SETI@Home Publishes Skymap 317
An anonymous reader writes "The skymap of where in the night sky to find the most promising SETI@Home signals is reported today, along with the research plan for the March Stellar Countdown project. The dedicated use of the Arecibo Telescope to revisit these spikes, pulses, and steady signals, focused on 166 star candidates. Those 166 were pruned from the five billion signals that have been found since 1999, depending on the signal's persistence, closeness to a known star, and frequency. The next step is particularly fascinating, if a signal appears to have increased since the first observation put that star on the checklist."
Should we be concerned... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Should we be concerned... (Score:2)
Re:Should we be concerned... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Should we be concerned... (Score:5, Informative)
It is also interesting that the radio telscope can only tract objects in a band across the sky, due to physical limitations of a ground based radio telescope. This "can" mean that there are as many as ~4 times as many potential signals out there (since they don't line up with the galactic plane we can assume they are nearby star systems which are scattered about the plane).
Re:Should we be concerned... (Score:4, Interesting)
uhh... no.
The Arecibo radio telescope is a fixed dish, which rotates along with the Earth. As the beam of the dish passes a constant power signal source in the sky, the power of the received signal will increase, peak, and decrease following a gaussian profile.
You are correct in the limitations of the dish, however. By pointing the detectors at different places on the dish, the beam can be moved in relation to the plane of the Earth's rotation. The Seti@Home equipment at Arecibo is capable of tracking +1 to +35 degrees declination, and has a beam width of 0.1 degrees. Thus it is only able to see 28% of the sky.
Seti@Home Whitepaper [berkeley.edu]
"Star candidates"? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:"Star candidates"? (Score:5, Funny)
And here's the surprise: the newlywed alien couple will have Disaster Area play at their wedding, and be given their own Heart of Gold Spaceship as a wedding present!!
Re:"Star candidates"? (Score:2)
Re:"Star candidates"? (Score:2)
It would probably be best if Disaster Area played on a neighboring planet to the wedding. Sure the grandmother of the bride can take out her hearing aids and not care but everyone else is probably going to find it hard to dance to.
Doppler Drift Rate "chirping" seems way redundant (Score:5, Interesting)
That seems horribly inefficient!
Have the SETI people ever heard of cepstral [shef.ac.uk] techniques [libinst.com]?
There should be no need to iterate thousands of times over the pattern recognition algorithms when you can just take anouther FFT of the log magnitude spectrum to eliminate doppler shift (the same as what audio engineers would call 'pitch.') Cepstral analysis has been eliminating pitch in audio signal processing for decades. Too bad nobody told the astronomers.
What a waste of all those CPU cycles!
Re:Doppler Drift Rate "chirping" seems way redunda (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Doppler Drift Rate "chirping" seems way redunda (Score:3, Interesting)
If they were using the cepstrum to correct for doppler shift, they could get several thousand times speedup; much more than just four.
Re:Doppler Drift Rate "chirping" seems way redunda (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Doppler Drift Rate "chirping" seems way redunda (Score:3, Interesting)
I was under the impression that this had more to do with redundancy of complex data for purposes of security to ensure someone does not spoof data? If the analysis were to proceed by simply taking a derivative of the FFT and using that, the data would concievably be easier to forge? Perhaps this also is one of the reasons that the Seti@home crew is unwilling to make platform specific optimizations?
Re:Doppler Drift Rate "chirping" seems way redunda (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty damn sure they could be getting a many thousand times speedup.
The process is to take a FFT of the log magnitude spectrum, and look for peaks in the cepstral domain instead of periodicities and triplets in the spectral domain. Maybe there is some reason you can't look for gausians that way. Maybe I ought to take this to email and see what the SETI@Home people say.
Re:Doppler Drift Rate "chirping" seems way redunda (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahh the very nature of Seti@home.
After I quit using it my power bill went down over 20$ a month and I'm not kidding in the slightest.
