2006-11-13
By Andrew Tillotson
Athens NEWS Campus Reporter
Intelligent life is likely abundant in the cosmos, and we will find evidence of it soon, according to one of the world’s top experts on the ongoing search for extraterrestrial life.
Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., gave a pair of talks in Athens last week about what his organization does to search for alien life, why he believes it is out there, and what might happen when we find it.
SETI is a general acronym for “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” that can apply to any group that does such work, and does not exclusively refer to Shostak’s institute.
“The bottom line is we will find E.T. in the next two dozen years,” Shostak said. “I’ll bet you all a cup of Starbucks on that.” “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” of course, was the name of Steven Spielberg’s popular 1982 film about a lovable alien.
His prediction of such a specific timeframe relies on statistical projections of how many intelligent civilizations lie within our Milky Way Galaxy, as well as how his institute’s searching capacity will continue to grow exponentially in the coming years.
In fact, he said each SETI experiment usually gathers more data than all the previous ones combined.
Seth actually did an entire interview without begging for funding? I am shocked!
Impossible to tell, I haven’t seen the transcript for his talks in Athens.
I wouldn’t necessarily blame him if he did however. The SETI project depends on grants and private donations now that the US Government in it’s infinite wisdom has decreed that looking for space aliens is a waste of taxpayer’s dollars.
the US Government in it’s infinite wisdom has decreed that looking for space aliens is a waste of taxpayer’s dollars.
Long diatribe that really is leading to something now begins–
And yet they keep the shuttle flying. Round and round it goes, and when it burns up, nobody knows. I wrote a paper in college (that actually made some people mad) which broached the subject of Congressional responsibility for the Challenger accident. Congress has always had its head up its collective arse with regard to funding space-related initiatives. I’m not saying the we shouldn’t be flying the shuttle, and there’s no disputing that the scientific benefits (Hubble, for example) have been immeasurable. I’m saying that for much of its history, NASA has been chronically underfunded, which shows in regard to the shuttle program: the ongoing exchange of parts back and forth between orbiters, the shuttle continuing to fly with severe problems (faulty O-rings in the case of Challenger; unstable foam in the case of Columbia; hundreds of “criticality-one” items besides this, no escape system for the astronauts save for an intact landing, and no capability for inflight rescue or repair…I could go on). All this can ultimately be traced back to funding limitations. Consider that what Walter Dornberger had initially envisioned, decades ago, was two liquid fueled vehicles, in piggyback configuration – a manned booster, with liquid fueled rockets, and air breathing jet engines for its return to base, and an orbiter with liquid fueled rockets, and air breathing engines for return to base after reentry. But Congress simply would not appropriate the funds for a reliable system like this – I doubt if the original configuration proposal ever made it to comittee. So, what did NASA go with instead? They used solid rocket boosters to lift the shuttle, which had NEVER been used in a man-rated launch facility before because they could not be shut off once they were lit, they could not be throttled, and they were generally considered “feisty and unpredictable.” Essentially, the two SRBs are big skyrockets, and they provide almost all of the lifting power for the shuttle – the three liquid fueled engines are almost an afterthought. In this respect, the shuttle is a primitive launch facility.
Air breathing engines were also disincluded, and the result is a “lifting body” with the steepest glide ratio of any aircraft ever built – 2 feet down for every 100 feet forward, I believe it is. Watch it land. That steep incoming trajectory is not a matter of choice – it glides like a rock. Did you know that if it missed it’s first line up, it doesn’t have the glide capacity to go around for a second try?
In the early 70s we were high on the success of the moon landing. But that was a cold war race against the Russians to be first. Accordingly, after a few successful moon landings, we scrubbed the remaining moon landings, refurbished on Saturn booster to double as Skylab, and used the other in the Apollo-Soyuz meet-up – another political mission. All this can ultimately be traced back to Congressional Committees.
