SETI Institute suspends search for aliens(mercurynews.com)
mercurynews.com
SETI Institute suspends search for aliens
http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_17926565
21 comments
SETI doesn't sell search for life, SETI sells "I have donated money to SETI." After you understand this, it is the Rosetta Stone for non-profit fundraising. (And the enduring support for the space program among geeks, which is non-profit spending using other people's money that actually funds military hardware R&D.)
There are many people who buy Ferraris to be the kind of person that buys Ferraris, rather than to drive. Seriously, there are like magazines you can buy so you can aspire to one day not driving a Ferrari.
There are many people who buy Ferraris to be the kind of person that buys Ferraris, rather than to drive. Seriously, there are like magazines you can buy so you can aspire to one day not driving a Ferrari.
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I wouldn't be surprised if SETI did this to promote their cause and raise more private donations, but the journalist is spinning it into a "Government cuts science spending" story to suit their agenda. The story will still serve its purpose though. I just donated $10, only another 499,999 more and they're home and dry.
> The quote: "if everybody contributed just 3 extra cents on their 1040 tax
forms, we could find out if we have cosmic company." suggests that the
organization is focused on government funding, rather than individual donors
s/we could/there is a very slim chance that &/
Or, we could take the cost of one day of our Libyan Kinetic Military Action ($100 million) and fund this program for a generation.
Or we could take the 2.5 million for SETI and help people get access to safe drinking water, food, and vaccines. After all, people on Earth suffering should be a higher priority than looking for spacemen, right?
edit: This might have come across as snarky - that wasn't my intention. I just wanted to show that you can argue that any government spending can be spent better, and/or more morally, somewhere else.
edit: This might have come across as snarky - that wasn't my intention. I just wanted to show that you can argue that any government spending can be spent better, and/or more morally, somewhere else.
"After all, people on Earth suffering should be a higher priority than looking for spacemen, right?"
Of course not. That line of reasoning is always flawed, as it is presumably always typed on a computer that was purchased with funds that weren't used for free water/food/vaccines.
Of course not. That line of reasoning is always flawed, as it is presumably always typed on a computer that was purchased with funds that weren't used for free water/food/vaccines.
Once worldwide military funding goes down to the level of the rest of budgets everywhere, we can talk about which one deserves more money than the other.
Until then, anything is a joke. A sad joke. And we're the clowns.
Until then, anything is a joke. A sad joke. And we're the clowns.
I'd be reluctant to invest more in an investment that has never paid off. They're searching for signs of life. Signs found so far = 0. Thats a pretty bad ROI.
Actually quite a lot of research has no apparent practical payoff - it's still worth doing though.
Edit: Or the results of the research can be completely serendipitous products that are only tenuously related to the original research - my favorite example of this being the best known product of high energy physics research.
Edit: Or the results of the research can be completely serendipitous products that are only tenuously related to the original research - my favorite example of this being the best known product of high energy physics research.
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Sure with that kind of short term thinking we will never get anywhere. It is far to early to call the investment a failure, in relative timescales it would be like calling a new school a failure because it had a bad first day.
Let's say we get a signal. Then what?
Even if we do find a signal, there is no payoff. The money is better invested elsewhere, then, once we are better able to capitalize upon a signal being found, then, we should invest in finding one. Right now, its premature.
Even if we do find a signal, there is no payoff. The money is better invested elsewhere, then, once we are better able to capitalize upon a signal being found, then, we should invest in finding one. Right now, its premature.
That's pretty narrow-minded thinking. Life isn't all about whether something pays off or not. There's science out there that you cannot capitalize on, but it's still worth it. It should be anyway, if humanity wants to progress as a species.
You're assuming a lot by saying "there is no payoff".
For instance, you're assuming that if we get a signal, from aliens, we will learn absolutely nothing of value from it.
I think we've got a few smart people hanging out on Earth; more than enough to learn something valuable from alien signals. For instance, we might learn how aliens send radio signals, which might have some relevance to our own communication technologies. We might learn something about alien linguistics, which might have applications here on Earth that could be beneficial. We might learn what alien porn looks like, and I know that most of you reading this comment would be very interested in that.
What seems vanishingly unlikely is that we'd learn NOTHING of value.
For instance, you're assuming that if we get a signal, from aliens, we will learn absolutely nothing of value from it.
I think we've got a few smart people hanging out on Earth; more than enough to learn something valuable from alien signals. For instance, we might learn how aliens send radio signals, which might have some relevance to our own communication technologies. We might learn something about alien linguistics, which might have applications here on Earth that could be beneficial. We might learn what alien porn looks like, and I know that most of you reading this comment would be very interested in that.
What seems vanishingly unlikely is that we'd learn NOTHING of value.
It's possible we won't get to a point where we're ready to do something with a signal unless and until a signal convinces us that getting there is worth the investment (an interesting chicken-and-egg problem).
