It's Time to Properly go Hunting Aliens

Dr Anthony Beasley is the director of the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville who used his appearance at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle to call for government funding for the search for ET.

The director of the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville in Virginia said that it was now "time for Seti to come in from the cold and be properly integrated to all other areas of astronomy".
Dr Beasley's comments come as one of the private sector funders of Seti research announced that the Very Large Array (VLA) observatory in New Mexico would be joining the effort to detect signs of intelligent life on other worlds.

The VLA is a multi-antenna observatory and home to what is regarded as one of the best-equipped telescopes in the world.

According to Dr Andrew Siemion, leader of the Breakthrough Listen science team at the University of California, Berkeley's Seti Research Centre, the incorporation of the VLA would increase the chances of finding intelligent life by "10- or even 100-fold".

To me it makes sense that with the technology we now have available governments should fund the few million a year it would cost for a concerted scientific search to answer one of our oldest questions ... are we alone ?

"We would like to see Seti transformed from a small cabal of scientists and engineers in California, isolated from academia to one that is as much an integral part of astronomy and astrophysics as any other field of inquiry."

With China using some of the time on their new FAST (Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope) radio telescope to search for ET signals the incentive is there to make the push to be the first to confirm ET existence , ESA and NASA are already in a good position regarding tech available to have the jump in the race for glory.

Nasa once funded the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence to the tune of $10m a year. But the funding was scrapped in 1993 following the introduction of legislation by Senator Richard Bryan, who believed it to be a waste of money.

"This hopefully will be the end to the Martian hunting season at the taxpayer's expense," he said at the time.

There has been no significant public funding for Seti in the US or anywhere else in the world since, although so-called astrobiology searches for evidence of simple organisms from the chemical signatures in the atmosphere's of other worlds receives increasing backing.
www.bbc.co.uk...

It seems short sighted for governments to spend billions on exploring our own backyard while ignoring the one aspect of space exploration that could yield the greatest result in terms of public interest in space.

It's time to properly go hunting Aliens and we should pay for it.

originally posted by: gortex


It's time to properly go hunting Aliens and we should pay for it.

Looking at it slightly differently, surely WE should have been hunted by now, with what we know about water and its scarcity in the planets we have observed, why have we not been hunted for our precious commodity.

Water being essential to everything we know that lives and breathes, are Aliens able to function without water? what does that mean for how we would recognise them or even interact with them, maybe we just need a big sign saying water available here, prices negotiable.

After all we are the pale blue dot visible from the outer reaches of space

a reply to: UpIsNowDown

Looking at it slightly differently, surely WE should have been hunted by now, with what we know about water and its scarcity in the planets we have observed, why have we not been hunted for our precious commodity.

Perhaps we've been hunted and found but they as we have no way to travel the distance to do anything about it , our existence could be common knowledge to those in our neighborhood with the ability to look.

If bugs started hunting me, I'd call an exterminator.. just a thought.

a reply to: gortex

a reply to: gortex

Travelling seems to be the issue for all concerned when it comes to the vastness of space, whoever cracks that puzzle will be the ultimate power in the universe. If humans crack it first then we will colonize other planets if aliens crack it first well......

originally posted by: gortex
It's time to properly go hunting Aliens and we should pay for it.

Not seeing any Return On Investment. How 'bout you continue to pay what you owe for taxes ... and then an extra measure to fund somebody else's dream (see if you get any credit BTW).

Maybe re-read your signature line.

a reply to: Deplorable

My tax's are paid in full and I'd rather they were spent on something constructive than destructive , individually living in the now doesn't mean we shouldn't look to the future ... I'm well aware of my signature line.

a reply to: gortex

Perhaps we've been hunted and found but they as we have no way to travel the distance to do anything about it

They could be right here with us now.

And have been here for a long time.

originally posted by: hombero
If bugs started hunting me, I'd call an exterminator.. just a thought.

a reply to: gortex

I get the feeling that this is a different kind of space race

a reply to: gortex
Okay, we have the tech and we have the funding, but do we have a government willing to actually make their findings public? I ask this because I suspect they already know the answer and have for a long time, so I'm wondering if they're thinking it's time to incrementally reveal it, or if the money is going to be (mis)appropriated.

Note that I would be just as interested to know they find absolutely zero as I would be if they find intelligent or non-intelligent life.

nvm....I was wrong....

anywhere i go, they only speak spanish now.
so im all for the hunt.

lmfao.

if there are aliens here, who cares. seriously.
if they are not harming people that is.

now, if there truly is a deal to let them hunt a certain percentage of humans per month, then i say lets truly kill all of them.

if they are eating humans, then we kill them.
if they are just stuck in traffic on the highway at rush hour, in an old beat up car, just minding his business? who cares.

a reply to: Klassified

I think to be the country or organization that discovered life beyond Earth would be the prize that would see the finding released , I see no reason why they hide the finding of a signal from a planet far far away although that doesn't mean there isn't one.

a reply to: gortex
I imagine myself brooding in the nest impatient that my parents are taking so long to forage for me bc I'm just a baby.
Making all kinds of sounds and such that my position is now compromised, and my chance to spread my wings and fly away on my own are diminished...

Or if what would normally be a hungry predator comes for me maybe the belly is full and somehow I get fed and taught to fly?

I'd prefer my parents would toil more to raise me proper and healthy that I'm not crying about every little exploration they go on and neglect me in so doing.


Don't inject the dysfunction of our society into a newly-found one. It's asking for trouble.

Somebody wants free money and thinks he's gonna get them when the UFO topic became popular once again.
Or somebody is dumb enough to think that aliens watch TV and use radio waves to communicate. Waste of money either way.

a reply to: KiwiNite

Somebody wants free money and thinks he's gonna get them when the UFO topic became popular once again.

Fair enough...

Or somebody is dumb enough to think that aliens watch TV and use radio waves to communicate. Waste of money either way.

Okay, call me dumb. Providing ET exists at all, they may be so different from us that we have nothing at all in common, but the opposite may also be true. They could be more like us than some have imagined them to be. The point is, we don't know at this point in time, and to pretend we do is just speaking from ignorance and arrogance.

A waste of money? I think a sincere search for intelligent life is worth the money spent given the stage of development the human species has reached and the general acceptance by the average person that we may not be alone in the galaxy, let alone the universe. Just my opinion of course.

originally posted by: UpIsNowDown
Looking at it slightly differently, surely WE should have been hunted by now, with what we know about water and its scarcity in the planets we have observed, why have we not been hunted for our precious commodity.

Water isn't as scarce as some believe. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. Mars and the moon both have frozen ice on their surface, as well as many other moons in the solar system and comets as well. Liquid water is a different story but any sufficiently advanced species isn't going to require liquid water on the surface of a body to survive.

a reply to: gortex

Some people have the opinion we are quarantined. You know like we have some kind of universal virus, and nobody is allowed to bother us without having the equivalent of a surgeons mask on.

Were too destructive

originally posted by: gortex


It's time to properly go hunting Aliens and we should pay for it.

Pay for hunting "Aliens" ?

No, get the Weyland-Yutani Corp to pay for it !

Oh....you mean aliens.... uhhh....get Mexico to pay for it ...??

a reply to: gortex

Be careful, they have much better energy weapons.