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SETI (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence): Compendium / Miscellaneous

Yeah, but what if they use some sort of weird space-sonar?
:p
 
i disagre with the whole we havent been able to comunicate with elephants,monkeys etc
this whole group on animals havent been able to exploit there surounding in the same way we have
case in point we are able to vistit or even stay in the dolphins enviroment indefinatly am pritty certain they cant replicate this
that and monkeys are obviously a close relative but..if monkets decided to try and capture/train us etc they wouldnt survive very long would they
we would be able through our inventiveness and complex society/writing/comunications to completly wipe them out for ever

the main thrust is these species dont have the ability to invent and then exploit the same way we do and am pritty certain if we ever find intelegent life would think it would be at a basic level simiar to our selves

unless we can find a way to travel at revalistic speeds,as in that case im pritty sure we would find a mulititued of dolphin/elephant etc like creatures
but again it would be us finding them and that would be it nothing
to truely find et we would have to hope we find a species something like ourselves(ok in the loses of terms but..)
 
Yep, I also got a begging letter from Arthur C. Clarke. 8)

Surely discovery of, say, bacteria on Jupiter would radically influence the intellectual and scientific way of looking at the universe, and change our lives radically?
 
yes agreed bateria would shatter the biblistic view of the universe

the main point is that dolphins etc cant help us understand them can they?
 
Sorry gonna have to disagree with the communication angle at an academic level. For example, I can teach a dog many tricks, but what is it understanding at a cognitive level (same monkeys etc)? Many people confuse the issue of communication and conflate it with language, consciousness and intelligence.
Personally,I believe that 'life' will be found to be present throughout the universe; intelligent life? a different shade of question...
 
There are those who claim to channel dolphins, of course. The dolphins often claim to be extraterrestrials themselves, which begs the question of how they got here in the first place, having no opposable thumbs and all. Although according to Big Mama:
We are able to leave three dimensional reality at will and can shape shift.
I dare say that if aliens ever did land and proved to be utterly incomprehensible, there would be no shortage of people claiming to be able to 'channel' them. The worry is that some people might even take them seriously.
 
graylien said:
There are those who claim to channel dolphins, of course. The dolphins often claim to be extraterrestrials themselves, which begs the question of how they got here in the first place, having no opposable thumbs and all. Although according to Big Mama:
We are able to leave three dimensional reality at will and can shape shift.
I dare say that if aliens ever did land and proved to be utterly incomprehensible, there would be no shortage of people claiming to be able to 'channel' them. The worry is that some people might even take them seriously.

Yeah, and if they could shift dimension and shape they wouldn't get caught in tuna nets.

Or zoos for that matter.

:rolleyes:
 
graylien said:
... The dolphins often claim to be extraterrestrials themselves, which begs the question of how they got here in the first place, having no opposable thumbs and all...

Perhaps they've read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and are having a joke at our expense.

'Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than the dolphin, because he has achieved so much more throughout history... the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins ever did was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins know themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reason.'

Douglas Adams, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[/ quote]
 
graylien said:
Yes, but why is that so important? It's no more than the cosmic equivalent of finding some new kind of beetle in the rainforest. It's not going to cure cancer, or end war, or significantly improve the day-to-day life of the man in the street.

Just posting to note - finding a new beetle in the rainforest could cure cancer. There's a huge amount of biodiversity there, especially among beetles, and the chances of finding one that has a chemical that prevents the growth of cancer cells...

The universe is filled with new things to learn, new possibilities. Where do you think all the technological wonders that exist today came from? From someone noting a minor weirdness in the universe, and finding out what caused it.

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, just think what weirdnesses are out there.
 
Well, here's an interesting potential alternative to SETI:
Planet shine 'to aid life search'
By Jonathan Amos

Earth-like planets around distant stars may be too far away to be reached by spacecraft but scientists could still investigate whether they harbour life.

Telescope technologies are being developed that will probe the very faint light from these objects for tell-tale signs of biology.