I agree with you. Very few people have thought through what would happen if SETI found a clear signal. Say intelligence is only 20 light years away from us and they say "Hi! Here we are!"
What possible step could we take? They are soo far away.
What possible step could we take? They are soo far away.
We could talk to them. We could listen to them. Chances are at least one side would have something useful to learn from the other. (Think about how much we know that we didn't 100 years ago. Unless this hypothetical other intelligent civilization, having developed independently of ours, happens to be within 100 years of progress of us in every respect, someone's going to learn something.)
You're forgetting about the existence of Republicans. Clearly, what we'd do is immediately fund a massive space army to go and attack the aliens.
The lack of results is an important result in of itself.
Though this could be said for nearly all research until it is complete.
Just in case anyone didn't bother reading the article - SETI is not calling off all of their searches, just shutting down one of its main radio arrays in Mountain View. Their other time-shared operations sound like they'll continue.
Not really sure why people feel like misrepresenting articles like this all the time, but this is one of them.
Not really sure why people feel like misrepresenting articles like this all the time, but this is one of them.
The article misrepresents itself. "Said SETI Director Jill Tarter, 'that a time when we discover so many planets to look at, we don't have the operating funds to listen.'"
It's a pretty naked sympathy appeal for money. "Honestly, if everybody contributed just 3 extra cents on their 1040 tax forms", etc.
Anyone around here familiar with the "Iron Law of Bureaucracy" coined by Jerry Pournelle? For every sufficiently large organization, self-preservation and expansion inevitably crowd out the organization's ostensible purpose. SETI's primary purpose is not to find extraterrestrial intelligence. SETI's primary purpose is to ensure the continued existence of and wages paid to SETI. Actually finding the aliens is a secondary goal.
(I am not ragging on SETI in particular here, that happens for every bureaucracy. The primary purpose of NASA is to get NASA and its contractors hired and paid, not to explore space. The primary purpose of TSA is to get TSA workers hired and paid, not to secure airways. The primary purpose of unions in education is to get themselves hired and paid, not to educate. These organizations do accomplish their stated goals to some and varying degrees of success, but never at any cost of imperiling their own demesne.)
It's a pretty naked sympathy appeal for money. "Honestly, if everybody contributed just 3 extra cents on their 1040 tax forms", etc.
Anyone around here familiar with the "Iron Law of Bureaucracy" coined by Jerry Pournelle? For every sufficiently large organization, self-preservation and expansion inevitably crowd out the organization's ostensible purpose. SETI's primary purpose is not to find extraterrestrial intelligence. SETI's primary purpose is to ensure the continued existence of and wages paid to SETI. Actually finding the aliens is a secondary goal.
(I am not ragging on SETI in particular here, that happens for every bureaucracy. The primary purpose of NASA is to get NASA and its contractors hired and paid, not to explore space. The primary purpose of TSA is to get TSA workers hired and paid, not to secure airways. The primary purpose of unions in education is to get themselves hired and paid, not to educate. These organizations do accomplish their stated goals to some and varying degrees of success, but never at any cost of imperiling their own demesne.)
If they dont have any funding its going to be kind of hard to accomplish goal #1, right?
You are extremely correct. It gets even worse for large NGOs without direct government funding - organisations like greenpeace are said to spend 40% of their funds advertising to get next years donations. I don't know if that is urban legend or plain false, but it seems quite plausible.
It's also very true for a lot of startups - too much of the founders time is spent ensuring the startup gets more access to funds. It's a terrible trap to get into, and circumvented only by bootstrapping to a revenue phase.
It's also very true for a lot of startups - too much of the founders time is spent ensuring the startup gets more access to funds. It's a terrible trap to get into, and circumvented only by bootstrapping to a revenue phase.
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It's worth noting in this context that the SETI Institute is a private organization, not a government agency.
The primary purpose of NASA is to get NASA and its contractors hired and paid, not to explore space
You're joking, right?
So you're saying that the purpose of everything is to make money, not to make what those enterprises were built to do in the first place?
No wonder capitalism is the root of almost all our evils nowadays.. I feel really sorry for you.
You're joking, right?
So you're saying that the purpose of everything is to make money, not to make what those enterprises were built to do in the first place?
No wonder capitalism is the root of almost all our evils nowadays.. I feel really sorry for you.
Is this not a reasonable suggestion? Any organisation which is unable to ensure its financial survival will by definition go extinct and so be unable to achieve anything else.
There's a huge difference between saying "ensure financial survival" and "their primary purpose is to get paid".
One puts money above everything. The other considers it a mean for a higher purpose.
Can you tell the difference?
One puts money above everything. The other considers it a mean for a higher purpose.
Can you tell the difference?
I think they piggyback on top of the Arecibo scope, but don't get to choose where to point it.
The beginning of the article is incorrect in identifying the Allen Array as the array in the film "Contact". That was the Very Large Array.
