It's old, I used to have this running for days on end.

I personally think its stupid, and does nothing.

i've been running SETI for a couple of years now, on several machines. it certainly can be considered a worthy cause, but recently funding has been cut form the program. they will go through the last batches of work units- then the SETI program will close. don't know when that will happen- maybe in a year or two.

there is a bit of controversy about SETI centered around a few key problems: for example, any signals we do get will be anywhere from 10-60 years *old* at the minimum, and it might have been so dispersed into the 'cosmic background noise' that it would be too weak to detect.

If you really want to use your cycles for good get Folding@Home and cure some cancer!

He means the signal, not the time at which it reached earth. Electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light (or rather, the speed of electromagnetic waves, which includes light)... so if we receive a signal from a star system that's 60 light years away, it's already 60 years old by the time we get it.

SETI has always struck me as deeply flawed. I would think any species which can travel interstellar distances is probably not communicating with slow ol' radio waves. There have been a couple different experiments here on earth which prove that FTL (faster than light) communication is possible... why wouldn't an interstellar species be using those?

The only cases in which SETI would pick something up is if for some reason they had antiquated radio beacons specifically for getting the attention of lesser species... and life, especially intelligent life, has got to be such a rarity in the universe that I can hardly see why they would be doing this... or if we pick up the Laverne & Shirley broadcasts from some other groundbound species like ourselves... in which case, what's the point? We could then aim messages at them and hope they're listening, but if it's a century round trip in between, what are the odds we'd manage to crack the language barrier?

Hedgemistress wrote:

SETI has always struck me as deeply flawed. I would think any species which can travel interstellar distances is probably not communicating with slow ol' radio waves. There have been a couple different experiments here on earth which prove that FTL (faster than light) communication is possible... why wouldn't an interstellar species be using those?

Indeed, and we are close to developing them for practical use ourselves. Quantum entanglement is our friend.

In my studies of antimatter I have been doing for my research paper (Yes, I'm still working on that... had stuff come up that got in the way for a while) I have learned some interesting theories on the subject. According to one model of antimatter, antiparticles have a reversed spin and charge because it is actually the same particle as its normal-matter counterpart as seen traveling backward along the time axis.

If the time-traveling electrons idea is true, that opens the doorway to instantaneous communications to anywhere. Hold a positron and alter it whenever you want, then the corresponding electron is instantly changed wherever it is in the universe because you alter its future by changing its past.

Of course, this model is not accepted as proven fact. And then there is an even more odd hypothesis another physicist came up to take it further saying that all electrons are actually the same particle zipping and zig-zagging about through space time and seen at different times and locations. That has even greater potential for travelling and communicating over vast distances, but I won't go into that since I don't subscribe to that model. Then again, I don't to the more basic time-hopping electrons idea either, but at least it is not as far-flung from proven science fact and is thus more probable.

The only cases in which SETI would pick something up is if for some reason they had antiquated radio beacons specifically for getting the attention of lesser species... and life, especially intelligent life, has got to be such a rarity in the universe that I can hardly see why they would be doing this... or if we pick up the Laverne & Shirley broadcasts from some other groundbound species like ourselves... in which case, what's the point? We could then aim messages at them and hope they're listening, but if it's a century round trip in between, what are the odds we'd manage to crack the language barrier?

I think there is a lot of reason to be doing that. Even if the lesser species such as us don't get a signal back to them for a century or two, that's only to our setback, not theirs. If they are advanced like that, they should be able to just set up a transmitter and reciever then leave them there to do their work without further input. That means little trouble to them, and they can just sit back and rely on any life out in the universe to reply if and when it is picked up. Why would they care how long it took if it doesn't hinder them?

If they pick up a return signal, they hop in their faster than light spacecraft and cruise over here for the afternoon to check in on the species that answered their call. It's a half century after this lesser species first got the alien message as well, so they may well have come a long way in learning how the language of the initial communication works and thus be better suited to communicating with the advanced race now.

Of course, that's if they even care about less advanced life, or other life at all for that matter. When we look to ourselves as an example, we see that many people would like to know the secrets of the universe; but then we also see many people don't care at all. But, if the question is set to the general public as to whether or not to do something, if even a small group wants it then it will often get done. If we developed a satelite we could park up in orbit that constantly sent signals and monitored significant patches of space then I am sure we would put it up.

Then again, if we had faster than light communications it would likely be possible to have faster than light travel as well, even if it came a while after. And then, if we had that, we would most likely ditch the interstellar radio altogether and just explore the galaxy faster by sending out lots of manned ships.

So I don't know, maybe they would maybe they wouldn't; but I think it is still quite possible. Furthermore, this is all assuming that the race does have faster than light communications, and that they are even more advanced than us for that matter. A species out there might well have a much more difficult time advancing and have been at our level of technology for the past few thousand years, and we might be bypassing them quickly, only able to detect the signals they have been sending out for millenia because we use such forms of communication for a brief time before we become more advanced, and as such it would be nice to find their signal before we move on.

I'll join later. My comp is too slow for me to download anything while I'm on it.

i agree with you, james burrow. And if there are races more advanced than we were, why would they try and communicating with us. It's like trying to teach algebra to your dog. It all seems kinda pointless to me.