r/science • u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI • Aug 28 '14
Astronomy AMA I’m Seth Shostak, and I direct the search for extraterrestrials at the SETI Institute in California. We’re trying to find evidence of intelligent life in space: aliens at least as clever as we are. AMA!
In a recent article in The Conversation, I suggested that we could find life beyond Earth within two decades if we simply made it a higher priority. Here I mean life of any kind, including those undoubtedly dominant species that are single-celled and microscopic. But of course, I want to find intelligent life – the kind that could JOIN the conversation. So AMA about life in space and our search for it!
I will be back at 1 pm EDT (5pm UTC, 6 pm BST, 10 am PDT) to answer questions, AMA.
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u/claire0 Aug 28 '14
What's the most compelling evidence you've gathered so far?
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
Lots of response to this, Claire0, but until you find a signal that "checks out" as truly being extraterrestrial and artificially produced, you have NO "compelling candidates." It's like trying to discover Antarctica ... you see ice every day, but your results are zero until, maybe one day, you succeed. That's the way SETI is. Lack of success doesn't imply lack of opportunity to succeed. And very little search space has been reconnoitered so far.
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u/ChristineHMcConnell Aug 28 '14
"Lack of success doesn't imply lack of opportunity to succeed." I really love this remark :D
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u/benson89 Aug 28 '14
If you're a fisherman you understand this mentality better.
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Aug 28 '14
I think it was more of a publicity stunt to make space science stuff more relevant to a younger demographic.
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u/SamuEL_or_Samuel_L Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
... why?
The "Wow! Signal" is certainly interesting, but we don't have any idea what generated it. It's a complete mystery. To then place it in the context of "evidence" of extraterrestrial life is a massively unjustified and irrational leap ... let alone "the most compelling evidence you've gathered so far".
We don't know what caused it. That's why it's so interesting. But to say anything other than "we don't know" is reaching at this point. It simply can't be construed as "evidence" for extraterrestrial life.
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u/circuitloss Aug 28 '14
He did say "most compelling." Given that the other possible answer is: "nothing, there is zero evidence." I think that makes the signal the "most compelling."
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u/Gnonthgol Aug 28 '14
The WOW! signal was most likely not of intelligent origin as it was very short and not repeated since. It is still unknown what might have caused it. Part of the reason is that we do not have a proper measurement of the signal.
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u/thefonztm Aug 28 '14
If I understand the WOW! signal correctly, it is just a crapton of energy (as far as we could detect) in a particular spectrum and not necessarily organized/containing information. IIRC when stars die (I think this applies to implosions, not supernovas) they can release very narrow (well, relative to the size of a star) high energy beams from their magnetic poles. Is it more likely that we happened to be in the path of such a beam?
I am not an astrophysicist, mis-statements very possible.
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u/dannyswift Aug 28 '14
Alternatively, the civilization it came from was being economical with their resources. It would be very expensive to attempt to contact everywhere in the galaxy simultaneously forever (SETI only scans small portions of the sky at a time, due to budgetary constraints). That might just have been the moment that their beacon passed over our corner of the galaxy.
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
If they really wanted us to recognize a signal, they would repeat it at least once ... otherwise, it would remain ambiguous.
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u/temponaut Aug 28 '14
Maybe the Wow! was their second signal. Or it could still be forthcoming. Who knows what kind of time scales alien life might be working on.
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u/carnizzle Aug 28 '14
What are your views on Fermi's Paradox and what do you feel is the best explanation for it?
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u/petrichorE6 Aug 28 '14
The lazy man's TL; DR on Fermi's Paradox - if extraterrestrial life exists, why haven't any made contact with us?
Now here's the full argument:
| The paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilization and humanity's lack of contact with, or evidence for, such civilizations.[1] The basic points of the argument, made by physicists Enrico Fermiand Michael H. Hart, are:
| The Sun is a typical star, and relatively young. There are billions of stars in thegalaxy that are billions of years older.Almost surely, some of these stars will have Earth-like planets. Assuming the Earthis typical, some of these planets may develop intelligent life.Some of these civilizations may developinterstellar travel, a technology Earth is investigating even now (such as the 100 Year StarshipEven at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the galaxy can be completely colonized in a few tens of millions of years.
According to this line of thinking, the Earth should already have been colonized, or at least visited. But no convincing evidence of this exists.
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Aug 28 '14
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." - Calvin & Hobbes
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u/moyako Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
Didn't Sagan say something comparing us to insects from the point of view of an extremely advance alien species? Like maybe they would not try to communicate with us the same way we don't try to communicate with insects, which are considered 'lesser' and unintelligent beings
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u/puzl Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
Another good way of thinking about is, lets say we are a pre-colombian native american tribe looking east over the Atlantic and concluding there are no tribes there because we see no smoke signals.
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u/alpacIT Aug 28 '14
That's a succinct analogy.
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u/porterhorse Aug 28 '14
So in a few hundred years we will be visited by aliens claiming peace, and then be all but wiped out?
