The Futility of the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence

I'm worried that nobody will do anything and this will be put on the back burner and forgotten. Or, what if the civilian science community doesn't work with the military and intelligence communities?

 

The DoD has expressed that our warming Earth is a serious national security concern for the USA.

It's hard to measure how well the DoD is working with NASA, NOAA, and other groups of scientists. And the higher end our military has to intersect with civilian politics - where leadership is chosen, and direction in the DoD is directed and funded, for example.

 

As much as this piece is true, I still think keeping an open mind is reasonable:

 

In the grand scheme of all things on Earth, the human and monetary investment in SETI is miniscule...it's a fly-speck compared to all we do. Science and philosophical curiosity should not be ignored as we search for 'any' signs of ET intelligence. We don't need to have a face-to-face and instead only need to find confirmation that 'others' exist outside of Earth. I tend to agree that unless there are new physics to be discovered that allow inter-solar and inter-galaxy travel and communications, due to the vastness of space and time and it's challenges, we probably never will achieve a meet-and-greet...

 

There is another interesting possibility involving robotic travel.

Some civilization somewhere could make a small fleet of robotic spaceships that are capable of landing somewhere, building replicas of itself and sending them on their way in various directions.

Over a few million years, or whatever, one could imagine a growing storm of alien robots, looking for resources for duplicating themselves.

Could WE make such robotic factory ships in 10,000 years (a bat of an eye, cosmologically speaking)? I would believe so. In fact, there might be reasons to investigate in something like this manner, as we could find that our view of the cosmos is better in some way if we have a view from outside our solar system, or whatever.

 

No matter if the ET's are biological or robotic, without new physics, the space/time issue is daunting. There are billions/trillions of destinations to send robots, all of which would need infinite power sources. Landing 'somewhere' is a huge challenge since most planets, based on our Solar System, are inhospitable even to robots.

Regarding time, like one million years, or even 10,000 years, based on Earth's path today, I can't see advanced/technological life lasting more than 2000-3000 years. Whether inhabitants annihilate themselves or they suck the life out of their planet, how long can advanced civilizations last? The idea of robots replicating themselves into perpetuity over millions of years is questionable.

But I suppose anything is possible...

 

Well, dodging the "could it be done" question, I'd suggest that a million years is trivial in the "self replicating robot" possibility.

The civilization creating that strategy would not need to survive, as the robots wouldn't be dependent on resources from the civilization.

So, perhaps there could have been a civilization tens of millions of years ago that did this.

I'm not a big advocate, but I think it does point to the possibility of at least indirect interactions with civilizations enormously distant in time and space - and without the need to ignore everything we know about physics.

 

Interesting to think about robots replicating over millions of years...since this is precisely some of our current fears about AI...in which AI will do whatever is necessary for survival...if our fears are correct about AI, then these alien robots will evolve into ?? over millions of years.

Everything remains possible since we have no history or knowledge to say otherwise...

 

Why would you develope a robot that will outlive your speciaes and culture?

 

Don't worry everyone. Technology like robots is actually very fragile and doesn't have as much staying power as most Humans. Think how many devices fail after a few years. With a lifespan measured in years rather than decades.

 

The discovery of intelligent ET's will be a wonderful day...about 30% of humans will crap their pants, 30% will get real religious, 30% will never believe the data, and 10% will think it's not only cool but about time. It will literally turn the world upside-down! It will be the most historic day in World history! Yet some people today argue against ET funding and any idea of ET research...go figure??

 

The discovery of divine Angels will be a wonderful day...about 30% of humans will crap their pants, 30% will get real religious, 30% will never believe the data, and 10% will think it's not only cool but about time. It will literally turn the world upside-down! It will be the most historic day in World history! Yet some people today argue against Angels and any idea of Angel research...go figure??

 

The discovery of honest Politicians will be a wonderful day...about 30% of humans will crap their pants, 30% will get real religious, 30% will never believe the data, and 10% will think it's not only cool but about time. It will literally turn the world upside-down! It will be the most historic day in World history! Yet some people today argue against donations and any idea of honest Politician research...go figure??

 

Before we search for intelligence in the universe we should search for some in Washington, DC.

 

You should block that website/blog/whatever as the author is ill-informed, uneducated, and seriously lacking in credibility. The author will only lead you astray.

Interstellar travel is both possible and practical. The fact that we have not achieved it is hardly relevant.

Right now, you got what, a whole 5 guys working on interstellar travel on a shoe-string budget?

Technology begets technology and when there's a crisis, it begets faster. If you had an Earth-centered crisis, and I don't mean the global warming hoax, rather something like the Earth's angular momentum was perturbed in such a way that Earth's orbit will cause it to crash into the Sun, or the orbit will expand so that Earth becomes a giant ice cube, then you'd have every scientist and engineer on Earth working with an infinite budget to find some way to get people off Earth and to a new home. Allow me to rephrase that: Get politicians and ill-begotten bastards off Earth and to a new home.

