Talk:SETI

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[edit] Corrections/clarifications on META and BETA added

I fixed some wording and added details on the META and BETA searches. Darren, 20 November 2005.

[edit] falsifiability

Under "criticisms", the article says "... assertion of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence has no good Popperian criteria for falsifiability".

An assertion that there exists extraterrestrial intelligence is definitely not falsifiable. However, the assertion that there is no E.I. is falsifiable - just find one. That seems to me to be the way SETI is working. They are not claiming that there definitely is E.I., but if they find one, that would falsify the null hypothesis that there isn't any E.I. Bubba73 (talk), 06:22, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] pseudoscience?

It is unfair to call SETI pseudoscience. Just because you are searching for something that might exist, but haven't found it yet doesn't mean it is unscientific. They have tried to detect Gravitational radiation for decades, and so far there is no direct evidence for it. Same thing for the Higgs boson. Neither of these searches are considered pseudoscientific or non-falsifiable. Bubba73 (talk), 04:02, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

The falsifiable hypothesis is that something does NOT exist. The burden of proof is on the naysayers. Jrgetsin 18:55, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Gravitational radiation is based on Einstein's theories, most of which have been proven very accurate. Einstein is science. Personally I do believe that it's a waste of money to do scientific research on gravitational radiation, but it's still science.

Seti is as scientific as trying to find evidence that God exists.

  • First there is no undisputed definition of intelligent life. According to biologists primates, dolphins and even octopuses (a cephalopod) are intelligent. Cephalopods have been around for over 425 million years yet they never felt the urge to communicate to any other species. They are actually able to communicate with divers, researches and people keeping them as pets but only do so once we initiate it.
  • The kind of Homo Sapiens that speaks, builds houses, wears clothes and so on is around little over 10,000 years. The technology currently in use for Seti is just a few decades old. What's a decade on the 15 odd billion years since the Big Bang?

We know that catastrophic event have almost wiped out all life on earth several times, we've seen the evidence of similar catastrophic events on most other planets, even witnessed one live (Levi Shoemaker). We have no idea, not even a clue to base an educated guess on, how long mankind will be around or how long our technological advanced society will last.

  • Seti not technically advanced enough to actively communicate with intelligent extra-terrestrials even if these do exist. It is impossible to predict how much time it might take to make all the technological break-througs needed to develop such an active communication system. Once it's there, there is no other way to test it than to actually communicate... with...?
  • I can make my old VIC-20 computer communicate with my current computer:
    • through a modem at 300 bps (if my current computer still is able to support such a low bitrate?) as long as I make sure they're using the same protocol, handshake, bitrate, character set and so on
    • through a serial interface. Although the VIC20 interface is nowhere near standard RS232 it can be done.

The good thing about such an experiment is that I could get instant feedback. As long as we're not able to set up a worm hole connection between us and ET, there will be no practical way to test our ET phone line.

  • How capable are we to communicate? I can read and write some English, but it's not my native tongue. I might be able to express some essential signals, using hands and facial expressions as well as sounds, to people who speak a language that I totally do not know. I was able to tell when my dog wanted a walk, or food, or a hug. Character sets are even in the 21st century so badly standardized that it's still not uncommon to receive emails containing ŪζŹğŐ characters.
  • Champollion was able to decypher hieroglyphs thanks to the coincidental discovery of the Rosetta stone but if we could bring an Egyptian mummy back to life there would still be nobody able to actually speak with him/her. We can only guess what this language must have sounded like. There are several written languages from past civilizations that we're not (yet) have been able to decypher.
  • There are currently over 1 million species on this planet, over 5000 species of mammals. How may of these species developed speech? How many developed written language?
  • Ever had a phone conversation where a 3rd party came throught? How willing and able to communicate are you when that happens? Even if we would be able to catch an interstellar communication, it's probably not directed to us and highly inappropriate to break in on the conversation.
  • Even if there are ET's out there in the Milky Way with the technology to send signals directly to us, does it make sense to them to do so? Even if they would know our exact location? The Milky Way is a disk 10,000 light years in diameter. It's like standing in New York, trying to whisper in the ear of a person in Australia. For our current technology it's impossible to maintain communications with our own satellites more than a couple of light-minutes away.