The point I’m making here is that neither Congress nor any of our Presidents have ever had any really deep appreciation of what our move into space means. Space really is the last frontier, but if this were the late 1800s and space was Alaska (the “last frontier” in the 1800s), Alaska would never have become a state. We would have given up on it, save for sending a boat up there once and a while.
One day, way back when, Carl Sagan was testifying for NASA in committee, regarding budget appropriations. Now, Senator Proxmire, from Wisconsin, was profoundly against any and all space exploration, and was very vocal about it. He was blowing hot air in committee, and Sagan said, “With all due respect Senator Proxmire, I think you would be all for space exploration if rockets were fueled with butter.” (since Wisconsin is the Dairy State). This is merely to illustrate that Senators and Reps have agendas dominated by the welfare of their respective states, even when they are in committee, addressing Federal programs.
Anyway, if you consult the Congressional Record, and look at annual budget appropriations for NASA, you’ll see BUCKS during the race up to the moon landings, followed by a five year absence from space (’75-’80), while the shuttle was developed. During those five years, the budget appropriations for NASA were down, at some points, to HALF of what they had been during the Apollo program. Necessitating all the shortcuts I have detailed, among others. Did you know that they had originally planned that a second vehicle, called the OMV (Orbital Maneuvering vehicle) was to be carried in the payload bay? This vehicle, unlike the shuttle, would have no effective ceiling, and could even be used as a “ferry” back and forth to the moon.
Great idea, eh? Where is it? No money. Because the powers that be couldn’t get their head around it, couldn’t see the long-term significance of our push into space. It is no different with their inability to get their head around the potential, long-term significance of a robust SETI program.
SETI is a natural progression to our move into space, regardless of Stan Friedman’s blatherings. Furthermore, if “they” are here and now, as Friedman believes, then radio telescopes sensitive enough to pick up a trillionth of a watt ought to be sensitive enough to pick up their ship-to-ship communications as they cruise about the neighborhood. Of course, one can suppose that they don’t communicate via radio, but then the question becomes, how do they communicate? By gamma rays? By infrared? These leave signatures too, and we monitor these with satellites. By telepathy? The “hive mind?”Now were getting into ad hoc explanations for why they maintain such an unbreakable radio silence as they zoom about earth’s environs. Explaining one unknown with another. One could argue that they screen their communications. Maybe so, but they certainly aren’t screening that electromagnetic footprint that’s big enough to allegedly foul a car engine, or blackout a power grid…
Searching the sky for a message makes sense, if only in the respect that this may be the only chance we have to find out if someone else is out there (barring a contact more tangible than is presented by the ufologists and abductologists, i.e., something like “Childhood’s End”) But don’t expect Congress to appreciate that. Remember, this is the congress that voted to impeach Clinton for messing around with an aide, but wouldn’t even consider impeaching Dubya for his many and varied foibles. You pretty much have to have your head up your ass to get into that kind of headspace. Congress was never able to appreciate the grand vision that NASA had for space exploration – why should they be able to appreciate SETI?
Be that as it may, NASA has done a bang up job, in many ways, considering what it has had to work with.
Is anybody out there? There are all sorts of ways to look at this question. The Drake Equation was a noble attempt to try to pigeonhole how many advanced races there might be in the galaxy, but a number of the factors in the equation are notoriously uncertain. What it really comes down to is whether or not Peter Ward is onto something with his “rare earth hypothesis.” Earlier in this century we were still naive, in a lot of ways, about the finer nuances of biological evolution (we had this unrealistic sort of “can do” attitude in regard to a lot of things back then, as a matter of fact). The idea that catastrophism might have played a major role in earth’s history was anathema. Then came along the Alvarez hypothesis, which suggested that if not for a 5 km wide piece of junk from space way back when, I might not be sitting here writing this right now. None of us might be here. When Drake penned his equation, we had this sort of naive belief that went like this: (primordial soup + lightning + solar radiation = abiogenesis). Now, some are considering, with the discovery of complex organic molecules in comets (formic acid, for example – beesting), that comets may have seeded the primordial oceans, providing the raw materials for abiogenesis. “Kick starting” the process, if you will. Now, we could always suppose that other solar systems have Oort clouds of comets, just like we do, but now that we’ve begun to discover extraosolar systems, we find that the solar system is looking unusually stable and atypical of these other systems. What if Oort Clouds aren’t a common feature of solar system development? No precursor molecules, no abiogenesis, no life?
