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Originally Posted by TLAM Strike
Well just finding life forms that live in extremely harsh environments could be useful in the long run. Imagine finding a lifeform that survives on Europa a moon deep in Jupiter's radiation belt, a complex lifeform that can survive that would be interesting to study to learn how it survives such radiation exposure.
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It would be interesting to study, I'll give you that, but I think that what would be
more useful in the long-run is devoting the resources needed to undertake such a mission to solving practical problems on the perfectly good planet we already have.
To clarify, I'm not saying that we shouldn't
ever attempt to explore other planets or other star systems. I'm just saying that we're not quite ready for it yet, and I think that throwing public resources at faint hopes that there
might be some form of life we
might learn something useful from is not the wisest use of said resources at the moment.
Consider: As it is now, private industry and governments alike are already throwing considerable resources into developing more efficient energy-generation technology. Eventually, they'll succeed. We'll need that tech to develop a viable platform for extraplanetary or extrasolar exploration anyway, so why invest resources in detecting something we can't reach and have no use for at the moment?
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Also outside (or maybe inside) our star system just finding remains of an extinct alien civilization would be worth any $ spent on going there. Who knows what technologies or ideas they left behind.
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An attractive possibility, but not a probable one. Even
if there were an extinct alien civilization within our currently very limited reach, odds are that nothing useful would remain.
As a thought experiment, imagine that we suddenly went extinct today. We've been sending and receiving organized high-power transmission
en masse for almost a hundred years. No advanced civilization within at least 30 light-years (generously rounding down) has responded. If a civilization existed that was at least equivalent to ours in terms of technology, they would have responded by now, or we would have at least picked up their broadcasts, so we can safely assume that that no such civilization exists within 30 light-years.
Now imagine what would be left of our civilization by the time they got here. There wouldn't be much left, even if they were somehow capable of travelling at light-speed. All of our most advanced technology requires constant maintenance and power and energy of some type. There would be no useful record that they didn't already understand.
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I agree there are problems with the way SETI looks. I'm a strong believer in "Visual SETI" that is searching space for mega-structures built by highly advanced species. Also scanning a different parts of the spectrum for evidence of advanced spacecraft in flight (when gamma ray busters were 1st discovered some assumed they were either the star drives of advanced spacecraft or the "Big Honking Space Guns" of some interstellar war.
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I'll have to do more research on visual SETI before I can from an opinion on that, but at least we agree on something
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Originally Posted by Gargamel
 That's like the Europeans saying there probably isn't anything worth looking for on the other side of this ocean, so let's not go looking |
That is not the same thing. Columbus was already aware that the world was roughly global in structure, and the Greeks and Persians had figured that out mathematically long before him.
In this case, mathematics strongly suggest that there is nothing reachable.
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Originally Posted by Gargamel
What I understand from that is that you are assuming they are using a transmitter designed for insterstellar communications. This is not what SETI is looking for. They are looking for normal everyday radiation coming from a civilization, along with any possible "stellar beacons".
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Then either you have misunderstood or I have offered an inadequate explanation. Probably the latter. I will explain further when I have more time. Bear in mind, I'm not saying you are wrong.
At the moment, though, I have to go to work.
edit-2 Goddamnit! No sooner do I finish editing this post after getting out of the shower when I get a call saying my work order has been cancelled. <double-facepalm>