These are the same "life markers" known to be present in light reflected off the Earth - so-called "earthshine".

They include signatures for water, and gases such as oxygen and methane.

"This gives you some information on habitability," said Wesley Traub, chief scientist on the US space agency's (Nasa) Navigator Program which specialises in the search for far-off worlds.

"These are only signs of life; they are only indicators. You can't actually detect the life itself crawling or sliming around on the surface of the planet," he told the American Geophysical Union Joint Assembly here in Baltimore, US.

In the glare

Traub is hopeful Nasa will approve the funds necessary to launch a Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) mission some time in the next decade.

It will comprise two space-borne observatories which will hunt down and study Earth-sized planets orbiting stars at distances where liquid water could exist and sustain life.

Europe has a similar, ambitious mission under consideration known as Darwin.

It is a hard task - the parent star is likely to be a billion to 10 billion times brighter than its tiny companion - but recent experiments at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory suggest the technologies are getting close to the sensitivities required.

The "template" for the information that a TPF or Darwin mission would target is based around what we know about the Earth's reflected light.

As the Sun's rays hit our world much of it bounces back out into space. We can see this light in the faint illumination it gives to the dark segment of a crescent moon.

Scientists have long established that this light carries information about the Earth's atmosphere and surface properties.

Pilar Montanes-Rodriguez, from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, reported to the meeting how she had been able to see in this earthshine a clear marker for chlorophyll, the pigment in plants that plays a critical role in photosynthesis.

Ancient planets

Clearly, to be able to detect such a signature in the light from a world tens of light-years away would be astonishing; but Montanes-Rodriguez cautioned: "For a typical day the signal of the vegetation is very weak for the Earth because it is obscured by the bright clouds.

"We used models and satellite cloud data to simulate the Earth reflectance for a whole year. We then applied what we'd learnt from Earth to an extrasolar planet.
"As this planet revolves around a parent star, there will be times when the signal will be prominent and can be unambiguously detected. Unfortunately, at these times the angle of distance between the planet and the star will be small and it will be difficult to rule out the light of the star."

She warned the instrumentation required might require a level of precision beyond what had previously been thought necessary.

Traub's own modelling has tried to work out what the Earth's planet shine would have looked like at various stages in geologic history - to get a set of "profiles" planet hunters could use to gauge what stage in the evolution of life a newly discovered world might have reached.

"If you look at the [current] earthshine spectrum and you calculate what that would have looked like at a point before any life arose on Earth, you see a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane," he informed the meeting.

"You wouldn't see any oxygen and you wouldn't see any ozone line, because the ozone comes from oxygen. As an Earth evolves, you would see the CO2 disappearing, you would see the oxygen increasing and at some late point you see the [infrared] of vegetation coming on."
source

See also the Nasa Terrestrial Planet Finder page. (Includes links to some very technical documents for those of you who understand such things.)
 
earth like planet

Why are we even looking for another earth like planet when we cant even look after this one!

Or is that the reason. After raping and destroying this one we simply move to another one - like locusts!
 
Well, not all of us. Just the elite. And their army of robot slave girls.
 
I think that SETI's chances at success are extremely low, so it's more of a loss of time than anything else. But maybe they should think to other targets. The recent exposition at London's Science Museum ("The Science of Aliens") gave a new insight at extraterrestrial life. Suitable, Earth-like planets may be found in very different solar systems (like binary stars or red dwarfs). This contradicts Peter's BROOKESMITH's viewpoint, as well as other proponents of Rare Earth.
Some of their arguments are naive. Why did we discover so many giant planets orbiting so close to their sun? Because:
1) It is much easier to detect giant planets.
2) It is much easier to detect planets which are close to their sun.
So it is a mere artefact. Nothing allows to say that our model of solar system is unique. Now that more stars are studied for a longer time, chances to detect planets orbiting far to their sun increase. Because we have more chance to spot them as they pass in front of it. And so, such discoveries increase.
And solar systems with a planet close to its star are not inevitably unfit to life. For example, 55 Cancri, with its two (very) "hot Jupiters", has another "Jupiter", almost at the same place as ours. It could have a rocky planet in the same position as Earth. Protected by a giant "guardian" acting against comets.
It is easy to imagine systems where two planets are suitable for advanced atmospheric life (see www.eponaproject.com). And our Sun is probably not the best suited star. Smaller ones are probably better candidates, due to their longer life.

