SETI Waste of Time & Money

I have not read this entire thread so I apologize if what I say has been mentioned.

SETI in my belief in fundamentally flawed for various reasons.

It is concentrated on the frequency of hydrogen, this is a very narrow frequency to do a search on, we assume other forms in the universe scan this frequency at all. We might not even be able to communicate because we are using radio after all, I believe that an advanced species able to communicate with us, might have far surpassed the use radio and discovered much more reliable method for galactic communication, why limit your self to a speed of light communication method when in theory you regularly surpass this speed.

I believe the money used for current SETI research should be used for our own space programs rather than looking to the sky and hoping to find someone looking back who is at our same level. Because unless they are looking for the specific frequency in our area with an outdated technology, with a means to communicate back, we will not get anything.

reply to post by ahddm

SETI in my belief in fundamentally flawed for various reasons. It is concentrated on the frequency of hydrogen

no its not. The hydrogen line is at 1.4ghz, SETIs ATA radio telescope searches 1-20ghz. Much much wider.

I believe that an advanced species able to communicate with us, might have far surpassed the use radio and discovered much more reliable method for galactic communication,

so every single ET civ doesnt use radio waves and there exists only ET civs who are more advanced than us? Doesnt seem likely.

I believe the money used for current SETI research should be used for our own space programs rather than looking to the sky

SETI runs on private donations not tax dollars so you'd need to take that up with the donors.I dont think they'd appreciate anyone telling them how to spend their money. SETis' total yearly budget is $5million which would buy half a nasa spacesuit.

[edit on 13-1-2010 by yeti101]

reply to post by SLAYER69


I would say its probably a waist of money, but i think it is more then likely aliens would use radio waves as we do. I don't think its silly at all to think this.

Hi Slayer,

I agree, I believe SETI would be a more worthwhile effort if it were to try to locate intelligence here on earth..

regards

seataka

Originally posted by yeti101
reply to post by ahddm

 

SETI in my belief in fundamentally flawed for various reasons. It is concentrated on the frequency of hydrogen

no its not. The hydrogen line is at 1.4ghz, SETIs ATA radio telescope searches 1-20ghz. Much much wider.

I believe that an advanced species able to communicate with us, might have far surpassed the use radio and discovered much more reliable method for galactic communication,

so every single ET civ doesnt use radio waves and there exists only ET civs who are more advanced than us? Doesnt seem likely.

[edit on 13-1-2010 by yeti101]

It's quite likely actually they'd be more advanced and reached atleast a Type 1-2 civilization. Especially since they'd have survived to trying to annihilate one another and have evolved atleast far enough to prevent that from taking place and letting technology progress beyond a few hundred years. Any civilization at possibly our technological evolutionary stage would be faced with dealing with local conflict and the same problems earth goes through.

It probably is a waste of time and money, but one would never know for sure if they didn't invest time and money.

You raise some interesting questions in your OP and like you I hope to be proven wrong one day.

Every time I look toward the sky, I can't help but wonder how the hell is it possible for us to be the only ones on this universe.

Surely, there are others.

Back to reading more of these replies.

There are some false assumptions here.

Transmissions such as our radio or TV peter out very quickly.

SETI isn't looking for accidental transmission. They would capture intentional transmission. Transmissions that are intended to be noticed.

And if WOW signal is an example of something like the Arecibo transmission, the program has already succeeded and we are just awaiting the chance to reconfirm.

SETI would absolutely not be capturing accidental transmissions of a media using alien in another system.

There are some definite problems with SETI...

It's akin to listening for just one small cricket chirping three blocks over while the next door neighbor is testing out his Pioneer subwoofers in his car with the amp turned to 11. (The Sun, man made radio broadcasts and noise, natural electrical discharges on Earth and other planets.)

We're still trying to listen using the "analog set and rabbit ears" when everyone else is using "DTV with QAM and satellite". (There should be more effort expanding the search to identify other possible forms of modulation, which currently are hard to discern from random noise. Not to mention other more esoteric and hypothetical forms of (FTL?) communication that may exist.)

And considering the time humanity has been known to be around, compared to the time we've been able to effectively use electricity, and the much shorter span of applied electronics technology... And that's before we change to something that doesn't leak radio signals into space. I think to make the odds work in our favor with existing methods, we'd have to be listening for 40,000 years to have a reasonable shot. The gamble might pay off for a long-lived civilization, but would seem a waste of money for any normal human lifespan.

In all likelyhood you're going to be listening and not communicating. The civilization making the signal may not be around by the time you recieve it. Also predicting where a star will be, where a planet will be in orbit around that star, and which way any recievers will be facing before you bother sending... Having your reply get through will have the same odds as finding the signal in the first place.

The biggest problem is it will be that one day that you stop looking when the "needle in the haystack" finally comes to the surface and glints in the sun. It's well known the odds of finding anything are zero when you don't bother trying. (The best thing to do in regards to feasibility is trying to eke out all the efficiency you can without killilng the project outright.)

reply to post by SLAYER69


You ask: 'And it they are totally alien to us, how would we decipher such a message?' This surely is the crux of the matter.

The optimism SETI scientists have about talking to extraterrestrials is entirely unjustified. Why? Because communication with any other lifeforms other than our own is in principle impossible. Wittgenstein once remarked that if a lion could talk we would not understand him. He could have added, nor can there be any possibility of translation. What is true for any other terrestrial species is true a fortiori for any extraterrestrial species. For not only would any alien language represent the world in quite a different way, it would represent quite a different world. The world of an alien must be unutterably different from that of homo sapiens, just as the world of the seagull, the bat, the jelly fish, the lion is from homo sapiens and from one another.