"There is a huge irony," said SETI Director Jill Tartar, "that a time when we discover so many planets to look at, we don't have the operating funds to listen."
That sounds more unfortunate than ironic. It would be ironic if funding went directly from SETI to the satellite which found the planets.
That sounds more unfortunate than ironic. It would be ironic if funding went directly from SETI to the satellite which found the planets.
A better use of funds would be grants or investments in non-government space exploration / cargo / communications / research. That could be nonprofits or companies like Elon Musk's SpaceX. The latter is actually producing something we need.
SETI will detect radio signals from an intelligent source, sure. "We have detected extraterrestrial intelligence, and it is us." It's better for US interests if the source is speaking English, not Russian (only program capable now of delivering astronauts to ISS) or Chinese. So don't mourn the loss of SETI funding. Celebrate when you find out that it's going to something more productive.
SETI will detect radio signals from an intelligent source, sure. "We have detected extraterrestrial intelligence, and it is us." It's better for US interests if the source is speaking English, not Russian (only program capable now of delivering astronauts to ISS) or Chinese. So don't mourn the loss of SETI funding. Celebrate when you find out that it's going to something more productive.
Of course, realistically speaking the money will probably just be appropriated by some Senator to build roads in Montana going nowhere.
Maybe. At least some though are working on a bill to mandate a permanent base on the moon. That's a decent piece of high ground. And if it has a core of iron as has recently been suggested, could lead to some interesting research. Might even shed light on some phenomena down here on the blue ball.
This seems like massive mis-management of money. Paul Allen contributed $50M to build the array. Whoever was managing that project should have thought about sticking back 30% or so for running it after it got built. Didn't have enough to build all the scopes? Build a few at a time.
Presumably this is what happens when you don't have clear goals and objectives laid out - and oversight to make sure you don't screw it up.
Pretty sad. They should be asking for new leadership and $20M to run it for 10 years.
Presumably this is what happens when you don't have clear goals and objectives laid out - and oversight to make sure you don't screw it up.
Pretty sad. They should be asking for new leadership and $20M to run it for 10 years.
With donations you don't always get to allocate money in the most appropriate manner. The $50M could have been directed for construction only or it might have had a fixed split attached (e.g. 75% construction, 25% maintenance).
My understanding (via astronomer scuttlebutt) is that the SETI institute fell massively short of the private fundraising goals it set at the outset of the project. (In fairness, this was during the economic crisis.) Paul Allen's funds were intended to start the hardware off, and then the privately raised funds would yield the operational/expansion budget.
So, not so much mismanagement as overoptimistic budgeting.
(Building a few telescopes at a time is likely a false economy, given the costs of paying engineering/fabrication costs over a longer period.)
All that said, it's going to be harder to get private donors to contribute towards telescopes in the future...
So, not so much mismanagement as overoptimistic budgeting.
(Building a few telescopes at a time is likely a false economy, given the costs of paying engineering/fabrication costs over a longer period.)
All that said, it's going to be harder to get private donors to contribute towards telescopes in the future...
It makes me wonder how much Paul Allen was involved with it besides the money grant. You'd think he'd actually enjoy geeking out on some of the details and be involved enough to either a) prevent mismanagement or b) have enough confidence in what they are doing to continue to commit funds to it.
This needs to be crowd-sourced.
Surely there are 5 million people who'd be willing to donate a dollar each for this.
Surely there are 5 million people who'd be willing to donate a dollar each for this.
Surely there's at least one Bill Gates who could spare 5 mil :)
Bill Gates might rather cure river blindness, malaria and cholera. He's at that stage when a billionaire thinks about humanitarian legacy. Similar to Andrew Carnegie and the moguls of that generation.
Discovering another instance of intelligent life would be one of the most profound transformational experiences that we could have as a species. I would think that there would be more than one billionaire out there that would like their name to be associated with such a discovery.
I'm rather bullish on matters of space exploration, but I'm pretty skeptical about just how profoundly transformational a SETI discovery would be. If there were such a discovery, it would be beset by difficult-to-imagine communication challenges, not the least of which is a years- or decades-long delay between sending a signal and receiving any response.
There have also been some cogent arguments that it might be in the best interests of our own self-preservation to not broadcast our presence, for now, just because we are still technologically primitive. Being loud represents a big wager that anything else within hearing distance is friendly.
I'm mostly disappointed at this announcement because it is part of a trend in dwindling government support for exploration.
There have also been some cogent arguments that it might be in the best interests of our own self-preservation to not broadcast our presence, for now, just because we are still technologically primitive. Being loud represents a big wager that anything else within hearing distance is friendly.
I'm mostly disappointed at this announcement because it is part of a trend in dwindling government support for exploration.
I think the transformation would be similar to the psychological change our species went through when it saw earth from space for the first time.
Putting it simply for the first time it would be us and them where us is our species rather than the us that happen to be on an arbitrary lump of earth, speak the same language or worship the same god.
