When Does SETI Throw in the Towel?

space.com ^ | 01/18/07 | Seth Shostak

[KevinDavis]

“At what point would you abandon the search?”

That’s a question I get relatively frequently from folks who think that SETI may be a quixotic quest, as futile as searching for the Seven Cities of Gold. After all, modern efforts to find signals from extraterrestrial transmitters are now in their fifth decade. Could it be that those of us who still hope to tune in other worlds may be missing some writing on the wall? Some dead-obvious, chiseled text with a simple, if disappointing message: “There are no aliens”?

The question seems fair, since SETI’s obvious analogs–the historical voyages of discovery made in the centuries following the Renaissance–were completed in considerably less time than SETI has been beating the cosmic bushes. Columbus spent five weeks finding North America (and he wasn’t even looking). Captain Cook, a true paragon of explorers, and a man who mapped places that Europeans didn’t even know were places, never mounted an expedition that lasted more than three years.

[KevinDavis]

Never give up......

[KevinDavis]

[Dog Gone]

It has to be an ongoing project. We didn't start projecting signs of life into the universe until, what, 150 years ago?

There are no solar systems that close to us by a magnitude of I don't know how much.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Does any tax money go toward funding SETI? (None should).

[Doctor Raoul]

After Global Warming gets here and LA is underwater....

[KevinDavis]

No...

[sig226]

SETI is one of the few things out there that comes close to 'pure' research. Since they don't know what they are looking for, it is impossible to predict what they might find.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Besides one burst from the Araciebo (spelling?) satellite dish, there has been no big attempt to contact extraterrestrial life (except God and angels). Radio waves from television, radio, etc. would dissipate.

[doc1019]

Mayhap, there is nothing or nobody out there?

[Drango]

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=36120

All the kewl FReepers are folding for the Gipper

[The_Reader_David]

Sure they know what they are looking for: signals that show evidence of being intelligently designed. (Don't tell the evolutionary biologists.)

(Incidentally before the defenders of neo-Darwinism jump on this: ID as proposed is not a scientific theory, as the attempts to make it falsifiable are based on a priori probability estimates that are neither falsifiable nor verifiable. I just have an objection, on behalf of archaeologists and SETI to the notion that intelligent causation cannot be regarded as a cause in a scientific theory.)

[Dog Gone]

I don't think there's any civilization out there that we should try to find. They'd do to us what the Spaniards did to the Aztecs.

Detect them, yes.

[Dog Gone]

Perhaps, but that doesn't mean we should assume that. We'd only have to be wrong once.

[Rodney King]

I agree. The nerds all think that if we find aliens they will cure cancer, bring world peace, etc. It is much more likely that they will dip us in a honey mustard sauce and eat us.

[LiteKeeper]

ID as proposed is not a scientific theory, as the attempts to make it falsifiable are based on a priori probability estimates that are neither falsifiable nor verifiable.

I am curious. What happens to Darwinism and evolution when the same criteria is applied to them?

[GonzoGOP]

I agree we shouldn't give up, especially as SETI doesn't cost much and is not on the taxpayer's dime.

There is also the real possibility that Earth is a fluke. Mostly because of the Moon forming event. Planets this small simply don't have moon's that big. A planet in the inner solar system with a moon that large would be expected to be the size of one of the gas giants. And yet the Moon is involved in almost every aspect from the earliest stages of microscopic evolution, to the highest endeavors of our scientific exploration.

For example most of the evolution purists indicate that the hotbed of early evolution was on the tidal basins where fresh and salt water alternate. Yet except for having a large moon, unlike the more typical small moons of Mars, we wouldn't have tides. So without the moon, life may have evolved, but would have remained much more primitive. In addition it was the moon forming collision that results in Earth having a molten core so late in it's life. Earth should have a solid core like Mars by now, except that the impact that formed the Moon warmed things up quite a bit. And it is that liquid core that give us our magnetosphere. And without that the sun's radiation would have sterilized the surface of Earth long ago.

So skip a few million years and Humans show up. We start doing that whole science thing. But the big kick start for science was when Galileo pointed a telescope at the Moon. And Newton invented the study of physics had he not been consumed with calculating the orbits of the Moon. And would we ever have ventured into space had the moon not been so close. I mean Mars is so distant that it would take a world wide effort and decades of work to mount a serious expedition. But the moon, well given the right inspiration one country did it in nine years.

And yet the moon was formed it the most ridiculously improbable event ever. The only way to knock off an object the size of the moon is to have a planet the size of mars hit the Earth, but not head on, that would just vaporize both worlds. No it had to hit at a very shallow angle while closing slowly from behind, bounce off, swing around due to mutual gravitation and hit the Earth again. I would like to see Oliver stone explain that magic bullet theory. I may not know the face of God, but his billiard ball swings around every 28 days.

[The_Reader_David]

That depends. Working biologists 'reformulate natural selection so that it is very far from tautological' (in the words of Sir Karl Popper's famous 'recantation' of his view that Darwinism is not scientific). Polemicists who want Darwinism to support atheistic extra-scientific commitments go out of their way to ramify the actual theory to make it unfalsifiable.

[TheyConvictedOglethorpe]

Columbus spent five weeks finding North America (and he wasn’t even looking). Captain Cook, a true paragon of explorers, and a man who mapped places that Europeans didn’t even know were places, never mounted an expedition that lasted more than three years.

Call me crazy, but space is, um, rather larger.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Never, so long as they can keep getting government money to pay them for accomplishing nothing.

In a minute, if they have to depend on money from people who expect to get something for their investment.

[CharlesWayneCT]

I don't know who that was. Ignore him. :-)

I would guess SETI will go on forever, or until they run out of people willing to look -- and I don't expect that will happen, because no matter how slim the odds, the rewards are just too great.

They won't ever find anything though.