SETI Founder Recommends Space-Based Search for Intelligent ET Life

[n2doc]

At this last's week's 2010 TED Conference, Frank Drake, the founder of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), offered a radical suggestion to enhance current efforts in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Drake wants to anchor the search about 82 billion kilometers away or 550 times the distance from Earth to the sun, to a point in space where the electromagnetic signals from planets orbiting distant stars would be focused by the gravitational lensing effect of our sun, making them, in theory, more easily detected. Drake wants to send a space-based listening post there in a bid to overhear alien communications, which would be too faint for telescopes on Earth to detect.

The major drawback to the proposal, of course, is that with existing propulsion technology, the spaceship would take hundreds of years to make the voyage.

Gravitational lenses could also be used to transmit signals, amplifying them so they could travel further and potentially reach distant civilisations. It's also possible, Drake says, that intelligent civilisations have built an intergalactic internet using such techniques and are just "waiting for us to log on". We don't think Google will be too pleased about this.

more
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/02/seti-founder-recommends-spacebased-search-for-intelligent-et-life-.html

[DavidDvorkin]

1. Nifty idea.

[Fumesucker]

2. Advertising our presence to the universe at large may not be a wise thing to do..

Here is an article by physicist and science fiction author David Brin (The Uplift Saga, The Postman) on possible dangers of contact with superior civilizations, I think Brin makes some good points and we should think long and hard about whether or not we should make our presence known.

http://www.davidbrin.com/SKEPTICcontactperils.pdf

[Vinnie From Indy]

3. Very interesting and valuable advice from Brin

I believe he is spot on about the need for carefully thinking about any first contact with ETs. Astronomer Phil Plait has offered that if evolution is the standard progression of life in the universe that some ETs could be more warlike than peaceful. He speculated on an ET civilization that might have in mind that any emerging advanced species they encounter might someday be a threat and should be eliminated. Assumption may the death of us all.

[Phoonzang]

4. You know...I think it's worth the risk.

Hell...even if the alien armada shows up at our front door, at least we'll know we aren't alone in the universe and be able to consider the profundity of this fact for the seconds/minutes/hours before the orbital bombardment begins.

But seriously...scientists can't have it both ways. We're constantly bombarded with the (I think ignorant) statement that "they can't get here from there." Yet some of these same people are warning us against active SETI. So....can they get here or not? If not, the what's the big worry?

I personally think it's idiotic to believe that another space-faring civilization wouldn't have the technology, imagination, patience, or resources (things humanity lacks) to travel from one star to another, yet I'm not afraid of being wiped out or absorbed by one of these civilizations.

[Fumesucker]

5. Did you read Brin's article?

He makes the point that even if contact is only intellectual there could be profound negative repercussions for humans.

Our societies are really pretty fragile in many ways, it really doesn't take that much imagination to envision ways in which we could be greatly harmed by contact with a vastly superior culture.

It's not like we don't have a plethora of examples from our own history of less developed cultures being devastated by contact with more advanced ones.

Edited to add: And I say this as someone who ran the SETI@home software on multiple home computers for years.