It could be the next psychological development stage for our species as it grows up. I'd like to have my name associated with that.
Putting it simply for the first time it would be us and them where us is our species rather than the us that happen to be on an arbitrary lump of earth, speak the same language or worship the same god.
It could be the next psychological development stage for our species as it grows up. I'd like to have my name associated with that.
We're already being loud. We've been leaking radio transmissions into space for the past century.
We have been leaking analog radio transmissions for such a short period of time during the lifetime of the universe that any other life out there would most likely be either underdeveloped or overdeveloped to receive the transmissions.
We have barely uttered a sound in the universe.
We have barely uttered a sound in the universe.
The mind-blowingly relevant picture: http://proto-knowledge.blogspot.com/2011/02/human-radio-bubb...
Of course, light goes really, really fast compared to anything physics says we can possibly manage for things with more rest mass than photons. Although there could be aliens on another spiral arm, or Andromeda, communication would take longer than the lifetime of our civilization; and material trade would take longer than the lifetime of our species.
Of course, light goes really, really fast compared to anything physics says we can possibly manage for things with more rest mass than photons. Although there could be aliens on another spiral arm, or Andromeda, communication would take longer than the lifetime of our civilization; and material trade would take longer than the lifetime of our species.
Yes. Why do people assume you can just make a phone call to Andromeda? 'Ya, hi ET, what's new?' If Andromeda disappeared into a black hole 1 million years ago, we wouldn't even know yet. We have to wait 2.5 million years for news from Andromeda, assuming the news can't transcend the speed of light.
That's true, but the same would apply to any deliberate attempt to reach other life.
Possibly, but the chances of it happening are very very small, even with adequate funding.
The cost/effectiveness ratio is much higher, though.
or maybe a Google
Given that so many have already helped with SETI@Home and used far more of their resources than $1, I'd say that's definitely true.
For instance, back in the 1990's, I had a NeXT, a couple Apollos, an SGI Challenge, and a few Macs cranking away on SETI@Home blocks, some of those machines running 24/7.
For instance, back in the 1990's, I had a NeXT, a couple Apollos, an SGI Challenge, and a few Macs cranking away on SETI@Home blocks, some of those machines running 24/7.
Aha, clearly the solution is to release a new version of SETI@home that mines Bitcoins and donates them to SETI.
That's what the SETI Institute thought: private fundraising was intended to support the telescope. But they had a massive shortfall relative to their expected donations.
Edit: just read the letter to donors; looks like the near-term problem was cuts by the state of California to the UC Berkeley budget.
Edit: just read the letter to donors; looks like the near-term problem was cuts by the state of California to the UC Berkeley budget.
Searching for aliens seems like the ultimate high risk/high reward investment opportunity. If someone secretly made contact with an advanced extraterrestrial civilization the potential for profit would be huge. On the other hand, good luck executing on that.
I'm not sure there's that much chance for profit even if you do find aliens, at least not directly from the information you'd get from the aliens. These aliens would be many light years away. (absolute minimum ~5, right?) So for a long time you'd just be receiving signals (because it would take at the very least 10 years for your first message to get to them and them to respond).
First of all, the signals you'd receive would probably be worthless. Even if you manage to understand them despite the fact that they likely use some totally different language and encode information in radio waves in a different way, it's not like we frequently broadcast "this is everything you need to know to build a computer" or anything super-useful. There might be some useful mentions of science they've developed (the equivalent of our NPR science programs), but it probably wouldn't be in enough detail (especially since their lay people would presumably have a much more advanced scientific base if they're so far beyond us) for us to really get anything out of it.
In the meantime, people have probably heard that you got alien signals, and they'd eventually figure out how to receive and decode the signals too. Maybe you could patent it or something, but again, if they're far enough away, your patent might run out before you do much with it. You'd get somewhat of a head start, I guess.
And since this whole thing would take so long to cash in, and your investors took an absurd risk, they'd expect at least 1000x on their money.
First of all, the signals you'd receive would probably be worthless. Even if you manage to understand them despite the fact that they likely use some totally different language and encode information in radio waves in a different way, it's not like we frequently broadcast "this is everything you need to know to build a computer" or anything super-useful. There might be some useful mentions of science they've developed (the equivalent of our NPR science programs), but it probably wouldn't be in enough detail (especially since their lay people would presumably have a much more advanced scientific base if they're so far beyond us) for us to really get anything out of it.
In the meantime, people have probably heard that you got alien signals, and they'd eventually figure out how to receive and decode the signals too. Maybe you could patent it or something, but again, if they're far enough away, your patent might run out before you do much with it. You'd get somewhat of a head start, I guess.
And since this whole thing would take so long to cash in, and your investors took an absurd risk, they'd expect at least 1000x on their money.
your investors took an absurd risk
If there's life out there, we'll probably find it eventually.
