Posted on 07/16/2002 7:40:55 AM PDT by Momaw Nadon
CANBERRA (Reuters) - Scientists searching the stars for aliens are convinced an E.T. is out there -- it's just that they haven't had the know-how to detect such a being.
But now technological advances have opened the way for scientists to check millions of previously unknown star systems, dramatically increasing the chances of finding intelligent life in outer space in the next 25 years, the world's largest private extraterrestrial agency believes.
"We're looking for needles in the haystack that is our galaxy, but there could be thousands of needles out there," Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer at California's non-profit Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence ( news - web sites) (SETI) Institute, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
"If that's the case, with the number of new star systems we now hope to check, we should find one of those in the next 25 years."
But Shostak, visiting Australia to attend a conference on extraterrestrial research, said detecting alien life, like the big-eyed alien in the film E.T., was only the start.
"Even if we detect life out there, we'll still know nothing about what form of life we have detected and I doubt they'll be able -- or want -- to communicate with us," Shostak said.
Since it was founded in 1984, the SETI Institute has monitored radio signals, hoping to pick up a transmission from outer space. Its Project Phoenix conducts two annual three-week sessions on a radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
Project Phoenix, widely seen as the inspiration for the 1997 film "Contact" starring Jodie Foster, which depicted a search for life beyond earth, is the privately funded successor to an original NASA ( news - web sites) program that was canceled in 1993 amid much skepticism by the U.S. Congress.
But the search has been slow. About 500 of 1,000 targeted stars have been examined -- and no extraterrestrial transmissions have been detected.
E.T. NOT ON THE LINE
"We do get signals all the time but when checked out they have all been human made...and are not from E.T., more AT&T," said Shostak.
He said the privately-funded institute was developing a giant US$26 million telescope to start operating in 2005 that can search the stars for signals at least 100 times faster.
The so-called Allen Telescope Array, named after sponsor and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is a network of more than 350, six-meter (20-foot) satellite dishes with a collecting area exceeding that of a 100-meter (338-foot) telescope.
The Allen array, to be built at the Hat Creek Observatory about 290 miles northeast of San Fransciso, will also expand the institute's stellar reconnaissance to 100,000 or even one million nearby stars, searching 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Shostak said he is convinced there is intelligent life out there -- but don't expect to find a loveable, boggle-eyed E.T..
He said if any aliens share the same carbon-based organic chemistry as humans, they would probably have a central processing system, eyes, a mouth or two, legs and some form of reproduction.
But Shostak thinks any intelligent extraterrestrial life will have gone light years beyond the intelligence of man.
"What we are more likely to hear will be so far beyond our own level that it might not be biological anymore but some artificial form of life," he said. "Don't expect a blobby, squishy alien to be on the end of the line."
Flawed logic at the outset. I believe in God, the Creator; and, I'm believe that the scope of his love induced him to populate the universe for exactly the same reason he populated Earth. Why would he build a great big neighborhood, then just sell one house?
And there is no mention on atoms, molecules, germs, microbes, radio, x-rays, atomic bombs, nitroglycerin, computers, internal combustion engines, or airplanes. There is no Biblical mention of Myans, Incas, Aztecs, or the Chinese.
Just because something isn't mentioned in the Bible doesn't cause it to cease existing.
God has, in fact, created other non-human intelligences, the angels. We are told, however, that the Incarnation was specific to one species of intelligent creation, man. I suspect other planets will have plant and animal life, in order to make them suitable for human occupation.
That's a slender reed you're hanging your faith on, pardner.
Mmm. More precisely, quantum mechanics + relativity + causality does not permit FTL communication. If you drop causality, then we're home free.
This is not what SETI is trying to accomplish. All SETI is doing is looking for that extremely narrowband signal which will indicate we are not the only tool building species in this universe. We have no intention of attempting to communicate with them. It would not be much of a conversation if it took 12,000 years to just exchange a simple hello.
According to special relativity, if you can send a signal faster than light, you can send a signal backwards in time.
That shows that the most difficult part of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is the avoidance of extraterrestrial stupidity.
We might not recognize a signal even if we were looking right at it. For example, an analog AM or FM carrier stands out way above the noise, but digital broadcasts make better use of bandwidth and are thus more noiselike. A highly exploited bandwidth would be indistinguishable from noise.
There may be a window of only a hundred years or so in which a civilization is advanced enough to put out a detectable signal but not enough to make full use of bandwidth.
Indeed for the present. However, to communicate across the solar system we will require higher-powered carriers. So there may be a temporary lull instead of a total lapse of high power carriers as we expand thru our solar system. All SETI is doing is looking for that CW carrier. We are not looking for information at all.
The problem comes with relativity. Suppose that an observer determines that event "A" is in some way the "cause" of event "B." If FTL communication is possible, then relativity allows the existence of another observer who sees "B" as occuring in "A's" past, i.e., as the effect having preceded the cause.
You're still using far too narrow a definition of "life". Even in our universe (as opposed the universe as it might have been, whether or not there are other universes) there are many opportunities for complexity to arise beyond mere chemistry. Chemistry seems obviously necessary to us, because we happen to have arisen in a chemical milieu, but to a being who is composed of Alfven waves in the interior of a star, or who depends on the "neutron drip" nuclear chemistry on the surface of a neutron star, or who consists of bound plasmas in the horribly complicated magnetic fields of a supernova remnant, or who is composed of superfluid eddies in a pool of liquid helium on an intergalactic planetoid, the Earth seems as inhospitable a place as could be imagined, and organic chemistry wildly inappropriate as a basis for life.
See it this way, for other Earths we have only one test case, but for your idea we have nine test cases plus about 50 moons of pretty good size. No advanced life has developed on any of them, and probably no mirco-organisms either- despite the fact some have probably been "seeded" by earth biotics (from ateriod impacts blowing chucns of earth into space).
If we find any sort of life anywhere in the solar system except Earth, then life is outrageously common, bank on it. I don't expect we will, but that doesn't won't that life isn't common across the galaxy.
That's the problem -- how can we know that a carrier is there? Spread spectrum broadcasting makes good use of bandwidth, but it's almost impossible to detect over noise.
I'm all for SETI, but I think it may depend on someone trying to get our attention.
That's the problem -- how can we know that a carrier is there? Spread spectrum broadcasting makes good use of bandwidth, but it's almost impossible to detect over noise.
I'm all for SETI, but I think it may depend on someone trying to get our attention.
I think it depends on the effect. What I'm suggesting is there can be FTL effects that form a foundation for light-speed effects. These effects could be consensus-forming on light-speed expressions, functioning as part of a protocol for them.
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