DailyDirt: Hello, World Universe! Hello? (Is This Thing On?)

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Fri, Jul 31st 2015 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) hasn't yielded much, and some of the results are even a bit embarrassing. We don't really know what to look for when we're listening for alien signals. There's growing evidence that planets like ours are not rare in the universe, but that doesn't necessarily mean intelligent life is abundant. Given the vast distances to neighboring star systems, we're also not likely to visit them any time soon.

Russian billionaire Yuri Milner is spending $100 million on a Breakthrough Listen initiative that will last 10 years and attempt to find alien intelligence. This effort will scan the universe using telescopes that cover more than ten times of the sky compared to previous projects, and the data will be made public for SETI@home distributed analysis. [url]
NASA has its Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) project to look for extraterrestrial life. Identifying exoplanets that might harbor life is a fascinating field that requires an interdisciplinary effort of biologists, physicists, astronomers, geologists and a whole lot of creative thinking. [url]
No obvious signs of life have been seen after looking at 100,000 galaxies. This probably doesn't mean anything other than we don't know what to look for. [url]

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Filed Under: aliens, breakthrough listen, exoplanets, extraterrestrial life, nexss, seti, seti@home, space, yuri milner
Companies: nasa

5 Comments

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Reader Comments

The First Word

“

It's already hard to find intelligence on this planet.

—Anonymous Coward

”

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Guardian, 1 Aug 2015 @ 5:43am

lolwhat
"This probably doesn't mean anything other than we don't know what to look for. "

um then i'd say all of this is a HUGE WASTE OF HUMANITES EFFORTS

prove you know what your looking for first
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- Roger Strong (profile), 1 Aug 2015 @ 8:32am
  
  Re: lolwhat
  Yes. No more money for research into eradicating cancer unless scientists know the steps that will eradicate it. Or at least the exact steps that will lead to that knowledge.
  
  /s
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 1 Aug 2015 @ 6:38am

The best proof of alien intellegence
The best proof of alien intelligence is that it avoids Earth.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Aug 2015 @ 9:18am

It's already hard to find intelligence on this planet.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 17 Aug 2015 @ 12:34pm
  
  Re:
  Why do you think they are looking elsewhere?
  
  $!00 million to use telescopes to listen
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]