Before that it struck me - what's the actual probability of finding intelligent life? I work in tech support 90% of all the people I talk to each day are complete morons.
Re:Doppler Drift Rate "chirping" seems way redunda (Score:4, Informative)
Let's just look at the CPU. CPUs have millions of transistors (a Pentium 4 has ~42 million), and each transistor is an electronic switch. The transistor technology they use is Field Effect [physlink.com] or "FET". The most common would be "MOSFET". To maintain the state of the switch as ON or OFF, the device holds a small charge (positive or negative depending on the device) and the charge acts to "pinch off" the channel for current to flow, or to open the channel, as the case may be.
While a transistor is just sitting there in a particular ON or OFF state, it uses very little electricity. However, to change the state, you have to either charge or discharge the gate. When you charge or discharge it, this results in a small but finite amount of current flow, and there being resistance in metal and silicon, this results in power being consumed (at a rate of the current squared, times the resistance). So a transistor that is constantly switching will consume power, but a transistor not switching will consume very, very little.
So, if you home computer is just sitting there doing nothing, then it isn't using most of the chip, and the transistors just sit there waiting for the next instruction to execute. However, when you're running SETI @ Home, the CPU is constantly crunching numbers, and the transistors are constantly switching.
If you want to see this yourself, run a temperature monitor on the CPU while it's not doing anything, and then when you run SETI@Home or DOOM. You'll notice that the temperature spikes when it's doing something, and this is just used up energy. If you have electric heat in your house, and live in a cold climate all year long, you may not see the difference on your power bill, but I don't think that applies to most of us.
Power consumption of computers (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Power consumption of computers (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually I live in Canada. In the winter we pretty much have to keep every heat producing appliance running just to keep the pipes from freezing. I need SETI just to keep the CPU pegged at 100% to keep the windows on that side of the house from frosting over.
Just kidding, obviously.
However, I was just responding to a question from another poster asking a legitimate question: Does a computer actually use more power while it's working than when it's just sitting there? The answer is yes, and I tried to explain why.
Also, let's say we're not just talking about your computer, but let's say you run it on your office computer. If every computer in an office uses $20 or even $10 more per month for electricity because everyone is running SETI@Home, then the owner of the business has a legitimate financial reason to not allow it on his or her network. On a 100 computer network, that could be $12,000 to $24,000 more per year in electricity costs.
Re:Trick? (Score:2, Informative)
cepstral terms (Score:5, Informative)
I have contributed.. (Score:5, Funny)
And to think my computer use to just fly toasters when it was idle.
Re:I have contributed.. (Score:5, Funny)
Will governments allow news to come out? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Will governments allow news to come out? (Score:5, Interesting)
> Supposing SETI finds something, will the government let out the news to the general public?
Why would governments keep it secret when they could instead use it as a long-distance boogieman to justify increasing defense spending and cracking down on civil liberties?
Aliens (Score:5, Funny)
These are some serious questions that need to be addressed before we invite more aliens into the country, I think.
Re:Will governments allow news to come out? (Score:2, Offtopic)
What about all the cases of people seeing images of Jesus in condensation on windows, or stuff like that? People will see what they want to believe.
They won't find anything... (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, Seti@home really helped to bring about this idea of 'distributed computing' to the world. And for the science in that end of the project I would be hard pressed to say this project isn't already a success.
But the more I think about it the more I think that radio signals are not the way we are going to find intelligent beings.
For one I question if we are capable of picking up the radio signals we are sending out.
If there was an earth, a duplicate of us, technologicaly, socialy and so forth, say 10 light years away, do we have the ability to pick up it's radio signals?
And for that matter we have had radio for a very short time, just over 100 years. And our use of it is on the way out already. In another 100 years we will probably be producing a fraction of the radio waves we produce now.
Any way you look at it the odds are stacked against Seti@home.
But I still congratulate them on giving us geeks something to talk about.