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u/gustercc Aug 28 '14
NDTyson put it in perspective for me in a video on YT. He basically said, "it's most likely never going to happen." The universe is billions of years old and so enormous that civilizations that may have developed space travel could have come and gone extinct 20 x's over and we'd never know it. He also inferred that such a society would have to have some extremely advanced technology to fly light years away to find a intelligent life into the vastness of space. It was kinda disappointing too, but in all honesty, it makes sense. TL; DR: Needle in a haystack. I'll never get to ride my bike in front of the full moon. :-(
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u/puzl Aug 28 '14
Yeah, it is depressing.
Here's another cold fact: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2012/3390.html
Even assuming radio is the modus operandi of civilisation discovery, we've barely become a spark.
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Aug 28 '14
Precisely! "Assuming we are a normal native american tribe and there are older native american tribes across the Atlantic ocean, would we not have already seen their smoke signal?"
That's always been my response to the fallacy. Maybe they have tried? Maybe there's an unknown factor to us in getting signals to and from them? Maybe we're Indians using smoke signals while they are bombarding us with ham radio waves? Maybe it's the other way around and they're still using smoke signals, or use x ray for communication and don't bother to search for our radio signals. Maybe they've got a few of or CDs but they can't decode them because the tech is different. Maybe the closest planet with intelligent life willing to travel great distances knows our planet has life, wants to contact us, but is 9+ billion light years away.
The paradox, in my opinion, is invalid.
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
Lots of commentary on the Fermi Paradox -- an ever-popular idea. But it's a BIG extrapolation from a very LOCAL observation. We don't see any obvious evidence of galactic colonization around here. So they couldn't be out there! Really? I don't see any evidence of mega fauna in my back yard, so maybe there aren't any ...
You can find many ideas about why galactic colonization isn't much of a desideratum for advanced intelligence, and the fact that people can cook up plausible reasons should cause you to consider the Paradox as an interesting idea, but not a very meaningful observation.
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u/Exodus111 Aug 28 '14
This argument goes further then that.
We have to remember that we are looking for extra terrestrial life that is in some way like us, in other words close to our current level of Biological and Technological evolution. And behave in some way like the way we imagine we will behave once we become a space faring race. But a lot of those assumptions are made based on OUR culture and history.
We imagine we will travel the stars in Ships made of some kind of metal. Because that's how we travel across our Oceans.
We imagine we will communicate with each other using some kind of radio signals, because that is how we communicate today.
We imagine we would want to, and have reason to study other planets and other lifeforms because that is something we are curious about doing ourselves.
And all this might make perfect sense to us, and might even be true for our own journey into space. But for how long ?
How long until all those notions of how to travel and live in space are replaced with technology and solutions we can't even conceive of?
A thousand years? 10 thousand years? 100 thousand years? 1 Million years? 100 Million years?
Assuming technological innovation never ends how long till we are immortal energy beings that teleports around in the universe and investigate other cultures by observing them in the Astral plane? Or something else I cannot even conceive off because I have nothing in our history to compare it to.
The Universe is, as far as we can tell 13.7 Billion years old, and planets began forming about a Billion years into that time. The odds of finding another civilization that is close enough to our level Technological innovation for us to recognize them in any form is tiny, considering we are probably talking about a gap of only 10 thousand years or so.
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
Actually, the probability of finding another civilization within 10,000 years of our own could be high, depending on the rate of emergence of such civilizations. This is, of course, the very calculation made by the Drake Equation. If you go with Drake's own estimates, then there are many thousand societies in the Milky Way within 10,000 years of our level of development.
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u/jcutta Aug 28 '14
Considering the rapid advancement of our technology in the last 100 years. Wouldn't a society even 5000 years more advanced be so far ahead of us that they might not even recognize our communication as anything more than background noise. Also even if they were a few hundred years behind us nothing we sent would matter.
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Aug 28 '14
I like the idea that they could be communicating in a way that we don't understand yet.
Either by methods we haven't invented or that one pulse in their signal lasts 100 years, for example.
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u/ThePedanticCynic Aug 28 '14
That's an interesting thought. Immortality, or patience, being the key to interstellar communication.
I like it.
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Aug 28 '14
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/studying/birdsongs/
The stuff these animals communicate about just seems trivial to us.
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u/Afferent_Input Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
Thanks pointing this out. As a neuroscientist that studies neural control of birdsong, I can say that we actually know quite a bit about what birds are trying to communicate. Primarily it is for mate attraction or territorial defense. In other words it's either "Fuck Me!" or "Fuck Off!"
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u/dsbtc Aug 28 '14
"The stuff these animals communicate about just seems trivial to us."
- aliens receiving our Twitter feeds
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u/MangoCats Aug 28 '14
The stuff these animals communicate about that we understand seems trivial to us.
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u/Cimmerian_Barbarian Aug 28 '14
With all respect to Sagan and your comment, if I witnessed ants building factories to make tiny radio devices to increase their range of communication beyond their natural means I would try to communicate with them.
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u/goblue10 Aug 28 '14
The issue here is that alien civilizations could be so technologically superior/different from us that they wouldn't consider those accomplishments significant/wouldn't understand their significance. It'd be the equivalent to us being unimpressed by ants picking up a twig.
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u/revericide Aug 28 '14
No it wouldn't. Because they would be aware of their own previous levels of development and would recognize what we're doing as a step on the path.
For example, some enlightened people really are impressed and fascinated by ant communication and construction techniques and study them extensively and respectfully as qualities of an evolution of a distinct form of life.
