[meteorite-list] OT: Listening To Fermi

From: Richard Kowalski <damoclid_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 22:08:01 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <680983.27916.qm_at_web113604.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>

No problem Phil.

Note I did not say there is life because I believe there is.
My belief stems from the knowledge that the elements of life exist in abundance throughout the universe and an understanding that life burst onto the scene on earth as soon as it was possible. It seems that the physical processes required to form life is a natural consequence of our universe.

Do I know life exists in the Universe? Of course it does, right here on Earth. Does it exist elsewhere? I don't know, but on the basis of our current knowledge is appears that it is highly likely that it must. My belief is based on this likelyhood, not on my desire. I too await proof.

As for canceling SETI, it's privately funded. Who cares how other people spend their money? I said that my opinion is that I think there are better ways to search for life on distant planets than SETI, but I'd never say that just because an experiment that could prove the existence of that life is unlikely to succeed, that is a reason that the experiment should never be tried at all, or continued for a reasonable amount of time. Even if it never does turn up a signal, that does not eliminate the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere. It just means we need to try a different experiment to try to find it.

This thread is very off topic, so I'll stop here.

Cheers

--
Richard Kowalski
Full Moon Photography
IMCA #1081
--- On Thu, 9/16/10, JoshuaTreeMuseum <joshuatreemuseum at embarqmail.com> wrote:
> From: JoshuaTreeMuseum <joshuatreemuseum at embarqmail.com>
> Subject: [meteorite-list] OT: Listening To Fermi
> To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> Date: Thursday, September 16, 2010, 9:19 PM
> Hi Richard;
> That's an excellent argument for cancelling the silly SETI
> project.? The key word in your argument is "believe".
> You believe in the existence of exo-life without any
> supporting evidence, I don't. So we can agree to disagree.
> 
> If life never existed on Mars, I can't see it existing
> anywhere else. But, my beliefs are evidence based, I'll
> change them in a minute if someone will just show me the
> money.
> 
> -----------------------------------
> 
> Phil Whitmer
> 
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Actually Phil, I'd disagree with that statement, even
> though I believe that the universe is filled to the brim
> with life, I think that intelligent life is exceedingly
> rare.
> 
> Personally I think that SETI is never going to find a
> signal, not because there is no life out there, but that the
> circumstances required to find a signal is exceedingly
> small. The analogy put forth by others in this thread of a
> child looking out a window for 32/1000ths of a second is a
> good one.
> 
> Use ourselves as an example. Radio technology on earth is
> barely a century old and we are already rapidly moving away
> from high powered transmitters to low powered devices for
> communications. Our most efficient long distance
> communications are already moving via fiber optics, so
> require no radio transmissions whatsoever.
> 
> Ask yourself what are/or were the most powerful
> transmitters used?
> The answer is Early Warning defense radar systems. In fact
> at those frequencies Earth was brighter than the Sun. As the
> Cold War wound down, and the technology improved, lower
> power transmitters could do the same job. For about 40
> years, Earth shined exceedingly brightly in microwaves, with
> a peak radiance about 1/3 through that period. So you can
> imagine a shell of microwaves 40 light years in thickness
> traveling out from our solar system, expanding at the speed
> of light. (I'm sure I'll be corrected here, but that's OK. I
> welcome it.)
> 
> Say a intelligent civilization, only a century behind us in
> technology (Almost statistically impossible) 50 light years
> away from us will develop the technology to detect radio
> waves of that frequency. Our microwaves from the early
> warning systems have been reaching them for more than a
> decade already, but they won't develop the technology to
> detect this radiation for another 30 years or so.
> 
> In other words, just as they gain the ability to detect our
> unintended signal to them just as it has completely passed
> them by. Even if they point their radio telescope directly
> at earth, they wouldn't hear us as our signal drops again
> below the background noise.
> 
> And so it goes planet after planet as the signal extends
> out into space in an ever expanding shell, growing ever
> weaker. If we continue our trend to become more radio silent
> in other frequencies too, our civilization could become
> radio dark again as far as the universe is concerned in the
> next hundred years or so.
> 
> Expand this problem by a more realistic estimate that
> civilizations become technologically capable thousands or
> millions of years apart, not mere decades apart...
> 
> Now reverse the situation. For SETI to work you have to be
> listening at the precise moment the signals are passing our
> region of space. Miss it by a century, a decade, a year, a
> day, and its too late. The signal is no longer detectable.
> It may literally take many millenia before the right
> combination of circumstances allow us to detect another
> civilization through just their radio communications,
> intended or otherwise.
> 
> Ironically, I think that SETI is an experiment that should
> not be abandoned, because you'll never know if there is a
> detectable signal if you don't look. I just think it will
> never yield a positive result. However, I do believe that
> the canceled Terrestrial Planet Finder mission had a much
> better chance to find habitable, and planets that have
> abundant life.
> 
> 
> 
> ______________________________________________
> Visit the Archives at http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html
> Meteorite-list mailing list
> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
> 
      

Received on Fri 17 Sep 2010 01:08:01 AM PDT