Scientists - Time to actively try to contact aliens using "active SETI"

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An article by BBC
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31442952

Scientists at a US conference have said it is now time to actively try to contact intelligent life on other worlds.

Researchers involved in the search for extra-terrestrial life are considering what the message from Earth should be.

The call has been made at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Jose.

But others argued that making our presence known might be dangerous.

Researchers at Seti have been listening for signals from outer space for more than 30 years using radio telescope facilities in the US. So far there has been no sign of ET.

The organisation's director, Dr Seth Shostak, told attendees to the AAAS meeting that it was now time to step up the search.

"Some of us at the institute are interested in 'active Seti', not just listening but broadcasting something to some nearby stars because maybe there is some chance that if you wake somebody up you'll get a response," he told BBC News.

The concerns are obvious, but sitting in his office at the institute in Mountain View, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, he expresses them with characteristic, impish glee.

"A lot of people are against active Seti because it is dangerous. It is like shouting in the jungle. You don't know what is out there; you better not do it. If you incite the aliens to obliterate the planet, you wouldn't want that on your tombstone, right?"

I couldn't argue with that. But initially, I could scarcely believe I was having this conversation at a serious research institute rather than at a science fiction convention. The sci-fi feel of our talk was underlined by the toy figures of bug-eyed aliens that cheerfully decorate the office.

But Dr Shostak is a credible and popular figure and has been invited to present his arguments.

Leading astronomers, anthropologists and social scientists will gather at his institute after the AAAS meeting for a symposium to flesh out plans for a proposal for active Seti to put to the public and politicians.

High on the agenda is whether such a move would, as he put it so starkly, lead to the "obliteration" of the planet.

"I don't see why the aliens would have any incentive to do that," Dr Shostak tells me.

"Beyond that, we have been telling them willy-nilly that we are here for 70 years now. They are not very interesting messages but the early TV broadcasts, the early radio, the radar from the Second World War - all that has leaked off the Earth.

"Any society that could come here and ruin our whole day by incinerating the planet already knows we are here."

Clash of cultures
His argument isn't entirely reassuring. But neither is the one made by David Brin, a science fiction writer invited to speak at the AAAS meeting, who opposes the plan.

"Historians will tell you that first contact between industrial civilisations and indigenous people does not go well," he told me.

Mr Brin believes that those in favour of active Seti have been "railroading the public into sending a message without a wide and detailed discussion of what the cultural impact might be".

He does not fear a Hollywood-style alien invasion and thinks the likelihood of making contact is extremely low. But the risks, he argues, are extremely high and so merit careful consideration before anyone sends out a signal to potentially habitable worlds.

"The arrogance of shouting into the cosmos without any proper risk assessment defies belief. It is a course that would put our grandchildren at risk," he said.

Also on the agenda at the active Seti symposium is that if we are to send a message to ET - what should it be?

Some involved in the discussions believe we should send a sanitised account of ourselves, leaving out parts of our history we aren't proud of and putting a positive spin on our achievements - as if our species were attending a job interview or first date. Dr Shostak disagrees. He thinks the only way to win over the aliens is to be ourselves.

"My personal preference is to send the internet - send it all because if you send a lot of information then there's some chance that they'll work it out".
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interesting article!
 
Given that almost all motile life we know of exists by consuming other life forms, we have zero reason to expect peaceful aliens. And plenty to expect Von Neumann machines.
 
seth, we've been sending our radiation emissions into space for decades, but you're talking directed broadcasts. Big difference that you shouldn't minimize.

Also, i never liked you, seth.
 
Contact aliens. What fucking aliens? Not to mention it taking decades at least, centuries more likely.
It is nonsense. SETI itself is, if you ask me, mostly nonsense. If there's other life, we'll find them sooner or later (or they find us).
Not to mention, caution before carelessness. An alien is exactly that, there is no way to predict an alien's actions or morals.
 
I'm in the "please don't" camp, personally. Not comfortable deliberately signalling our existence until we've hit singularity or at least got a population outside of Earth.
 
sand-castle.jpg


We're like the sand castle, if this actually works.


If you were an alien, how would you view the human race? They would probably think of us as parasites. Nothing more.
 
we've conquered nature, now lets conquer an entire universe worth of unknowable social dynamics, when we can barely get along ourselves.
 
On the bright side, it's likely we won't actually contact anything because no matter how much life is out there, the odds of it actually catching these transmissions is infinitesimally small. And then if they do receive them, they won't be able to do anything about it for a few hundred or thousand years.
 
ThoseDeafMutes said:
I'm in the "please don't" camp, personally. Not comfortable deliberately signalling our existence until we've hit singularity or at least got a population outside of Earth.
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I have to think that aliens that can do anything to get to earth must have the technology to have already spotted us.

