Happy 50th Birthday to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence!

In other words.....still no reason believe that the earth isn't in a privileged position in the universe.

The Carl Sagan SETI message was actually very successful, making contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. His message contained the type of atoms in our bodies which is based on carbon. About six light years out, the message was received by the Commander of a spacecraft who then teleported here to earth. He created two crop circles near an observatory in England. The first one was a crop circle of intricate design showing a picture of his face. The second one was a modification of Sagan's message with the addition of the element silicon. This extraterrestrial's body is based on silicon, not carbon. I never could understand why Cornell did not make more of this first contact. The problem with the SETI program is that the aliens do not communicate by radio waves. They communicate by mental telepathy. The only time they use radio is when transferring a large amount of information between two spacecraft that are close together. The aliens use the musical gateway for connecting conversations in real time around the galaxy. This is done through the subspace tetrahedral manifold which connects all points in space. This avoids the speed of light limit.

@Bagpipes100

That is a classic example of the negative evidence fallacy. IN FACT, the whole Bible is a fallacy, from a historical standpoint, in addition to the concept of god. YOU CANNOT STATE THAT SOMETHING IS TRUE OR COULD BE TRUE BECAUSE IT HAS NOT YET BEEN PROVEN FALSE. Comments like that do not belong on a science website.

If we're in such a privileged position in the universe, you probably still have this Ptolemaic notion that our solar system is geocentric. You'd think Earth would be in a place where apocalypse-inducing meteors/comets/asteroids couldn't get to.

And if and when we discover alien life, religions all over this tiny world will need to rewrite their so-called holy texts.

I doubt Extraterrestrial life would use the same kind of technology as us. Whether they are more advanced or less advanced, the chances of them developing the same kind of technology are very very very slim. Maybe SETI should start looking for more than just radio signals. That "wow" signal, idk what that could have been.

This is erroneous. Aliens have been discovered on this planet. Glenn Beck is one of them...

Bagpipes100 has some point here. Yes, you can't prove something just because it has'nt been proven false but look at all the data we have collected and there has been a lot. Out of all the data their is still one remaining fact that the number of planets known to be capable of supporting life is exactly ONE.

We should have heard something by now. In theory the universe should be crawling with life and even if subspace telepethy is the way to go they can't all be more advanced than us and so someone else out there would have to still be ringing the electromagnetic wave bell. It is the tecnological evolutionary precedent.

I don't know the answer to what else is out there but I think we are really close to finding out. Will poopshoop be able to rewrite his "book" if suddenly something like bubble theory were to be conclusivly proven and we find out that the universe is actually almost entirely inhospitable? Finally, I must confess it really boggles my mind that people will deny the existance of God but insist upon aliens and vise versa when if a truly advanced civiliation were to exist of virtualy immortal life and exponential intellect who have been involved in our lives from the begining they would be indistinguishable from GOD(s). So I actually think I have disagreed and agreed with everyone and somehow ended up on the side of the poster who sounds an awful lot like a scientologist. THAT'S IT I'M GOING HOME AND HAVING A BEER!

edisonkenevi:
What do you mean "ONE?" Glises 581 d is in the habitable zone. The moons Europa, Enceladus, maybe Ganymede have oceans that could support life. Why are you on a science website???

let's try to find the location of heaven then can communicate with angels. Heaven must be floating somewhere in universe.

@Poopshoop,

If you're on a science website, you should understand that ALL OF SCIENCE is geared not to prove things in the positive but to show that certain models are false. You can't prove things in the positive. Which is why naturalists have no high ground over creationists, ID'ers, or the followers of the FSM, so long as the scientific models each proposes based on their given set of initial hypotheses (which they all have, and take on faith) don't result in any gross contradictions when compared with observation.

And if you think that what you are calling science starts with pure observation and has no hypothesis taken on faith, and no philosophical foundation....then you sir do not belong on a science forum talking.

the point being, is that no, lack of evidence does not disqualify the Copernican principal. However taking it as a starting assumption, and then sitting around saying that some day we will hear back from ET is nothing more than the naturalists version of the "God of the gaps" argument. It doesn't make for good science.....dogma that masquerades as science maybe.....but not science.

I don't understand the logic behind SETI.What are the odds in this immense universe that there is a civilization whose technological progress approximates ours? In other words,some intelligent beings are still living in caves.The rest are tens or hundreds of thousands of years ahead of us technologically.Any radio signals they sent out when they were at our stage of development were sent many thousands of years ago.Presumably,they now have more advanced means of long distance communication,which we don't understand,or aren't listening for.
The galaxy could be teeming with life,and earth could be quarantined as a culture too primitive and violent to deal with.