Considering life is a binary condition (there or not there) and we haven't found anything to strongly indicate the odds of life existing elsewhere are very small, I certainly wouldn't call the odds of finding life absurdly bad.
If there's life out there, we'll probably find it eventually.
Considering life is a binary condition (there or not there) and we haven't found anything to strongly indicate the odds of life existing elsewhere are very small, I certainly wouldn't call the odds of finding life absurdly bad.
> If there's life out there, we'll probably find it eventually.
That's quite possible, but you'd want a highly-advanced technological organization - some bacteria-type things in Martian ice would be a scientific breakthrough, but unlikely to be massively profitable.
That's quite possible, but you'd want a highly-advanced technological organization - some bacteria-type things in Martian ice would be a scientific breakthrough, but unlikely to be massively profitable.
If there's life out there, we'll probably find it eventually.
I don't know. I would like to think that this is so, but it seems hard to reconcile with the Fermi paradox (referring to intelligent life, at least). We do not know the probability of intelligent life developing, but I consider it plausible that the probability is such that although other life exits, it is beyond the limits of known methods of communication (e.g. extragalactic).
I don't know. I would like to think that this is so, but it seems hard to reconcile with the Fermi paradox (referring to intelligent life, at least). We do not know the probability of intelligent life developing, but I consider it plausible that the probability is such that although other life exits, it is beyond the limits of known methods of communication (e.g. extragalactic).
There is also the possibility that extraterrestrials exist and communicate in ways we can't conceive of.
Yes, this is possible. I'd argue though that if 2 instances of life exist (them and us), n instances must exist, (and thus some must use radio waves) because it clearly demonstrates humanity wasn't a freak septillion-to-one occurrence that shouldn't have happened.
Interesting point, but given the amount of randomness involved in evolution, the physical complexity of cognition, and the timescales involved, is it possible that even given massive numbers of cognitively advanced species in the universe, each could have such a fundamentally distinct ontological relationship to reality and model of the physical universe that even a concept as seemingly scientifically basic as a 'radio wave' would be unique to us?
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This would be relevant for civilizations like ours, using waves to purposedly contact with others, but not for signals used to communicate with spaceships or colonies of the same alien civilization.
http://xkcd.com/638/
"We've searched dozens of these floor tiles for several common types of pheremone trails. If there were intelligent life up there, we would have seen its messages by now."
"We've searched dozens of these floor tiles for several common types of pheremone trails. If there were intelligent life up there, we would have seen its messages by now."
Lol... exactly.
I suspect that they communicate in ways that we can conceive of, and have recently started to communicate, ourselves.
Specifically, if you're broadcasting radio or TV signals that look like anything other than random noise from the perspective of an uncorrelated receiver, then you're wasting energy. Human history suggests that there's a window of about 100 years between the time when a civilization learns RF theory and starts to generate coherent signals, and the time when they learn information theory and stop.
Specifically, if you're broadcasting radio or TV signals that look like anything other than random noise from the perspective of an uncorrelated receiver, then you're wasting energy. Human history suggests that there's a window of about 100 years between the time when a civilization learns RF theory and starts to generate coherent signals, and the time when they learn information theory and stop.
I've been thinking about faster-than-light communication recently.
Consider gravity. Is its effect instantaneous? That is, gravity varies as the inverse of the square distance between two bodies. If, say, the Earth were to suddenly get much closer to the Moon, would that gravitational effect be "instant"? Or does it propagate at the speed of light?
If gravitation is somehow "instant", then one could imagine an apparatus which allows you to transmit information instantaneously. (You would need a way to measure the effect of gravity from the sending body; perhaps by measuring the height of waves formed in a planetary-sized sphere of water.)
Consider gravity. Is its effect instantaneous? That is, gravity varies as the inverse of the square distance between two bodies. If, say, the Earth were to suddenly get much closer to the Moon, would that gravitational effect be "instant"? Or does it propagate at the speed of light?
If gravitation is somehow "instant", then one could imagine an apparatus which allows you to transmit information instantaneously. (You would need a way to measure the effect of gravity from the sending body; perhaps by measuring the height of waves formed in a planetary-sized sphere of water.)
Instantaneous gravity exists in Newtonian mechanics but not in modern theories. Gravitation is thought to be transmitted by gravitational waves, which have a finite speed of c. It is not possible to transmit information at a faster speed than light in special relativity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Relativity#Gravitationa...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity#Causality_an...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Relativity#Gravitationa...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity#Causality_an...
Gravity propogates at the speed of light. However, using gravity to send information will allow you to send information through most objects like Earth or the Sin without any satilites to redirect it around the object.
Just knowing something is possible is invaluable. "Our space-scouts returned from 6 light-years away yesterday, validating govt funding of this 2-year-old program"
This sounds pretty crappy but the more I think about it, what's the best case scenario here? Mind you, we're coming out of the worst recession of most of our lives, we've still not fundamentally fixed any of those problems and then with the general status of human life on most of the planet, global warming, etc..
