SETI & Anomalous Signals
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I remember reading on the sadly departed Dilbert List of the Day, about co-workers who took a screen grab of their colleagues SETI screensaver, photshopped something like 'A strong signal has been detected. Please contact the University of California immeaditely', and then set it as his wallpaper.
The bloke fell for it hook, line and sinker, thinking he would be remembered forever as the first man to discover an alien signal.
Cruel but very funny.
The bloke fell for it hook, line and sinker, thinking he would be remembered forever as the first man to discover an alien signal.
Cruel but very funny.
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chatsubo said:
Damn.. is this the same thing as the Dilbert Newsletter?
I wonderd why I didnt get those any more.
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Adam Rang said:Damn.. is this the same thing as the Dilbert Newsletter?
It was the greatest thing on the Dilbert site, but for some reason, they axed it.
Basically it was all work related questions like 'Best excuse for falling asleep at your desk', and you could email your answers in, and then people would vote for the best answer.
My brief moment of fame was reaching number two .
Q. Most bizarre request from your human resources department.
A. I was asked to sign a contract promising that I would never divulge any company news to the media. Makes sense, apart from the fact that I was working as the companies press officer at the time.
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Copied from a newsletter - a bit fringey, but worth a read:
________________________________________________
SETI and Intelligent Alien Life in the Solar System
by Mac Tonnies
See: http://mactonnies.com/cydonia.html
1. The Demise of "Academic" SETI?
The "mainstream" Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has finally conceded that it's not impossible that aliens are already here, rather than diligently manning radio telescopes hundreds of light years away. Inevitably interpreted by some as signaling a conspiratorial inside agenda, SETI's change of perspective is more accurately attributed to recent advances in science and their implications for the human future.
While SETI continues to ridicule the UFO phenomenon as evidence of ET visitation, arguments by physicist/ufologist Stanton Friedman, outlined in the new issue of New Frontiers in Science, remain especially topical. Friedman, a long-time critic of SETI's justifications (he's interpreted the acronym as "Silly Effort To Investigate"), has justifiably lambasted the "old school" SETI
assumption that extraterrestrial civilizations will necessarily
forego interstellar travel because of the daunting requirements of
chemical rockets. Indeed, SETI's long-held contention that beings
thousands or millions of years more advanced than us would be
constrained by Apollo-era technology (already near-obsolete here on Earth) has always seemed something of a convenient anachronism for researchers content to keep the study of ETI comfortably academic.
2. The Postbiological Cosmos
Rapid advances in computing, manufacturing and physics (theoretical and otherwise) suggest that intelligent extraterrestrials (assuming they exist), are almost certainly more exotic and technically capable that previously assumed. Scientists such as roboticist Hans Moravec, who predicts that the human species will become effectively obsolete within the next few hundred years, and K. Eric Drexler, whose work with nanotechnology has done nothing less than redefine how futurists view the coming decades, have collectively modeled a future in which artificial intelligence is near-omnipresent ("ubiquitous computing" or "ubicomp") and practical travel between stars is moved out of the arena of wishful thinking and into the realm of the imminently possible.
Recent books such as Moravec's "Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind" and Ray Kurzweil's "The Age of Spiritual Machines" present technologies as optimistic as any dreamed by Arthur C. Clarke--and as potentially hazardous as the dystopian nightmares of neo-Luddite Bill Joy.
At the same time, breakthroughs in fields as seemingly arcane as
quantum teleportation (and possibly antigravity) reveal a universe alive with untapped potential. If the human species can survive what astronomer Carl Sagan poetically termed our "technological adolescence," predicting the future with any hope of accuracy becomes impossible. In all probability, the minds that will plot our trajectory through the next millennium will be humanity's cybernetic offspring; the role of humans as we know them is quite unguessable (although Moravec argues that we will coexist peacefully with our "mind children," perhaps even merging with them until the distinction between "animate"and "inanimate" is thoroughly dissolved).
3. SETI's Disturbing Double Standard
Such speculation fuels SETI's new intellectual renaissance, as
addressed by senior researchers Seth Shostak and Jill Tarter (the
inspiration for Jodie Foster's character in "Contact"). SETI's
reappraisal of the galactic neighborhood is both welcome and long overdue. Rather than reflecting a hidden agenda, SETI's willingness to entertain once-heretical notions indicates the (perhaps grudging) need to acknowledge the changing scientific zeitgeist.
