Is It Time to End SETI? - Ask a Spaceman!

[@snowforest6487]

How you haven't got at least 500k subs is beyond me, you teach science so simply that even my when I was 9 could understand it. I'm older now and can understand science at a more complex level but, your work is amazing

[@FaxanaduJohn]

Pretty sure his channel has been throttled. It’s the only explanation.

[@paulwoodford6229]

"How you have not achieved 500k subs is beyond me," That would read better

[@pavel9652]

Science is hard and it makes it niche in society. Most people on the street, if you questioned them, would go with a blank stare on the first mention of things like thermal conductivity, radio frequency, wave amplitude or hydrogen line ;) On the other hand, I have lost this channel from the radar, as for some reason AI did not recommend it for a long time. One thing that might be the reason is I have subscribed to a lot fo channels and AI tends to recommend things I currently watch.

[@TanyaLairdCivil]

There's one point that I think should be addresses in this discussion - the nature of ambiguity. We require a high level of proof of extraterrestrial life, and this naturally creates ambiguity and endless debates about evidence. For example, look at Mars. We've had the Viking lander results, detection of mysterious methane emissions, the famous Martian meteorite in the 90s, and others. We've had lots of hints of potential life, but nothing definitive. Imagine in a few years we manage to detect, on a distant habitable-zone exoplanet, an atmosphere with high oxygen content. That would certainly suggest life, possibly even advanced multi-cellular life. But it wouldn't prove it. Chemistry and planetary geology are very complex fields, and nature is always capable of surprising us. Even if we detect such an oxygen-bearing world, there will be plenty of people coming up with plausible non-living mechanisms for the observed atmospheric properties. For Mars, I think the only way we will ever actually know if life exists there is if we can send someone there and directly find and study the cells of living Martian organisms. This would have to be by either manned missions or sample return missions. The only way we can conclusively prove life on Mars exists is to find, drag it back to a lab, and directly measure its cellular properties, genetics, etc (to prove it's not just a hitchhiker from one of our probes.) And it's likely to be the same throughout the solar system. We can find all sorts of evidence of liquid water in the outer system, and we can document the presence of necessary precursor chemicals for Earth-like life. But the only thing that will ever prove life on Europa exists is if we manage to either go there ourselves or perform a sample return mission. The same will hold true for life in other star systems. Except, of course, it will be many orders of magnitude more difficult to actually ever get people or suitable probes out there. We can vaguely contemplate a Europa sample return mission now; an interstellar one is simply beyond us. The reason this is relevant to SETI is that SETI, unlike any other method we have of detecting extrasolar life, has the potential to produce unambiguous, irrefutable evidence of life's existence. For example, imagine we find a laser beacon pointed our way from a distant star, bleating out the first thousand prime numbers or some similar signal. If we find this, we instantly, completely unambiguously prove that both intelligent life, and life in general, exist outside the solar system. There is simply no plausible natural phenomenon that could produce such a signal. This is why I think funding SETI should not be abandoned. It's not just about finding intelligent life, it's about finding life, period. SETI is the only plausible method we have of unambiguously proving that life exists beyond our solar system. Studying the atmospheric spectra of distant worlds might strongly suggest the existence of life, but it will never be able to prove it. Unless you are able to build an optical telescope of such ridiculous proportion that you can actually resolve animals walking around on the surface of a distant planet, any biosignatures you detect will always be ambiguous. SETI is the only method have we have now that could conclusively prove the existence of extrasolar life. It's a high risk, high reward method for investigating the broader existence of life in the universe.

[@l_ChillZone_l]

TLDR

[@TanyaLairdCivil]

@@l_ChillZone_l TLDR: Improve your literacy skills.

[@goranthoren5522]

Considering how few years we've been looking, and looking with really blunt instruments, it's no surprise we haven't found any signs of life yet. And yes, SETI might have played out its role in that endeavour but at the same time it's kind of a monument of the human curiosity. Would be a shame to shut it down.

[@russellneitzke4972]

Rather than shutting it down perhaps we can alter it to assist the search for all life rather than just the ones we think are intelligent.