The current most widely accepted estimated outcome of the Drake Equation is 0.0000008. The highest estimate I've ever seen was 10,000,000. That last number falls IMHO in the category wishful dreaming. Is 8 a fair compromise? Drake didn't even take into account the number of stars that are absolutely unable to support life, like red dwarfs, red giants and lots of others. Nor did he know the recent discovery that lots of candidate stars have a giant gas planet similar to jupiter orbiting very close by and with extreme velocity. But against all odds lets say there are 8 planets somewhere in the Milky Way where currently intelligent life might live that might be willing and able to communicate with us. As far as I know Drake didn't define willing and able either. The octopus is intelligent life willing and able to communicate. With its 8 arms and lots of suction cups it can do a zillion things our silly primitive hands can only dream of. If it would have had the urge to develop technology it would have had an evolutionary head start on us of hundreds of millions of years. Rolling on the sea floor laughing at our few dozen years of radio telescopy and computers.

I personally estimate the chances of life on other planets in the Milky way near 1. The chances of a lifeform as intelligent as the octopus somewhere in the universe might well be near 1 as well, anywhere within the reach of our radio telescopes that chance is very near zero, lets say 0.0000008. Chances that that creature actually felt the urge to build radio telescopes compatible with ours? Is 0.00000000000008 a fair estimate? Chances that this civilization has either ceased to exist or that it will rise thousands, millions or even billions of years into the future? Chances that that civilization doesn't even want to communicate with us? Chances that they tried to make a similar equation as Drake's, only to conclude that the numbers are either unknown or too small to take seriously?

Actually spending lots of resources trying to communicate with ET with our current technology, based on an equation with a total lack of definitions and lots of blank spots, with an unknow but undoubtedly extremely small probability that it might lead to an actual communication more meaningful than the WOW signal? That's not science, not even pseudoscience, it's rediculous.

What's scientific about trying to find a needle in a random hay stack without any particular reason to believe that there might actually be a needle in that specific hay stack? MythBusters have proven it possible to find deliberately hidden needles, even made of bone, in a particular hay stack. Both the number of hay stacks and the number of actually existing needles are high, chances of an odd needle ending up in some odd hay stack might be high as well. Probability of actually finding one is higher than the probability of getting struck by lightning. We all know that lightning does kill several people a year. "Science is reasoned-based analysis of sensation upon our awareness. As such, the scientific method cannot deduce anything about the realm of reality that is beyond what is observable by existing or theoretical means." (quotation from the Wikipedia article on science)

Although I'm a firm believer in the theory that we're not unique, this is still pure speculation and belief. And it will stay equally speculative in the foreseeable future, unless we learn to develop practical use of worm holes or similar futuristic technology. And even then a seriously intelligent ET wouldn't consider communications with a silly creature like man. Maggy Rond 06:46, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Maggy Rond is to be commended for the stamina of her typing muscles, if nothing else, but this page and Wikipedia in general isn't the place to debate whether SETI is pseudoscience. The purpose of the article is to describe the thing as it exists, and the purpose of this discussion page is to discuss how to make the article better. What is or isn't valid science can and should be debated elsewhere. KarlBunker 14:08, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I didn't start this sub-thread about pseudoscience, I just replied to it. This IS the Discussion page, isn't it? If this isn't the place to discuss a highly controversial Wikipedia article, then what is? Some of the first lines of the article are

The general approach of SETI projects is to survey the sky to detect the existence of transmissions from a civilization on a distant planet, an approach widely endorsed by the scientific community as hard science (see, e.g., claims in Skeptical Inquirer [1]). (SETI is a scientific organisation.)