However, SETI's implicit rejection of UFOs and evidence for
extraterrestrial artifacts on Mars betrays its frailty as a political
entity. Ignoring the evidence in Cydonia is ironic, as Carl Sagan's
own early calculations suggested that our solar system may have been visited once every 20,000 years. Even if Sagan grossly overestimated, a single visiting ET civilization could have left artifacts within our ability to discover. (This scenario is presented in the Brookings Institute's famous report to NASA, with Mars cited as a candidate for ET intervention.)
Interestingly, mainstream SETI astronomers have made no secret of their searches for "Bracewell probes," theoretical automatic devices left by visiting civilizations (much like the "monolith" left buried on the Moon in "2001"). Bracewell probes, in any exist, are thought to occupy orbital Lagrange points, where they can remain stable for millennia. Acting as calling cards, such devices could alert their long-departed creators upon detecting intelligent life; conversely, the probes themselves could establish a dialogue with an emerging technical species. (I personally think that such a "machine intelligence" could be responsible for some UFO encounters. A similar hypothesis has recently been advanced by Richard Dolan, author of "UFOs and the National Security State.")
Since SETI is willing to look for ET artifacts in space, why not
planetary surfaces? Perhaps if the disconcertingly human-like "Face" hadn't first been discovered and popularized, radio SETI's attitude toward "planetary SETI" (the search for ETI on planetary bodies such as the Moon and Mars) would be different. Cydonia, with its implied "terrestrial connection," has been neatly excluded from mainstream SETI research for no apparent scientific reason (NASA's erroneous "tricks of light" and bungled MOLA data notwithstanding).
Merging planetary SETI and mainstream radio SETI promises to advance objective efforts to detect intelligent alien life, even if
eventual "contact" is one-way. The hoped-for signal sought by Jill
Tarter may not be an electromagnetic emission from some distant sun, but a collection of geometric anomalies on a planet we've already pronounced as "dead."
Not long ago, a geologist involved in JPL's robotic exploration of
Mars remarked that the proper way to view the fourth planet was
to "expect the unexpected." We would be wise to apply this maxim to the ongoing search for extraterrestrial intelligence as well.
________________________________________________
SETI and Intelligent Alien Life in the Solar System
by Mac Tonnies
See: http://mactonnies.com/cydonia.html
1. The Demise of "Academic" SETI?
The "mainstream" Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has finally conceded that it's not impossible that aliens are already here, rather than diligently manning radio telescopes hundreds of light years away. Inevitably interpreted by some as signaling a conspiratorial inside agenda, SETI's change of perspective is more accurately attributed to recent advances in science and their implications for the human future.
While SETI continues to ridicule the UFO phenomenon as evidence of ET visitation, arguments by physicist/ufologist Stanton Friedman, outlined in the new issue of New Frontiers in Science, remain especially topical. Friedman, a long-time critic of SETI's justifications (he's interpreted the acronym as "Silly Effort To Investigate"), has justifiably lambasted the "old school" SETI
assumption that extraterrestrial civilizations will necessarily
forego interstellar travel because of the daunting requirements of
chemical rockets. Indeed, SETI's long-held contention that beings
thousands or millions of years more advanced than us would be
constrained by Apollo-era technology (already near-obsolete here on Earth) has always seemed something of a convenient anachronism for researchers content to keep the study of ETI comfortably academic.
2. The Postbiological Cosmos
Rapid advances in computing, manufacturing and physics (theoretical and otherwise) suggest that intelligent extraterrestrials (assuming they exist), are almost certainly more exotic and technically capable that previously assumed. Scientists such as roboticist Hans Moravec, who predicts that the human species will become effectively obsolete within the next few hundred years, and K. Eric Drexler, whose work with nanotechnology has done nothing less than redefine how futurists view the coming decades, have collectively modeled a future in which artificial intelligence is near-omnipresent ("ubiquitous computing" or "ubicomp") and practical travel between stars is moved out of the arena of wishful thinking and into the realm of the imminently possible.
Recent books such as Moravec's "Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind" and Ray Kurzweil's "The Age of Spiritual Machines" present technologies as optimistic as any dreamed by Arthur C. Clarke--and as potentially hazardous as the dystopian nightmares of neo-Luddite Bill Joy.
