'! May be 'thoughts' or 'prayers'! That would be at the speed of 'thought'! Or maybe even some more "un-earthly" means of communication with each other or other worlds , including us humans made in the image of God!

What is out there that is intelligent, (terrestrial wise), may be so 'alien' that we may never understand them, unless we are visited by them and communicate with each other! It's all out in space!

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SETI enthusiasts are unrealistic about the immense difficulties of sending or receiving messages from an alien civilization. And that's just assuming that there is anybody out there to have a conversation with in the first place---and that's not a given.
I'm a pessimist about ever contacting aliens---ever. It will never happen. I will go one step father. There are no UFOs from other planets on earth. There never have been and there never will be. We will never contact alien civilizations directly or indirectly. If you disagree, then perhaps you don't understand the problem.
We will never fly a space ship to another star system with planets inhabited by intelligent alien life forms. The financial and human investment of such a foolhardy mission is far too great for any country to bankroll.
I also think it's well within the realm of possibility that we are alone in the galaxy. The circumstances of our planet are so unique that it's very possible that it has never occured before. I postulate that our planet is one in a billion. That is not such a high number as it seems if you draw up a list of possible bottlenecks to intelligent life. Navigating twelve bottlnecks on a "one in ten" probability basis would leave us as the only planet in the Milky Way Galaxy with all of the characteristics necessary for the evolution of intelligent life.

 

You state these things as if they were facts. I believe that you do not have anywhere near the information to back up any of these statements, any more than I could back up the statement that we definately aren't alone. Of course there's a possibility that we're alone in the galaxy. There's even a possibility that we're alone in the universe. Considering, however, that we've found evidence of bacteria on meterorites and on Mars, I don't think that it's too far-fetched to believe that maybe somewhere out there life exists. You also have to take into account that our pattern is not necessarily the only way for life to exist. That's just my opinion.

 

Krytho wrote;

Outside of mathematics (and even there I'm wary) I tend to not use universal quantifiers such as: always, never, for all, etc., in my writing. History is littered with such absolute statements, now remembered only for their humorous quality, i.e., "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." - Lord Kelvin, 1892. It's prudent to leave a bit of room for the idea you either missed, or were in no position to contemplate.

On the question of SETI; for the moment it appears to be a long shot. I wouldn't divert money from cancer research to SETI, though I would gladly divert the money from Professional Wrestling, or perhaps the Miss America Pageant

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A problem is that our tools are not quite up to the job. It's like asking the Wright Brothers to make a transatlantic flight in their Kitty Hawk aeroplane. Bear in mind that even though our current technology might be inadequate, the rate of growth of our technological advancement is nothing less than explosive!

"It took 10,000 years from the dawn of civilization to the airplane, but just 66 years to get from powered flight to a lunar landing." Michael Shermer

I think it probable than a great deal of other life exists in our universe. The vast share of obstacles to the origins of life was eliminated when our universe turned out the way it did. You might take a look through Martin Ree's book, Just Six Numbers to get an idea of the very unique situation we find in our universe. That our universe itself has turned out to be hospitable to life might be thought of as if six (to pick a number) combination locks were randomly spun, and each of the six just so happened to land on the correct "combination". The "heavy lifting" that went into making life possible was completed when the particular constants of the universe were formed very early in the life of our universe.

Primitive life appears to have started on this planet only a half billion years after the planet itself formed. If the chances for life are as remote as Krytho imagines among the vastness of our universe, it does strike me as peculiar that life here wasted so little time in forming on this little dot. When you look out on a very clear night you are seeing only about six thousand stars. As you know, our own galaxy contains roughly 100 billion stars, but our galaxy appears to be only an average specimen among billions of such galaxies. Our universe extends at least a million times further than the most remote star we can see.

I like the analogy of SETI I read in this thread in which a person standing outside their house calls out hoping that a person in China might hear him. However, I think the situation might be more accurately described if the other person were on the moon rather than in China. Clearly we need to get beyond the equivalent of acoustic transmission if we are to have a serious hope of discovering alien life.

Luckily, man has not made a habit of giving up when faced with technological problems. As Archimedes might not have forseen the computer I run my Mathematica software on, I have confidence that as-yet unimagined technologies will one day become commonplace. I honestly don't expect to hear that we have made contact with aliens in my lifetime, but I've a fair expectation that it will happen one day.

Michael

 

A nice answer, orthogonal. I enjoyed your post.

 

Life out there

Hi Wet1, thanks for signing my guestbook. I recently added a new section #5 to Starship Generations. It was an epiphany, I realized that the launch capacity needed to build space habitats could only be achieved with a Space Elevator, and cannot be done with rockets alone. So while we still don't yet have the technical ability to build a Space Elevator, let alone a starship, I believe that this is the way to go. We might get there someday, when the people with the purse-strings realize the same thing.

http://www.geocities.com/womplex_oo1/StarshipGenerations.html

As for extraterrestrial life, I think that we need to search for them actively rather than just listening for radio signals. We need to search for planets (millions), and study them, looking for signs of life such as oxygen & ozone in their atmospheres, artificial light sources, faint radio sources, or other strange suggestive things.

Most of the solar systems we've found planets in had a single gas giant. Consider that our solar system contains 9 planets (including 4 gas giants), 66 moons, and tens of thousands of good-sized asteroids & comets. So obviously there is a lot more to discover even orbiting those few stars. It is just a matter of developing the techniques.

As for the evolution of life. I think that if bacteria alone can develop, then that will inevitably evolve into intelligence. Why? Because even if the planet is harsh by our standards, they will form protective barriers: animals on earth have developed thick skin, fur, teeth, and digestive systems coursing with acid. We've developed fur skin clothing, pottery, textiles, housing, door locks, air conditioning, light & heat, seat belts & air bags, anti-virus software, antibiotics, weapons, bullet-proof vests, pressure suits, ejection seats, parachutes, and manned spacecraft. NASA is currently developing a greenhouse for Mars.

Life adapts to previously inhospitable or dangerous conditions, as long as the most primitive elements can form in the first place.