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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."
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The stuff at reasons.org is a defacto Drake equation. I know that the list was at less than 100 factors only a few months ago. The more our knowledge grows the more we find that the parameters that will produce a planet capable of harbouring life as we know it get narrower.
I myself would be interested to know if there is an offical "Drake Equation" that is updated frequently. My guess is that unless it is updated monthly, it will not have all 118 of these factors, but it will have more factors than it did two years ago, or whenever it was last updated.
But for specifics, a long sequence of events and conditions produced us. Any other set of conditions would have produced something else, not us.
There is zero factual evidence that the "something else" would have been advanced life of any kind. There is much evidence to suggest that the parameters that produce advanced life are VERY narrow. Why don't the other planets and other bodies in our solar system have life if the parameters for life are not extremely narrow?
You are hypothesizing that diffrent conditions would have produced different kinds of life, but we already have places where that hypothesis has been tested: The other planets and their many satellites (Saturn alone has 22 large satellites, one with an atmosphere closer to Earth's than any other known body).
Someone who is six feet tall has legs of a certain length. No coincidence. He is six feet tall because his legs are that long. We are here because of events
A better analogy to describe the facts scientists are finding would be to say that there was a universe where no one can live who varies more that 1mm from six feet in height. Different legs would not produce a different height, but death. Since our height varies slightly from day to day, no one would survive in such a universe long.
If you will look at the link I have provided, you will see that most or all of the 118 parameters apply to ANY kind of advanced life arising. Any carbon based life as we know it. Big brained dinos, whatever. The odds against ANY advanced life as we know it, not just humans, seems enormous.
The equation is usually written: N = R* • fp • ne • fl • fi • fc • L
Where,
N = The number of civilizations in The Milky Way Galaxy whose electromagnetic emissions are detectable.
R* =The rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of intelligent life.
fp = The fraction of those stars with planetary systems.
ne = The number of planets, per solar system, with an environment suitable for life.
fl = The fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears.
fi = The fraction of life bearing planets on which intelligent life emerges.
fc = The fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.
L = The length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.
Look at the last paragraph of my #256. What do you offer to refute the point of that paragraph?
I love the waterfall effect of the the FFT. :-)
Those places MAY have simple life, and may not, but they were likely seeded from Earth. Even with that kind of boost, no advanced life has evolved to suit any of their various conditions.
There's no need to get angry. If there's something you don't understand, just ask. If it's something you do understand, there's no harm done, because you're not the only person who reads these discussions. I don't know what you know and what you don't. But I can tell you that the average reader doesn't know this stuff.
You repeated it inanely, as if I had overlooked it the first time.
I didn't merely repeat it. The key to the whole problem--which is the very fact that people fail to grasp, in my experience--is that Bob and Alice don't share the same axis of simultaneity. I wanted to make that clear. Perhaps you already knew that, or perhaps you just don't give a damn. But a layman trying to follow the discussion--you included, for all I know--would need to know it.
you expect far too much for your trouble.
Now who's being presumptuous? How do you know what I expect?
Well, much of that would better be called journalism than science, however, where it is science--that's science's workaday job--debunking things. I can prove that animals spoke the Kings English rather well 10,000 years ago if mere dispositive proof is our measure of truth--the historical sources are plentiful. "Proving" things is as easy as it is inconclusive. Disproving things, however, tends to stick, and to help us carve our way incrementally closer to the truth of nature.
I'm sorry your ox was gored, but goring oxen is what science is usually about when it is on its marks.
The odds against any specific thing arising from a combinatorially complex system for producing things are enormous. But the odds of producing SOME complex thing are about unity. Said thing may then look back and say, "whoa, what a miracle I am for having arising where so many other things might have arisen instead--I must be a bonefide miracle!"
However, those of us who are literate in statistics need not take this miracle seriously. Something had to arise, and it happened to be us. Good luck for us, but humdrum business for the rest of the universe looking on.
Hoagland makes overreaching claims from scant evidence, and can get into quite a tizzy about it. However, that does not gainsay that fact that he did predict some of the major components of contemporary crop circles from the cydonian geometry with remarkable detail, which seems very hard to write off to coincidence. Newton was an alchemist and a deviner--should we therefore ignore the laws of gravity?
Whole lotta projectin' going on from Mr. KMA and "Cut the cr*p and buzz off."
It doesn't prove there's no wheat in his chaff, but it does show there's a lot of chaff in his wheat.
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