I agree that the techniques used by SETI are hard science techniques. But the underlaying assumption that the use and refinement of these techniques will eventually lead to any scientific result, e.g. the proof of existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, is pseudoscience. So IMHO these lines should be rewritten.Maggy Rond 21:42, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
But the conclusion of the SETI searches is not "life" or "no life". What they actually claim is roughly "there are no continuously present, monochromatic carrier signals of more than 10^-26 w/m^2, and frequency 1-3 GHz, from any of the 150 nearest stars" (numbers are from memory, and may be wrong). This is absolutely hard science - a reproducible experiment, falsifiable, etc. The *motivation* is to find life, but the actual experiment is measuring the intensity of radio waves. The actual scientific reports make this distinction very clear. LouScheffer 23:01, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stopping condition

Quote: individual SETI projects have clearly defined "stop" conditions

What are the stopping conditions for the Allen Telescope Array?

Tom

Main condition is scarcity of funding.

[edit] Section on "Other grid programming projects" moved

The section "Other grid programming projects" doesn't belong in this article, it belongs with SETI@home. While SETI@home is mentioned in this article, this article is by no means about a grid computing project. Thus, a section on "other" such projects doesn't belong. I have moved this to the SETI@home article.

[edit] Hard Science

SETI I believe can hardly qualify as soft science since its basic tenet is not falsifiable. Any comments? 69.211.150.60 13:24, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

The very strongest statements, such as intelligent civilizations must exist somewhere else in the universe other than Earth are indeed not falsifiable. But no reasonable SETI researcher would claim this. Instead they claim we have found (did not find) the following evidence... which *is* falsifiable.

"Science" is primarily a methdology: make a hypothesis and test it. Good theories make predictions that are specific and distinquishing, and can hypothetically be falsified by contradictory evidence. SETI is not a theory. SETI is a research program. It's no different than searching for unicorns or signatures in genomes that say "Yahweh designed this." In short, it does not qualify as hard science despite it's "affiliations." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.220.31.30 (talk) 18:08, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

The observations of SETI are very hard science. The basic hypothesis (for radio observations) is There exists at least one coherent microwave transmitter, not made by humans, of at least X watts, visible to us, in our galaxy. This is falsifiable by looking at a certain sensitivity level and not finding any....

     Wrong. Absense of evidence is not a "falsification." You do not know what you're talking about.


...The opposite hypothesis, There exists no coherent microwave transmitters of more the X watts anywhere in the galaxy is also falsifiable, by finding one. These hypotheses in principal could be quite strong, since the physics of radio supports detecting very small transmitters, though we can only see big ones now. We know the waves are coherent over very long ranges (radio interferometer observations between earth and satellites, and VLBI) so antennnas capable of detecting roughly 1 watt transmitters, anywhere in the galaxy, are in theory possible (though way too expensive now, of course). This leads to a very strong falsifiable statement, such as There are no transmitters, not built by us, of 1 watt or more anywhere in the galaxy

Now suppose you find a signal. Then your hypothesis is There is no non-intelligent process that generates signal with characteristics Z where Z is modulated, narrow-band, or some other trait. This is falsifiable by thinking of a non-intelligent process that could create such a signal.

Suppose you don't find a signal. Then the falsifiable hard science part is there are no transmitters in our galaxy of power X or more. Successively softer are the conclusions there are no radio using civilizations, then there are no technical civilizations, and there are no civilizations, and there are no intelligent beings.

Statements about beings based on biology are in principal falsifiable, too, since nothing in physics prevents you from examining each planet in detail. So the statement there exists (or does not exist) any self-replicating molecules of size X or greater, anywhere in the galaxy except Earth is in principal falsifiable. Of course this is even less practical to check than a comprehensive radip search.

Basically, claims about evidence are hard science, but claims about existence are not. I think all the serious SETI scientists understand this very well indeed.