[@TheBinarygenius]

I agree the more options you have to gather information the better so we should add to seti with more ways to detect life. Also what does changing the name really change and if you would like a different way to look for life then go set it up in parallel with seti they had to start somewhere and after 60 years look at what resources are available to them.

[@russellneitzke4972]

@@TheBinarygenius I still think they're preying on our hope. The catholic church had to start somewhere and after 2,000 years look what resources are available to them. I don't have a problem with SETI or the catholic church or the USA government allocating 16% of the money they gather from me to go to defending ourselves against a fictional enemy while only spending 2% of the money they gather from me to go to education. Gathering money without requiring results is the best and worst business model of all time.

[@gorbachevdhali4952]

@@russellneitzke4972 There must be other civilizations out there, even if very rare. How do you propose we find them? How are they "preying", have you donated to SETI? Your tax dollars are not funding it.

[@russellneitzke4972]

If they've got the funding and the enthusiasm of private investors perhaps they can simply pivot to continue looking in new ways that are more in keeping with the scientific method.

[@bobmorr2892]

Finally someone that makes sense about SETI. They are missing over 99.9% of the possibilities of finding life with that method. Looking for biospheres with telescopes is a far far better way to look. Not only would it find unintelligent life that it will also find intelligent life. In our four and a half billion year history we've only been sending out radio signals for 100 years or so, with this method no one would have seen us because our signals would be too weak not directed at them or not enough time has passed for the signal to get there.

[@kennogawa6638]

They should use SETI money to investigate UFOs. The only thing SETI proves is the aliens don't use radios.

[@Mateamargo54]

I'm pritty sure that I'm gonna watch this video a few more times, makes the right questions, and possibly has the right answers.

[@PhiberOptik1979]

My contention is that the search for life outside out planet as also not yielded any positive results yet we are not going to try to stop doing that any time soon. As far as SETI is concerned, we haven't given it a fair shake yet. We have been doing it for many earth years, it takes time for radio signals to travel the vast distances in space. We're thinking in small terms in that regard, we have really only just begun to listen and if we don't listen, we won't hear.

[@christopherwalls2763]

Great Video

[@zapfanzapfan]

Funding for JWST: 1 billion-ish per year. Funding for SETI: 10 million-ish per year. Maybe we should do a serious effort before giving up?

[@MrCmon113]

What does that have to do with funding? The seti people should first explain why we should expect to just so happen to have arisen at the same exact time as another civilization in the same galaxy, especially since we see thousands of galaxies sans civilization.

[@rv.9658]

Every successive generation of radio astronomers gets to employ better technology than the last and, thanks to them, knows a little more about the Universe too. Our chances get better bit-by-bit through the decades.

[@Tonyv1951]

Here's the thing: Using the techniques of most of SETI an alien civilisation on a nearby system could have pointed its antennas at Earth in 1850 would have heard nothing at all and could have concluded that Earth hosted no intelligent life forms. Homo-sapiens has been as intelligent as we are for at least 60,000 years - maybe 100,000.

[@infinitemonkey917]

I am also far more excited about the potential of ocean worlds ( and distant O2 worlds ) than I am for a WOW signal. I think SETI should continue, though, despite the unlikelihood of success. There are worse ways to spend money.

[@russellneitzke4972]

I would like them to continue but to address the non-disprovable aspect of what they are doing.

[@infinitemonkey917]

@@russellneitzke4972 It's only non-disprovable if they never detect a civilization. Perhaps if they just admit their chances of success are very remote.

[@russellneitzke4972]

@@infinitemonkey917 It's important to dislocate the end goal to find aliens from the steps we use to find them. Scanning and crossing our fingers is not logical or efficient. We just need to acknowledge the futility of SETI and the return on investment of SETI and strive for better ways to find aliens.

[@infinitemonkey917]

@@russellneitzke4972 What ROI ? It's privately funded. No tax dollars go into it. If people want to donate to SETI despite a low chance of success then that's their prerogative. People are claiming that UAP are alien visitors and you are whining about SETI which makes no such claims. At least it's run by actual scientists. I'm sure if more sophisticated technology becomes available to them then they will avail themselves of it

[@russellneitzke4972]

@@infinitemonkey917 Why are you sure? I think what you mean is that you hope they avail themselves of it. I'm trying to encourage you and SETI and UAP to all stop hoping and start being more realistic about the things you hope for.