SETI was not the first distributed project (Score:3, Interesting)
Except that it'd be pointless, even if they did get a signal. It'd be a signal hundreds or thousands of years old.
Besides, Seti@home really helped to bring about this idea of 'distributed computing' to the world.
Pardon the pun, but what planet are you from? SETI was NOT the first, Distributed.net's RC5 challenge significantly predates the SETI@home client and was enormously popular. At least Distributed.net's ruler thing will be USEFUL.
Oh, and i
Re:SETI was not the first distributed project (Score:4, Insightful)
SETI might not be the first but it's without a doubt the most widely known. That's got to count for something doesn't it? It's advanced awareness of distributed computing far more than any other application so far (unless there's a distributed porn program running around I'm not aware of).
The list of shit people have pulled "back when they first started up" is miles long. I wouldn't have done it (re-fed the clients the same data over and over again) but it pales in comparison to some of the things that people have pulled in order to keep interest alive in their projects while they get things running smoothly.
Re:SETI was not the first distributed project (Score:5, Insightful)
Hello? SETI@home is a scientific endeavour. Accuracy of results matters, and as long as hacking the client to produce false results is possible(always will be), rechecking work units for authenticity by sending them out to more than one client is necessary, duh.
Re:SETI was not the first distributed project (Score:2, Informative)
Re:SETI was not the first distributed project (Score:2)
That's right--a signal from an ALIEN INTELLIGENCE is only useful if it is up to date.
Also, SETI isn't under any sort of compulsion to prove to the people who use its client whether the data is "fresh" or not. That's silly.
Re:They won't find anything... (Score:2)
how many countries produce a radio signal? All of them. How many countries produce as many radio signals as the US? not many. how many will in ten years? Many more.
How do you think your cell phone works? Hyper beams? Wi-Fi? That must be some sort of new physics the kids are using.
Re:They won't find anything... (Score:3, Insightful)
But we are talking about radio waves that are powerful enough to be seen light years away.
That I think we are going to be getting away from.
I expect that in 10 years there probably will be more devices using them, but they will be using them in a smarter way, say spread spectrum and such.
I think we are moving towards 'doing more with less' as an attitude.
But I still ask you, in 100
Re:They won't find anything... (Score:2)
Yes, and in 500 years, maybe we have the resources to put up a huge radio beacon right outside Pluto's orbit to see if anybody would pick up our signal. We would do that, just as we do SETI today, if it's cheap enough. Similarly, a sufficiently prosperous alien civilization might be putting up all sorts o
Re:They won't find anything... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've seen a design for a ship called the Valkyrie with a cruising speed of
hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
I can just picture it (Score:3, Funny)
A universe full of introverts, wouldn't it be ironic.
OK, so kind of a troll (Score:3, Insightful)
"Following up on what is an equivalent of a million years of computation..."
When the RIAA talks about the "equivalent number of CD burners", it's a meaningless inflation. Here's another example. It would have served better to mention the number of SETI@Home clients. A true and meaningful figure which would still have conveyed the scale and a sense of awe.
God, how pedantic and picky of me.
Skymap?? (Score:2)
A little OT but (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A little OT but (Score:5, Interesting)
If life is common, the vast bulk will be single-cell goop, lichen, etc. The ones that go multi-cellular have a shot at intelligent species. Get intelligent, and you have fire, the wheel, and radio in short order.
The human race has had radio for 100 years or so: if we detect a signal from aliens, chances are that they have had radio for thousands or millions of years. We are almost certain to be the primitives in this case.
Interestingly, the radio age is probably extremely short-lived: signal compression, etc, should make any advanced race's radio look like noise to observers.
Re:A little OT but (Score:2)
This is actually an interesting thought. Maybe we go hunting in the jungles of an alien world using our personal cloaking devices. Maybe we mass an armada to go from planet to planet sucking up their resources (hell, we did it on this planet why not when we go interstellar?). Maybe I take my giant robot to their cap
Re:A little OT but (Score:2)
Re:A little OT but (Score:2)
Re:A little OT but (Score:5, Funny)
oh wait...