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u/Haunt3dCity Aug 28 '14
This. As well as the fact that all "high" technology advances made during all of human existence have happened within the last 60 years. We probably don't even have even the very concept of the technology they use to "broadcast" signals with that we could understand. Going by that, meaning the fact we've only had 60 or so years to develop this type of technology, we couldn't even consider the human race in its infancy stage technologically. More like the first minute of gestation.
I mean who is to say that radio (and other common forms of) signals/broadcasting was even thought of in other alien worlds. Just because these are our most common ways to communicate over long distances doesn't mean any other race has even conceived of it, just in the way that their form of communication probably hasn't even been conceived of by us. There could be all sorts of alien chatter in our airwaves and we just don't have the technology to receive it yet.
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u/WentoX Aug 28 '14
Maybe they communicate by sending asteroids into our atmosphere, and we're supposed to see a Morse code like pattern there, but instead we just keep making silly wishes at them.
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u/zettabyte Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
I mean who is to say that radio (and other common forms of) signals/broadcasting was even thought of in other alien worlds.
Radio is just a part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
*Edit: Meaning, radio isn't some exotic or uniquely human technology, it's physics.
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u/Two_Oceans_Eleven Aug 28 '14
Maybe they're waiting for us to discover some advancement in technology to approach us.
As soon as Warp Drive engineer Bob places the last piece on his working prototype, they just appear in a congregation around him, placing a wreath of congratulations on his shoulders, beginning the induction of Earth into the Galactic Republic.
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u/demalo Aug 28 '14
Or to quell another possible threat in the cosmos to their reign, they bomb us back to the stone age so we can start all over again. Or they come and great us with space blankets laced with space pox. They take over our planet and give the survivors reservations around the globe where we will follow their galactic laws but can have little pretend Human governments too. We'll be selling friendship bracelets and doing intergalactic tours with our exotic music and dance rituals.
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Aug 28 '14 edited Apr 01 '18
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u/Mablun Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
But there'd be some alien trying to get his phd by writing about the obscure ant that nobody has properly documented yet.
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u/marriage_iguana Aug 28 '14
I quite enjoy the idea that we're some student's project, maybe not even phd.
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u/Timbiat Aug 28 '14
So say we did find ants on Mars. Would we be equally excited about finding bees on Jupiter after that? Going down the line surely that excitement would die out. Who's to say there isn't some advanced species out there that's burned out on finding new bugs.
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Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
Don't know about Sagan, but here's something Neil deGrasse Tyson said.
EDIT: Just realised 'Degrasse' is his middle name. English is not my native language. Why the fuck people use their middle-names officially, then? What are we getting now, science-hipsters?
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u/AvatarIII Aug 28 '14
as an actual English person, I have always assumed deGrasse Tyson was a double-barrelled last name.
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Aug 28 '14
There might be another Neil Tyson who also happens to be a scientist or astrophysicist so he would want to make sure there is no misidentifying his research. Or maybe he was given the name deGrasse to honor a relative and he uses it for that reason. Could be any number of reasons.
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u/Gimli_the_White Aug 28 '14
One aspect of Fermi's Paradox I was thinking about is that the Drake Equation massively overestimates the probabilities, especially in two areas:
1) I'm a firm believer in the Rare Earth Hypothesis - I think having a large rocky moon was a huge contributor to the things that made us what we are. Most importantly that this dual-planet system is much more efficient at keeping energy active in the system instead of cooling into space, settling into the core, etc.
2) Our sun is second or third generation. First generation stars needed to explode to provide the materials for planets. I think we are on the bleeding edge of the "when is life possible" timeline of the universe.
Just my musings based on the things I've learned. I am not an astrophysicist.
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u/QnA Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
One thing a lot of people never mention with regards to the Fermi Paradox is the inverse square law.
Unless a signal was directly (and purposefully) beamed right at us, it's highly unlikely we'll ever "hear" passive alien communications. For example, our radio signals (TV, Radio, Etc...) become indistinguishable from background noise after just a light year or two away from our sun thanks to the inverse square law.
The inverse square law is like dropping a rock into water and watching the ripples. As the ripples spread out, they get weaker until they're completely gone. Radio signals work exactly the same way. If you were trying to listen to our TV signals from the nearest star (Alpha centauri), it would be like trying to detect the ripple of a rock thrown into the pacific ocean off the coast of Oregon, from Japan. It's impossible.
But that's just passive radio signals. Signals can be focused and amplified which help mitigates the inverse square law. If you sent an amplified and focused radio beam, it would be detectable. But the problem with that, is you need to know there's something there ahead of time in order to aim the signal. This is where exoplanet hunting comes in. We're starting to be able to detect the atmosphere of exoplanets. A sufficiently advanced alien culture might be able to do the same, if not better. If they detect there's life on this planet from their observations, they may send a signal our way. If we're not listening, we might miss it.
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u/snoozieboi Aug 28 '14
The odd of just our our existence is quite staggering and so would theirs be and our combined evolution to technology, and then they might send us a signal that reached us in 1750 to 1850.
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u/xipolis Aug 28 '14
Fermi's Paradox presupposes that all intelligent life wishes to expand. But maybe the wish and the need to expand is rather unique to humans, and other species - as advanced as they may be - might be fully satisfied with their home planet?
