Posted on 05/07/2006 11:10:47 AM PDT by KevinDavis
Despite 40 years of effort, it has yet to produce a single result. Millions of pounds have been spent and thousands of man-hours expended, yet Seti, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, remains the great unfulfilled hope of modern astronomy.
On Friday, at the Royal Astronomical Society, scientists will reassess their prospects of finding aliens in our galaxy. They will gather at a special meeting to explain current programmes and outline a series of projects aimed at finding out whether or not we are alone.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
The miracle of a planet that substains life is uncalculable. It could be quite possible that we are it.
Maybe they should be asking themselves what they have done to deserve being contacted by the aliens of presumably far superior intelligence and technology. The aliens are a busy lot, with their own alien problems, so why should they waste their alien time and resources for some gasbags in Royal Astronomical Society to pat themselves on their collective backs?
Actually it has been calculated and that is why SETI is listening...
Even the most pessimistic estimates have earth-like planets in the hundreds of millions just in this galaxy. Statistically, half the civilizations would be older than humans, most much older. It isn't much of a leap to think the same tech that would produce faster than light travel would also bring faster than light communications. We just may be deaf... ;)
I would say even the most pessimistic estimates are optimistic.
It's about the same as believing in ghosts. All of the negative evidence means nothing if there is one "proof".
Let’s see, scientists have spent lifetimes studying Physics, Astrophysics, Planetology, Astronomy, matter distribution in the universe, cataloging star types by the millions and those calculations have been out there since the 1930s and refined ever decade since…
You base you observation on… study of the flat earth theory and the fact sand makes a good hat? Mmm’ky…
Oh puh_leeez. If there were a hundred million in this gallexy and half of them were more advanced than us, we would have found some hint by now. Maybe there is something more unique about our little planet than what the experts assume.
You made my point and don't even know it...
If YOU were an alien, would YOU want to contact US?
Quitters.......;') It wasn't all that expensive, but I still regard it as a waste of money. Of course, I also regard the STS as a waste of money, since it costs $500 million a launch, and only goes 200 miles. :'D
"But I am not really willing to accept your premise, because it may well be that the means of communications they have are of a kind that we do not know how to receive, and that they would not have the means of communicating with sufficiently powerful radio or optical signals. That is something which, technologically, is too difficult for them but they would have some other means we would not recognize." -- Thomas J. Gold (Communication with Extraterrestial Intelligence)
UFO study finds no sign of aliens
BBC NEWS | 05/07/2006 | By Mark Simpson
Posted on 05/07/2006 3:25:53 PM EDT by oxcart
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1628267/posts
I found the thread intriguing, and your comment was one of the most thought-provoking. Based on a quick search, we are about 28,000 light-years from the center of the Galaxy, so the Milky Way is approximately 60,000 light years wide. What if, 20,000 years ago, there was a civilized planet on the "opposite side" of the galaxy where the technological era lasted 5,000 years. (We don't know how long a fully-technological society will last.) Say that they were fully-technological exactly 20,000 years ago -- let's make wireless electronic communication (radio) the mark of a fully-technologized society. Imagine that within a century they start broadcasting a signal spaceward to alert any other possible technological societies that "We Are Here". Imagine that they broadcast this signal for the full duration of the existence of their society.
Under that scenario, the signal that they started to broadcast 20,000 years ago would still have 40,000 years to travel before we could detect it; and at that point that society would have passed from existence 55,000 years ago.
While I like the idea of SETI, I think that the distances involed make detection of anything highly, highly, highly unlikely, even if this single galaxy had hundreds of technological societies.
"It wasn't all that expensive, but I still regard it as a waste of money."
Why do you care? It isn't your money. SETI has been funded by private donations since the 80s.
The theory behind SETI isn't that somebody might be intentionally trying to contact us specifically, but that we might be able to pick up communications they sent out into the heavens long ago.
Any signal we pick up would presumably have been generated long before the Royal Astronomical Society, or human civilization, even existed.
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