Re:A little OT but (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, our enlightened species would bring great things to these indiginous aliens. Wonders such
Re:A little OT but (Score:2, Funny)
Re:A little OT but (Score:3, Funny)
If the signal has INCREASED? (Score:3, Funny)
"The next step is particularly fascinating, if a signal appears to have increased since the first observation put that star on the checklist."
How could it have increased?
These signals are coming from light-years away.
Even if the aliens learned, somehow (say, a year ago) that we were listening for them, finding this out instantly via some sort of "subspace radio" or the like, the signals we have received since then were ALREADY IN TRANSIT when the SETI@home program began.
Besides, there'd be no way for them to know we're listening, let alone to find that out within the last year.
Or maybe I just grossly misread the poster's meaning?
Re:If the signal has INCREASED? (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, they could have noticed us a while ago from radio signals, and we're only now getting the signal after they swung the antenna around to point at us.
Re:If the signal has INCREASED? (Score:5, Funny)
We could all watch Omicron Persei 8's version of Single Female Lawyer.
Re:If the signal has INCREASED? (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps the signal is from an object like a pulsar that is increasing in mass near its center and increasing its rate of spin a'la conservation of angular momentum? After all the first time a pulsar was discovered, it was thought to be "little green men".
Re:If the signal has INCREASED? (Score:2)
Perhaps it's the Vogon spaceship on its way to Earth, broadcasting the "you are about to be paved for an interstellar highway" message. It increased because the ship's getting closer...
Re:If the signal has INCREASED? (Score:5, Insightful)
And an opportunity for T-Mobile to make a killing.
The WOW signal (Score:4, Interesting)
Good way to spend free time :) (Score:2)
Hm. Strange ideas.
"The next message will be sent by us in 0.00063 of galactic second".
RF Blackout Implies SETI Failure (Score:2, Insightful)
Greater Importance (Score:3, Insightful)
Up in the air (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to think we were simply looking into outer space with the SETI project and hearing complete silence. Well, that doesn't seem to be the case. Even in the 'relatively quiet' radio bands, there's still a whole lot of signal going on, and by and large we can't tell it from noise.
The article mentioned is a bit humble when saying 'oh yes, there were more than 166 candidates'. Yes, there were a 'few' more, and it was pretty tough to pare the list down to something the Arecibo could be solidly used for, according to the Planetary Society [planetary.org]
Nor is the search in the radio band the be-all end-all to all the observation techniques; to that effect, there are a number of other observations and techniques [berkeley.edu] underway.
I suppose the "saddest" thing at the moment is that we honestly cannot currently tell the difference between "nobody's out there" and "ten billion civilizations are out there", due to our narrow and infrequent observation bands, our simplifying assumptions, and our limited processing power (think of the difference another 50... or even 10 years will make to that).
I suppose an additional question we might have to face if we hear an ET signal: how many people will play it backwards and hear Elvis or the Devil?
Link text: my pet peeve (Score:5, Informative)
Let's look at the links in this article:
-
"skymap" points to the astrobio article
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"most promising" points to the skymap
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"project" points to a past slashdot article about SETI@home
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"these" points to a description of the signals SETI@home looks for
Here's my suggestion:can SETI break DRM? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Proximity to a star? (Score:5, Insightful)
--
If we find aliens I hope they like beer.
Re:Proximity to a star? (Score:2)
Re:Proximity to a star? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Proximity to a star? (Score:2)
Whoa! Too obscure of a Star Wars reference for this hour of the morning. Wait, I'm just confirming my dorkiness...crap.
Re:Proximity to a star? (Score:3, Informative)
N.
Re:Proximity to a star? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Proximity to a star? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not impossible for something we're only guessing about in the first place, but unlikely given what we believe to be true.