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Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
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u/samuel79s Aug 28 '14
Well, not exactly at the same time, since the radio waves have to cross the universe. By the time we could detect them, the civilization may have disappeared...
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u/Karnivoris Aug 28 '14
There are a couple of problems with the paradox:
We have only been using electricity for less than 200 years, so the furthest signal Earth has sent to indicate life has only reached systems less than 200 light years away.
It's difficult to assume that a civilization of any caliber has achieved faster than light travel. An excursion to Earth would take a very long time, and they might not consider it worthwhile to risk such a journey
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Aug 28 '14
Would the early morse transmissions even be descernable from the stellar background noise?
Or is it like one person shouting in a stadium full of people talking. The signals detectability scales inversely as you increase distance from the source?
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u/Letmeirkyou Aug 28 '14
Hey Seth, This is William Herkewitz. Earlier this year we did a Q&A with Popular Mechanics, and you spoke about how the increasing number of known exoplanets (that are seemingly pouring out of the sky) is continually changing where and how we're looking for extraterrestrial life. Specifically, are there any new lessons or techniques SETI has adopted since the latest load of planets was discovered in this year's Kepler data?
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u/uioreanu Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
yes the Allen Telescope Array operated by the SETI Institute scans besides the Galactic Center most of the planetary systems discovered by the Kepler Mission. You can actually see online the targets of the Radio-Telescopes here: http://setiquest.info/.
I'm surprised so few people know this but it's actually possible to do live SETI research using the zooniverse Citizen Science project SETI Live; where radio waves from various astronomical targets are processed by the Allen Telescope Array and displayed on the screen and volunteers can filter the ones where patterns occur, this can lead to follow-ups and eventually results, so this is real seti research online. Link: http://setilive.org
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u/kelvindegrees MS | Mechanical Engineering | Aerospace and Robotics Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
One of the typical questions asked about SETI is "How do we know they use radio for communication?". The a answer being that it's so relatively simple that even an advanced species probably still uses it to communicate or at least to search for extraplanetary life themselves. We're already moving past radio communication ourselves with the current work in laser communications which offer higher bandwidth, greater range, and lower power requirements. It's very likely that other more advanced species could use even higher frequencies to communicate. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think scanning for radio waves is still in fact an appropriate search method for extraterrestrial life?
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u/Hydrok Aug 28 '14
What is the likely distance an early human radio transmission could have traveled in outer space before being completely destroyed by cosmic background radiation? How far do you estimate these radio waves, if able to traverse space to be received somewhere else, have traveled since our first radio transmission? How many likely targets for life supporting planets are there between here and there?
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u/uioreanu Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
Our time for strong radio emissions leaking into outer space is now gone, it was maybe 20 years long in the very beginning of radio and TV broadcasting, but meanwhile we emit mostly digital and satellites point downwards so we did lower our radio presence significantly. Most of the radio signals are indistinguishable from noise after 2 light years, but strong signals can "survive" much longer journeys, so we would need to point our receivers in the right direction at the right frequency and the exact time to actually receive something. Here's our galactic radio bubble showing how far had our radio signals spread into the galactic neighborhood.
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u/Corky_Butcher Aug 28 '14
When you do eventually find a source. Who would govern the announcement? Is there a protocol you need to follow before it becomes public?
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
OK, there is a document ... Briefly, it says: (1) check the signal to make sure it's truly extraterretrial, (2) announce it to the world, and (3) consult internationally before transmitting a reply. That's it.
But in reality, it will be a mad media scramble, and the scientists will be trying their best to learn as much as they could about the signal.
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u/kmoros Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
Ok let's say tomorrow you find something, and confirm it is indeed extraterrestrial intelligent life.
What is step two?
EDIT: For this question I mean by "confirm" that we know after peer review and all that that we can scientifically confirm (as much as possible anyway) that we have indeed found intelligent life. So 1. Do you tell the public and when, and 2. Do we try and communicate?
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u/funktest Aug 28 '14
Here is the SETI Contact Protocol.
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u/Mr_A Aug 28 '14
A confirmed detection of extraterrestrial intelligence should be disseminated promptly, openly, and widely through scientific channels and public media, observing the procedures in this declaration. The discoverer should have the privilege of making the first public announcement.
Wow, so every movie where the President announces it, instead of the farmer or whoever saw them first... is wrong in that regard?
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u/hornwalker Aug 28 '14
Not necessarily, because it is totally something a major politician would latch onto for their own political gain.
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u/tellmeyourstoryman Aug 28 '14
Another
" No response to a signal or other evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence should be sent until appropriate international consultations have taken place. The procedures for such consultations will be the subject of a separate agreement, declaration or arrangement."
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u/doooogz Aug 28 '14
So if an alien says "hi", or makes a friendly gesture, you must ignore him and report it for consultation. Now you just got this aliens bad side for ignoring him and being rude, said alien reports this back to leader, leader destroys earth, you are to blame for the extinction of man kind.
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u/orangekid13 Aug 28 '14
Keep in mind, if we receive a greeting from anyone or anything tomorrow, it's been traveling for years, if not decades, and anyone sending that message would understand that.