[@justayoutuber1906]

80 years of Radio broadcasting and the signals aren't even 1/100 of the way across our own Milky Way.

[@Crushnaut]

Your argument against SETI could be applied to many hunts in particle physics as well.

[@rwood1995]

But what is your proposal to do instead that would achieve similar results???

[@kk346592]

How we've been looking for life outside earth is analogous to a blind man trying to read the Hollywood sign from a basement in Sweden.

[@NFawc]

That analogy is analogous to a fish playing backgammon in a toaster.

[@kk346592]

@@NFawc You disagree with "we haven't looked hard", or just with how I worded it?

[@MrCmon113]

You have no clue what you're talking about and this is about civilizations, not life. A civilization in your galaxy would be impossible to overlook, bcs they would be everywhere. That there's no aliens here is sufficient reason to see that seti is a waste of time. It's just people irrationally banking on the rarest of scenarios. If we find anything more intelligent than a dog in our galaxy, I'm eating an entire hat store.

[@MrCmon113]

@@kk346592 We have looked super hard in thousands of galaxies and there is nothing. Seti is like not finding a gf in a million bars and then suspecting to find one in a woman hiding under your bed. It's absurd.

[@kk346592]

@@MrCmon113 The only thing we have looked for "super hard" are possible Dyson spheres, what might themselves be "super dumb" concepts.

[@KentoLeoDragon]

LOL. S.E.T.L. Settle. I tend to agree. We'll spot photosynthesis before we spot megastructure building aliens.

[@cortos_9733]

Great explanation on your reasons for believing SETI is impractical. Sad to see that space radio is ending but I'm glad you're continuing with your other outreach efforts. Looking forward to the last episode!

[@madderhat5852]

Mentioning JWST in science is like mentioning Macbeth in the theatre world. ps the joke was worth it.

[@jonizornes5286]

Should SETI shut down? You make some interesting comments. The most likely way we would eavesdrop on another civilization at our stage of technology, would be hearing their military's megawatt pulse search radars, like ours. Like you said, most likely any radio transmission would be too weak to hear, beyond a few light years, say 100 light years at most and it would be a needle in a hay stack. That range would only be within our own back yard in our galaxy. That just adds to the unlikely odds of finding another technological civilization within our existence. There may be many, but most likely we'll never make contact.

[@pablocopello3592]

Evolution of solar systems, planets, and life (from bacteria to us) takes billions of years, but technological civilizations (what SETI searches) evolve in hundreds of years. If we find another technological civilization, it is almost impossible that they are at our same or similar level, they should be much much much more advanced (for instance 10 million years more advanced, that in planetary evolution is a short period). Such an advanced civilization surely have evolved to improve their mental abilities (artificial intelligence/evolution) and would be totally incomprehensible to us, and would live in and use realms of reality totally incomprehensible to us, they would see us as we see ants: do we make an effort to communicate with ants? do ants know of our existence ??

[@1701_FyldeFlyer]

SETI isnt just searching for radio signals.

[@halilzelenka5813]

Hell yeah dude. The increased production quality immediately stands out. Prepare for a deluge of subscribers. Who doesn’t want to watch an actual astrophysicist talking about astrophysics?

[@donsample1002]

I suspect that even if SETI continues to get funded at its peak historical rate, adjusted for inflation, if there is anything out there it's going to be found by some astronomer looking at black holes, or neutron stars, or brown dwarfs, or any of the other things astronomers look at, seeing something strange in their data and saying "Huh. That's funny!"

[@MrCmon113]

Funny stars/galaxies is exactly how we should search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Namely galaxies being too bright in the infra red.