At the same time, breakthroughs in fields as seemingly arcane as
quantum teleportation (and possibly antigravity) reveal a universe alive with untapped potential. If the human species can survive what astronomer Carl Sagan poetically termed our "technological adolescence," predicting the future with any hope of accuracy becomes impossible. In all probability, the minds that will plot our trajectory through the next millennium will be humanity's cybernetic offspring; the role of humans as we know them is quite unguessable (although Moravec argues that we will coexist peacefully with our "mind children," perhaps even merging with them until the distinction between "animate"and "inanimate" is thoroughly dissolved).
3. SETI's Disturbing Double Standard
Such speculation fuels SETI's new intellectual renaissance, as
addressed by senior researchers Seth Shostak and Jill Tarter (the
inspiration for Jodie Foster's character in "Contact"). SETI's
reappraisal of the galactic neighborhood is both welcome and long overdue. Rather than reflecting a hidden agenda, SETI's willingness to entertain once-heretical notions indicates the (perhaps grudging) need to acknowledge the changing scientific zeitgeist.
However, SETI's implicit rejection of UFOs and evidence for
extraterrestrial artifacts on Mars betrays its frailty as a political
entity. Ignoring the evidence in Cydonia is ironic, as Carl Sagan's
own early calculations suggested that our solar system may have been visited once every 20,000 years. Even if Sagan grossly overestimated, a single visiting ET civilization could have left artifacts within our ability to discover. (This scenario is presented in the Brookings Institute's famous report to NASA, with Mars cited as a candidate for ET intervention.)
Interestingly, mainstream SETI astronomers have made no secret of their searches for "Bracewell probes," theoretical automatic devices left by visiting civilizations (much like the "monolith" left buried on the Moon in "2001"). Bracewell probes, in any exist, are thought to occupy orbital Lagrange points, where they can remain stable for millennia. Acting as calling cards, such devices could alert their long-departed creators upon detecting intelligent life; conversely, the probes themselves could establish a dialogue with an emerging technical species. (I personally think that such a "machine intelligence" could be responsible for some UFO encounters. A similar hypothesis has recently been advanced by Richard Dolan, author of "UFOs and the National Security State.")
Since SETI is willing to look for ET artifacts in space, why not
planetary surfaces? Perhaps if the disconcertingly human-like "Face" hadn't first been discovered and popularized, radio SETI's attitude toward "planetary SETI" (the search for ETI on planetary bodies such as the Moon and Mars) would be different. Cydonia, with its implied "terrestrial connection," has been neatly excluded from mainstream SETI research for no apparent scientific reason (NASA's erroneous "tricks of light" and bungled MOLA data notwithstanding).
Merging planetary SETI and mainstream radio SETI promises to advance objective efforts to detect intelligent alien life, even if
eventual "contact" is one-way. The hoped-for signal sought by Jill
Tarter may not be an electromagnetic emission from some distant sun, but a collection of geometric anomalies on a planet we've already pronounced as "dead."
Not long ago, a geologist involved in JPL's robotic exploration of
Mars remarked that the proper way to view the fourth planet was
to "expect the unexpected." We would be wise to apply this maxim to the ongoing search for extraterrestrial intelligence as well.
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Anonymous
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Fascinating Rynner. A lot of it mirrors my own thoughts.
The search for Bracewell probes will probably be futile until we develope the required technology to "see" them. I've always been intriqued by this idea. I'm sure they exist, however, and will be revealed in due course. It's precisely what we'd do if we discovered a Neandethal planet and wished to observe progress without hanging around for millenia. These things could be a possible explanation, in some way, for UFO activity too.
As to searching for ETI with Aricebo. What else is there to do? We can't not search for them can we? We have no other means of a possible contact/detection as yet, and so we must use what we have.
The search for Bracewell probes will probably be futile until we develope the required technology to "see" them. I've always been intriqued by this idea. I'm sure they exist, however, and will be revealed in due course. It's precisely what we'd do if we discovered a Neandethal planet and wished to observe progress without hanging around for millenia. These things could be a possible explanation, in some way, for UFO activity too.
As to searching for ETI with Aricebo. What else is there to do? We can't not search for them can we? We have no other means of a possible contact/detection as yet, and so we must use what we have.