@Jackson0458-Okay, so the moons of Europa might just have some single celled organism living in it's ocean. Not exactly somebody sending us a radiogram now is it.

Oh, wait a minute did you say "could support life"? Thats right we still have not confirmed life anywhere else have we? So their are some good candidates but the number of planets known for a fact to actually have life not in a theoretical sense is still ONE. Of course that could change next week as we discover smome microbiotic organism on a comet or something. But uness I am mistaken this has not happened yet. Besides, the conversation is primarily about advanced lifeforms not microbiotic ones.

Honeslty I think Gort60 has an excellent point. I can think of only a few good reasons why we have yet to find ET:

1)The universe is vastly populated but they are avoiding us because we are primitive and violent and their left-wing controllers have constructed a legal system that prevents interfering with developing civilizaions. If they were right-wing then they are just running the show from behind the sceens and we still wouldn't know.

2)The universe is so void of life that finding other forms of intellegent life will take serious advances in technology. The "We havent found them yet but we will get there soon" scenario.

3)We are at the present time the most advanced civilization in the universe. Egotistical I know, but perhaps the development of nanotecnology always results in the extermintation of civilizations and we are just have'nt developed enough to completely obiterate ourselves.

4)WE ARE ALONE. No angels no demons no little green men just us and a handful of planets with microbiotic organisms.

Personaly I go for #2 but I think the last one scares the hell out of everyone so much that no one wants to even contemplate it.

Now I’m no rocket scientist but if we did receive a radio transmission from our closet solar system their Gort60 just how long before we received it would it have had to be sent.... I was kind of under the impression that we were looking for historical evidence. But hey like I said I’m not the scientist.

For Moezart: Radio transmissions travel at the speed of light.That is why a star is said to be 200 (or whatever) light years from earth,which is the distance light would travel in 200 years. My point is that if there is intelligent life out there,and it has developed technology,that technology is almost certain to be thousands of years ahead of ours.I think it's a safe bet that an advanced culture,say 100,000 years more advanced than us,has moved on from radio for communications. If the last time they used radio for communications was say,95 thousand years ago,their last radio transmission left their planet 95,000 years ago,and has travelled 95,000 light years so far.If as you say we are looking for historical evidence,ie radio signals,the alien planet has to be 95,000 or more light years from us to pick up the signal.If it is any less,we would not have had the ability to receive their signal,as radio was invented only about 110 years ago,and radio telescopes went online about 80 years ago.Their last transmissions could have swept by earth 100 years ago.

-"SETI has failed at its initial goal of contacting aliens"
I wouldn't fraise like this. It is impolite. I'd rather use "hasn't found".

@edisonkenevil

I think number one is very possible as it may require both number 2 and 3 to be possible. I think they would rather have us find them then have them come here, show us some technology that we couldn't possibly comprehend and be blamed for when we blow ourselves up with it. So, once we have the technology to reach them, we may be accepted by them and we'll discover a so-called galactic federation or a space government of some sort and we'll meet all kinds of intelligent life or whatever.
Then that's where number 3 comes in. If we were ever to have such technology, we would probably blow ourselves up time and time again before we mastered such technology. For example, the LHC may blow us all up when it's running in 2012 at full power or nuclear tension or nanotechnology. Hopefully we keep advancing without blowing up or destroying ourselves.

@omaracoustic yeah, I hope we are wise enough with nanotech not to make self replicating deconstructing swarms that devoure the earth in a matter of minutes too.

@Gort60 I must say that any civilization that has moved beyond radio almost certainly had to have radio at one time or at least be aware of it and would understand how to use it. It stands to reason they would be looking for us too and at least be looking for our radio signals even if the technology is beneath them.

Should we be doing more than listening. Right now we can detect slight wobbles or phase shifts from distant stars. Could we somehow alter the spectrum comming from our sun to cause it to change hue for instance. Of course we are back to the limitation on speed of light but it would be pretty obvious to see a star in the sky blink red and green in morse code rather than a radio signal lost in all the background noise.

Not that we have even close to the technology to do this but I wonder why we aren't seeing something like that from somewhere else. Some mega civilization that made some massive star based type of sculpture. Of course any advanced civilization probably doesn't have the inflated ego to need to do something like that. The least they could do is let us know we are not alone.

