Posted on 10/11/2007 2:05:36 PM PDT by Freeport
Today, in the remote northeast corner of California, technology innovator and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen will hit the big red button.
No, he won't be throwing heavy-duty machinery into an emergency shutdown, nor will he be sending ICBMs screaming from their silos (traditional functions for ruddy buttons). Instead, he'll be christening a new telescope that, in its significance, could eventually outpace the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.
The famous technologist will be inaugurating the initial 42 antennas of his namesake, the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) – the first major radio telescope designed from the pedestal up to efficiently (which is to say, rapidly) chew its way through long lists of stars in a search for alien signals. Within two decades, it will increase the number of stellar systems examined for artificial emissions by a thousand-fold. The ATA will shift SETI into third gear.
This telescope is truly a geek's barn-burner. In the last two decades, high-performance radio amplifiers have gotten smaller and, more importantly, much cheaper. This has changed the recipe for building radio telescopes, and the ATA is taking advantage of the new formula.
Consider: the single most consequential characteristic of a radio telescope (at least, for SETI) is its collecting area: the number of square meters boasted by its "mirror." There are two ways to increase this area: either build a bigger antenna, or build lots of smaller ones and hook them together. As an example of the former strategy, imagine doubling the diameter of the antenna's "dish", thereby increasing the collecting area by a factor of four. A good thing, surely. But since an antenna is a three-dimensional device, the amount of aluminum and steel necessary for the larger antenna has gone up by a factor of eight...
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Refuting Fermi: No Evidence for Extraterrestrial Life?
National Institute for Discovery Science | John B. Alexander, Ph.D
Posted on 01/02/2005 7:43:04 AM EST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1312384/posts
We will never hear anything because we are to distant and other forms of life are too primitive!
It's not about odds. What are the odds of a universe existing?
And you know this how?
And you know otherwise how?
Window dressings to an infinitely powerful God.
What fun. Adventure implies not knowing an outcome.
this piece is all about discerning, that’s the point
we have not yet discerned the manner to communicate with colonial insects
discerning is the problem
I wasn't the one who made the absurd absolute claim. You were. Answer the question, if you can.
The answer is the Bible.
Where in the bible? I don't recall anything about aliens in it, but my memory could be wrong.
Exactly!
So you are saying God is highly inefficient then?
Not at all. He very efficiently showed His glory by making such amazing window dressings.
OK I understand now, if it isn't mentioned in the bible then it doesn't exist? I don't agree with you, but at least I understand why you said what you said.
Yeah, like Mary's immaculate conception, for example.
Was going to mention that statistics is not mathematics but some oddball thing that uses entropy but isn’t science either. The Statistics Dept. is two doors down from the Math Dept. next to Computer Science.
I must say you're talking in tongues. I believe that mary's immaculate conception was stated in the bible with the business with the angel explaining things to Joseph. But whatever dude. I personally think that the odds of these guys finding anything are miniscule, because the basic SETI assumptions are trash. For example they assume that alien civilizations will be deliberately sending a very high power signal to us. Why would they? We're not sending anything to them.
Thanks for your apodictic confirmation that the SETI program is a waste of time. They don’t follow good math protocols nor good statistics protocols, basically it’s bad science.
And thus he went into writing fiction instead of studying science.
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