-ptah
Re:Proximity to a star? (Score:2, Informative)
However, to be more consistent with popular media science measurement systems, we would more correctly say that a sheet of interstellar space the size of a football field and the thickness of a human hair would contain about 3000 atoms.
Re:Proximity to a star? (Score:5, Interesting)
Planets, as far our theories go, are generally formed during the creation of stars and seem to generally be captured in orbit around stars. (Of course, I doubt anyone has made a wide search for planets not close to stars.)
Thus, to look for life, look near stars.
Re:Proximity to a star? (Score:2)
The assumption is that you'd have a much better chance of finding aliens around a star. This seems reasonable since one might expect aliens to be made out of matter and live in areas where there were copius quantities of matter. The other inescapable truth is that you need some place to look and stars represent a barely finite set of possible locations whereas "not stars" doesn't.
Matters of Matter (Score:2)
*honk*
Re:Proximity to a star? (Score:5, Informative)
R* is the rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of intelligent life. These stars are neither too hot (too close) nor too cold (too far) for life to form. This happy middle ground is also known as the Goldilocks zone.
Fp is the fraction of those stars with planets. Planets normally form only around stars. Some solar system have no planets and hence very little chance of having life as we know it.
All life is dependent on energy is some form or another. For most life on this planet, that energy is the sun in the forms of light and heat. While other forms of energy have been found to sustain life like chemosynthesis in the deep ocean trenches, this phenomenom will be nearly impossible to detect from earth. It is far easier to detect stars, but that doesn't mean locating a signal will be a breeze.
Re:Proximity to a star? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, the problem with the Drake Equation is that its nigh-useless. All seven of its factors are (for the most part) completely arbitrary. You can use it to prove whatever you want, and people frequently do.
Re:Proximity to a star? (Score:3, Insightful)
While the computations from the Drake equation are useless, I think that it does provide some insight and analysis into which factors are important in limiting our ability to contact other species. As science evolves, certain aspects of the equation change. For example until the discovery of life near
Re:Proximity to a star? (Score:4, Interesting)
[roughly, where can I learn more about chemosynthesis - based ecosystems?]
Try googling on "black smokers". Here's a quick overview: an introductory lecture about black smokers [oceansonline.com]
Re:Proximity to a star? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Proximity to a star? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:SETI is a crock- here's why (Score:3, Informative)
As for the century long delay, just start talking. Wicked lag time, but eventually you'll get something said.
Re:SETI is a crock- here's why (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:SETI is a crock- here's why (Score:2, Funny)
I think you answered your own criticism here. Nobody fricken knows. It is a Columbus-like exploration: sail and see what you bump into.
Ok, so you send a reply.
Who says we would send a reply? Maybe we will just listen more in and watch their version of I Love Lucy.
Re:SETI is a crock- here's why (Score:5, Insightful)
Er, um, you are aware that "Contact" is a work of fiction, right?
More seriously your post seems ill thought out. Yes, the odds of finding anyting are rather slim, especially considering that our only sensors are inside the sun's area of interference. However you seem to be underestimating the importance of finding evidence of non-human sentience. Carrying on a conversation is nice, don't misunderstand me, but I'd be happy just knowing for sure that we aren't the only ones out here. Sure, the odds are that there's other people in the universe, but I'd like to know for sure.
The cost is quite low, really, and its spin off effects are already prooving to be of benefit in the short run. The truth is that "pointless" research has paid off time and again. Maybe SETI won't pay off, but the fact is that it might.
Oddly enough, you didn't mention the single biggest problem facing the SETI program: the likelyhood that use of omnidirectional radio is not long lived. Here on Earth we're already tending to move away from powerful omnidirectional signals. Increasing use of laser, microwave, fiberoptic, etc is slowly killing off true broadcast radio. Some people suspect that within another thrity years or so the only omnidirecitonal broadcasts will be quite weak and short ranged (equivalant to cordless phones).
Still, even given that, I'd say that the potential benefit of SETI vastly outweighs its miniscule cost. You've got to take chances sometimes...
