From Astrobiology Magazine:

"The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, turns 50 years old this year. By scanning the cosmic radio dial, it has forged a scientific beachhead into the mystery of whether we are alone in the universe. One of its main disciples has written a book chronicling the history and offering an apologia as to why it is a worthy cause."


Is it?

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Seth Shostak is a good skeptical thinker. Let's toss him a more direct plug.

Amazon: Confessions of an Alien Hunter

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Worthy??

Do you know of any other methods for detection of other advanced civilizations?

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

Yes it is, but Congress did not think so.

The US Congress, and other legislatures around the world, don't do a lot of things that are worth doing.

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Hi there,

Yes, there are other methods...

I am not anti-SETI at all but SETI is one of the methods we can use to search for ETI, let's listen & watch what Michio Kaku has to say about SETI :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw8dcb8iKSM

I would like to have your take on that you guys.

Ok, let's say we assume that we are not alone and that maybe there are Type I or Type II or Type III (on the Kardeshev scale) civilizations in the Universe.

Since, we have no clue what ET would "look like", how advanced it could be, how it would communicate, how it would become "visible" to our instruments => what would be the best method to search for them ? I do think that we have to use different methods in order to raise our probabilities to find & identify ETI or even ET-AI (as ET artificial intelligence).

Some other methods I know are :

OSETI : http://www.oseti.net/

SETA : http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/SETAActa1985.htm
and S3ETI : http://cic.setileague.org/cic/v1i2/s.../s3eti-ata.htm
and
SETV : http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/Stride.html

Scott Stride on The Space Show : http://www.thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=359

And a SETV initiative :

Title: Instrumented search for exogenous robotic probes on Earth
Authors: Teodorani, M.
Journal: In: Exo-/astro-biology. Proceedings of the First European Workshop, 21 - 23 May 2001, ESRIN, Frascati, Italy. Eds.: P. Ehrenfreund, O. Angerer & B. Battrick. ESA SP-496, Noordwijk: ESA Publications Division, ISBN 92-9092-806-9, 2001, p. 413 - 416

Source : http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2001ESASP.496..413T

The question is, why shouldn't we search closer as well, much closer and not only for civilizations but also for the technology they coud have sent here and there or left behind to study & collect data about the Universe ?

Personnaly, I am assuming that :

-Chances that ETI (or ET-AI) "visited" us in the past > 0
-Chances that ETI (or ET-AI ) is here now in our SS > 0
-Chances that ETI (or ET-AI) will "visit" us in the futur > 0
-Chances that we did not detect "them" yet but that "they" are or were here, or will be here > 0
-Chances that some UFO&UAP observed down here could have an ET origin >0

I am not a pro-ETH regarding the UFO&UAP "phenomena", but I do think that we have to remain open about these possibility.

It might sound paradoxal but yes I am skeptic about the ETH being the best hypothesis to explain some of the sightings down here but at the same time, I do think that serious research could be and should be conducted in these directions as well.

Now, on the other hand, searching for them is one thing I find great and intellectually stimulating but letting "them" know we are here is something I not only find sketchy but stupid and immature.

Who can affirm that ET will be nice with us if they exist and can make it here ? Assuming they would be nice is taking a very odd bet.


Cheers,
Buckwild

Good post, Buckwild.

I tend to think we would not know ETi even if they were flitting around in our skies or leaving messages in our DNA and cropfields...

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Shouldn't that be equal to or greater than 0? Simply saying "> 0" means that all of those things would have actually happened, when in reality there is no credible evidence that any have..

If there were actual, credible evidence in support of ETH being the "best" hypothesis to explain UFO sightings, then there would be "something" to research. As it stands, who would you have pay for this research??

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

I certainly don't want to RAF; likewise with current SETI (I applauded the cessation of gov't funding, actually).
Were UFOs actual alien tech in our skies we'll come to know this not on any terms of ours, or by any means of detection or science.
If they're here, they're quite beyond our present understanding such that it will be on their terms.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Hi there,

Well, some people who are not familiar with asteroid detection and sometimes even amateur astronomers do think that it is easy for us to spot what is coming at us and most of all, to be able to identify any object correctly with empirical data without sending a space probe for a rendez vous mission.

This is wrong, most of us overestimate our capabilities to do so and we have many exemples to "demonstrate" it.