Even though the SETI program has not made contact with extraterrestrial civilizations, contact in other ways has been made with over 1200 planets and at least six crop circle designers. For example, one crop circle contained a three-level fractal of triangles. The question was what did it mean? It had to be a ratio of numbers rather than the lengths of the sides. Looking at the center of the crop circle, it was apparent that the fractal design had been modified, as though certain digits were needed in the design. By summing up the lengths of all the triangles, and then dividing by the periphery of the fractal, the ratio was 3.14 or pi. Because crop circles are really business cards, the designer verified the ratio as pi. She said that she is in charge of a large manufacturing company on the other side of the Pleiades. She said she had been invited aboard a spacecraft coming to earth. When she got here she and the crew decided to leave a crop circle for us. Anyway, she was thanked for her intriguing puzzle. Most of these alien planets are governed by three people who are the president, science adviser and the legal/financial officer. Because these people live for thousands of years, they are trained in physics, math, chemistry, engineering and so forth. Most planets have a population of 10 billion people. In one case I asked why the Pleiadian Beamship rocks or oscillates when it comes to a standstill as seen in the Billy Meier film. She said that a brilliant physicist solved the oscillation problem just a few years ago. Contact with these people gives one a cosmological sense of things and opens up new possibilities for those of us stuck here on earth.

edisonkenevil,it's likely that advanced cultures know about us,and that is why we haven't detected any yet.Like the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek,we will only be admitted to the "club" once we become a more peaceful,star faring society.We have been pumping out radio for about 100 years,so this is likely how we came to their attention.You are probably right,they still monitor radio frequencies for primate civilizations like ours.

Bagpipes100. To clarify, there may be no "evidence" that earth isn't in a privileged position in the universe.

Evidence and reason are not the same things.

Based on statistics, there is reason to believe earth isn't in a privileged position in the universe.

Two VERY different things.

Just like there is no reason to believe that among the gazillions of worlds out there, this is the only one with "intelligent" life.

Of course, with comments like these, I question whether there is intelligent life on earth.

Just because we are part of 'it', doesn't mean that we are the only forms of life available. Alien life forms do not necessarily have to be carbon based, or even three dimensional. String theory (esp, after Ed Whitten's M-Theory explanations) put our Universe to have at least eleven dimensions. We know that there are no life forms which live in one dimensions, and there are none in the two dimensions either. In three dimensions, life is so rare that there are approximately only about 500 million planets out there where 'we' can exist - that among 100 billion stars per 100 billion galaxies, with each star having approximately 6 planets! But, what if the odds of existence of life go up as we start going to higher dimensions? A four dimensional being will be invisible to us (we cannot imagine or perceive anything beyond three dimensions, because we are three dimensional). What if life is commonplace in some higher order of dimensions? It could be possible that life is so common in the eleventh dimension that there's nowhere in the universe where it doesn't exist. Now, an eleventh dimensional being can actually alter all the lower dimensions (we can tear up pieces of paper as they are two-dimensional). If that's the case, then probably any higher order being who can control all our existence, just because he is a higher order being, can be referred to as God. I am not saying that I believe in it, I am just saying that there's a possibility out there which cannot be discounted. If the Large Hadron Collider at CERN finds the Higg's Boson, it will prove that there are eleven dimensions in the Universe. Where do we go from there?

The whole premise of SETI is if you were to receive a message containing coded information it would be proof of design by intelligence. DNA is not just a molecule – it is a coding system with a language & alphabet, and contains a message. Wouldn't this be proof of design by intelligence? Is there any message that does not come from a mind? What makes a message?1) Symbolically represents something other than itself (i.e. a book is more than paper and ink)2) Requires a speaker (“transmitter”) and a listener (“receiver”)3) Contains the elements of language – alphabet, syntax, meaning and intent. The Atheist’s Riddle: “Show me a message that does not come from a mind.”

Earthlings, we appreciate your offer but are unwilling to wait and have chosen to act now. The full set of Ginsu with free orange peeler will be sufficient. Priority shipping. Thank you.

Most people, and even some scientists, have difficulty wrapping their minds around the vast scale of cosmological time and distance. It is most likely that travelling (or communicating) at or faster than the speed of light is just impossible in our universe. Fantasizing what ifs and wishing this were not true doesn't change things. The "L" variable in drake's equation says it all for me. How long do you really think we are going to be around as a technology using species?There is no reason to think that just because we can think, that we are different than any other species. A few hundred thousand years?(way to long imho) That is an eye blink !!!!
So we are looking for another eye blink happening at the exact same time, within communicating distance. I don't think so!

tfam: Intelligence along with opposable digits allows us to construct elaborate tools which we use to explain and adapt to the physical world. No other species can do that.As a result,we can shape our own destiny.If we do not destroy ourselves with a nuclear war,our future as a species is practically unlimited.Space travel will allow us to establish a human presence throughout the solar system,and eventually the stars.I for one think we have a very bright future.