The author's ignorance and 6th Grade Level Education shines overwhelmingly bright.

The two men who discovered DNA -- Nobel Prize-winning scientists Crick & Watson -- never believed Life originated on Earth.

The two men came to the same conclusion --albeit through different lines of very valid logical and scientific reasoning -- that Life did not originate on Earth.

How dumb is the author not to know that? How can one seriously opine about the origins of Life without ever having read the works of Crick & Watson?

More to the point, to demonstrate how ill-informed the author really is, 3 years ago, a probe was launched. The probe's mission was to interdict a comet on its return path from the Sun, land a device on the comet, and test for the Seeds of Life.

In December 2019, the probe did exactly that revealing Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Phosphorus on the comet's surface.

Crick & Watson were right ever since 1958: The Seeds of Life are in Space.

Unless the author is a shill with an agenda, the author is grotesquely misinformed.

It probably follows that the author is oblivious to the Photo-Electric Effect, which is why you and I are even having this conversation.

All DNA undergoes a natural rate of mutation, but the odds are so incredibly small, that if left to natural mutation, the only thing on Earth would be some colonial organisms and perhaps a handful of primitive multi-cellular organisms.

The Photo-Electric Effect is UV-A, UV-B, UV-C, hard/soft x-rays and hard/soft gammas from the Sun (and other stars) that zings through things kicking out electrons. The loss of an electron either breaks bonds or ionizes and causes chemicals to recombine in different ways.

The Photo-Electric Effect happens in Space just like it does on Earth, and even more so since smaller celestial bodies have no magnetosphere, little to no atmosphere and no Ozone Layer to reduce the number of particles.

Why do you think Methane is measured in parts per billion (ppb) instead of parts per million (ppm)?

It's because Methane can never possibly accumulate in Earth's atmosphere in massive quantities, because Methane is rapidly broken down by the Photo-Electric Effect.

Methane is an Hydro-Carbon, just like you are an Hydro-Carbon-based organism. There's nothing unique about amino acids. They form as the result of the Photo-Electric Effect when you have Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Phosphorus, and nearly all comets and asteroids (not chunk Iron asteroids although they could) do.

 

Actually I think that's about to change. I heard Congress has started funding the Pentagon UFO UAP task force and has given permission to share data with the military and intelligence agencies. I have no idea whether this will change anything, but I hope so.

 

So, the military sends up objects and then collects cash from the government to investigate them!!

Nice racket.

 

Some good points here.

But, finding those elements in a comet does NOT mean that Earthly life came from somewhere other than Earth.

Another problem withy Crick and Watson is that the double helix form of DNA was actually figured out by a Chemistry PhD who worked with them:



And, they gave her NO credit when they collected their Nobel Prize for which she was such a key part.

 

So you think that the UFOs are ours? Well no doubt that some of them are ours, and as our technology advances more and more of those things will be of human origin, but I also think that some of them come from intelligent ETs. I've had my own encounters with both Aliens and an unknown branch of the military piloting those things, so I know that it isn't a racket with no substance.

 

I commented on paying the DoD to investigate. And, how much more STUPID could THAT be??

Besides the ridiculous aspect of paying them to investigate their own objects, there is the FACT that the DoD is SUPREMELY interested in these objects REGARDLESS of their source.

After all, each of those objects COULD be the result of some Earth based technology that exceeds our level of capability. Do you think the DoD isn't watching for that?


We are already spending BILLIONS in the search for life that didn't come from Earth. The motivation for finding ANY real, actual evidence is extreme. In fact, the motivation is so extreme that we get absolutely DELUGED with cranks. For a while there it seemed like it was everybody who owned a frisbee or garbage can lid and knew how to take seriously crap pictures.

And now we still have press that is fully ready to suck up and PROMOTE any bit of nonsense, with a total unwillingness to apply or add any actual analysis - they like the magic, not the buzz kill.

 

Any SETI budget will be minuscule within the grand spending plan but at least maintain a respectable SETI research group...

 

It's not quite a SETI project though is it? It's a threat identification program. We're not searching out in the universe for signs of life. We're studying real objects here in our skies and nearby space.

 

Debunking UFO sightings is not SETI...

 

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. But, I think that you might think that I don't support spending money on this program. I used to think that spending money tracking UFOs/UAPs is a waste of funds, but now that we have this program at the Pentagon I don't think it's a waste of money after all. I just hope it finds something out rather than being put on the back burner and forgotten.

 

SETI is indeed a tiny percent of our effort towards finding life of unearthly origin.

With current physics it remains not totally impossible that we could have a meet-and-great with a robotic object from some ancient civilization.