[@prusak26]

Oh boy. Paul, I’m your subscriber, watched ALL your past videos, gave you many likes, and commented occasionally. The only reason I didn’t give you a dislike now, is the excellent point that you’ve made on active SETI or CETI/METI, thing that most people don’t understand. If they’re so advanced, that they could be a potential threat across the vastness of space, they already know we’re here. You’re basically saying, that SETI should end, because it has so far failed to make the most profound discovery since the dawn of human civilisation. Even though, it has hardly scratched the surface. Saying, that SETI, and generally looking at the sky, so far turned out absolutely nothing (as far as finding potential ETs is concerned), is at least a bit misleading. Yes, we didn’t hear a “Hello”, but if we did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We had however had a couple of signals, that baffle scientists to this day. We do have stars, that dim in an unexplained way (yes, I know that whatever is causing the dimming of KIC 8462852 is not a solid object, but if the dimming repeats this autumn - and it seems to be - then the mystery deepens, and there’s more to it too. And there is at least one other star which number I forgot, that dims more than Tabby’s star, and that something blocks all visible frequencies). We DO have stars - or at least A star - with strange, unexplained chemistry, full of radioactive elements. We’ve seen an interstellar object, behaviour of which we can’t explain, at least not all aspects of it in one hypothesis. We haven’t found a monolith on the Moon though, this may have something to do with the amount of surface, that we’ve explored. I’m not saying we will, but the guy who dug for the city of Troy on Earth, was probably ridiculed more, than people who say we may one day find an alien artefact on the Moon - until he found it. Oh, and yeah, oxygen on earth is here because life made it, but methane on Mars is overwhelmingly more likely produced by geological and geothermal precesses that we haven’t yet discovered, even though we pretty much know Mars is dead cold inside and we know chemistry and geology pretty well (again - yes - you didn’t actually talk about Mars, but this is what immediately comes to my mind when you talk about biosignatures). We also shouldn’t be forgetting what SETI discovered, other than ET. Pulsars of course would have been found and studied eventually. Just like Pluto would have been discovered, even if a young guy named Clyde Tombaugh, who, at the time - as far as I recall - wasn’t even a qualified astronomer, didn’t find it first. And that was after the search of Planet X was deemed a lost cause, and the task of taking pictures and looking through the plates was given to him. I have a bit of a problem with this whole “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” thing. The discovery of microbial life in our solar system would be profound, but the claim itself, that it may exist, is not extraordinary at all. Moreover, to say, that it is an extraordinary claim, that INTELLIGENT life beyond Earth exists in our galaxy, means moving away from the Copernican principle. It is to say, that we are one of a kind, unique and privileged. To say “yeas, this could be aliens” is different from filling the gaps with gods. I don’t want to open another can of worms, but we don’t have any evidence, that gods exist, we do however have an unequivocal proof, that intelligent life can exist in universe. Paul, you are a great science communicator. You demonstrated your passion and confidence in the scientific process many times over. Someone has to be out there, looking for those dragons though. PS. Having said that, one Avi Loeb may be enough.

[@infinitemonkey917]

He isn't saying that ETI doesn't / hasn't / will not exist. He is saying that, even if it does exist, we can't detect it unless it sends us a direct message. Time and space is very, very large and the speed of light relatively slowwwww. Claims of ETI do require extraordinary evidence because we can thus far conclude that detecting them is not ordinary.

[@hebruixe9125]

that's a lot of setup for a simple pun :P but you made a lot of interesting points and gave us much to think about

[@Cuplex1]

Aha, so looking for technosignatures is not something you do when going clubbing in Berlin? 🤔😳

[@russellneitzke4972]

HOUSE!

[@WJSpies]

Do space aliens know how to play 33.33333 rpm long-playing stereo recordings?

[@angelosasso1653]

But did SETI provide any data besides: It's propably hard to find!?

[@pavel9652]

I participated many years ago in BOINC, which is distributed data processing platform. SETI might have large quantities of data, so it might be hard to get.

[@angelosasso1653]

​@@pavel9652 Didn't they stop BOINC because it didn't deliver anything interesting?

[@pavel9652]

​@@angelosasso1653 I didn't know about it. I suspected a lot has changed since I participated ages ago! These days data is often available on___e. There are many databases of stars, galaxies and other astronomic objects everyone can search to find information like a redshift of galaxies or spectral data of stars, etc. Interesting stuff! I used it a couple of times to find information on the objects I have seen in the pictures. Sorry, AI keeps deleting this comment. It doesn't seem to like when people say "search the...".