Much about the concept of abiogenesis, leading into the development of complex life forms, and eventually sentience and technology, suggests that it might be a rare process. But if that is so, then that would mean that life is rare.
But if life is rare, where are all the UFOs coming from? Could we be wrong? Could advanced life be abundant in the galaxy? Then why radio silence?
One can get around the various conundrums, one way or another, with various ad-hoc “explanations.” A few of these are:
1.) God created no other beings besides us (and angels, presumably) Man is a divine creation, and if we aren’t literally the center of the universe as was supposed by the geocentrists, then we are functionally at the center of the universe, being God’s crowning creation. The religion that I was raised in believed this, but it never made any sense to me – they told me that God created all those stars and planets to attest to his glory, but this is a sentiment that reeks of vanity, and given that we weren’t able to inventory more than 6000 stars for much of human history prior to the telescope, it looks like God’s vanity drove him to create stars and galaxies several quadrillion orders of magnitude greater than necessary to demonstrate to us that he’s truly the “big cheese.” Such a “human-seeming” vanity doesn’t really jibe with an omniscient, omnipotent being. On the other hand, “Q” is an asshole…
2.) Life is common throughout the galaxy, but we are a fallen race and are therefore in quarantine. This was the basic premise of C.S. Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet trilogy. It’s possible to look at this from a religious or metaphysical angle, or one can take Alfred Webre’s tack, and suppose that Adam and Eve were extraterrestrial colonists who rebelled at the behest of an extraterrestrial commander gone outlaw, and the earth was therefore placed in quarantine.
3.) Life is common throughout the galaxy, but only because a precursor race seeded planets. There’s really no way to prove this other than inventorying multiple galactic species and finding genetic commonalities that could not be attributed to chance. I’m aware of all the “hypotheses” that have been advanced in support of this; none of them meets the burden of proof. They are simply expanded versions of the speculation I just made.
4.) Here’s a metaphysical twist. Life is common throughout the universe, but our definition of what constitutes “life” is hopelessly limited, so it could be right under our noses and we wouldn’t even see it. A few million Buddhists could get behind this proposition.
5.) A omnipotent, omniscient being created life on multiple worlds, through internally guided processes which we have interpreted as “evolution by natural selection.” Ergo, this being built a “life-forming” property into matter. This doesn’t really jibe with what we observe in terms of the 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy).
6.) God is dreaming, and we are that dream.
7.) Make up your own “theory,” and hence, your own religion.
I will make one final comment. I admire Shostak’s tenacity and optimism, but there is no denying that his certainty is based on faith, because he doesn’t know the answer to the abiogenesis/catastrophism in evolution questions. Perhaps this is why the wager of a cup of Starbucks is so small.
Best,
RDB
Quite right. SRBs are a cheap, efficient way to get impulse on that thing What they are using is in essence a metal pipe full of gunpowder.
Oh yes, the absurd nature of the Space Shuttle’s entire flight profile is well known by people who care to look. It’s so freaking BIG too! About twice the size that it aught to be. The space shuttle program is all about putting a winged space station in orbit. It was quite exciting when I was in high-school, in retrospect it seems silly today. The Russians came up with a much better system—the Buran,. They test flew it too. Today, the last production model is rusting away in Gorky Park.
This angers me to no end. We can build hundreds of invisible bombers that have no purpose other than to kill people and break things but we can’t fund the only human endeavor with open ended prospects and a real chance of saving our butts from eventual extinction.
