Credit and Copyright Andy Cook
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No signal since the Wow transmission
Now more than ever, one imagines that we should intensify our search for life out there. Life down here has become difficult. And how else can we maintain American supremacy, if not by muscling in on outer space?
It seems, though, that economics is putting a difficult hue on our quest. According to the San Jose Mercury News, the SETI (Search For Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute has announced that it is setting aside some of its telescopes, as it cannot afford to run them.
Indeed, 42 radio dishes, named the Allen Telescope Array, are being silenced until someone can come up with the cash for them to keep on scanning for otherworldly beings.
“There is a huge irony that a time when we discover so many planets to look at, we don’t have the operating funds to listen,” SETI director Jill Tarter told the Mercury News. NASA’s Kepler telescope has managed to sniff out 1,235 planets that might have some life on them, of which 68 are more or less the size of Earth.
There is some hope that the U.S. Air Force might offer some funds, but currently no one seems terribly optimistic that the telescopes will soon restart their search.
The chances of a discovery are extremely small, but if a message is detected and verified…
Anybody run that SETI@home distributive computing application anymore? Back in the day, it took many days (more than a week) to finish one work unit.
Means we will be unable to find anyone who cares about the British royal wedding.
What a stupid waste of money. Damn things have been here longer than we have. Seth Shostak is an idiot.
Besides, why do we always assume they are listening for a radio signal? Or want to have anything to do with us? One look at us should convince them to put us down like rabid animals.
Better we keep quiet.
They must have found something. The Area 51 aliens must have lobbyists too.
@#3 Allen Space Telescope array is PRIVATE venture. Anyone should be free to do with their money as they please, including search for ET. Article kind of fails to underline that, which is important. Just the very fact that private venture have built such radio telescope array is on par with Virgin Galactic private efforts to go to space.
As to “Besides, why do we always assume they are listening for a radio signal?”, first I agree. Second, Allen Space Telescope is not transmitting… It is listening. But the same question should be asked in our direction “Besides, why do we always assume they are using radio signals?”
What will typical sentient or not (if it could even be attempted to apply) alien species look like and do? – we must stop thinking of us with a twist. It will be something as different from us as “Solaris” alien of sci-fi fame.
In #3 Obama is an alien said: stupid waste of money.
Having eyes is stupid too, might as well tear them out, and I can hand you sharpened chop sticks so you can poke your ear drums.
SETI is a private foundation, not government money, and they can do whatever the fuck they want.
I’m really surprised to read something from a troglodyte since I didn’t think they needed to type back in the paleolithic age.
Must be so he can whine more effectively.
Thank heavens I don’t have to actually hear him. (I imagine a guttural whine, sort of like hitting a half-inflated bicycle tire with a lump of raw meat.)
I think it would be cool if the next time they find an extraterrestrial signal they wrote “Holy Shit!” instead of “Wow!” on the printout.
Poor ET, he’s not going to be able to phone home…
So much solid scientific research funding is misdirected into hair brained and cultist misadventures that it is in some way a relief to see this project cut.
I don’t know that much about SETI. Does it have research value outside of finding aliens?
Even of one believes in aliens, it must be a billion to one odds that they are in listening range.
However, I imagine that there is lots of other cool stuff to “hear” from space. I’m a pro-science guy, so I hate to see research shut down.
The aliens have hacked the internets and are pirating our pr0n.
“Brethren! We have a message from another world, unknown and remote. It reads: one… two… three…” – Nikola Tesla http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/12/we-have-message-from-another-world.html
bullshit.. its because they’re already here.
-and they’re using the array as a giant hair dryers..
-s
“is putting a difficult hue on our quest”
Don’t know if that is grammatically correct, but I like it!
If there are aliens, which I doubt, they might be hostile. Why do we want to let aliens know we are here? How do we know they have radio? Maybe they use buried cable.
SETI finally admitted that searching for aliens is a useless waste of money, tonns of money. It is they who will find us!
Design is currently underway for a radio telescope with an aperture the size of Earth’s diameter. Using aperture synthesis and dishes located in Hawaii, the U.S., S. America and Africa the resolution should be high enough to obtain images of the event horizon of the super massive black hole at the center of our galaxy, as well as images of extrasolar planets and detail never before seen in galactic nebulae. Imagine what a few hours a week on this monster would do for SETI.
16 Benj – what? no buetooth?
Time to give it up. Forget the space shuttle, searching for life on other planets and trying to call ET. Let’s focus on getting Earth back on track because it appears our only hope at survival.
#18:
We could view aliens having sex in their hover car on Alpha Centauri.
The earth peoples got enough shit on their plates. They don’t need someone look’n for more trouble. If these aliens have the power to send us a message, they certainly have the power to do so via mass media like radio, TV or WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access). Turn’m off, for good.
The Array in the picture is the VLA (Very Large Array)and not the “Allen Telescope Array” which is less impressive and probably cheaper.
[Like ATA, SETI makes use of the Very Large Array. Besides, we wouldn’t get the kickback from Andy Cook for a picture of the ATA — Ed.]
As we slide into third world status a lot of things are going to fall by the wayside. Few nanny states prosper and no states prosper that can’t do math or understand economics.
I would like to see this research continue but the wealth to support efforts like this is going away. In my view it’s just a matter of time till NASA folds as well.
i guess paul allen is running outta money! those lawyer eat up a lot of your funds in hairbraind patent litigation of software..
If you find, say, 5000 potentially life-bearing planets that might parallel Earth’s life production run, the chances of coinciding with intelligent life there is about 1/5000th the Earth’s life-bearing history has been.
But life here has been on the planet some 4+ billion years.
Lemme see. Three billion divided by five thousand is 800,000. And techno transmissions have been spewing forth for what percentage of that 800,000 year footprint?
Intelligent, broadcasting, technological life on Earth represents some 0.0000000smidge of its history. Meaning that you don’t have a lottery’s chance of finding anything within earshot, no matter how many hopes, dreams, listening posts and money you throw at it.
There is ZERO urgency to funding, participating in or becoming concerned with SETI. Give it a hundred years. Once climate change has been solved, energy crises are a thing of the past and robo-listeners are cheap, you can set up your listening posts on Ceres and give it a real go.
Until then; chill.
I think we need to search for Intelligent Life ON EARTH !!! The so-called “Intelligent” Humans aren’t doing too well !!!
Aliens are already here. They’re running the RepubliCON Party! They want to kill all the poor and working class folks, so that they can all have more food, when they colonize.
“The chances of a discovery are extremely small, but if a message is detected and verified… ” it won’t feed the bulldog, of the average US citizen. Just them dogs owned by SETI people. This is just 21th century soothsayerism. High tech mediums, searching for answers from among the stars. And because they got it labeled as “science”, they managed to pick the pockets of the gullible. Any “intellegent” noise that might be picked up, would likely be way too old to be of any use. Like hearing the daily chatter of ancient Egyptians. And it would just become some kind of political football for Science to denounce religion. Why? Because they’d claim God didn’t mention creating any like, “out there”. Why the hell would he? “Hey Moses. I know you’ve already got enough on your plate to worry about. Wars and your people’s survival. But just to confuse you more, I made some people in another part of the universe. Though you’re not likely to ever hear from them. Just thought I’d let you know, so you can right that down, and get one up on future atheists.”
And if God had so spake, and life out there had never been found (just as it HASN’T), these ever same atheists would saying, “God don’t exist because we’ve never heard from any other lifeforms. Damned if you say it, damned if you don’t. You can’t prove a damned thing to those who refuse to believe anything they don’t want to. So be it. But why force the rest of us to pay for their un-belief proof?
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