Worse, what if we start receiving "Dancing IN the Stars??"
Posted on 05/08/2008 12:15:14 PM PDT by chaos_5
A widespread and popular impression of SETI is that it's a worldwide enterprise. Well, it's not, and there's something modestly puzzling in that.
The idea of communicating between worlds is at least 150 years old. Victorian scientists Karl Friedrich Gauss and Joseph von Littrow are both reputed to have concocted schemes to establish rapport with Moon-men or Martians by signaling them with light. Gauss was a German, and von Littrow was Austrian. But within a century, the important ideas about getting in touch with aliens were coming from the western side of the Atlantic. The fundamental concepts for radio SETI were first incubated and hatched in America.
For three decades following Frank Drake's first modern SETI experiment in 1960, the American efforts had a strong and fertile counterpart in the Soviet Union. The Soviet SETI work was frequently brilliant, occasionally nutty, and pursued by researchers who were active and enthused.
That all ended with the Soviet Union's collapse. And for the last two decades, the large majority of all SETI effort has taken place in the U.S. Yes, there have been commendable experiments in Australia, Argentina, India, and Italy. But only the Italians are active today.
So what's the story? Why is SETI nearly exclusively an American game?
The oddity of this was brought home to me a few years ago when I held a colloquium on SETI research at the Dutch university in Groningen where I was once employed. The room was full — overfull actually, with students and faculty braced against the walls. My first question was, "How many of you think it's likely there are intelligent extraterrestrials out there in the Galaxy?" Virtually every hand went up.
I followed with "and how many of you are willing to spend one guilder a year to look for it?" (That's the cost of one cup of subsidized university coffee. One cup per year.) The hands all went down.
I was stunned. When, after my talk, I inquired of a faculty member why the Dutch were reluctant to mount a SETI program, his answer was, "We're too sober for that." I didn't understand his comment, especially given the concordant opinion that there could be something to find.
Let's be clear: it's not that the Dutch don't have the radio telescopes or technical smarts. They do. It's not because they don't have the money. They do.
And so do the British, French, Germans, Canadians, Japanese and lots and lots of others.
So, as Gertrude Stein asked, "What's the answer?" What's so singular about Americans that only they are willing to spend a small (very small) amount of money and a bit of time to try and answer a truly important question about life, the universe, and everything?
My first, naïve thought was that this was the legacy of America's frontier history. Innovation and the occasional gamble on a long shot were necessary and sometimes essential in an unsettled environment. So perhaps SETI sat more comfortably on American shoulders than on others.
There's at least some support for this inexpert speculation. Professor Geert Hofstede (who, rather coincidentally, received his doctorate in Groningen) has researched global cultural differences, and among his investigated traits is something he calls "uncertainty avoidance." This is an index of a society's tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity, and its willingness to search for new truths.
Looking at Hofstede's data, you'll find that when it comes to uncertainty avoidance, Americans score 15 percent lower than the Dutch. In other words, they truly seem to be more disposed to take on ambiguous projects. Actually, the Dutch are closer to the Americans in this regard then many of their European neighbors. The Greeks, French, Belgians, Italians, and Germans are even more inclined to avoid uncertainty then residents of The Netherlands. (Only the British do substantially better: In fact, their score is lower than the Americans'.)
Could this greater reluctance to take risks play a role in the fact that NASA's budget is three times that of the European Space Agency's, despite the comparable populations of the U.S. and Europe? Does it help explain why venture capital investment in the former is roughly twice that in the latter?
No doubt the social scientists can come up with the answer. Meanwhile, I note that both India and China score lower than the U.S. on Hofstede's index. Maybe they'll join the search. SETI, after all, is one of the most provocative and exciting explorations of all time. We could use some company in scouting out the final frontier.
Hmmm... Perhaps he is on to something.
Frank Drake is a neighbor of mine. Extremely intelligent man...........and I had to giggle when I found out he likes square dancing. Heheheh.
Maybe a massive radio antenna tasked to look for 'alien life' is really just a cover?
There's plenty of wishful thinkers with cash out there who I'm sure are more than willing to foot the bill for what is in reality an enormous waste of time.
Let’s see, if we receive signals from some intelligent broadcaster,
the signals would have had to originate thousands of years previous to reception...
and what would have happened to that civilization in the “present” (gets weird when you deal in time and distance like this)...
doesn’t seem like a good use of time and resources.
Yep.
Consider, too, what intelligent life would want to attempt communications with a species which radiates the sort of crap that has overwhelmingly taken up our broadcast bandwidth for the past thirty years?
What is the coorelation between age and uncertainty avoidance? On average the European countries are older than us while China and India are younger.
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
Why let your home computer waste millions of CPU cycles running a screen saver when it could be analyzing SETI data? Computer users from around the world are able to participate in this major scientific experiment.
Have a blast, actually I thought Seti was the father of Ramesses II, during the 19th dynasty.
“Let’s see, if we receive signals from some intelligent broadcaster,
the signals would have had to originate thousands of years previous to reception...”
Well, maybe not THAT far.
I remember when I was becoming a ham radio operator in 1958, there was a buzz about our first high power VHF signals, from the advent of television, would have reached the nearest star, 11 light years away, and the time was near that we might have some reply from a planet associated with that star. Just imagine someone on another planet seeing those old Amos and Andy films ;)
While I do listen to Kook-to-Kook AM, I am not one of the kooks, and I am an extreme skeptic that we are being visited, but I think it is fine that the world has a few big antennas and automatic scanning receivers looking into space. The cost is not that high.
How many watts would they have to transmit on an antenna how big for us to receive it from 1000 light years away?
Ask the ham radio guy, but I think once they get out of the atmosphere without being defracted, they travel until they hit something, regardless of the wattage.
O.P.I. ping....
Do we even want to make contact with a space faring culture? If they can travel between the stars in a reasonable amount of time then chances are they could paste us flat without a great deal of effort no matter how many nukes we lobbed.
Or maybe I’ve been watching too many old Twilight Zone episodes and they make me paranoid. The whole “To Serve Mankind” deal being a cook book made quite an impression on me when I first saw it.
INTELLIGENCE INTREP
Worse, what if we start receiving "Dancing IN the Stars??"
SETI project can not receive any single out side our solar system. We talked about this the other day here:
Earth 'Noise' Could Attract Alien Invaders
The diffusion of EM signals wash out after a couple light years.
"But Daddy, they are messing up my vid reception during my favorite show! Please , Daddy! Just zot the planet! Please! Please! Please! (jumping up and down, or the species equivalent)"
Daddy: "Oh, all right, if will let me have a moment's peace..."
Yep. I can see that.
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.