[@williamkacensky4796]

Unfortunately our Spaceman is incorrect on his data perceived and given pertaining to extraterrestrial life in the cosmos. Not sure where our scientific community lends its credence on data but our extraterrestrial visitors are already here to explore, observe, and record. I can only account for 62 years on my watch.

[@lastsilhouette85]

I'm of the mindset that we should always contribute a SMALL amount of our taxes towards SETI, as unlikely as a direct detection is. I'd rather have it there just in case. It is a worthwhile question to ask, and I can respect the opposite opinion on this one.

[@russellneitzke4972]

I'd rather give the $800 billion we spend on defense each year to SETI and Dr. Sutter for science outreach and education.

[@MrCmon113]

@@russellneitzke4972 Yeah, lets disarm ourselves and deliver our allies and everyone weak and innocent to their tormentors, so that we can send msgs into the void that almost certainly no one will ever receive.

[@russellneitzke4972]

@@MrCmon113 spending money on education doesn't mean we are disarming.. it just means we have educators in charge

[@xhtml5for1.0]

seti=nightmares of my body

[@bentationfunkiloglio]

SETI is privately funded, right? It’s their time and their money, so I don’t see a problem here.

[@gorbachevdhali4952]

This argument strikes as extremely myopic coming from a science educator no less, how disheartening, it almost strikes me as cynical clickbait. Your argument is akin to saying we've placed a cup in the ocean, have pulled it out and having seen no fish decide to stop looking. The resources devoted to SETI are relatively minimal and don't detract from anything else, not to mention the other things we learn about the universe while looking for ETI. Also, your argument about not finding anything like aliens doing things to stars and the like is flimsy because again, we just haven't searched enough and/or may not have the right tools just yet. And there are space phenomena which may yet represent something alien, like Tabby's star or perhaps more likely (though still unlikely) Przybylski's Star. You also seem to be starting with a flawed presumption that the galaxy should be teeming with ETI, it may be there are only a handful, in which case the search becomes much tougher. However, with more advanced telescopes and computing power we just might find our galactic neighbors.. and so in the grandest tradition of scientific exploration (which you seem to be crapping on in this video) we should keep looking because all it will take is that one detection to score the greatest discovery in human history.

[@MrCmon113]

More like we have surveyed billions of liters of ocean and found no fish and now we are fumbling around with our hands to see whether we can touch any. There's simply no reason to suppose that there's anyone near enough to hear us or vice versa.

[@MrCmon113]

If there is ANY in the galaxy, it should be FULL of civilizations shortly after. I think that's your key misunderstanding. The time needed to colonize the galaxy is several orders of magnitude smaller than civilizations had time to arise on planets like ours. There's no reason to assume others would appear at the same time as ours.

[@gorbachevdhali4952]

@@MrCmon113 From where do you derive this notion we've searched billions of liters. Taking a picture of the ocean from 30K feet up, you can get a picture of the wide expanse of the ocean but you won't have the resolution to see all that is in it. If you knew anything about the evolution of telescopes and the leap james Webb represents for example, you wouldn't make such a silly statement. We can barely even detect small rocky worlds at this stage, it is just starting to come into fruition. So no, we haven't searched billions of liters of water, and actually there have been calculations done. The amount of sky surveyed really is akin to roughly that of one glass of water when it comes to radio seti. More needs to be done before any definitive statement about our milky way galaxy can be made, anything else is just blind presumption without data.

[@gorbachevdhali4952]

@@MrCmon113 The idea of "colonization" was originally centered around von neuman probes, not alien beings physically landing everywhere. This straight line assumption that all extant alien civs would focus on galactic colonization strikes me as a myopic math exercise. It doesn't even begin to consider the pitfalls such am endeavor would face, nor any cultural impediments that would hinder an alien race from doing this. Sure all we would need is just one civilization to do this, but who's to say interstellar travel is that easy anyway? What if only 5 civilizations are extant in the galaxy and only 2 care about expansion? Who's to say someone wasn't here already 500m years ago and the evidence is lost to the geologic record? Who's to say von neuman probes aren't already present in sol? We don't have any high resolution searches for anything of the latter sort right now. I'm not saying that is likely, just that we need to think broader.