An exemple : 2002 EM7

"The object, now named 2002 EM7, was probably between 40 and 80 meters (130-260 feet) in diameter, said Gareth Williams, associate director of the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center.

On March 8, the asteroid passed within 298,400 miles (480,200 kilometers) of our planet, or about 1.2 times as far away as the Moon -- considered a relatively close shave by cosmic yardsticks. It was not discovered until March 12, however. After the rock was detected, scientists calculated its orbit and determined the path it had taken."

Source : http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ss_020319.html



Now, talking about our limits to identify an object correctly within our own SS so < 1 AU. 1991 VG is a good exemple :


1991 VG :

"Abstract A ~ 10-metre object on a heliocentric orbit, now catalogued as 1991 VG, made a close approach to the Earth in 1991 December, and was discovered a month before perigee with the Spacewatch telescope at Kitt Peak. Its very Earth-like orbit and observations of rapid brightness fluctuations argue for it being an artificial body rather than an asteroid. None of the handful of man-made rocket bodies left in heliocentric orbits during the space age have purely gravitational orbits returning to the Earth at that time, and in an3' case the a priori probability of discovery for 1991 VG was very small, of order one in 100,000 per anmun. In addition, the small perigee distance observed might be interpreted as an indicator of a controlled rather than a random encounter with the Earth, and thus it might be argued that 1991 VG is a candidate as an alien probe observed in the vicinity of our planet."

Source : http://www.setv.org/online_mss/1991vg.html

And a very interesting critic made by Hans Weiler on Duncan steel paper : http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1998Obs...118..226W

+ an old thread about it here on BAUT : Is "1991 VG" a bracewell probe?

Have a good time reading all this, may this information make people realize that our governments really need to invest more money in (killer) asteroid detection, otherwise we may never reach Type I status on the Kardeshev scale.

Cheers ya all et bon week-end !
Buck the unsatisfied

Hi R.A.F,

You made a good point, I agree with you actually, this should be equal to and/or greater than zero at the same time. My bad.

There's no credible evidence that advanced civilizations exist in the Universe but we are making assumptions based on our comprehension of the only referential we have down here and what we know about the Universe. So yes SETI & SETI like initiatives are legit.

On the other end coming to "conclusions" while we just started searching for ETI and that we are just starting to have a "better" comprehension of the Universe is and would be fallacious.

Like Michio Kaku said, they could be here without us knowing it and at the same time, why would they come here ? Who knows, so these questions have to be answered.

Cheers,
Buck

is the book worth a read though quite

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Actually, I think that first formulation was OK. If an event is known to have happened its probability is 1, while assigning a probability of 0 would indicate that it is proven to be impossible.

Assigning a non-zero probability thus only indicates a lack of definitive counter-evidence and says nothing about the existence or non-existence of credible positive evidence. Thus it only says that the proposition is not fundamentally ruled out by known facts, which is an assertion about those points I think I could accept (though in some cases with a vanishingly low probability).

To assign a probability of ≥0 seems to be saying that the probability of truth lies somewhere between certainty and impossibility inclusive, which isn't very meaningful.

Sorry, pedantry over.

Expecting something "meaningful" from the study of a subject where there are no other examples is not rational.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

What percent of gov't funds (or NASA funds) goes to SETI or SETI-like projects? I have to believe it is some minuscule percent.

I find it perfectly meaningful. One means aliens must have visited us already (etc.); zero means aliens can't have visited us yet.

If we could prove anything about alien visitations of Earth, we wouldn't be talking probabilities to begin with.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Beg pardon, but I don't see that having anything to do with what I posted. I was not advocating the study of any subject.



To say that the probability of X lies somewhere between 0 and 1 inclusive is not meaningful unless you allow probabilities outside that range.

I essentially agree with your second sentence, but note that it says that the probability is neither 1 nor 0.

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Well, there might be dogs, light rail and tofu, what's your point?

On the contrary, the probability of X always lies between 0 and 1 inclusive!

You misread my sentence. Nowhere does it say that.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Which is exactly my point.

Well, you said "If we could prove anything about alien visitations of earth, . . ." I interpret that to mean that such visitation has not been proven (that its probability is not 1) and that it has not been disproven (that its probability is not 0).

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Well, there might be dogs, light rail and tofu, what's your point?