Unless we send out a signal and then they arrive like 500 years later to enslave us.


I'm more of the mind that if there is life intelligent enough, we are both too far away to ever reach each other, or we will be dead, which makes me incredibly sad.

Then you consider the even sadder thought that there just may not be any intelligent life out there anywhere in our immediate neighbouring cluster galaxies, let alone the whole universe
 
Frankly, the idea of this resulting in... well, results, offends me more than the stupidity of the idea in the first place.
At times, it feels like all SETI advocates forget the speed of light, how slow it is. I figure we may be very powerful by the time we might get a reply (unless it comes in form of a relativistic projectile). But what the heck are they trying to accomplish? Get some funding, press a button and then congratulate themselves... and then realize by the time the reply comes, they're dead and forgotten?
 
I figure any space faring alien race is so advanced and intelligent that they don't really pose any danger to us.

Firstly, chuck out ideas of them eating us, if they've evolved totally isolated from humans eating exotic life would pose a danger to them. we have so many weird chemicals in our body that their food sources probably don't have.
If you're that advanced, you've probably already sorted out food, whether it be factory farms, or lab grown food. You could easily genetically engineer the best tasting food ever. why bother
And it's even possible they don't even eat, rather collect energy by other means.

Labour; a space faring race probably has machiens which are far more capible, and reliable, plus don't require the same downtime and maintenance we do.

Resources? The fact of the matter is, nothing on earth is rare. There are countless earth like planets. Asteroids made of diamonds, whole planets of iron, etc. Anything that naturally occurs in our planet, also naturally occurs all throughout the universe.

They might just want to kill us for fun though.
 
Konka said:
It's not like we'd actually contact anyone. The Universe in unimaginably huge.
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The sad irony of extraterrestrial life; the universe is so big there have to be others out there, yet it's so big that we'll also never find them.
 
Whenever humanity has encountered a more "primitive" culture it's destroyed it. Really hope aliens aren't like us.
 
Let's make sure we don't blow ourselves up, or destroy the planet with fumes before we show ourselves to the galaxy please.
 
"My personal preference is to send the internet - send it all because if you send a lot of information then there's some chance that they'll work it out".
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Great, now they're going to read all those hoax "alien" stories.

They'll probably be anti-vaccination too.
 
Raonak said:
They might just want to kill us for fun though.
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They might kill us just because we might someday be a danger to them.
At least, that would be my reasoning if i were to press a button to commit genocide against aliens. And i have to assume everyone else would do the same.

Sure, it is nice to expect the best of others, i'd prefer that to happen. I would expect the best of them. But at the same time, i'd keep that button close, just in case, and assume they're doing the same.

A cynical view but arguably there is no other reasonable view when dealing with the unknown.
 
I was under the impression that our radio transmissions were too weak to ever reach another star system.. it would be indistinguishable from the background noise. Same reason we've never heard anything through SETI.
 
freenudemacusers said:
we'll be dead and gone by the time the aliens arrive. then they'll dig up our historical archives and stand in wonderment that we managed to get spiderman and the avengers in the same movie universe before our untimely demise.
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This planet will be ruled by an artificial super intelligence by the time the aliens arrive. I am betting the AI will kick their ass.
 
I still believe the WOW! signal was from an alien race in Sagittarius. Nothing to base that on other than what I've read about it and dumb hope. This news pleases me. Humans are already doing a great job at wiping themselves out, so contacting Aliens isn't any different.

Hey, the Egyptians had good luck with aliens right?

SniperHunter said:
This planet will be ruled by an artificial super intelligence by the time the aliens arrive. I am betting the AI will kick their ass.
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Unless the aliens are themselves an AI. They may just join forces.
 
Jedi2016 said:
I was under the impression that our radio transmissions were too weak to ever reach another star system.. it would be indistinguishable from the background noise. Same reason we've never heard anything through SETI.
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Broadcasts only last a few light years or so. Focused signals can last much longer. We would be long gone by then I'm sure.
 
freenudemacusers said:
we'll be dead and gone by the time the aliens arrive. then they'll dig up our historical archives and stand in wonderment that we managed to get spiderman and the avengers in the same movie universe before our untimely demise.
Click to expand...
Sadly, the ancient human mythology will forever be unfinished. The aliens will wonder who the black beast of the jungle was, the figure everybody was waiting for until the end of days.
 
boogyman said:
Broadcasts only last a few light years or so. Focused signals can last much longer. We would be long gone by then I'm sure.
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I remember reading this book which mentioned aliens might be too advanced to be using radio signals. I remember the author mention communication via lasers. Is that even possible? I might be wrong, I read it in 2006 or so
 
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