I'm just trying to think this through, so we identify some sort of signal. I'll bet that there will be detractors, with legitimate arguments, why wouldn't there be? It's not going to be an English message encoded in a format we can't dispute. Maybe it's a bad assumption but assuming the aliens use radio technology, it seems at least somewhat reasonable to assume that they'd use it to communicate with themselves before attempting to communicate with others, for those aliens, we'd most likely intercept their communications signals rather than directed communication with us or others. Communications which happened years and years ago. The best case scenario would be one of the near by stars having alien life that happened to be listening too and in that case should we get a signal and send one back it would still be on the order of a decade long cycle. What's the average case? A century long communication cycle? Assuming both parties are listening and engaged? Likewise, if they're sufficently advanced, wouldn't they compress and encrypt their communications and it should appear to be entropy to us?
I think there are a lot of things you should do just to do. The best upside here seems like hope or an easing of the beliefs about the universe, it just seems like we'd have to get really really lucky to actually communicate with something else and it could take centuries to establish that. Which in a round about sort of way makes it seem like shutting down a telescope for a few years isn't so harmful after all. Then let's just toss in nuclear proliferation, Islam fundamentalism (as well as other religious zealotry over the centuries,) AIDS in Africa (imagine should it some how become more communicable...) hunger, and global warming as issues that might affect our ability to concentrate on a problem for a century or more, is stoppage that bad?
I'm just trying to think this through, so we identify some sort of signal. I'll bet that there will be detractors, with legitimate arguments, why wouldn't there be? It's not going to be an English message encoded in a format we can't dispute. Maybe it's a bad assumption but assuming the aliens use radio technology, it seems at least somewhat reasonable to assume that they'd use it to communicate with themselves before attempting to communicate with others, for those aliens, we'd most likely intercept their communications signals rather than directed communication with us or others. Communications which happened years and years ago. The best case scenario would be one of the near by stars having alien life that happened to be listening too and in that case should we get a signal and send one back it would still be on the order of a decade long cycle. What's the average case? A century long communication cycle? Assuming both parties are listening and engaged? Likewise, if they're sufficently advanced, wouldn't they compress and encrypt their communications and it should appear to be entropy to us?
I think there are a lot of things you should do just to do. The best upside here seems like hope or an easing of the beliefs about the universe, it just seems like we'd have to get really really lucky to actually communicate with something else and it could take centuries to establish that. Which in a round about sort of way makes it seem like shutting down a telescope for a few years isn't so harmful after all. Then let's just toss in nuclear proliferation, Islam fundamentalism (as well as other religious zealotry over the centuries,) AIDS in Africa (imagine should it some how become more communicable...) hunger, and global warming as issues that might affect our ability to concentrate on a problem for a century or more, is stoppage that bad?
this sounds like it has the potential for the largest kickstarter funded project to date!
Part of me hopes the secret reason for this is they've actually discovered some so they don't feel they need to keep looking right now.
Paul Allen is still worth billions, can't he help a little more?
Paul Allen is still worth billions, can't he help a little more?
I often think about that - if life elsewhere were discovered, what would be the repercussions of letting the public know? If the gap between replies were 10 or more years, how many people would just give up work figuring it was pointless? Would society as we know it collapse?
Google to the rescue!
Seriously, first they are both located at Mountain View. Second it is not that much money to begin with, at least for Google. Third it totally fits Google's pet project description - wildly awesome but realistically little chance to produce result.
Seriously, first they are both located at Mountain View. Second it is not that much money to begin with, at least for Google. Third it totally fits Google's pet project description - wildly awesome but realistically little chance to produce result.
I feel really sorry about it and I hope they'll make it.
Maybe they should consider writing more appreciated applications.
They could write more applications which involve people for the AI search.
I don't know what could reduce time to find AI, but I would bet SETI could get many volunteers if they just would provide a social network application (e.g. facebook).
There must be more than just calculation distribution.
Maybe they should consider writing more appreciated applications.
They could write more applications which involve people for the AI search.
I don't know what could reduce time to find AI, but I would bet SETI could get many volunteers if they just would provide a social network application (e.g. facebook).
There must be more than just calculation distribution.
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Does anyone have any insight as to how they justify 2.5 million dollars per year in operating expenses?
Some TV-Channel on alpha centauri just lost a viewer. Or maybe not, since we didn't find the channel yet.
They should 'open-source' this project.
Although I think the seti@home project was one of the groundbreaking distributed/crowdworking projects, my personal opinion is that the actual search for ETI is a waste of time (not factoring in any advances in science/engineering that have been derived from the project).
I'm a firm believer in the most common solution to the Fermi Paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox) - ie there's nothing else out there - because for any civilisation that's even slightly more advanced than us (for galactic values of slightly), the effort to make a noticeable impact on galaxy is reasonably trivial.
