[X] My Assistant

[Bob Shaw]

Here's a good set of ranges from the paper by Guillermo A. Lemarchand (link 1 above):

ARECIBO PLANETARY RADAR

TARGETED SEARCH

Unswitched
With CW detector 4217 MAXIMUM RANGE (light years)
With pulse detector 2371

Switched
With CW detector 94
With pulse detector 290


SKY SURVEY

Unswitched
With CW detector 77

Switched
With CW detector 9


BMEWS

TARGETED SEARCH
Pulse transmit CW detector 6
Pulse transmit pulse detector 19

SKY SURVEY
Pulse transmit CW detector 0.7



Not so far, really...

Bob Shaw

[ljk4-1]

The Park hypothesis
---

Human spaceflight opponent Bob Park and the Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) do not appear to have much in
common. Michael Huang proposes a hypothesis, based on Park's
arguments, which could explain SETI's greatest mystery.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/629/1

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/629/1

hmmmm... another ad-hoc hypothesis to try to solve the Fermi paradox (after theory, numerous alien lfe, but nothing observed yet).

After Park, all alien civs are like him, harsh oponents to manned spaceflight. And this explains why we don't see them around.

This hypothesis just adds to other untestable hypothesis of this kind: -we are in a zoo -they wait we reach a given evolution level -they boycott us because we are violent etc. We can utter many other hypothesis of this kind... My prefered is that civs quickly evolve in a spiritual way and leave the physical world.


But we simply have no right to pose such hypothesis as truths, or even not as working hypothesis. Simply because we have exactly zero information about life on other planets, and less than zero about eventual other civs.

-The theories about formation of planets and appearance of life, which predict that life would be common, these theories are not tested until now, and they could be false, and life very uncommon.
-We absolutely don't know how other civs could think and behave, what could be their purposes and methods. We already know little about each others, the variety of civilizations and ways of thinking which exist on Earth. And we still have a common animal ancestor (chimpanzee), but other intelligent beings could have evolved from very different animal ancestors. They could have a very different brain structure, or a very different way to feel life, a completely other set of emotions.
-But, whatever an alien civ would be somewhere between cruel predators and wisdom peaceful benevolent beings, they would find reasons to colonize other planets and build a large communication/industrial network in space. So any civ would be visible.
-Already our vision of alien civs much evolved since the time we are aware they could exist... jut look at the incredible variety of scifi worlds!

So we are still with the Fermi paradox, and just one more special untestable hypothesis to solve it... (edited later: untestable for now, of course. We can hope to test in some days).

[ljk4-1]

The Case for Transmitting to Space

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_transmit_060525.html

When talk turns to SETI, there's one question that's as common as catfish:

"We're not broadcasting to the aliens; so what makes you think they'll be
broadcasting to us?"

[ustrax]

When talk turns to SETI, there's one question that's as common as catfish:

"We're not broadcasting to the aliens; so what makes you think they'll be
broadcasting to us?"

One more from Space.com:

http://space.com/searchforlife/seti_religion_060601.html

[ljk4-1]

Some thoughts on alien ways of thinking:

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=679

“Advanced societies throughout the galaxy probably are in contact with one another, such contact being one of their chief interests. They have already probed the life histories of the stars and other of nature’s secrets. The only novelty left would be to delve into the experience of others. What are the novels? What are the art histories? What are the anthropological problems of those distant stars? This is the kind of material that these remote philosophers have been chewing over for a long time…” — Philip Morrison (1961)

“Will we be able to understand the science of another civilization?… Our science has concentrated on asking certain questions at the expense of others, although this is so woven into the fabric of our knowledge that we are generally unaware of it. In another world, the basic questions may have been asked differently.” — J. Robert Oppenheimer (1962)

[ljk4-1]

The SETI Institute is having its own Open House on June 10, 2006:

Celebrating Science of the Future

An interactive science faire for the entire family

Join us at the SETI Institute on June 10, 2006 from 10 am to 4 pm for a celebration of science and imagination.

Learn about the SETI Institute's pioneering exploration of life, our solar system, and beyond, including the search for signals from other civilizations, as well as astrobiology.

Meet SETI Institute scientists, see what the future holds for SETI and astrobiology, participate in fun interactive activities like creating your own alien, and more.

The details are here:

http://publish.seti.org/celebrating%20science%20emailer.html

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

"We're not broadcasting to the aliens; so what makes you think they'll be
broadcasting to us?"

We are not transmitting to aliens because we don't have antennas and resources for this. Some experimental broadcastings were done with the Arecibo antennas, for a short time. But this antenna has other priority uses. Even receiving for SETI is possible only because the SETI receiver is installed as a parasitic one besides the astrophysics receivers. If this was not possible, there would be no SETI.

We can hope in the future that sending intentionnal signal to other candidate stars will be possible at a lesser cost, or that there will be more people interested in. But, if aliens have so much advance over us, it is difficult to expect, or only imagine, what kind of signals they expect for us. Absurd but though-provoking prank: if they are so advanced that they can detect us with an happiness detector instead of a radio detector, we are still a bit away of being seen, even with the largest radio transmitters.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

“Will we be able to understand the science of another civilization?… Our science has concentrated on asking certain questions at the expense of others, although this is so woven into the fabric of our knowledge that we are generally unaware of it. In another world, the basic questions may have been asked differently.” — J. Robert Oppenheimer (1962)

As many scientists and science teachers like to say*, there is only one science. This means that if a physicists do an experiment in Andromede galaxy, he finds the same results than us. So physics and chemistry really are common languages.