Re:SETI is a crock- here's why (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I don't think that the receivers used by SETI are sensitive enough to pick up anybody's omnidirectional signals. If we pick up anything at all, it would be because they are beaming massively powerful signals in a narrow beam directed specifically at our solar system. We certainly aren't going to stumble onto any random local alien TV broadcasts.
Re:SETI is a crock- here's why (Score:2, Funny)
Maybe we should work this from the opposite end... Use the highest power transmitters available to broadcast something for years and years!
How about Pr0n, for example? I'd love to see what aliens would think about "That blue Pr0nWorld orbiting the yellow star".
Perhaps they'd have anal-probe tours... Perhaps they ALREADY DO!
N.
Re:I'm NOT trolling (Score:2)
Agree with you here. I disagree completely with your viewpoint, so I wrote a reply. Moderating you down was uncalled for.
I will note, however, that your rather pointlessly aggressive language is doubtless what caused the people to mod you as a troll. Tossing about terms like cult and suchlike isn't really the best way to make points.
Re:SETI is pointless(repost) (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, I don't think anyone is claiming that radio waves are a viable method of intersteller communication (frankly, all the options there suck, barring the discovery of handwavium or similar magic-tech).
The point isn't to find a race out there to chat with. The point is to find evidence that, at some point in the past, *someone* out there emitted radio signals. Are they still around? Can we call them up and discuss deep, philosophical questions? Maybe, and probably not. But proving that intelligent life exists or existed off Earth, even if it went extinct long ago by our reckoning, is a worthy enough project, in my less-than-humble opinion.
James.
Re:SETI is pointless(repost) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:SETI is pointless(repost) (Score:2)
Re:SETI is pointless(repost) (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:SETI is pointless(repost) (Score:2)
OK now all you other people...
Re:SETI is pointless(repost) (Score:3, Insightful)
There is the possibility (probability perhaps) that a found civilisation is far in advance such that it might take 100 years for our message to rech them but when it does they engage thier ftl communication system and promptly tell us how to build our own if we don't have one by then already.
I'd agree with you that the chance of SETI being successful is probably slim, but it's not pointless, because there is *a* chance,
Other ways (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a lot of "pointless" projects out there, cold fusion, AI, room temperature superconduction, teleportation, time travel, an end to world hunger, "peace keeping", Battlestar Galactica as visioned by Richard Hatch. Luckily there are still dreamers out there wasting their time and money trying the impossible. Who know's maybe they'll succeed.
point vs counterpoint (Score:5, Insightful)
>They don't get much radio time, and they can't cover much of the sky.
Granted, but that could change tomorrow with funding.
>Now chances of actually recognizing the signal as intelligent life are unknown
I wouldn't say that. Primes in binary would be pretty obvious. Even a something trivial that isn't a pulsar but repeats could be seen as meaningful communication i.e. someone is saying "I exist!"
>Ok, maybe you see it and you recognize it. Can you decode it?
Even if they cant or if its just numbers, the proof that life exists off our sphere is revolutionary and will change humanity forever. That's something to take seriously even if we don't know what we're being told.
> Great, someone's actually listening and gets the signal. You've just had the century-long equivalent of the 20 second bar conversation
I don't think the consensus at SETI or SETI-like projects is to build a conversation. Its about discovery. The proof that intelligent life is abound in the universe, like I mentioned above, is more than justification for the projects.
I think people with your kinds of criticisms have a very high expectation of a very limited project. That doesn't mean that the project isn't worthwhile or can't deliver goods. It just wont deliver the goods you seem to want - a "telephone" like conversation with aliens. A verified signal is more than enough to bowl the world over. Who knows how it will affect us. Will space exploration get a second boom? Will people take global disarmament more seriously? Will the religious scream bloody murder?
Who knows. Like I wrote above, its not an expensive project and I hope to see more SETI stuff in the future, especially powerful wholesale transmissions to likely candidates.
