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Astronomers Hope to Find E.T. in Next 25 Years
Reuters via Yahoo! ^ | Tue Jul 16, 6:34 AM ET | By Belinda Goldsmith

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."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Unclassified
KEYWORDS: alien; astronomers; et; extraterrestrial; godlessheathens; paranormal; sethshostak; seti; ufo
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Comment #21 Removed by Moderator

To: Momaw Nadon

22 posted on 07/16/2002 8:11:50 AM PDT by Momaw Nadon
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To: Momaw Nadon
Astronomers Hope to Find E.T. in Next 25 Years

And I hope to spend a week with Jamie Lee Curtis and a large jar of chocolate syrup.

23 posted on 07/16/2002 8:13:21 AM PDT by Valin
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To: Scott from the Left Coast

24 posted on 07/16/2002 8:13:50 AM PDT by Northpaw
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To: Momaw Nadon
Argh! My eyes!!! My eyes!!!
25 posted on 07/16/2002 8:14:32 AM PDT by RoughDobermann
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To: Momaw Nadon
Ugh! stop hat, will you?
26 posted on 07/16/2002 8:15:17 AM PDT by Ahban
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To: marcleblanc
How pretentious to believe that we are the only living things in the universe.... Few centuries ago we were suppose to be at the CENTER of the universe and only atheist believed othewise.

So, are you saying that we are not!? Heretic! Get thee to thy death!

Oh, BTW, just pretentious? I'll throw in hyper-arrogant, deluded, closed-minded, dogmatic, self-righteous, lordly, overbearing, supercilious, and so on.

27 posted on 07/16/2002 8:19:59 AM PDT by RoughDobermann
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To: Conservative Chicagoan; biblewonk
I have heard a pretty convincing case that UFOs do exist, as demonic manifestations to keep mankind searching after the wrong things. Unless one rules out the possiblity of extra-dimensional (read demons/angels) beings in advance, the case is much stronger for that explanation than is the case that they are 'traditional' aliens.

As far as being lots of Earth's out there, I doubt it. It is literally a miracle that WE are even here. The more we learn about the earth the longer the list of things we realize had to be JUST RIGHT for this planet to support human life. Even if they discover 100 billion solar systems, that is not enough to make it likely that there is even one other Earth.

28 posted on 07/16/2002 8:20:17 AM PDT by Ahban
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To: Momaw Nadon
Man, that stubble really makes him look masculine, don't it?
29 posted on 07/16/2002 8:20:43 AM PDT by RoughDobermann
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To: Tom Bombadil
Isn't it also a little pretentious to "believe" that we aren't alone? It can go both ways.

Actually, no, it's not, based on probablities as well as ego. Saying "we are unique" is obviously alot more pretentious than saying "we are not unique" - the first sentence implies special status, the other does not. Additionally, believing in something is that is VERY VERY VERY probable, mathmatically, versus believing something very very VERY improbable is pretty much the opposite of pretention - it's common sense.

30 posted on 07/16/2002 8:23:11 AM PDT by Shryke
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To: RoughDobermann
Him? More like it.
31 posted on 07/16/2002 8:24:36 AM PDT by Momaw Nadon
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To: Tom Bombadil
You are correct about the pretention. Isn't it also a little pretentious to "believe" that we aren't alone? It can go both ways.

If one believes in life evolving through chance chemical interactions, then it is short-sighted NOT to consider that life could have evolved elsewhere. Given the billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars, then the sheer magnitude of star systems suggests that, if we are the only life forms in the universe, we are extremely lucky. We are the Powerball winners of the life lottery.

I can't say for sure that there is life elsewhere, nor would I myopically state that we MUST be the only ones. As the saying goes, absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence. That applies to the scientific view as well as the religious one.

32 posted on 07/16/2002 8:25:39 AM PDT by TrappedInLiberalHell
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To: Momaw Nadon
Ok, I'll bite:

Please don't reach for the Tinfoil just yet!

In general I support the SETI Project, because it actually runs on a cheap budget while sincerely working on looking for ET signals. And in the radio spectrum, I'm betting that someday we'll find something that'll knock our socks off.

However, having said the above, I think Shostak is blinded by his crusade and too close association to Carl Sagan and his expectation of how alien life should be characterized. Both men have espoused that alien life will be so different that we will have a hard time recognizing it, and that its technology will challenge us too greatly. This view leads folks down the path that we are so very backward technologically that finding signals will be very hard and, in addition, we certainly aren't being visited by anyone. "Even at the speed of light interstellar travel is too slow..." that sort of thing.

There have been some very recent advances in technology here on Earth that have shown that practical teleportation of light (and hence, information) has been achieved. Why is this important? Two things:

1. Faster-than-Light communication is achievable. The galaxy just got a lot smaller.
2. We humans, y'know, we primatives in the universe, have found this technology and are ably poised to exploit it.

Those two factors show that Shostak's view is biased and ultimately flawed. He and and the other SETI "priests" think the only way to communicate is via slow radio waves, so any chance of galactic travel or community is pretty much impossible. I take a contrary view: Radio is a phenomenon that is found in nature, and all technological species stumble upon it and use it for remote communication to start out. Perhaps the next step is to devise an artificial but much more useful transmission technique that is faster than radio. The upshot of this stuff is that the real communication in the universe may actually be happening with this "next-step" technology. When we begin using such techniques ourselves, we may find we're on a galactic "party-lne".

Alright y'all, I promised no tinfoil required, so hang with me here on the next point, then I'll go back to conservative political stuff. There has been another breakthrough in technology as of late, through the virtual creation of matter. Artificial atoms, if you will, used to control incredibly small computer circuits. The application beyond electronics, however, may not be apparent to you. Basically, to create the artificial atoms, the researchers had to have information available to describe the atoms. If you join this idea with the transporter technology I described above, the implications are that there may be a "Star-Trek-Scotty-Type" in reality sometime in the future. Commucating in and travelling around the cosmos doesn't appear to be nearly as impossible as SETI may have you thinking.
33 posted on 07/16/2002 8:26:33 AM PDT by Frank_Discussion
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To: ALASKA
EXACTLY how I see it! Why do we continue to put God in a box? He can do whatever he wants. The book of Genesis didn't say in a footnote somewhere "This is the only time God has made a solar system".

Sheesh.
34 posted on 07/16/2002 8:28:57 AM PDT by Frank_Discussion
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To: Ahban
I have heard a pretty convincing case that UFOs do exist, as demonic manifestations to keep mankind searching after the wrong things. Unless one rules out the possiblity of extra-dimensional (read demons/angels) beings in advance, the case is much stronger for that explanation than is the case that they are 'traditional' aliens.

Demons certainly have the ability to manifest themselves as angels or aliens of light. To a dead world an alien would be an angel of light. It gives them more hope in their vain thoughts of reincarnation, extended life, and evolution. I have to wonder if they aren't working up some way to ping SETI or something like that to increase the hopes and waste in this effort.

As far as being lots of Earth's out there, I doubt it. It is literally a miracle that WE are even here. The more we learn about the earth the longer the list of things we realize had to be JUST RIGHT for this planet to support human life. Even if they discover 100 billion solar systems, that is not enough to make it likely that there is even one other Earth.

Yes, I heard that the original list was some trivial 5 or 6 things needed for a good ole "class M" star trek, planet. Now they have something like 70 or 80 things needed for the earth to be as perfect and stable as it is. When you consider the fire of the sun and the cold of space and we sit here on this planet under a quilt of atmosphere that never varies but enough to give us some interesting weather. What an amazing creation.

35 posted on 07/16/2002 8:31:00 AM PDT by biblewonk
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To: Conservative Chicagoan
These atheists can look all they want but they are going to find any UFOs. They don't exist.

Don't look at that green man behind the curtain, eh? Protest all you want, but we're closing in on your home planet.

36 posted on 07/16/2002 8:35:52 AM PDT by Wm Bach
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To: Mr. Lucky
LOL!!!
37 posted on 07/16/2002 8:36:54 AM PDT by Conservative Chicagoan
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To: Momaw Nadon
Well, we don't know what they look like, how to find them, or how to communicate with them when we do, but (1) we can make categorical statements about whether they exist or not, and (2) we can put a timeline of 25 years out there for finding them.

A whole lotta smoke gettin' blown here...

Patience, Commander Zebronk. We must lull the Earthlings into a sense of security before the invasion fleet arrives.

38 posted on 07/16/2002 8:37:11 AM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: RadioAstronomer
Any thing to add?
39 posted on 07/16/2002 8:37:19 AM PDT by Virginia-American
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To: ALASKA
Is it in the Good Book? No!
40 posted on 07/16/2002 8:37:25 AM PDT by Conservative Chicagoan
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