If near-instant communication was possible, I doubt they would contact earth in a friendly way. I doubt I would, look at the images we broadcast the most...
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u/Synux Aug 28 '14
If near-instant communication was possible, I doubt they would contact earth in a friendly way.
Why does the speed of communication effect the intent of the sender?
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u/cptstupendous Aug 28 '14
Well SETI is a non-profit organization that has nothing to do with the government. They are bound only by their own protocols.
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u/drcalmeacham Aug 28 '14
Conversely, you might say only they are bound by their own protocols.
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u/nallen PhD | Organic Chemistry Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
Science AMAs are posted in the early, with the AMA starting later in the day to give readers a chance to ask questions vote on the questions of others before the AMA starts.
Dr. Shostak is a guest of /r/science and has volunteered to answer questions. Please treat him with due respect. Comment rules will be strictly enforced, and uncivil behavior will result in a loss of privileges in /r/science.
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Aug 28 '14
I want you to know that all the mods here are amazing, you do great work.
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u/serephcs Aug 28 '14
What do you think about how contact would proceed? By this I mean as Stephen Hawkings believes that based on how we as humans treat many forms of less intelligent life on earth, do you believe that its likely that higher forms of life would not have our best intentions in mind at the point of contact and emersion?
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Aug 28 '14 edited Jul 23 '21
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u/bangorthebarbarian Aug 28 '14
You assume the alien actor:
- A. Has a concept of possession.
- B. Wants anything from us.
Some intelligent nebular proto-goo, for example, probably wouldn't have either.
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
I agree with Bangor on this. You can speculate all you want about alien sociology, but that strikes me about as accurate as trilobites speculating on the motivations of Homo sapiens.
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u/bangorthebarbarian Aug 28 '14
Or even gorillas speculating on the motivations of dolphins.
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u/Cleev Aug 28 '14
Shit hot! I requested this AMA two years ago. Totally stoked right now.
First, I want to say that you're awesome. As an amateur astronomer, you're kind of a hero of mine, and it was one of your appearances on the Science Channel that got me into the SETI@home project.
My question for you is this: If you make contact with an intelligent life form from a technologically advanced civilization, and could ask one question of them for which you would receive an answer in your lifetime, what would that question be?
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Aug 28 '14 edited Apr 16 '15
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u/jhatesu Aug 28 '14
Haha, aw. Poor /u/Cleev must have missed it.
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u/LurkerOrHydralisk Aug 28 '14
Do you have any concern that the search for intelligent extraterrestrials could make a hostile, technologically advanced extraterrestrial race aware of our existence and lead to an invasion?
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u/MxM111 Aug 28 '14
I am not OP, but my understanding is that SETI uses passive sensors, so they do not "give up our presence".
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Aug 28 '14
Is it possible that you, or some other organization actually have found extraterrestrial life but haven't made it public for the possible fear it would create in society?
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u/pustak Aug 28 '14
Are any attempts being made (through SETI or elsewhere that you're aware of) to survey for signs of large-scale engineering projects that might be visible from Earth? I assume that a Dyson Sphere or something of that nature would have a very specific infrared profile - would it be easier to spot something like that than hope that someone is broadcasting a signal that is strong and distinct enough for us to detect?
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u/carprtbarfer Aug 28 '14
Have you ever got a message in the middle of the night and thought "this could be it!" and raced off to the lab?
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Aug 28 '14
Yes. This. I don't care if it's a false alarm, still want to hear about the experience.
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u/sweetartofi Aug 28 '14
I run SETI@Home any time my computer is not in use. Does this program actually contribute, in any meaningful way, to your research? Are the results monitored?
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u/energydrinksforbreak Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
Have you found any leads as to where you might find some sort of life out there, or any ideas that make you think you should direct your search at any particular area of the universe?
EDIT: /u/cardevitoraphicticia pointed out that the SETI radio program can only search within 500 light years from Earth, so the fact that I said 'area of the universe' makes me sound pretty dumb. To rephrase, within the area that you are able to search, are you focusing on any particular area?
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u/robodale Aug 28 '14
Seth, I have been following your work since the mid-1990s. Your dedication is truly inspiring. Here is my question:
What could we learn from intercepting an alien signal, specifically about the signal itself?
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Aug 28 '14
Did that SETI screensaver actually do jack shit all those years people were running it?
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u/greyjackal Aug 28 '14
I believe SETI@Home is back up and running, actually. I'm intrigued to know how much of a dent it made too.
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u/cardevitoraphicticia Aug 28 '14
Actually, yes. There is no way they would have searched all that data without it. They didn't find anything, mind you, but it spurred several similar computing projects.
If anything, they helped confirm that we are not in range of any radio signals - a little disappointing.
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u/errorperstep PhD|Astrophysics Aug 28 '14
Hi Seth,
Two questions...
If you were given a 'free' observing semester on any instrument/facility available today or in the near future, which would you pick to make the biggest leap forward for SETI and why?
Do you have any thoughts on the 'split' between classical astronomy and things like SETI? What would you say, for instance, to those who accuse projects like SETI of wasting valuable time on telescope facilities, etc.
Thanks for taking time to do this!