You equate a probability of 1 with positive proof and a probability of 0 with negative proof. I think that interpretation is wrong. If we had either positive or negative proof, there would be no need for probabilities.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Sorry, but that is exactly what probabilities of 1 and 0 represent, certainty and impossibility. Thus any proposition conclusively proven is the first and any which is conclusively disproven is the second.

Those are still "probabilities," but I take it your use of the term in the last sentence refers values of probability lying between those cases, those in which the jury is still out. Yes, if we have enough evidence to make a positive determination then they are no longer needed.

I'm not fully clear on what we're arguing about.

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Well, there might be dogs, light rail and tofu, what's your point?

I do agree with that. I think I've gone off track a little bit.

Looking back, my objection was really against the following statement:

However, now that you've added the following:

...I believe we are in agreement.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Yeah, I think we're on the same page now. My point was that it's like saying, "I just rolled a standard 6-sided die and the result was between 1 and 6 inclusive." It's true but doesn't convey any information beyond the fact that I did roll a die.

I actually haven't looked at the links that open this thread yet, so all I was commenting on was the usage. If all Buckwild means to say is that none of the propositions in his list has been conclusively disproven, then I think the way he formulated it is valid.

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Well, there might be dogs, light rail and tofu, what's your point?

I didn't notice anything about double-posting. If it's bad form please let me know.

OK, I've at least glanced at the links given. As to Dr. Kaku's piece, his basic theme of not dismissing potentially miraculous capabilities in an advanced technology strikes me as valid enough. That said, I think his analogy of the lost keys and the streetlight is questionable. If I know my keys were lost well away from the light it makes little sense to search there, but if my keys could be anywhere then perhaps it does make sense to eliminate the best lit locations before stumbling about in the dark. SETI strikes me as the clearest way to do that with our current understanding.

It's not my area, but I didn't think the multiverse idea was as broadly accepted as he suggests. Does anyone have a better sense of that?

As for the idea of searching for manifestations of alien intelligence closer to home, that seems a natural concomitant of a thorough exploration of the solar system. Almost by definition you can't design a specific search to find something unimaginable; it's more a matter of stumbling over it.

Getting specifically to the subject of UFOs, I actually think there's much to learn from it, but I'd be surprised if any of it actually relates to alien intelligence. Researching the field has given me a lot of insight into issues of human perception, the growth of belief systems and suchlike. I can understand becoming fed up with it though, and indeed haven't paid much attention for years.

With regard to the chance that it might yield some actual manifestation of alien intelligence, I think the odds are so low compared to something like SETI that it's a comparison between apples and orchards. All the same, I think it's important not to abandon that analysis to true believers. We don't need a research program, but we do need a Phil Klass or two.

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Well, there might be dogs, light rail and tofu, what's your point?

end SNIPPET

A. Dim. I disagree. Given our present level of physical world understanding...I think we would be quite capable of understanding a sentient race. pete

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A third rate theory forbids.
A second rate theory explains after the fact.
A first rate theory predicts.
A. Lomonosov

Hi pete.

I said, "Were UFOs actual alien tech in our skies we'll come to know this not on any terms of ours, or by any means of detection or science.
If they're here, they're quite beyond our present understanding such that it will be on their terms."

As far as is accepted there is no evidence UFOs are alien tech.
By what means could we establish UFOs being alien tech?
More accounts with pic/video, radar-visuals, multiple eyewitness?

And besides detecting ETi I'm not so sure we'd understand them if we did. Do we understand the language of whales, dolphins, apes, other sentient beings on this planet?
Do they understand us?
And so what of ETi millions of years more advanced?


chris

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Round and round we go......

I think SETI is a good start, but anyone who actually has any expectations from it shouldn't hold their breath.

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"In the end the aggressors always destroy themselves, making way for others who know how to cooperate and get along. Life is much less a competitive struggle for survival than a triumph of cooperation and creativity."- Fritjof Capra

www.gonzoscience.com

I read it referred to as SETL, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Life, since the SETI picking up a signal is exceedingly chanceless.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Thanks DA (well, BA too).

Once in awhile I find myself wanting more TV; this is one of those times.

And I've yet to get Shostak's book but I'm interested in his arguments as to why he thinks a signal from ETi will be detected in his lifetime.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill