While searching for signs of intelligent life on the internet, I stumbled across a site for the SETI Institute. SETI stands for Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, an attempt to find evidence for intelligent life in the universe by tuning in to the satellite radio of the cosmos. Check out this great video on the Allen Radio Telescope Array which was recently fired up at the Hat Creek Observatory in northern California.
The movie Contact, starring Jodi Foster, was based on a SETI project with Ms. Foster's character Ellie Alloway loosely modeled after SETI astronomer Dr. Jill Tartar. When I first saw Contact as an inflight movie, I thought it was pure science fiction. But the screenplay was written by Carl Sagan and, according to the SETI web site, it is "indescribably more accurate in its depiction of SETI than any Hollywood film in history."
Apparently there is more radio noise in the universe than AM talk radio in southern California. All of it appears to be just that, random electromagnetic static. The idea behind SETI is to focus lots of radio telescopes at lots of star systems and listen for any signals that rise above the static. This presumes they don't pick up our own music stations some of which are virtually indistinguishable from static.
In the movie Contact, science hero Ellie Alloway at the Phoenix Project detects a series of pulses in prime numbers on her radio telescope. Clearly more than random space noise. In the real SETI projects, scientists are looking for any concentrated, narrow band of electromagnetic radiation, sort of the cosmic equivalent of smooth jazz FM 99.6. The idea is that such a concentrated radio signal must emanate from an intelligence and cannot simply arise on its own.
So I find this interesting. Though scientists believe that "design" is undetectable, some , at least those who believe in ET, think that concentrated, coherent radio signals rising above the level of noise are a sign of intelligence. I also find it interesting that the Earth happens to be situated in such place in space that we can listen in on the universe's satellite radio. Location is everything.
This also makes me wonder. What if someone somewhere is listening in the electromagnetic noise that rises above the static in our neck of the universe, such as Don Imus, American Idol, and Wife Swap? Would they conclude that intelligent life existed here?
Posted On: May 02nd, 2008 at 8:10pm by James Brown
Your article popped up on Google because it had the word SETI in it and since I am very interested in the subject I had to respond.
I also loved the movie Contact. In fact the ET detector in the first part of the film is a very accurate depiction of what a real SETI station does and how it works. In fact I built one myself that works well enough to detect ET signals out to the nearest few stars.
SETI Net is on line most of the day and night searching for signals from ET and it's the only amateur SETI station on the planet right now and one of only four or five working of any description. Hat Creek is the biggest and best running now.
I didn't understand what you meant by the location of Earth being important to receive ET signals. In fact Earth is in a backwater part of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and our star is very run of the mill one in the several billion stars of our neighborhood.
The kind of signal I'm looking for is a beacon sent by ET precisely to advertise their presence. It will be a very pure signal with no material on it, nothing like American Idol, and will stand out from the background noise in a way that only a purposefully sent signal could. It is in fact just the opposite from what the backers of Intelligent Design are looking for. It must have a complete lack of complexity for me to recognize it as intelligent origin.
If taxpayers did not foot the bill on so much of this, I would remain highly amused by those who are so absolutely convinced we are not alone. Of course we aren't; isn't that what our faith has told us all along? Yet new gods for a new age! How many scan the heavens looking for some 'higher being' to drop us a line, or better still, drop by UFO style with salvation from above--the latest to help us solve the tech problems we galactic infants have gotten ourselves into. If there are any green men out there and if they're anything like us, they'd be more likely to see us as raw material than an object of charity. When I lift up mine eyes, I still know where my help comes from (as do you, Bill).
Well Paul I think you misread what is going on. In fact the taxpayers don't fund any SETI searches. The government used to until the late Sen. Proxmire could not see the sense in it and used his influence to stop funding. I could never understand how such a small amount, the sum our forces in Iraq spend during a coffee break, but with such a huge payback possible could be denied but it was. Of course the search for life outside the Earth is really the main theme of the probes to Mars, Saturn and other places in our solar system. How, or where we came from is a great mystery that is nearly within our grasp to understand.