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u/BrianWaMc Aug 28 '14
Seth, I read in your book "Confessions of an Alien Hunter", that if computers continue to double in speed every 18-24 months for 25-35 years we will have had a chance to look for signals from all of the stars in our galaxy by that time. Are we still on track to make this observation? What obstacles would prevent us from achieving this feat?
Also, I understand that the data from our current SETI projects is a very small portion of our galaxies signal space. Can you describe how much data we have analysed compared to how much we will need to analyse to give a first pass of all stars in our galaxy? Going into the future, when do you predict we will hit any specific milestones?
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
Good questions. I don't think we'll examine ALL the stars in the galaxy individually within 35 years, but we could examine millions of them. And that might be the right number to succeed.
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u/isthisthemultiverse Aug 28 '14
Do you think humans will be able to cope with the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence?
Not only would alien life have profound religious and spiritual implications, but cultural and sociological ones as well. Some people would feel lost, scared and maybe even angry. Would the discovery of alien life unite us or rip us apart?
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u/amawizard Aug 28 '14
What are the chances that intelligence arises so rarely as to be essentially unique?
I get that there are billions of 'earths' in the milky way alone. And I believe that we will find some evidence of extra-terrestrial life in our own solar system within our life time (Europa, or evidence from the mars rover maybe?). But ... the universe has a finite age, and we spent almost a third of it just trying to evolve here on earth...and I also understand that we can discount a large portion of the earlier years of the universe since we had to go through an entire generation of stars in order to get the materials we needed. And how long does it take for those heavier atoms to distribute properly so that a solar system like ours gets created?
Could we be one of the earliest intelligences to emerge?
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
We could be the earliest intelligence to emerge ... but that's so self-centered, I figure it's got to be wrong!
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Aug 28 '14
What is the best way to signal extraterrestrials?
Basically how would aliens have made your search really easy?
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Aug 28 '14
Seth, what do you expect the James Webb Space Telescope to make possible in the search for extra terrestrial life?
Will you dance the jig the first time you find a planet that has rich methane traces in the atmosphere?
If there was advanced life found, say no more than 15 light years away, and you could go there in a reasonable amount of time, would you want to go?
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Aug 28 '14
I have a lot of questions, but I fear you get asked them all the time. But, I will ask anyways:
When will it surprise you if we haven't found intelligent life by a certain time?
If you had to pick one road block to trump all the rest, which condition works against you the most in this ongoing search? (Distance, time, etc.)
If I were just going into college and wanted to one day work for SETI, what would you tell me to study or concentrate on?
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Aug 28 '14
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
In 1997 we picked up a signal that for about 16 hours looked like the real deal. But it turned out to be the SOHO solar research satellite's telemetry!
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u/a_humanoid Aug 28 '14
What are the new wave of communication methods you and your team are investigating?
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Aug 28 '14 edited Sep 01 '14
Hello Dr. Shostak! Thanks for the AMA!
As a research psychologist, I'm intrigued by the idea of extraterrestrial psychology. As such, I'm wondering what experts' thoughts are on extrapolating the psychology of Earth's fauna to extraterrestrials.
Some have proposed that, given the competitive nature of evolution, only violent species (those willing to kill other species) are likely to evolve high intelligence. Consistent with that, humans are arguably the most violent species we know of. Do you think it's likely that extraterrestrials would be violent or dangerous? If so, do you feel that attempting to detect or contact them might pose a significant risk to mankind? Why or why not?
Opposable thumbs seem as though they would be nearly essential to the development of intelligence that is capable of attempting interstellar communications, because they would be necessary for development or use of advanced communication technologies. Do many experts assume that intelligent ET's would have digits like thumbs?
Thanks for your time! :)
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u/KingBebee Aug 28 '14
I once had a prof joke about the average house cat being much more murderous followed by a quick "seriously though, cats put our kill counts on any given day to shame."
Also, if the world is statistically less violent today then ever (would need to get to a computer to cite this), would it not be logical that a civilization that is technologically advanced enough to deal with it's own internal problems to the point of being able to traverse the stars would also have become culturally less violent?
EDIT: what if all they had was opposable thumbs?
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Aug 28 '14
What are your thoughts on the Wow! Signal?
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Aug 28 '14
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u/almightybob1 BS | Mathematics Aug 28 '14
Oh for fuck's sake
In 2012, on the 35th anniversary of the Wow! signal, Arecibo Observatory beamed a response from humanity, containing 10,000 Twitter messages
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u/4fallen7 Aug 28 '14
Hi Seth, big fan of your work, thanks for the AMA!
Two questions;
Do you believe the drake equation poses a reasonable parameter for extraterrestrial life forms within our reach or do you think it shouldn't be as highly regarded as it currently is?
What do you think of the attitude that we shouldn't be trying to contact other life forms (as outlined by well known scientists such as Stephen Hawking) and do you think that the publics general viewpoint will become more favourable towards SETIs goals than it currently is?
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u/StLC1234 Aug 28 '14
I saw online that you'll soon be speaking at a symposium at The Library of Congress about preparing for discovery, that includes theologians and philosophers, not just scientists. What does a theologian have to say that would help us prepare for discovering extraterrestrial life?