LouScheffer 16:56, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

The hypothesis 'Life exists on other planets' is not falsifiable. Sorry. My point is that other studies are claimed to be pseudoscience because they are not falsifiable. By that definition SETI is pseudoscience. If one tries to be consistent. 68.109.234.155 19:07, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Can you explain why you think this? The hypothesis a technical civilization exists on Mars is falsifiable, and we have falsified it. The hypothesis life exists on Mars we are quite close (in historical time) to either falsifying or proving, by a global survey, finding the most likely spots, sending robot laboratories, etc. Doing the same for other planets in the solar system is harder, and planets around other stars much harder yet, but it does not seem physically impossible. So the idea is clealy falsifiable, though we do not have the technology to do so yet. LouScheffer 19:22, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, we would have to observe something that would show that life does not exist anywhere in the universe to falsify the statement 'Life exists on other planets' In other words the classic 'there exists a black swan' is not falsifiable since there is no observation that will show the opposite. To me this is a fallacy. Now some people say astrology is pseudoscience but it IS falsifiable. And many of Freuds theories are falsifiable. There seems to be a great misunderstanding about all of this. Some people say that economics is not a science or archaeology. Do you see my point? 68.109.234.155 19:47, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I see your point, if SETI was trying to settle whether life exists anywhere in the universe. But (most) SETI has smaller goals, trying to determine if life exists in our galaxy. (Check out the Drake equation, current radio and optical surveys, etc.). This seems clearly falsifiable to me (we've determined it for one planet (Earth), are almost done with another (Mars), and it's only a matter of scale to extend this to the trillion or so planets in the galaxy.). Do you agree that the statement 'Life exists in our galaxy' is falsifiable? If so, why not? LouScheffer 20:26, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

It is not falsifiable. Again it order to falsify it you must propose an observation that would falsify it. Again if I say all swans are white all I have to do is produce one black swan and the would be the falsifying observation. What would be the falsifying observation in the preceding example? Again how would you falsify a black swan exists? Do you see the point. It is all in the falsification wiki article. 68.109.234.155 22:14, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

It also depends on your definition of life - if 'life' is expected to cover a whole planet uniformly and is easy to find (in say the first foot of soil) the a statement 'there is life on Mars' is falsifiable. But if, as is more reasonable, *life* can be hiding in small pockets, at unknown depth, and has unknown chemical make up, then the statement is not falsifiable, since you can't look everywhere and in every concievable way to find it. So define what you mean by *life* first. sbandrews (t) 22:28, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Statements that something exists *are* falsifiable *if* you specify a limited place to search. For example, purple elephants exist in the San Diego zoo is falsifiable. Likewise, purple elephants exist on Earth, since you can examine the Earth in enough detail to find any purple elephants, if they exist. If you don't find any, you've falsified it. Purple elephants exist in our galaxy is beyond our ability to settle right now, but not in principle. Only the fully general Purple elephants exist is not verifiable, since they might exist in some far away part of the universe we cannot even in principle examine. Applied to SETI, the statement life exists in our galaxy is falsifiable - you search for it in enough detail to find it if it exists, using whatever definition of life you adopt. If you have examined all the possible places, and not found it, then it does not exist. Of course we cannot do this yet, but falsifiability requires that we can do do in principle, not that we can do so right now. LouScheffer 22:46, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

No saying life exists in the galaxy is not falsifiable. Again what would we observe to show the premise is false??? OK then you must agree that saying God exists is falsifiable. 68.109.234.155 22:49, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, life does indeed exist in the galaxy - you and I are alive, and we exist in the galaxy. The claim that life exists in the galaxy is falsifiable, although the test would be rather difficult - check every planet in the galaxy. Not presently possible, but not a theoretically impossibility. But since live does exist in the galaxy, we know it can exist. --RLent 21:23, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

How about life exists on Mars? Do you agree that this is falsifiable? If so, then 'life exists in our galaxy is just as falsifiable; it's only a matter of scale. LouScheffer 23:01, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