[@jamestaylor6041]

Wow I'm truely surprised by this one Paul , you are usually so on the point , but I'm sorry I have to disagree with you this time . You have some great points , gas signatures , lack of (wow) signals , yeah I get it , but it's only been 40 years for seti , and you want to kick them out already ? as I said , truely surprised ..

[@russellneitzke4972]

Perhaps we can convince SETI to fragment their projects in to disprovable segments.

[@5thdymension]

You have highlighted the improbability of intelligent life getting signals to us. You neglected to say it would take over 4 years to get here and another 4 years to respond. You have pointed out that our strongest signals would not be detectable amidst the background radiation of the Milky Way and Universe, beyond our nearest stars. So any signal we get or send must be very strong and focused. BUT, the big missing piece is that to travel to our nearest stars would take over 80,000 years. So anything we detect or they detect from us would take vast amounts of time to have any purpose or meaning. Also, detecting signals or sending them is a total waste of time. As you say, our only chance is to process Electro Magnetic Waves received here and look for life signatures in the waves. Replying will be inconceivable for the next few thousand years. SETI = no go and a waste of time and money. SETL = a spare time activity for the next few millennia :-)

[@ARWest-bp4yb]

Oxygen: Doesn't listen and does its own thing. Sounds like Oxygen is a teenager! We don't hear ET because they're too far away, thousands or tens of thousands of lightyears. Probably never will...

[@crontemisto8994]

I came to make the SETL joke, but you were *way* ahead of me.

[@78grafikal]

YES

[@thatnerdyuncle]

I do t understand. As far as I know, SETI is a privately funded project using receivers not used for anything or much else. So monitoring could occur as long as someone wants to fund it.

[@russellneitzke4972]

Perhaps we can convince the general public alien signals are a threat so we can use the $800 billion a year defense budget to help SETI scan.

[@larrybeckham6652]

Wait a minute! Single cell life does NOT have a techosignature but complex life might. I read once that in the Roman times, metal smelting (iron, steel, copper, tin, etc) have started reaching high level of heavy metal pollution in our atmosphere - maybe that will be our first detectable techosignature?

[@russellneitzke4972]

I thought the James Webb telescope was for infrared. How can it see the gaps for oxygen in the atmosphere of exoplanets? Is there an infrared absorption gap for oxygen?

[@terrywhite6269]

Yes, if you count millimeter waves as far infrared. Around 60 GHz there are strong O2 absorption lines in the millimeter wave bands.

[@mdavid1955]

Cross your finger, or your rabbit foot,etc that the JWT goes off with any more issues and works!

[@russellneitzke4972]

To lower JWST launch anxiety perhaps we should launch 10 less stressful pieces of JWST one at a time and have them transform in space lagrange points in to one telescope.

[@TC-1207]

What about the "WOW" signal in the mid 70's? Keep SETI going! The cost of running it is a drop in the bucket.

[@russellneitzke4972]

Breit and Wheeler suggested that it should be possible to turn light into matter by smashing together only two particles of light (photons), to create an electron and a positron. Could we use the sun's light to build the Dyson sphere?

[@russellneitzke4972]

I guess I thought they were talking about protons rather than positrons. I don't think positrons are going to be a very good building material.

[@MrCmon113]

There's more than enough material in the planets and moons.

[@jeroenk3570]

Question, before we had big telescopes and space probes, did people assume there was life on other planets because there is so much life on earth?

[@joey199412]

Why is this unlisted?

[@ZZstaff]

It is past time to end SETI. How many years does it take for light to reach us from near by stars and how long does it take for light to travel from galaxy group to another? There are too many variables as well. If there was "intelligent" life like ours elsewhere, they could have formed earlier and nuked themselves to death by now, and in other places radios may not have been invented. In any event, SETI is a waste of time, interesting however not enough to spend millions of dollars on it.