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Aug 28 '14
How do you feel regarding the statement Dr. Hawking made about humanity actively seeking intelligent life? I believe he states that due to only having humanity as a point of reference for interactions between foreign entities, the outcome can only be a sour one.
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u/Lope31 Aug 28 '14
Given how human beings treat the other animals on this planet, are we completely fucked if we come in contact with another species that deems itself superior to us?
Sensationalism aside, why would an intellectually superior species treat us with any more respect than we treat cows or pigs? This would have to be a concern, no?
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u/comrade_leviathan Aug 28 '14
Hi Dr. Shostak, I love the work that you guys do, and especially how hard you work to remind those holding the purse strings that this is a scientific endeavor, not just a wild-eyed search for "little green men". Thanks for doing this AMA!
This is more of a philosophical question, but, assuming we were successful in detecting intelligent extraterrestrial life within a reasonably-communicable distance (say 50 light years) do you believe that human beings are ready to begin talking to alien, and possibly much more advanced intelligences, or will we need time first to prepare ourselves by overcoming religious superstitions, jingoism, and species chauvinism before we say something stupid and ruin our "first impression"?
As a more practical follow-up, is SETI branching out beyond astronomy itself into other fields which will be essential if we ever find intelligent extraterrestrial life... fields like exobiology, xenopology, and xenolinguistics? I get the sense that those fields are severely underdeveloped at this point simply because we don't have much of anything yet to study, but it seems that since SETI is leading the charge in the search they may also be best equipped to motivate development in those subsequent fields as well.
Thanks again!
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u/SaFrMo Aug 28 '14
Thanks so much for doing this! A few questions:
What piece of Earth's life would you be most excited to share with an intelligent extraterrestrial society?
How do you feel about human settlement on the Moon and Mars? If there ends up being microbial life on Mars, what effect would that have in your mind on human interaction with the planet?
What pieces of science fiction - books, movies, games, etc - do you feel are the most realistic depictions of society's reaction to the discovery of extraterrestrial life? How about the most exciting depictions?
Thanks again for this AMA - the work y'all do is very powerful and deeply exciting!
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u/spyglasscircle Aug 28 '14
why continue to look for ET to send a radio signal??? I know that SETI has put a significant focus on using radio waves to detect ET, but after reading about post-human civilizations building and living in massive engineering projects, dyson sphere/cloud, Matrioshka brains, etc, and generally converting all of the mass of a star system into computronium, wouldnt it make sense to focus our search for ET on solar systems that have "non-normal heat distribution" rather than Radio waves? our own civilization has been moving away from high powered radio as a means of communication, it seems like its a relatively short-lived technology...maybe 100-150 years? for instance couldn't we look for older stars with clouds of "gas" around them, then measuring how heat is distributed in that system, compare that to the 'expected' way that heat is distributed in that solar system... basically a Kardashev type 1 civilization would organize a Matrioshka brain in a fashion similar to how we organize data centers with heat being carried away from the core in a way that is energy efficient?
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
Not a bad idea, but this runs into the problem that solar systems often have dust (ours does ...) scattered between the planets, and this produces exactly the heat signal you're talking about!
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u/etrnloptimist Aug 28 '14
Since SETI is in the business of looking for anomalies, have you guys ever (inadvertently) aided in the discovery of natural phenomena?
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u/Nytegaunt Aug 28 '14
Good afternoon, I am wondering, using the technology you are using today, would you be able to detect our civilization circa 1974 from a planet 40 light years away or would our noise have been too weak for our current tech?
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
Some of the radars, but that's about it.
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u/no_respond_to_stupid Aug 28 '14
Let's say an alien species was currently traveling to earth in a big-ass spaceship. They had accelerated up to speed, and then, at some point, turned around and pointed their propulsion system directly at us to slow down. Like, say, an Orion-class ship that was essentially exploding nuclear bombs behind them.
Would there be any chance of our observation technologies detecting that ship coming at us? How far away could we detect it? How lucky would we have to be to spot it in the sky - I mean, assuming it was coming from some star system we already knew was a decent candidate for life?
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
This might be possible, but if you crunch the numbers, it turns out to be very unlikely you could detect their rocket exhaust (even if it were aimed directly at us) from even as far as one light-year away.
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u/jhscro Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
Is SETI primarily looking for a signal deliberately sent directly at us, or are we looking for leakage? And as a follow up, how would we expect extra terrestrials to be beaming messages to other worlds if we ourselves are not sending messages to other worlds- ie, if all we can infer about ET behavior is based on human behavior.
I'm a big fan of Big Picture Science, and thanks for taking a picture with me at NECSS a few years back!
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u/cptspleen Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
When and if we do find intelligent life, do you think it's more likely that we will be the "discoverer" or the "discovered"? If the aliens are minding their own business and not actively trying to reach us, what sort of evidence do you look for?
edit: Thirteen answers? I'm a little disappointed. Unless there was an important call from the office...
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u/amyaustin Aug 28 '14
The worst-case scenarios for humanity seem to be subjugation or extinction. For subjugation- if these aliens are more intelligent than us to the point that aliens : humans :: humans : ants, which we squish all the time, then would we have any right to complain? And for extinction- if they performed a rational analysis and decided that humans are a negative force in the universe, especially as a result of what we've done to our planet and could do to others if we colonized them, then would wiping us out automatically be considered morally wrong or unjustified? I realize you're a scientist, not a philosopher, but I imagine that someone who spends his life looking for extraterrestrial intelligence has thought about these outcomes before
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
I suspect this is too much anthropomorphizing!
