SETI Program Gets a Reprieve

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Lack of funding shut down the now-privately funded SETI program several months ago, but the fund raising effort got a boost from actress Jodie Foster and astronaut Bill Anders. Together they spearheaded a drive which netted 2400 donors and raised the needed $200K to reopen the project, at least for the near future. The program goes back online in September.
 
Nice!

Were I not on of the"unwashed poors" of this nation, I would have sent every dime of the needed funding myself. Even if we don't find "them", I believe that there are other great discoveries to be made using this technology, and humanity in the long run will benefit in some way.
 
Color me stupid, but couldn't Ms. Foster just ponied up the $200k herself? Granted, she hasn't been a big star lately. But to call her a has been, not making money actress would be silly.

Hollywood hates your corporate jets, but loves their corporate jets.
 
stiltner said:
Color me stupid, but couldn't Ms. Foster just ponied up the $200k herself? Granted, she hasn't been a big star lately. But to call her a has been, not making money actress would be silly.

Hollywood hates your corporate jets, but loves their corporate jets.
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Maybe, but part of this, is about awareness. We need others to support this for the long term.

Sorry Jodie Foster is just too high in my Goddess chart. :p
 
Paul Allen could fund the entire project for life if he wanted to, but he did provide the arrays to get the project moving initially. The key lies in getting adequate individual long term support.
 
Of course the bulk of SETI research is carried out by a Boinc Distributed PC project known as: Seti@Home which outside of the word Seti has no connection to the Seti institute or the Allan Telescope Array, Seti@Home relies on Donations of money and equipment and uses the Arecibo Radio Telescope down in Puerto Rico. :)
 
stiltner said:
Color me stupid, but couldn't Ms. Foster just ponied up the $200k herself?
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Yup, basically its what the rich and famous get away with, sure they put effort into something but they let others do the donating, or worse they donate their time, say it's $5000/hr and then get that as a tax writeoff :)
 
Waste of time and Money I say. Let's put the money towards a better use and get to Mars. That way we have a back up site that we can go to in case of an Alien Invasion and have weapons there to launch our own invasion force to retake the Earth. Besides, Jodi Foster has the money to restart the project herself if she wants it so badly.
Oh and for those drooling so much over her, she swings on the other side of the fence. Take a cold shower on that one.
 
soulman901 said:
Waste of time and Money I say. Let's put the money towards a better use and get to Mars. That way we have a back up site that we can go to in case of an Alien Invasion and have weapons there to launch our own invasion force to retake the Earth. Besides, Jodi Foster has the money to restart the project herself if she wants it so badly.
Oh and for those drooling so much over her, she swings on the other side of the fence. Take a cold shower on that one.
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JokerCPoC said:
Of course the bulk of SETI research is carried out by a Boinc Distributed PC project known as: Seti@Home which outside of the word Seti has no connection to the Seti institute or the Allan Telescope Array, Seti@Home relies on Donations of money and equipment and uses the Arecibo Radio Telescope down in Puerto Rico. :)
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Of course since they piggy back on existing observations they cannot do whole sky serveys and the like. They're more like ledches on the telescope than users. :)


Also, the funding gap for the Allen array did not shut down SETI. It's one small aspect of what they do.
 
Now if the distributed computing program Boinc was more like the original Seti@home I might run it. Otherwise forget it.
 
leave the fucking aliens ALONE... the only thing that would ever happen if aliens came here is to rape the planet for it's resources and have a human BBQ
 
Techx said:
leave the fucking aliens ALONE... the only thing that would ever happen if aliens came here is to rape the planet for it's resources and have a human BBQ
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We aren't doing anything to them, just listening to see if anyone is broadcasting. Besides that, why would aliens come all the way here to eat us? We'd have a completely different biology and evolutionary history... why would we be delicious? Even if we were, a civilization capable of interstellar space travel would presumably be capable of synthesizing whatever it is they like about us on their own planet.

There are over 100 billion galaxies and a billion trillion stars, including some 400 billion in our modest galaxy. The laws of nature appear to be structured in such a way that life can arise anywhere, given appropriate conditions.

We spend billions (literally, billions) of dollars on defense project overruns... is it really that big a deal to spend a few hundred thousand every few years to keep SETI projects running? There could be civilizations all over the galaxy, but we'll never hear them if we don't listen. Despite this, some ignorant person always argued against SETI on the grounds that it hasn't found anything. :rolleyes:

Our SETI efforts have been pretty weak so far. We can hear occasional 'twinkling' of radio signals from distant stars on frequencies not known to have natural sources, as if they're just beyond our detection range and occasionally brought into focus by pockets of hot interstellar gas acting like a lens. It could be nothing, but the signals are concentrated in the disk of the Milky Way... The problem is that they don't repeat, they aren't deliberately broadcasting towards us.
 
What a waste of money. I'm glad to hear that government is at least sane enough not to fund this with tax dollars. There are plenty of other things that this sort of money could be spent on rather than chasing dead signals that degrade over a few light-years.

Even if we do receive a signal from a distant planet by the time it gets here the civilisation that sent it will either have been long since anihillated or has had enough time to advance to such a stage where they'd be able to find us and drop on by. That is assuming that it is possible to overcome the barriers and perils preventing interstellar travel.

There are many other legitmate ways to do research relating to extraterrestrials I can't see why this is humoured. This requires vast sums of money, huge radio telescopes and cloud computing (both commercial and voluntary user end).

But lets face it, we're alone in this vast universe. Advanced biological life is much rarer (statistically) than the number of stars in the universe. After learning a little about the universe and how incredibly vast it is, its quite easy to come to the belief that there just MUST be somebody else out there. But then learn more details about the universe and also the origin and history of the earth and its inhabitants and the incredibly rare chain of events that occured to give rise to man, rather quickly those 'odds' of advanced life forming on a planet start to outweigh the septillions of stars in the sky even without discounting things like extremophiles etc.

Besides, I think we should be a little more concerned about worldly issues before we start worrying about adding alien civilisations to our Twitter feeds. This endeavour does nothing for humanity unlike traditional space research this achieves nothing for humanity, it merely indulges the already over-active imaginations of some tin-foil hat wearing ufo hunters.
 
You guys, give me a break.

My chances of sex with Jodie Foster, is as good as sex with any other Holywood actress.

I just love her and her and her movies.

I also love Clint Eastwood. And yes, I know he is not gay.
 
The US is about to crash and burn, but hey at least we made sure to reach out to those aliens.
 
Let them waste their money. Just as long as this nonsense isn't government funded, then I'm okay with it. At this point, there is nothing out there and even if there was it would be so faint by the time it got to use that it may never be detected.
 
I dont find SETI a very practical use for resources but I'm not going to flame them or the people who support it
 
Why even bother; aliens are already here and have been here for a while. Hasn't anyone watched Ancient Aliens?

No, I'm serious.
 
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