How about aliens came to earth 1.5 billion years ago and planted the first DNA or bacteria and started life. Do you think that is falsifiable? Or black swans exists in this room. Then extrapolate the black swans exist on earth. Only just a matter of scale? 68.109.234.155 23:13, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

"but falsifiability requires that we can do do in principle, not that we can do so right now" I do not think that is correct otherwise we can always say we can go back in time and see what happened or go forward to see what will happen. 68.109.234.155 23:23, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

That's not a valid point. We could, given enough time, build probes that could search every planet in the galaxy for life. It's not at all clear that we could, even in principle, build a time machine. The goals of SETI are much more modest. The claim "there is a transmitter on some planet outside the solar system sufficiently strong to be detected from Earth" is falsifiable.--RLent 18:17, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I think you people are missing the point. The falsifiability argument is meant to show that no matter how many times we look and find nothing, you people are just going to say we haven't looked enough and ramble on about "absence of proof" and "scale." Also you might consider that just because something is soft science doesn't mean that its pseudoscience -you don't really need to break your backs trying to prove that SETI is "hard." This article contains a lot of bias on a subject which is fairly controversial. Drunkboxer 17:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SETI Simulation

I am running a SETI simulation where participants can try decoding messages sent from a simulated extraterrestrial intelligence (and optionally send). It can be found at SETI Simulation. Is it appropriate to include as a link in the entry? 69.121.214.226 03:36, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Talk page archiving

This talk page is pretty long. I'm planning on setting up automatic archiving (courtesy of User:MiszaBot). If anyone has any thoughts/objections please let me know. Adam McMaster (talk) 12:42, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

And, done. Threads which haven't been edited in a year will be automatically archived. Adam McMaster (talk) 16:34, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What about the time factor?

Homo sapiens has only been producing meaningful radio signals for a century, expanding to a volume of 4.2 x 10^6 cubic light years out of the 8 x 10^12 cubic light years in our galaxy, so the probability of any one reasonably localized society at a random location in our galaxy finding us through SETI-like radio means is less than one in a million. Yet given a density of one star per 40 cublic light years, our radio signals should already have reached about 100,000 stars and their associated planets.

If someone out there were searching by optical means sensitive enough to identify a settlement of 1,000 or more (presumably occuring as early as 10,000 years ago), that evidence would exist throughout 4.2 x 10^12 cubic light years, but since our galaxy is only 1,000 light years thick, only 3.14 x 10^11 cubic light years of this information sphere intersects our galaxy. Then the probability of detection by a single competently searching civilization could be as high as 0.075 The total number of stars within the visible evidentiary sphere should be about 8 x 10^9.

LADave (talk) 05:39, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The logic of this sentence in "Where are they" is unclear

"Science writer Timothy Ferris has posited that since galactic societies would most likely be only transitory, then an obvious solution is an interstellar communications network, or type of library consisting mostly of automated systems."

What does the "since" part have to do with the "then" part?

--208.54.94.45 (talk) 22:33, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Misleading sentence.

As was suggested by Richard Carrigan, a particle physicist at the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, 'passive' SETI could also be dangerous in style of computer viruses. [8]

I know Wikipedia is based on verifiability and not truth, but Richard Carrigan is a little off even according to his colleagues in the computer/information/security field. The only way ETI could transmit an effective virus would be if they had very recent schematics of our computer architecture, and the architecture of the operating systems we use. The speed of light would require a civilization to be within a five light-year radius or less. Anything further away would probably make the engineered virus obsolete. The only way around this distance "limit" would be to engineer a trojan virus that would be activated by humans and which would gather information once here. This would also require a very advanced Artificial Intelligence agent.

Given that most ETI civilizations are probably farther than 5 light-years away (if there are any) the virus would have to target something very specific (or obsolete), which would only cause minor problems; or they would need to have access to malicious strong AI and hope we can assemble it for them without understanding what it is. Deepstratagem (talk) 08:39, 27 May 2008 (UTC)