Re:SETI is pointless(repost) (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed... but it doesn't hurt to try. Also, don't forget that to develop advanced techniques or better alternatives, one needs to start with the basics. You don't start riding a bicycle without learning how to balance or how to walk. Same thing here. What they are doing may be "primitive" and next to useless but I'm sure some good will come out of it--if not now, in 50 or 100 years ago.
* Now chances of actually recognizing the signal as intelligent life are unknown. They've got some great theories. Who knows if they're right?
Intelligence is an overrated word that is used to oppress lower classes. There is no such thing as intelligene--at least when you look at things from a macroscopic scale. The point wouldn't be to find intelligent lifeform--rather it is to find ANY lifeform. Whatever you find may or may not be "intelligent" (for example, if you find aliens that have mastered electromagnetic waves but haven't even figured out how to build a 10 story building, are they "intelligent"?).
* Ok, maybe you see it and you recognize it. Can you decode it?
This will be the tough part IMO. Even if you find something, it could take hundreads of years to decode the message. Stanislaw Lem, a Polish sci-fi author who has written many sci-fi novesl (including Solaris), postulates that it will take 100+ years to communicate with an alien (even if the alien made physical contact). Humans can understand each other's language because we made it all up; and we can understand animals because we are animals. The same cannot be said of foreign aliens.
* Alright, so who cares if you decode it, you FOUND INTELLIGENT LIFE that existed at least several hundred of years ago
I can't believe you are dismissing this. If contact is made (or evidence is found), it will be the MOST IMPORTANT human event in the last 500 years. It will be bigger than theory of gravity, theory of relativity, development of transistors,computers,electricity, World War II, rise of Communism, Nazism, etc. Discovery of aliens will likely result in elimination of religions (or religious wars), massive scientific "push", etc. It will alter our understanding of the universe. We will know that we are not "alone". In addition, this can provide more answers to the meaning to life and further philosophy...
* Ok, so you send a reply. You figure out where that source planet will be when the signal finally reaches it. * "The aliens get it" requires the same hurdles. Mainly, they have a SETI program, they've got their ears pointed in the right direction, they identify the reply as intelligent life, etc. Hell, it assumes they haven't nuked themselves into extinction like we're on the steady path towards.
They may or may not have technology dealing with electromagnetic/radio waves. But the hope is that they will. For all we know, they may be far more advanced in that area... As far as aliens nuking themselves, it is a possibility. However, I don't think it will be the case. Humans are very violent (we kill each other, destroy nature, etc). I think the probability of finding more peaceful beings are higher than finding ones that are more violent than us.
* Now, lets say they decide to reply(ie, they're not xenophobic, they don't think it's pointless, etc). It takes another couple hundred years to get back to earth, assuming they aim right etc.
This argument is moot. There will be a massive lag so people can't communicate. However, we (and them) can sort of figure out that something is out there. Also one should keep in mind that this will be a long term action, done to benefit humanity as opposed to the individual. For instance, if you send a signal now, someone 200 years from now may get back the response from the alien. It does not benefit you
Re:SETI is pointless(repost) (Score:2)
You presume the point of SETI is to communicate with aliens. It is not. It is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. So they only need to answer your first two conditions, and those are some of your weakest ones. In fact, you seem to advocate them getting more money, as then they will be able to cover more of the sky and have a better chance with increased funding for their projects.
Re:And they're saying... (Score:2)
Re:What a waste (Score:2)
Sounds like you have a poorly cooled (and probably overclocked) CPU.
Re:Straight Lines? (Score:2, Interesting)
Okay, looking at the map, the orange dots near the following locations are in lines:
7.2hr, +20 deg., near Gemini, 6 dots.
17hr, +20 deg., near Herculese, 6 dots.
14hr, +25 deg., near Booties, 5 dots.
The UFO statement was just a joke. But, I am curious as to why those orange dots do fall into a line on the map. I am just asking a question.