[@russellneitzke4972]

Perhaps the universe knows what it's doing keeping us all separated incase one of us comes to the nuke itself conclusion.

[@williamblack4006]

@ ZZstaff: No government funds are allocated for SETI searches- these are financed entirely by private contributions.

[@ZZstaff]

@@williamblack4006 Did I mention government funded?

[@russellneitzke4972]

@@ZZstaff Well honestly I would have voted for government funds to be allocated to SETI over spending $22 trillion to murder one person.

[@williamblack4006]

@@ZZstaff I'm glad you realize that.

[@davecurtis8833]

I think the Milky Way aliens tuned in to the Kardashians and now have moved to Andromeda.

[@mikewashington4188]

I think we should employ more AI programs to continue and increase the the search for signs of life within the universe.

[@DavidSmith-kd8mw]

I remember how disappointed I was when I learned that SETI required the aliens to be intentionally aiming signals at us. I felt like SETI didn't make that clear, that they understood how such a fact would be perceived, and that they were being intellectually dishonest.

[@realkarfixer8208]

Meh, SETI isn't a thing. It's an idea. There is no official government funding and hasn't been taken very seriously by the scientific community- mostly because there's no money. There's a few billionaires that have contributed to pet "SETI" projects, most notably Paul Allen. There's the SETI @ Home project that attempts pick signals out of existing radio surveys by using distributed computing power. I did it for awhile, years ago, but getting packets to process was erratic and the platform just crashed too damn often. Personally I think the level of resources dedicated to the various SETI projects is fine.

[@GwegKnott]

Just send alians a singal we are here, if they can get here and want to wipe us out they would ve able to do so so quickly we would never know so either we blip out of existence or we trivialize with help from alians if they exist

[@the3dom]

SETI expecting aliens are like Americans

[@nagzi20]

Ellie Arroway would be disappointed.

[@dzjoshi2176]

Why do you like bald and bankrupt lol

[@pistitoth1363]

Pokolból küldtek .Mit szeretnél ? Világot? Az élet anyagát ? Vagy Hélium- Hidrid titkát ? Teret nem hajlíthatod meg , de alakítható! Ídöt csak emberek mérik , valójában nem is létezik ! Csak a specatime ! Zéró? Mi is ? Az együttható tágulás. És tág protokoll mellett! Nem lehetséges minden csak szűk keretek között!

[@kensmith8152]

Fermi paradox wins

[@larrybeckham6652]

Is it time to end SETI? Nope, as long that the donations keep coming in. I still vote no for using tax dollars. Vote early, Vote often! After far as "active SETI", I vote hell to the no. We have might that broadcast "Amos 'n' Andy" and Hitler at the Munich Olympics to the stars, do not think about build a yottawatt laser to signal that invasion fleet from Tau Ceti.

[@lunalangton5776]

End SETI, and begin a search for *terrestrial* intelligence.

[@lunalangton5776]

(I actually have no opinion one way or the other on SETI)

[@ortonh1]

Time to end Paul Sutter videos.

[@illogicmath]

If I were an astronomer working at SETI I would be very depressed

[@russellneitzke4972]

I think they have more job security though than disprovable projects.

[@MrCmon113]

You should be. That's like trying to hunt elephants in your own living room.

[@spacemonkey1071]

Good nerd joke Dr. Sutter

[@mbj__]

A scientist that calls for and end of a scientific investigation because of lack of success. This, while we have only been able to search a fraction of 1% of the Milky Way galaxy... I think there are some personal biases in play here. So sad.

[@MrCmon113]

They're not looking for amoeba. They're looking for intersrellar civilizations. If one existed, it would be everywhere already. There's been earthlike planets for many billion years, billion years younger than earth, colonizing the galaxy takes at most 10 million years, more likely less than 1 million years.

[@yasminhassan3837]

no one elaine for the universe only you see that power of allah

[@mhedman]

Go and make a bomb and use it

[@googlemechuck4217]

hahahahaha

[@cripmeister9104]

Science is biased against aliens. Hey I just solved the Fermi Paradox!

[@EDECO79]

Another dupe.