With all due respect to Mr. Friedman, he’s flat wrong. And anyone who thinks UFOs are representing some alien survey mission has got a screw loose. We could stick an object in Earth Orbit the size of a barrel and learn all we wanted about humanity. If UFOs are actually alien spacecraft they must represent a full scale invasion, one that took place about 5,000 years ago.
Exactly, they don’t have a chance unless their constituency (that’s us little people,) stop arguing about Zeta Reticulan politics and start writing letters. Many letters! All saying the same thing, “how about we stop invading Arab countries and start doing space exploration for real?
NASA has done a fantastic job considering the crap they’ve been given for funding. Not to mention the crap they get from many UFOlogests. I about hit the ceiling every time I read about Hoagaland proclaiming that NASA is covering up all kinds of juicy alien junk while at the same time using NASA photos for his own lame-brained theories. These people aught to mocked and mocked well! 😉
I have no doubt that there is life in Cosmos. I have no doubt there is intelligent life, probably quite a lot of it in fact. Look at the species on the Earth though, there are three that probably could pass for sentient, Pan Troglodytes (probably the Bonobos too,) and several species of the order Cetacea. Humans are the only species that developed a relatively high order of tool use and that might even be a happy accident. Neanderthals were bigger, stronger and had larger brains. (Say, there’s a good science fiction story idea about reviving Neanderthals as super solders, but finding out that they are way too smart…..)
Nonsense, The Christian God is a construct of it’s time (a very long time ago.) God is either a smacking big liar (the Cosmos is an illusion to throw us off track.) or he’s the biggest waster of all time (literally.) Why create such a BIG place to put a dust-speck like the Earth? It would be like building New York city to house a single electron, OK points for style but did he have to create all that other stuff?
Naa- Too human-centric. I think we will be shocked at how common life is, even in our own solar system. Intelligent-space faring life is probably rare and why in the hell would one want to contact another? Once we get off of Earth there will be utterly no reason the live on planets again. We might study a less advanced species but I suspect we would do well to leave any more advanced species alone. One that was at exactly our technical level could be contacted but I suspect the sociological barriers between us and an alien species could never be overcome. Hell we can’t even overcome many of our own!
Panspermia, it’s possible. I strongly suspect that if we find life on Mars it will be stuff that originally came from the Earth, or vice-versa.
So could I!
More on that later! (Much later!) 😉
Enter the Matrix!
There is nothing wrong with faith in science, unless the person in question has lost faith in the scientific process and is now forging ahead on belief alone. In which case someone needs to box their ears!
Hey! Good post dude!
RDB’s statement, “Remember, this is the congress that voted to impeach Clinton for messing around with an aide,” makes me wonder if no one remembers that Clinton was impeached for perjury for statements made under oath and for obstruction of justice. Both are felonies. How soon we forget.
Other than that, I think RDB made some outstanding points about the space program and Ufoology.
makes me wonder if no one remembers that Clinton was impeached for perjury for statements made under oath and for obstruction of justice. Both are felonies.
Granted, and I wasn’t trying to exonerate Clinton. Rather, I was pointing out that Dubya is hardly a saint, and if one really wished to dig into his administration, one would likely find comparable impeachable offenses. For example, the WMD fiasco. Bush can always invoke that he was fed bogus intelligence, but the certainty of his proclamation that Iraq was concealing WMDs seems to belie that position, ergo, he sent an envoy to plead the case in front of the General Assembly of the United Nations. His case for WMDs was similarly pleaded before the American people, and the Congress.
So we went to war – one that is now becoming increasingly bloody and every bit as intractable as Vietnam was.
After the fact, we learn that there were no WMDs. And the captain of the ship got off the hook by blaming his mates.
One can always argue that a clear “offense” hasn’t presented itself in the case of Dubya, but when the cost of the error is measured in blood and countless billions of dollars, waffling about what charges to level sounds pretty hollow to me, and the whole debacle appears rather more extreme than Clinton’s perjury.
All this said with the recognition that this isn’t a political blog, and merely to clarify my position – and NOT as a basis for beginning a debate.