This said, your remark about the questions we ask are interesting. We are very good in physics, but materialistic prejudices forbid us any other study. And if aliens studied consciousness, happiness, socilology or morals with the same care than we did with physics? And if these aliens are clever but have no hands, they could develop a highly sophisticated culture and mind science, without an atom of physics. Useless speculations? We have examples right on Earth. In India evolved a complex mind science, which is immediately dismissed as "religious beliefs". And highly communicating being with no hands, we have the dolphins. So we really have weird and alien things right on Earth, and we don't see them, mostly because of our prejudices and mind limitations. So how could we pretend to understand peoples of other worlds, with perhaps very different conditions? What will happen if one day we meet them???? What to emit toward them, that they will expect to receive? What do they send us, that we could try to understand???


* a mistake was edited later

[ljk4-1]

This hypothesis just adds to other untestable hypothesis of this kind: -we are in a zoo -they wait we reach a given evolution level -they boycott us because we are violent etc. We can utter many other hypothesis of this kind... My prefered is that civs quickly evolve in a spiritual way and leave the physical world.

This must be a French thing - Camille Flammarion was also an astronomer and
very pro-alien life person who ultimately went for spirituality and telepathy as
a means of communications with the beings he thought were on Mars.



I don't know if really advanced ETI go "spiritual" in a supernatural sense, but
they may achieve levels that for us mere primitives would appear as such.

As Arthur C. Clarke once said:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

"Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)

He also said:

"Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories."

[Guest_Myran_*]

Richard Trigaux wrote: ....they are so advanced that they can detect us with an happiness detector instead of a radio detector.

That also reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke, in a short story where the Sun were to go nova the only solution was to send such a signal since radio was too slow, and the end line of the story was 'We must love each other or die.' So yes that must have been your 'happiness' signal.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

As Arthur C. Clarke once said:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

"Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)

He also said:

"Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories."

For some reason that first quote from Clarke is the one that always gets dredged up -- although it's totally inane and uninformative. The second one is MUCH better -- and an even better one is his 1970 statement that "With increasing technology comes increasing vulnerability."

[dvandorn]

I totally agree with that last quote. If you want to get *really* scared, watch the opening sequence from the original series, "Connections." It demonstrates, almost viscerally, how vulnerable our modern technological society is to minor breakdowns in the daisy chain that keeps everything moving forward.

This is one reason I tend to say that, in order to survive this (hopefully) transitional period between dwindling energy and resources into a period of much cheaper and more plentiful energy (and thus the ability to get to hard-to-reach resources), we're going to need to use every tool at our disposal. Every resource, every scheme.

That's why I can't side with the Greens, for instance, in their desire to reduce our dependence on technology. We're *way* too far down the road for that. If we are to survive, we need to use every dreg of technology we can possibly dream up... at least, in my humble opinion.

-the other Doug

[Bill Thompson]

For some reason that first quote from Clarke is the one that always gets dredged up -- although it's totally inane and uninformative. The second one is MUCH better -- and an even better one is his 1970 statement that "With increasing technology comes increasing vulnerability."

9-11 ?

Are intellects capable of seeing the future?

My retired father has read a set of history books written in the 1930's inwhich the author says "The only future for Japan is war."

OK, all that is Off Topic.

What I wanted to say was this. I think that given all available information, we are, for all practical purposes, most likely the only folks like us in the galaxy. Or am I wrong?

I think there is movement of chemicals out there in all sorts of wierd arangements (is this, "life" ? ), but the only place I can get up, walk across the street to the 7-11 and buy a slurpee is right here.

[helvick]

What I wanted to say was this. I think that given all available information, we are, for all practical purposes, most likely the only folks like us in the galaxy. Or am I wrong?

Nope - your dead right. As far as our light cone is concerned we're the only folks around. But those of us who are looking are looking only for folks reasonably similar to ourselves. Operating at a similar rate, using RF signalling, and concerned with smilar concepts. Change any of those and we wouldn't be able to see, let alone recognise what we were looking at.

Part of the SETI problem though is that (theoretical) real intellegences progressively augment themselves (bootstrapping in computerese) so the lifespan of an intelligence that would remain recognisable to us is limited by forces as fundamental as those that rive evolution within the earth's biological ecosystem. The logical progression is meat body (or equivalent) grade intelligence, assisted intelligence (meatbody or equivalent plus serious enhancements) and accelerated intelligence (purely "artificial"). No one can tell if that is actually going to happen or when but all the current pointers indicate that it is happening here now and it is likely that earth centric intelligence will leave us poor meatbodies behind very soon. It may or may not happen within our lifetime but as soon as we get to the stage where we can manufacture intelligences smarter than our biological instances the writing is on the wall - within a handful of generations (of that intelligence, ie 18 months or so at most) the dominant intelligence in this sphere will be unrecognizable to intelligences like us.

Say there was an intelligence out there that operated at a pace where a generation lasted less than a microsecond or longer than a Myear - could we detect or recognise either one? What if it used only higlhy encrypted signalling with quantum entanglement for communication?

Even as an avid fan and participant in SETI the problem that I have with it is that I don't think enough people realise that our efforts are almost certainly the equivalent of a Stone Age shaman trying to talk to the gods by dancing around a fire. We might be lucky (so its worth trying) but the odds are ery long even if the Gods* exist.

* Any long lived civilisation will have to be Godlike from our persepctive. If they aren't it means that our future holds vast periods with near zero progress, that's something I can't accept at all. Richard might well point out that that means I have some spiritual leanings after all.