Gort60, you've forgotten the pressures of evolution. Our species has the unique ability to direct its own evolution with technology, but that doesn't mean we will force it to sit still. Indeed, if we wish to travel and live among the great distances between the stars, then our current form will prove poorly adapted and little by little we will literally reinvent ourselves. Then of course, there is the possibility of competing strains that will choose different evolutionary changes in order to out compete. Human beings, as we know them today, are a very transformative and temporary species.

Sorry to be a party pooper, but see what I just said about the unimaginable scale of cosmological distances and our most likely speed limit. Travel amongst the stars during the time we are here is not to be our destiny.

@the slaw

Don't forget those stats are based on observation....oh wait. So based on statistics there probably isn't any life out there since we haven't observed any. Out side of guesses made by guys who've never even had one other planet with life to compare conditions necessary for life on (aka little to know observed data) we don't know jack about what it takes to have life anywhere.

The way you all are so positive there is life. And 'specially those of you who think it's highly advanced and more peaceful (?!?!?) so it ignores us. Do you realize that all of that does not amount from scientific reasoning, but just smells of the same stuff as religion?

@the slaw

Don't forget those stats are based on observation....oh wait. So based on statistics there probably isn't any life out there since we haven't observed any. Out side of guesses made by guys who've never even had one other planet with life to compare conditions necessary for life on (aka little to know observed data) we don't know jack about what it takes to have life anywhere.

The way you all are so positive there is life. And 'specially those of you who think it's highly advanced and more peaceful (?!?!?) so it ignores us. Do you realize that all of that does not amount from scientific reasoning, but just smells of the same stuff as religion?

Whys333: Thinking about what you said,a technological singularity is rapidly approaching,according to Raymond Kurzweil.He believes we will be overtaken by true AI,and end up as pets of some machine intelligence that evolves day by day.We could never complete with an intelligence that thinks millions of times more rapidly than our biologically based brains.I hope he is wrong!

i tried to help SETI@home a week or two ago, that old cloud computing thing, but it wouldnt work for SETI@home. it worked for a couple other projects, and i let it complete a few jobs for those people before i uninstalled, because i was wanting to help SETI, not those other guys. i figure they gave up? or does SETI@home still do that thing, i just picked a day they were down?

Just a thought, if we study ants, we merely want to know how they gather foods, build their homes etc... But what if the ants writes "HELLO WORLD" in the sand! Then it will get our attention, and it means that the ants now have the intelligence and technology maybe to communicate with us and we being curious and amazed by this will try to communicate back... Just a thought...

Your comments remind me of an Outer Limits episode called Sandkings...

Nanotech will lead the way of the technology singularity. Imagine control of matter at a molecular level.

Imortality becomes possible when you can reconstruct or repair your entire body from a master image. And if you copy yourself then you can increase the breadth albeit depth of knowlege. For example another me could be writting another verbose response on a different popsci article and still not say anything witty or intellegent.

Once you have such an incresed lifespan does it really matter that it takes 1,000 years or more to travel to other places?

It always surprises me the amount of garbage skeptics drop on these subjects,simply because some people think differently than they do,it's a shame skeptics try to insult rather than have a rational conversation..

That being said,to not believe that this universe is full of life is a bit shocking to me,we as a race of beings seem to limit the world/universe to our limited frame of mind,what we have decided,what we can expierence,the fact of the matter is that we are in no position to decide what is "intelligent" life and what is not,we can't even decide as a race of people which animals it's ok to kill and which you can't. LIFE may turn out to be something beyond our comprehension,I for one don't believe the rest of the universe is subject to our laws and physics !

SETI is one of the greatest efforts made by man to open it's blindfolded eyes,instead of feeling blindly through the darkness we are least listening ! TRUE as it may be that what we are searching for may be outdated to certain civilizations but as it was pointed out any Alien civilization out there would be looking for life throughout the universe and would no doubt use every form of communication it has available to them ! As a form of defense in the least,and as ambassadors one would think,or for possible advanced war planning ect call it scouting reports or whatever you perfer,my point being the best defense would be a good awareness of whats out there....

Carl sagan said it best "Either mankind is the most advanced intelligence in the galaxy; or not. Either alternative is mind-boggling."

Me for one----I am willing to point a mic into the darkness just on hope alone : ) Cheers