Slayer,

with all due respect, you are speaking with the benefit of hind site. SETI was a gamble, a shortcut. We still don't know the number and occurrence rate of the worlds capable of supporting life. If we "got mail", that would have been a fantastic breakthrough.

As has been mentioned, the thing about SETI is that while it may be focused in the wrong direction, it's at least an attempt. It doesn't hurt anything to try. We're wasting a lot more time and effort and people's lives in wars around the world. Listening to the sky for intelligent radio transmissions is as good a use of money as any.

And if it turns out that locating aliens is a little more complicated than that, it's not our fault. We're just trying something. Maybe learning a little bit in the process. Nothing wrong with that.

reply to post by SLAYER69



Is it a waste of money...absolutely. The last time I checked the SETI site they were asking for money and donations for research, but if Aliens wanted to communicate with us they would if they are not already doing so.

Lets take a look at a believable visitation to our SUN:


To me it is quite plausible to think that these spheres are UFOS containing advanced Alien life. Possibly scientists mining our Sun since its almost at its solar maximum.

But here is my question to SETI how do you plan to communicate with them? Were signals sent to these spheres? And if so did you receive a response?

I think if SETI and the government was absolutely upfront about well everything there would be no need to ask for money for research. And maybe Bill Gates would givehis money to you instead of charity.

Originally posted by packinupngoin
if Aliens wanted to communicate with us they would if they are not already doing so.

Maybe. If they cared. But just because they don't want to communicate with us doesn't mean we still wouldn't like to know for sure that they exist. It doesn't have to be two-way. Just knowing they're out there would mean a lot to us.

i got to disagree with most of the previous opinions. i think the most likely way of encountering aliens in any way would be through some type of communications other than physical. think intergalactic cb radio... the problem with our current technology is that it is going to be pretty slow, so we are sending out waves which could potentially take thousands of years to reach someone capable of receiving it. in the long run i think it will pay off, but it is probably not going to be for several lifetimes. they say if you knock on hell's door for long enough someone will answer, well i believe the same goes for space.

Originally posted by 2weird2live2rare2die
i think the most likely way of encountering aliens in any way would be through some type of communications other than physical. think intergalactic cb radio... the problem with our current technology is that it is going to be pretty slow

Has NASA or SETI came up with a better way to comunicate or technology that is more advanced now since they started the program

Originally posted by ahddm
I have not read this entire thread so I apologize if what I say has been mentioned.

SETI in my belief in fundamentally flawed for various reasons.

It is concentrated on the frequency of hydrogen, this is a very narrow frequency to do a search on, we assume other forms in the universe scan this frequency at all. We might not even be able to communicate because we are using radio after all, I believe that an advanced species able to communicate with us, might have far surpassed the use radio and discovered much more reliable method for galactic communication, why limit your self to a speed of light communication method when in theory you regularly surpass this speed.

wouldn't an advance species know this would be a typical route some other civilizations would take in order to search the cosmos and make contact though?

reply to post by SLAYER69


No need to worry. Even if it were, they're not wasting your time or money.

NASA doesn't run SETI. NASA doesn't work on SETI. NASA isn't wasting any of its time or money on SETI because it has nothing to do with it. SETI is a privately funded experiment.

a reply to: SLAYER69

Why bother with aliens?

i mean you can't even get along with your neighboring aliens or the aliens across the border.

so why would you want to talk to stinking bug eyed monsters?

originally posted by: championoftruth
Why bother with aliens?

Why bother with anything? Why play chess? Why watch TV? Why do people spend more than $100 billion annually on video games?

Something to pass the time. See if there's anything interesting in life.

And don't give me that "money better spent on curing cancer" crap. Spending money so that more people can live longer is like pouring water down a rat hole. People are always going to get sick or old and die, and human beings are not an endangered species.

Might was well see if there are any aliens relatively easy to find out there. Just for entertainment, if nothing else.

I have heard Seth Shostak say the most ridiculous things, so that his comments follow the exact same pattern of denial and the debunking of anything related to extra terrestrial visitation, and concludes that they have never been here, are not coming here now, and he ridicules the idea as if he is a indoctrinated agent of military counter intelligence, to keep people silent by using the same tactics of ridicule every time he gets the chance to publicly do so.

The last one I heard him say, was about all the SAC bases that had UFO's seen over the weapons areas, and had the missiles deactivated or had targeting changed, was that this never happened and is ridiculous because aliens would not come here to look at our silly weapons, and he said that would be like comparing bows and arrows to their alien weapons.

But he failed to reason out the fact that atom bombs and hydrogen bombs can destroy a planet, and because so many have already been detonated here, that ET was obviously making a big statement about how dangerous they are. But what he said instead was his usual blanket statements of denial that any ET has ever been here by using the most childish logic imaginable to get people to believe that they are not here and haven't been here. But he said maybe in a couple decades that SETI expects to finally discover someone out there.

It's the same style of public misinformation using ridicule against the known facts, by denying all of the known facts, and saying there are none and nothing, leaving a hint for anyone saying otherwise, that they will be laughed at if suggesting otherwise. Same method used by NASA and colleges, academia, etc.

Seth Shostak is a lot smarter than that, but those hilarious reasons ET is NOT coming here that he uses publicly are a dead giveaway that he has been warned not to say anything too provocative regarding the most highly classified subject.

The best thing available to totally end the debate, is seeing a real craft of super advanced origin for yourself. Those who haven't yet, have a better chance to look up and see a ET UFO sooner than Seth Shostak and SETI will ever announce success finding ET themselves.