No one in the SETI community is 'absolutely convinced we are not alone' or of anything else for that matter. We are scientists and the word 'absolute' sends shudders up and down our spine. We leave absolutes to people like you.
Well Paul I think you misread what is going on. In fact the taxpayers don't fund any SETI searches. The government used to until the late Sen. Proxmire could not see the sense in it and used his influence to stop funding. I could never understand how such a small amount, the sum our forces in Iraq spend during a coffee break, but with such a huge payback possible could be denied but it was. Of course the search for life outside the Earth is really the main theme of the probes to Mars, Saturn and other places in our solar system. How, or where we came from is a great mystery that is nearly within our grasp to understand.
No one in the SETI community is 'absolutely convinced we are not alone' or of anything else for that matter. We are scientists and the word 'absolute' sends shudders up and down our spine. We leave absolutes to people like you.
Well, Jim, I think you misread many of your fellow scientists (By the way, "No one in the SETI community is absolutely convinced we are not alone" seems to be an absolute statement to me). I think we are kidding ourselves if we think the only values that drive this search for 'how and where we come from' are some sort of abstract love of knowledge. I'm glad to hear the government doesn't fund this, and am sorry for the misinformation. If this truly helps humanity, great, but I suspect solving environmental or medical problems here below would be a more humane use of funds.
About the only complete agreement you will ever reached among a group of scientists is on the subject of 'absolute'. They know that they are merely scratching at the window of knowledge wishing to be allowed in to see more and to understand more.
I don't really understand your point about kidding ourselves about the drive for the search. The people I come in contact with consider this a quest not a means to an end like paying the bills or self aggrandizement. Of course they are human after all and have the standard set of foibles well all share but they really do love knowledge and are never happier than when discovering something new.
If you want to hear (and see) the people that I'm talking about in action play some of these videos. Warning - some of it is strong stuff.
About the only complete agreement you will ever reached among a group of scientists is on the subject of 'absolute'. They know that they are merely scratching at the window of knowledge wishing to be allowed in to see more and to understand more.
I don't really understand your point about kidding ourselves about the drive for the search. The people I come in contact with consider this a quest not a means to an end like paying the bills or self aggrandizement. Of course they are human after all and have the standard set of foibles well all share but they really do love knowledge and are never happier than when discovering something new.
If you want to hear (and see) the people that I'm talking about in action play some of these videos. Warning - some of it is strong stuff.
I thank you for the link and found it most interesting--especially the comments by Scott Atran in his piece entitled "A Response" to R. P. Bird. Some at the LaJolla conference clearly had an anti-religious agenda, if the reporting on the website is correct.
If science is to be pure science, I have always heard, it should do its research in a frame of mind not prejudiced by any value other than the extension of pure knowledge. If such a situation could really exist, I leave others to determine; I will allow for it as an ideal. This means, however, that science presents us with ever more perfected tools to be put by us to unclear, or worse still, evil ends. If this is not the case I would be curious to know how values could arise as some sort of epiphenomenon on careful, unbiased observation; it would violate the closed nature of the system. Barring that, religion, broadly understood, should be recognized as the custodian of value systems; entrust them to science, and science will itself fall from its own self-articulated ideal. Besides, any value-less endeavor would be less than humane; I think Antoine de Saint Exupery was quite correct: "We live not on things, but on the meaning of things." Based on the very short video clip, I think Francisco Ayala was making a similar point.
I lean toward the view of Enrico Fermi, who, on the subject of extraterrestrial intelligent life, asked, "Where is everybody?"
Elsewhere his 1950 statement is quoted as "If they existed, they would be here."
The statement is based on the understanding that while some extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy may not have been able or indeed want to contact or visit us (and who could blame them?), all it takes is one ET group with the desire to actually do so; they've had sufficient time to make their presence known throughout the galaxy.
In any case, the Prime Directive is not Scripturally mandated.
Then there's the SF scenario where we intercept an extraterrestrial radio transmission, which, when translated, announces Earth's inhabitants as a new galactic menu item.
.jpg)