So, I suspect that BROOKESMITH merely replaced an idiosyncrasy ("any solar system is like ours, because it's the only one we know") with another ("only solar systems similar to our own can bear advanced life"). I think that advanced e.t. life is probably rare. But there is "rare", and "rare". But, to quote an answer frequently put, if intelligence turns to be exceptional, it will more probably be the result of a lack of intelligence, than of the absence of life itself (or at least of suitable conditions).
 
This is quite interesting - SETI responding to accusations of being more like a religious faith than a scientific project. I'm not wholly convinced by their rebuttal - nor that SETI is one of our "noblest and most exciting scientific quests" (devoting your life to finding a cure for cancer - for example - is surely far more 'noble' than looking for aliens).

I suspect that when it comes to wishful thinking dressed up as science, SETI and the Saucerheads have rather more in common than Seth Shostak would like to admit.

Of Faith and Facts: Is SETI a Religion?
 
Analis said:
Some of their arguments are naive. Why did we discover so many giant planets orbiting so close to their sun? Because:
1) It is much easier to detect giant planets.
2) It is much easier to detect planets which are close to their sun.
So it is a mere artefact. Nothing allows to say that our model of solar system is unique. Now that more stars are studied for a longer time, chances to detect planets orbiting far to their sun increase. Because we have more chance to spot them as they pass in front of it. And so, such discoveries increase.

I agree. Our ability to detect smaller planets around stars is bound by current technology. As that improves, I wouldn't be surprised if smaller planets are detected. Sometimes it seems as if the Rare Earth proponents don't take this into account.
 
Well put, Analis.

Another thing that the Rare Earthers, and many on the other side of the argument, seem to ignore is that they are only looking at the requirements for life as we know it. Why does life need to be carbon based? Why does it need liquid water? And don't get me started on DNA.

The fact is, there is every possibility we will encounter alien life long before we recognise it. And that's assuming we ever get a useful working definition of "life" in the first place.
 
Well, I guess the Rare Earthers are saying that they think Earth-like planets are rare (and perhaps thus Earth-like life).
 
Anome_ said:
Why does life need to be carbon based?

Because carbon is the only element able to form the long and complex chains of molecules necessary to make organic compounds.

(Although there is some debate about the possibility of silicon based lifeforms.)
 
I can think of some silicone-based lifeforms - Jordan, Lolo Ferrari, Lea in Big Brother...
:lol:
 
graylien said:
Anome_ said:
Why does life need to be carbon based?

Because carbon is the only element able to form the long and complex chains of molecules necessary to make organic compounds.

(Although there is some debate about the possibility of silicon based lifeforms.)
You're kind of proving my point. People seem to think that life has to look like it does on Earth, with carbon-based compounds etc, because that's what it looks like on Earth.

There is no reason to think that life might not arise with a totally different chemistry to life on Earth.
 
Anome_ said:
You're kind of proving my point. People seem to think that life has to look like it does on Earth, with carbon-based compounds etc, because that's what it looks like on Earth.

There is no reason to think that life might not arise with a totally different chemistry to life on Earth.
Agree totally - we don't really know what imbues any particular set of compounds with life anyway - who's to say that under different chemical conditions it won't nonethless produce a similar effect?

Rain makes things wet, regardless of what they're made of :).
 
What "different chemical conditions"? What "totally different chemistry"? As far as we know, the physical make-up of the Universe is constant - the same elements and compounds are found throughout. Both the laws of physics and the laws of chemistry are exactly the same on the other side of the Universe as they are here.