Then again, if probes or beacons from alien civilisations were already here, who's to say that they would take a form that we'd understand or recognise? I think it assumes alot that an alien civilisation would have a similar or recognisable rationale to ourselves, and/or that they would know how to put themselves across in a way that we could understand.
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Anonymous
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I wouldn't be surprised, if there was some sort of galatic community, that the use of Von Neuman machines would be outlawed - or at least seen as being in the worst possible taste
Anything with the potential to spread exponentialy must be regarded as a large scale ecological menace.
Anything with the potential to spread exponentialy must be regarded as a large scale ecological menace.
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Anonymous
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chatsubo said:Q. Most bizarre request from your human resources department.
A. I was asked to sign a contract promising that I would never divulge any company news to the media. Makes sense, apart from the fact that I was working as the companies press officer at the time.
Reminds me of when I used to work for a london council, and they sent out letters to council tenants asking about levels of literacy, and asking the recipients to fill out the form and return it
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Anonymous
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We at Orion's arm are attempting to imagine the postbiological cosmos-
some of us make the assumption that humans will survive, and be valued and cared for
some are not so sure...
but what the heck it's a big cosmos
so we have a bit of both
heh heh
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Anonymous
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Here is one thing that gets me They say that if they get no signal that means that there is no other life out there
I think they are useing something that is beyond anything that we are able to pickup there must be some contact between the craft and it's homeworld
Nebka
I think they are useing something that is beyond anything that we are able to pickup there must be some contact between the craft and it's homeworld
Nebka
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Anonymous
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That is very likelyNebka said:
-3 possibilities (probably many more)
1/narrow beam lasers- preferably high uv or xray to minimise spread-would be practically undetectable outside the beam
2/Quantum entanglement-once all the entangled material is used up thats it- no more messages, but it is completely immune to interception
3/ mircoscale Einstein/Rosen bridges- also immune to interception, but can cause time-like distortion
heh heh
steve b
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Anonymous
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Search for ET
Why not do your bit for searching for aliens?
All you do is download the software and when your screensaver comes on, it will analyse radio telescope data, once it has anlysed it, it will send the results to SETI HQ and you are then given a little bit more, it costs nothing and helps the search for aliens, if the first person from here to download the software, he'she can set up a team, so that the others can join and so on, if you call the team FT forums or similar, you can get this site free publicity too! ive been doing it for a while now and have racked up over 13 years of processor time.
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
Why not do your bit for searching for aliens?
All you do is download the software and when your screensaver comes on, it will analyse radio telescope data, once it has anlysed it, it will send the results to SETI HQ and you are then given a little bit more, it costs nothing and helps the search for aliens, if the first person from here to download the software, he'she can set up a team, so that the others can join and so on, if you call the team FT forums or similar, you can get this site free publicity too! ive been doing it for a while now and have racked up over 13 years of processor time.
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
top :chuffed:
D/L it! like Mr. C. says, it defaults as your screensaver and have racked up 2193 units and 43,761 hours 23 mins and 12 seconids - which is about 5 years
It's free, is only a small D/L and is all round a top cause!
D/L it! like Mr. C. says, it defaults as your screensaver and have racked up 2193 units and 43,761 hours 23 mins and 12 seconids - which is about 5 years
It's free, is only a small D/L and is all round a top cause!
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Anonymous
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Yep, had this for years on my home PC (before it got deaded) and used 1000's of hours of computer time.
And do I even get a sniff of an alien? Do I buggery
Ungrateful bastards!
And do I even get a sniff of an alien? Do I buggery
Ungrateful bastards!
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Anonymous
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JerryB do you have a link to the story? ive not heard that one.
Schnor why dont you set up a Fortean times forum team! im sure with 20 people you could rack up atleast 100 hours a day, and make contact with aliens that little bit easier?
Schnor why dont you set up a Fortean times forum team! im sure with 20 people you could rack up atleast 100 hours a day, and make contact with aliens that little bit easier?
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Anonymous
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schnor said:I could Mr. C. but I can't be bothered
LOL lazy arse!! do it for the people.
rynner said:
It took me about 5 earth minutes to get the "coinky dinks" joke... which made me wonder about alien communication. We always seem to assume that maths is universal - that fundamental numbers such as pi and e are always the same and understood everywhere. What if they are not? Maybe the aliens have been sending us signals that we think are natural, whilst we are sending them signals that they think are natural?
Stop me if I begin to make sense...
Jane.