SETI: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence 50-Year Anniversary

[parasearchers]

“Scientists have been searching for aliens for 50 years, scanning the skies with an ever-more sophisticated array of radio telescopes and computers. Known as SETI, the search marks its half-century this month. Jennifer Armstrong and Andrew Johnson examine its close and not so close encounters,” reports The Independent.

Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is the collective name for a number of activities people undertake to search for extraterrestrial life. SETI projects use scientific methods to search for electromagnetic transmissions from civilizations on distant planets. The United States government contributed to earlier SETI projects, but recent work has been primarily funded by private sources.

There are great challenges in searching across the sky for a first transmission that could be characterized as intelligent, since its direction, spectrum and method of communication are all unknown beforehand. SETI projects necessarily make assumptions to narrow the search, and thus no exhaustive search has been conducted so far.

“Scientists have been searching for aliens for 50 years, scanning the skies with an ever-more sophisticated array of radio telescopes and computers. Known as SETI, the search marks its half-century this month. Jennifer Armstrong and Andrew Johnson examine its close and not so close encounters,” reports The Independent.

Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is the collective name for a number of activities people undertake to search for extraterrestrial life. SETI projects use scientific methods to search for electromagnetic transmissions from civilizations on distant planets. The United States government contributed to earlier SETI projects, but recent work has been primarily funded by private sources.

There are great challenges in searching across the sky for a first transmission that could be characterized as intelligent, since its direction, spectrum and method of communication are all unknown beforehand. SETI projects necessarily make assumptions to narrow the search, and thus no exhaustive search has been conducted so far.


Read More: http://parasearcher.blogspot.com/2009/09/seti-search-for-extraterrestrial.html

[evenso]

1. I've always believed that life

in the universe is fairly common, probably common than we can imagine. But complex life, sentient species like primates, whales or dolphins must be extremely rare. This is because great catastrophes and upheavals have been necessary to produce speciation and increasingly complex life forms on Earth. These catastrophic events have also caused the great mass extinctions in our past. So we're a product of these great catastrophes, searching for others who came into existence in similar ways. That being said, I think SETI is a great cause, I'm glad we haven't given up on the search for our distant cousins out there. If nothing else, SETI has allowed us to reflect on our own place in the universe and ask a lot of important questions.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. I don't think it's necessarily rare, but we're dealing with huge distances in space as

well as in time. Who knows how many cultures existed while we were still swimming in the ooze, or how many are so far away we'll never know they are there.

But like you, I love SETI and hope it has another great 50 years.

[midnight]

3. I love this topic. And I find myself impatient with the experts

boring response to what many suspect is going on-managed information.

[pokerfan]

6. The short answer is no one knows

just how rare life in the universe is. All anyone can say with certainty is that it's happened at least once and on what appears to be a fairly average planet orbiting a fairly average star. Perhaps 'intelligent' life is incredibly rare. Intelligence doesn't seem to be an inevitable consequence of evolution, indeed in our case it seems to have been by accident. We simply need more information.

Carl Sagan on Drake Equation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ztl8CG3Sys

[Nihil]

4. K & R ... but bear in mind ...

... xkcd's view on it

[pokerfan]

5. Fifty years is nothing compared to age of the universe

If the age of the universe was translated into a year then we've been listening for all of about a tenth of a second.