I'm a firm believer in the most common solution to the Fermi Paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox) - ie there's nothing else out there - because for any civilisation that's even slightly more advanced than us (for galactic values of slightly), the effort to make a noticeable impact on galaxy is reasonably trivial.
I ran Seti@Home for years; after I found out about Folding@Home, I switched over; disease research yields short- and long-term benefits.
http://folding.stanford.edu/
http://folding.stanford.edu/
Does Folding@Home really yield a lot? I did some quick figuring (http://www.gwern.net/Notes.html#charitable-supercomputing) and that project costs a lot, while, as far as I can tell, delivering little especially compared to alternate charities.
You write, "$12.65 million is a lot of money. What could we do with that?" Here are some issues:
1. This implies that there is a direct way that everyone who runs Folding@Home could, instead, have donated their electrical costs directly to a charitable organization.
2. The article fails to address how Folding@Home eases scientific contributions by the masses. I agree that $12.65 million can save many lives -- provided it was not split across scores of charities.
3. Folding@Home has the potential to save hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives.
1. This implies that there is a direct way that everyone who runs Folding@Home could, instead, have donated their electrical costs directly to a charitable organization.
2. The article fails to address how Folding@Home eases scientific contributions by the masses. I agree that $12.65 million can save many lives -- provided it was not split across scores of charities.
3. Folding@Home has the potential to save hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives.
> 1. This implies that there is a direct way that everyone who runs Folding@Home could, instead, have donated their electrical costs directly to a charitable organization.
Either you are paying for all of your electrical bill or you're not.
If you are paying for all of it, then yes, you can donate your electrical costs! just don't run Folding@Home and send Oxfam or whatever a Paypal donation at the end of the year.
If you are not paying for all of it, if someone is sharing the bill or footing the bill entirely, then donating directly may harm your pocketbook, yes. But in such a situation, does it really still make sense to force the other to pay for all the electricity you are using? The overall economics are bad per the original note, it's an inefficient way to turn someone else's money into charity. What right do you have to burn the electricity like there's no tomorrow, for that matter? (If you weren't going to use a year's worth of electricity, then whomever is paying for your electricity is poorer by that $10 as surely as if you had pick-pocketed him of $10.)
> 2. The article fails to address how Folding@Home eases scientific contributions by the masses.
'Scientific contributions'? What contributions? If you just mean, let the masses feel like they're doing something useful, then Folding@Home could do us all a favor and make the main loop of the daemon a call to sleep()! If you mean, actual scientific progress, that overlaps with your point #3 which I'll get to.
> I agree that $12.65 million can save many lives -- provided it was not split across scores of charities.
A dollar is a dollar, no matter where it comes from. If you and 99 other people each donate $100 to 100 charities, then it's the same as if each person donated $10,000 to just 1 charity. The only difference is whatever overhead there might be; and even if we say that our Folding@Home contributors lose 50% to overhead and the charities wind up getting only $6 million in their bank accounts to use, that's still thousands more lives saved than by running Folding@Home and wasting the same amount of money!
> 3. Folding@Home has the potential to save hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives.
This is the key question. If Folding@Home has expected value of thousands of lives a year, then running it is fine. But if it's not producing...
For these sort of stakes, one would hope that one had really good evidence. But let's lower standards and merely ask for ordinary evidence. What reason do you have to think Folding@Home has such extraordinary potential? It has been operating for nearly 11 years. 11! And nothing that has saved a single life. (You are free to provide a counter-example.) At what point do we stop talking about its potential to save millions of lives and about the possibility of teapots in orbit around Mercury?
Either you are paying for all of your electrical bill or you're not.
If you are paying for all of it, then yes, you can donate your electrical costs! just don't run Folding@Home and send Oxfam or whatever a Paypal donation at the end of the year.
If you are not paying for all of it, if someone is sharing the bill or footing the bill entirely, then donating directly may harm your pocketbook, yes. But in such a situation, does it really still make sense to force the other to pay for all the electricity you are using? The overall economics are bad per the original note, it's an inefficient way to turn someone else's money into charity. What right do you have to burn the electricity like there's no tomorrow, for that matter? (If you weren't going to use a year's worth of electricity, then whomever is paying for your electricity is poorer by that $10 as surely as if you had pick-pocketed him of $10.)
> 2. The article fails to address how Folding@Home eases scientific contributions by the masses.
'Scientific contributions'? What contributions? If you just mean, let the masses feel like they're doing something useful, then Folding@Home could do us all a favor and make the main loop of the daemon a call to sleep()! If you mean, actual scientific progress, that overlaps with your point #3 which I'll get to.
> I agree that $12.65 million can save many lives -- provided it was not split across scores of charities.
