Posted on 05/06/2011 8:27:02 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
A monitoring system for potential extra-terrestrial communication has been shelved due to budget cuts.
The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) in California has been mothballed, according to the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (Seti) Institute.
Funding for the observatory, which hosts the ATA, has been cut to one-tenth its former level.
The Seti Institute was established in 1984 to look for life beyond Earth.
The telescopes, at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory north of San Francisco, California, have a number of science goals, including searching for radio signals from intelligent life in the Universe.
"Effective this week, the ATA has been placed in hibernation due to funding shortfalls for operations of the Hat Creek Radio Observatory where the ATA is located," Tom Pierson, chief executive of the Seti Institute, said in a statement.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Why spend millions on something that may or may not exist. Let the aliens spend their money and contact us.
It was a cool project but a waste of time due to the mathematical odds against success. Perhaps if they discover an earth like planet they can dust off something like this concept with a target in mind.
But by God high speed rail and food stamps for everyone!
We have over 16 million in the USA. Why do we need a telescope to find them?
They are right down the block..........
Check the recent (last five years) recipients of Social Security. It’s the new Welfare.
In these conditions it is the right decision to close the project. Truth be told, radio is impossibly slow for interstellar communications, and as such it is likely not used by aliens if those aliens actually exist. You have only two options - either you communicate in real time, faster than light, or you don't communicate at all. Communication at light speed is just not practical.
Imagine that people in Europe, in times of Columbus, set up large African drums on Portuguese and French shores and started making noises, then listening for a response. And then they would declare that there is nothing on the other side of the ocean because we don't hear anything back. But the natives were there; they simply couldn't hear us, and even if they did do you think they'd bother to drum a message back?
The money can be better used for sending probes to other planets and to asteroids. That is important, that has practical value. Receiving signals from aliens ... ok, even if you hear the signal, so what? You have no clue what those aliens are, whether they are peaceful or are like us, and so on, and you can't ask. The information, aside from a single YES/NO bit, would be useless. Today the news that aliens exist won't be that earth-shattering; the current generation grew up on SciFi and has already accepted the possibility of existence of other civilizations.
Allen Telescope Array Hibernation
As noted in the Scientific American and elsewhere, the Allen Telescope Array was recently forced into hibernation. While we are sad to see this happen, SETI@home receives its data elsewhere, so our project is not directly affected. Dr. Eric Korpela wrote a helpful Q&A about this in the SETI@home Staff Blog. 27 Apr 2011 | 21:44:03 UTC · Comment
Yeah, we should probably give up looking for a cure for cancer too, because a cure may or may not even exist.
Not my point ... let the aliens spend the money to contact us.
They just have come up with an earth-like planet about 45 light years away. What that means is that if you scale the universe to make the distance from here to Mars about a foot or thereabouts, the planet just discovered would be 45 miles away. That’s the difference between distances inside our own system and interstellar distances.
Your words, not mine.
The answers are on the History Channel’s series on Ancient Aliens and in Erick V Danniken (sp?) books. Just buy the DVDs and a few copies of his books used. Problem solved for the most part.
>>> Why spend millions on something that may or may not exist. Let the aliens spend their money and contact us.
I suppose the same argument could be made regarding any philosophical or scientific endeavor. The answer “may or may not exist”, so why search for it.
Perhaps the tabloid type headline misdirected you from what the observatory does. “Aliens” grab readers, but SETI was simply one of the lesser activities carried out there.
The bread and and butter was general conventional deep space studies, search for Earth-threatening asteroids, plot and track for NASA space junk that threaten the space station and general satellite use, etc. The facility is there, it’s a waste to not use it.
I suggest we’ve not been looking in the right place since the inception of SETI...
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/04/the-seti-game.html
The SETI Game
By Robin Hanson · April 19, 2011 11:00 pm · Discuss · « Prev · Next »
When listening for signals from aliens, it isn’t enough to just point an antenna at the sky. One must also choose details like directions, angles, frequencies, bandwidths, pulse widths, and pulse intervals. Apparently most SETI searches assume that for a given signal power density, aliens would pick details to make it as easy as possible for us to detect their signals. So standard SETI searches are optimized for such easily-seen signals. Two excellent papers, published back in July, instead consider what sort of signals would be sent by “beacon” building aliens, who seek to create the maximum possible power density at any given distance away from them. (One of the authors is SF author Greg Benford.) Such signals are quite different, and most of today’s SETI searches are not very good at seeing them:
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ast.2009.0394
Yep, my words. And they have nothing to do with my final conclusion. Let aliens (if the exist) tow the freight.
How do we know InterGalactic Life isn’t run by Star Nazis? Why the assumption that other life is wiser and superior? They might be a race of jerks.
I wouldn’t worry too much about it. We will know em when we see em. LOL!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.