Consequently, carbon remains the only element capable of forming complex organic compounds.
 
There is at least one type of "life" based on silicon: Artificial Intelligence. In nature, however, sislicon has many drawbacks. It can have four bonds, like carbon. But its bonds with hydrogen are too weak, and those with oxygen too strong. This lets too little room for an alternative chemistry. Some thought to a different context, at much higher temperatures, using molten silicates as solvents. But it's too alien, we can't judge its plausibility. However, the universe being so huge, I don't ontend to exclude any possibility.
There are alternative, carbon-based, bio-chemistries. For example, with ammonia or hydrocarbons as solvents. Ammonia is indeed interesting. There is a plausible biochemistry using C-N chains. But ammoniac liquid phase has a narrow range (approximatively 44°C under 1 bar). Water can use protective ice caps as an insulation mechanism protecting against temperature variations. But ammoniac ice doesn't float, it sinks. If ammonia is involved, it would be more probably mixed with water. Ammonia wolud also act as "antifreeze" for water. This could be the case on Titan, where such an ocean might exist in its dephts (possibly mixed with methane and ethane too).

We may also dream about neutronic life on pulsars. Frank DRAKE wrote interesting pieces about it. But even if they existed outside his imagination, we couldn't communicate with such civilisations.
 
Here are some alternate biochemistries as described by David Darling
silicon
ammonia
boron
nitrogen
phosphorous

As Analis has said, there is a distinct possuibility that artificial life may be soon created which is silicon based; self-replicating machines with an arbritary level of artificial intelligence. It might be the case that artificial self-replicating devices are the most common form of 'life' in the galaxy.
Here is a little fictional species of mine which is half carbon based and half silicon
http://www.orionsarm.com/topics/Cybyota.html
 
It seems seti wasn't such a waste of time after all.


According to Dr. Steven Greer, yes, SETI has received multiple extraterrestrial signals. This news he says, is confirmed by senior employees within the SETI program.

This is what Greer had to say at a recent Exopolitics Conference:

"We have confirmation - and I'm not going to give the name yet because we are trying to coax this guy out of the closet - but one of the senior people in the SETI project, which is the Carl Sagan Search for Extraterrestrial project, has confirmed to the Disclosure Project that they have received multiple extraterrestrial signals," Greer said.

"but that now they are getting external human, probably NRO or NSA jamming of those signals and they are getting very frustrated. "


Greer continued, "The question is why hasn't the SETI project, funded by Paul Alan the co-founder of Microsoft, come forward with this information? I'm a little uncomfortable even mentioning this, except for the fact that the public needs to know that this effort, which has received a great deal of mainstream media attention, has actually confirmed to us from two inside sources that they have received extraterrestrial signals and have confirmed them as being extraterrestrial and that they have become increasing in frequency and number."

Dr. Steven Greer is head of the the Disclosure Project, a non-profit organization with almost now 500 former military, intelligence, and government employees who go on record about their various experiences with aliens and alien technology.

Since the National Press Conference of 2001, viewed by millions of people across the globe, Steven Greer has been referred to as the authority on the truth about extraterrestrials.

For Greer to come out and make a statement of this magnitude, something is defiantly up. We will wait patiently to see whether or not these SETI insiders take the stage and become whistle blowers for this monumental secret.

http://www.shoutwire.com/viewstory/1803 ... en_Contact
 
As we're still waiting for all the disclosures that were supposed to be appearing a few months after the announcement of the Disclosure Project, it's probably not worth holding our breath on this one.

What possible reason could a project searching of extraterrestial life have for concealing for concealing it?

The only reason for not releasing stuff straight away would be because you're not sure what your signals are and in this situation want to be very certain before you go public and THEN the signal later turns out to be from a fault in the canteen microwave...
 
Nice find there, Jim. I only wonder whether SETI is worth funding if they really are here. If that is the case, SETI seems like a red herring, designed to distract the general public and make them think that because the government is funding this, that they aren't here already.
 
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