A dollar is a dollar, no matter where it comes from. If you and 99 other people each donate $100 to 100 charities, then it's the same as if each person donated $10,000 to just 1 charity. The only difference is whatever overhead there might be; and even if we say that our Folding@Home contributors lose 50% to overhead and the charities wind up getting only $6 million in their bank accounts to use, that's still thousands more lives saved than by running Folding@Home and wasting the same amount of money!
> 3. Folding@Home has the potential to save hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives.
This is the key question. If Folding@Home has expected value of thousands of lives a year, then running it is fine. But if it's not producing...
For these sort of stakes, one would hope that one had really good evidence. But let's lower standards and merely ask for ordinary evidence. What reason do you have to think Folding@Home has such extraordinary potential? It has been operating for nearly 11 years. 11! And nothing that has saved a single life. (You are free to provide a counter-example.) At what point do we stop talking about its potential to save millions of lives and about the possibility of teapots in orbit around Mercury?
World Community Grid, sponsored by IBM, uses BOINC to distribute a variety of humanitarian number crunching projects, not just protein folding:
https://secure.worldcommunitygrid.org/
https://secure.worldcommunitygrid.org/
Exactly, using that computing power for folding@home would have been much more beneficial, IMHO.
BOINC was actually developed to support SETI@HOME. Without the pulling power of SETI who knows if you had all the others spinoffs. As for many other kind of research, space research often brings very unexpected innovations.
That is very true. I didn't mean to imply that nothing good came out of it at all - obviously they developed some great tech to help their search for alien life, which can be reapplied elsewhere.
I have multi multi-core machines, so I run seti@home as well as a (much larger timeshare of) rosetta@home. I agree that disease research has a much more probable impact, but the implications of a successful SETI search are not trivial either.
I also run Einstein@home, and world community grid.
I also run Einstein@home, and world community grid.
Agree with your 1st paragraph. As for whether there's anything out there, I don't know. But if there is, it's optimistic to assume their technology would be related to ours in such a way that we could detect it with a few dishes plunked down in a valley. Besides that, the news would be at least 2.5 million year old. ;)
An alternative solution to the Fermi paradox would be that radio signals fade into the background fairly quickly. SETI only has the ability to pick up signals coming just few light-years away (if emitted by an Earth-like radio culture). It would be expected that a more advanced civilization would prefer to use highly focused directional beams (perhaps lasers), signals which won't (easily) get picked up by those to whom they're not intended. Even now, as communication bandwidth is increasing, it's mostly as ground-based fiber optics.
Yes or 'they' might use a form of energy that is totally foreign to us. Maybe it's not even a beam or a ray. Maybe it's micro-black-hole-oscillation (yeah, made that up). I mean, who knows? It's all hypothetical anyway. And here we are spending money on a bunch of dishes that pick up a specific range of radio frequency. Stick the same dishes on top of a sports bar and at least we can all watch football.
The advantage of SETI is that the radio equipment can be used for radio astronomy just as well. So the money spent has dual use (almost complementary).
We might be seeing their impact on the galaxy all around us. How would we know? They might work on different (time)scales.
Edit: I agree that SETI makes no sense to contact such entities though.
Edit: I agree that SETI makes no sense to contact such entities though.
Assuming such beings work on the same physics we do, they need massive amounts of energy to run a galactic civilization; and they have the same sources available that we do: Stars; and for extra credit black holes.
Putting a dyson sphere around a star changes its energy output, shifting it far into the infrared. Putting a matrioshka brain around a star is even more dramatic a change--but it still has the same gravitational effect on other stars. But no, unfortunately that doesn't explain the effects of "dark matter."
Putting a dyson sphere around a star changes its energy output, shifting it far into the infrared. Putting a matrioshka brain around a star is even more dramatic a change--but it still has the same gravitational effect on other stars. But no, unfortunately that doesn't explain the effects of "dark matter."
Seth Shostak's podcast - http://radio.seti.org/ . Highly recommended ;-)
It is a risk for any firm to be highly dependent on one customer for most of its revenue and SETI appears to have been highly dependent on US government funding.
It is dangerous to make conclusions based on a newspaper article, but it seems they found $50 million in private donations way back when to build the network. Now they can't find $2.5 million per year to run it?
If nothing else, something is seriously wrong if donors that ponied up $50 million to build the Ferrari no longer want to shell out $2.5 million run it.
The quote: "if everybody contributed just 3 extra cents on their 1040 tax forms, we could find out if we have cosmic company." suggests that the organization is focused on government funding, rather than individual donors - and continues this focus even after an evident failure of that model to keep things running. Meeting the needs of government funders and meeting the needs of donors are entirely different things. In my experience, you can have one or the other, but not both.
They should step back and rethink how they can make their non-profit work primarily based on voluntary donations. The world is full of non-profits that manage it with budgets much larger than the $2.5 million/year SETI appears to need.
Link to send SETI money: http://www.seti.org/page.aspx?pid=1468