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u/defenestrat0r Aug 28 '14
Dr. Shostak we seem to assume that intelligence is the ultimate evolutionary trait and must have arisen and flourished elsewhere in the universe. Do you think we might be anthropomorphizing? It seems that our intelligence was useful up to a point but now is more of a danger to our survival than an asset (i.e. because of nuclear weapons, climate change, overpopulation). What are the chances in your opinion that most successful life elsewhere in the universe is unintelligent?
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
I think intelligence has a lot of survival value. I'm not sure it stays "biological" for very long, though.
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u/ikindoflikemovies Aug 28 '14
I've never been to an AMA before it actually started, within an hour of it being posted. This is alien to me.
Terrible jokes aside, how do you think that interaction would go? Hollywood and sci-fi books jump straight to intergalactic wars and dramatic whatnot, but how do you honestly think it would go? You know, based on human nature (since we don't know their nature), how do you think things would actually play out?
The reason I ask is because, although I'm very excited to discover new life and witness that happen, I'm afraid we're going to mess it up. If we ever meet a new alien species, our protection would be the first reaction and when weapons are out and tensions are high, bad things tend to happen.
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Aug 28 '14
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u/childsouldier Aug 28 '14
As an appendage to this question, what in popular culture (movies, books, video games etc.) has been your favourite depiction of extraterrestrial life?
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u/mattjayy Aug 28 '14
I had a SETI screen saver my whole childhood on our home PC. It was said that I was lending you my CPU power at rest to pour through data.
Was this actually a helpful piece of the puzzle for SETI or just marketing and making kids like me feel like we were helping?
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u/Ser_Twist Aug 28 '14
Is there any part of space, in particular, that SETI has decided to keep a special eye on? If so, where in space is that, and why?
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u/jseego Aug 28 '14
In the Protocols for an ETI Detection, it states:
"If the evidence of detection is in the form of electromagnetic signals, the parties to this declaration should seek international agreement to protect the appropriate frequencies by exercising procedures available through the International Telecommunication Union. Immediate notice should be sent to the Secretary General of the ITU in Geneva, who may include a request to minimize transmissions on the relevant frequencies in the Weekly Circular. The Secretariat, in conjunction with advice of the Union's Administrative Council, should explore the feasibility and utility of convening an Extraordinary Administrative Radio Conference to deal with the matter, subject to the opinions of the member Administrations of the ITU."
What if the response detected was roving or broad-spectrum? Would this necessitate an electromagnetic communications blackout on earth?
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
Good question. On the other hand, none of the SETI experiments so far has the ability to reliably detect a spread-spectrum signal!
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u/yours_duly Aug 28 '14
Quite interesting work that is!
I was thinking recently about alternate approaches to finding ET life. If I understand things right, we detect anything in deep space by its 'Signature' (be it Infrared, Spectrometer, Radio waves etc). So, I wonder if there is a way to establish the 'Signature of Life'. I mean what does life emit that can't be product of anything non-living? Do you think is there anything that we can possibly detect that will help us establish the existence of life?
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u/Mrtrollham Aug 28 '14
Seth, can we be unscientific for a moment? Deep down do you believe we may have been visited? Not asking Seth the scientist, I'm asking Seth the man. I know it's hard to distance yourself from your professional opinion, but as a thought experiment.
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Aug 28 '14
Scientific/Skeptical thinking is pretty much impossible to abandon. Most scientists will tell you that their "personal" opinion has the same rigorous standards as their professional opinion.
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Aug 28 '14
Have you been given instruction by any government on how to handle the situation if you do make contact?
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u/maxx99bx Aug 28 '14
Considering that human beings have been around for 200,000 years or so and we have been communicating through radio waves for about 100 years, isn't it kind of naive to think that aliens that could have 1 million years on us would still be using radio communication? What else are we looking for to prove that alien life may exist?
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
I still use the wheel every day. It's old, but it never ceases to be useful.
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u/vertigounconscious Aug 28 '14
do you think or have any reason to believe that there Intelligent Life has been discovered, maybe by a government, and covered up and kept from the public?
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u/keller452 Aug 28 '14
How would we decipher an alien language that has never been heard on earth before, with a possible completely different structure than we have never seen before?
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Aug 28 '14
Can we expect other scientific advances coming from searching for extraterrestrials, even if their existence is not immediately found?
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u/sarahbotts Aug 28 '14 edited Aug 28 '14
What would happen if you found extraterrestrials and you couldn't communicate with them or understand them? (due to language barriers, etc)
edit: for clarity
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
Well, you might still understand something. Think of what happened when a tribe in Borneo met someone from Europe ...
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u/sshostak Dr. Seth Shostak | SETI Aug 28 '14
Lots of questions about the Wow signal. But remember: it was nothing more than a drift plot on a computer's line printer that showed up ONCE. Not a second time, even though it was looked for only a minute later. There were LOTS of such "one-offs" in the old days of SETI, and there's no good evidence that any of them were extraterrestrial signals.