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Astronomer Seth Shostak:We'll find ET by 2037


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SETI Institute chief astronomer Seth Shostak bet hundreds of people at our Boing Boing: Ingenuity live event that we'll hear from an extraterrestrial within 25 years. Watch this video to understand why the odds are in Seth's favor.

http://boingboing.ne...hostak-wel.html

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And he bet on it!!

Contact is one of my favourite movies and I'd love it if it'll ever become a reality.

Mine was Fire in The Sky. It was only later that I learned that the film makers disregarded Walton's testimony and pasted in their own version of the face to face contact. No doubt to turn it into a horror movie rather than merely a drama.

Edited by zoser
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So any/all advanced civilisations replace themselves with machines? Whatever, maybe for long space hauls....

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So any/all advanced civilisations replace themselves with machines? Whatever, maybe for long space hauls....

Why can I only see that an an H.R. Giger themed Lovecraftian bit of mind *******?

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So any/all advanced civilisations replace themselves with machines? Whatever, maybe for long space hauls....

I think more likely we will supplement ourselves with machine parts.
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Enigmatic throwaway line "We have Rovers going to Mars. They're not looking for life, but they will soon".

:unsure2:

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Enigmatic throwaway line "We have Rovers going to Mars. They're not looking for life, but they will soon".

:unsure2:

Well, yes, any astronomy looks for life out there, including things to the planets. It may not be the main reason for the work, but if life is found regardless it will be found.
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Huh.

And we haven't heard from them by now?

What's so dang special about 25-year's from today?

I call total BS on this. Another "wannabe" date that will not happen.

EDIT: In other news, and to all credits, the end-of-the-world date's seem to have stopped. Well, for now.

Edited by pallidin
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Huh.

And we haven't heard from them by now?

What's so dang special about 25-year's from today?

I call total BS on this. Another "wannabe" date that will not happen.

Well, to be fair, he's more than just some random nut on youtube.

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Well, yes, any astronomy looks for life out there, including things to the planets. It may not be the main reason for the work, but if life is found regardless it will be found.

but does he mean that's part of the plan, that the Mars Rover will look for signs of (presumable ancient) life,? Richard Hoagland will be pleased, at least.

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One question, though, about his "ETs are likely to be mega-intelligent machines" thesis; is he speculating that any ET race with super enough technology would somehow hybridise themselves so that they're partly machine? does he envisage the machines taking over? :cat: And how does he envisage discovering them? if SETI still relies on listening out for Radio signals, surely any race as super-duper advanced as he's talking about wouldn't still be using radio transmissions in frequencies we can detect, would they? :unsure2:

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Dr. Shostak reports that 1 in 6 red dwarf (M class) stars are thought to have an Earth-like planet. There are 48 M class stars within about 16 light years of Earth. That implies that 8 of those stars could host life as we know it. There are 6 of this sort of star within only 9 light years. A least one of these could be Earth-like.

Edited by bison
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Astronomer Seth Shostak:We'll find ET by 2037, which let me understand Dr Bruce Macabee's reply about my case on this forum http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=173421&st=30

".........I don't know how you prove that the pictures are of extra-terrestrials, especially if they could be images distorted by diffraction and aberrations....." that could mean all my visitor just the alien, they are not ET. . :tu: :tu:

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Dr. Shostak reports that 1 in 6 red dwarf (M class) stars are thought to have an Earth-like planet. There are 48 M class stars within about 16 light years of Earth. That implies that 8 of those stars could host life as we know it. There are 6 of this sort of star within only 9 light years. A least one of these could be Earth-like.

There is the unfortunate thing here that such a planet will be much closer to its sun than we are to ours, leading to gravitational locking. Such stars also have much more dangerous flares -- by several orders of magnitude -- so that being close to them would be seriously problematic.
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is it just me? :huh:

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a la the Borg???????

Well maybe just things that help us like a wired in memory chip for looking things up, a wired in way of knowing where we are, a wired in internet connection, and so on. I think these would be welcomed so long as they didn't try to control us and allowed us privacy (the ability to turn them off when we want).
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There is the unfortunate thing here that such a planet will be much closer to its sun than we are to ours, leading to gravitational locking. Such stars also have much more dangerous flares -- by several orders of magnitude -- so that being close to them would be seriously problematic.

Dr. Shostak referred to the first problem. It is believed that heat at the sub-solar point would drive planet-wide atmospheric circulation, and so, moderate the worst extremes of temperature. Probably the band on the planet around 90 degrees from the point directly facing the sun would have the most agreeable climate.

I understand that M class stars tend to flare when they're young, then settle down. As they're extremely long-lived, there could be ample time for life to establish itself, and evolve extensively, within this stable era.

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Huh.

And we haven't heard from them by now?

What's so dang special about 25-year's from today?

I call total BS on this. Another "wannabe" date that will not happen.

EDIT: In other news, and to all credits, the end-of-the-world date's seem to have stopped. Well, for now.

Without being a mind reader (or admittedly having properly looked into the assumptions upon which he is placing this bet), I am guessing that he is basing it on the increase in radio sensitivity seen by SETI and a calculation of if ET is out there within a given range, then when will we reach the sensitivity required to detect him/her/it.

Just my two uneducated cents.

Cheers,

Badeskov

Edited by badeskov
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Well,IMO he is WAY off...it is not that far into the future..which 2037 isn't that far,but I'm going to say within the next 10 years..and I'm talking about REAL contact,not "we'll find an ET signal" kind of contact..radio telescopes are useless to contact advanced civilizations because they would be so far advanced they are beyond that kind of primitive communication..they would communicate on more of a quantum level I guess you could say..they would pick up radio signals,but they would most likely ignore them because they don't want to deal with civilizations that are still at the "hormonal teenager with a loaded gun" stage,which is what we are..to me,SETI is partially a good idea and partially a rotten idea..it is good to be skeptical,but the people at SETI are a bit closed minded..of course,most of them are still thinking in outmoded scientific thought(if I'm wrong on that,please post legit info that proves me wrong),and we need scientists that are wiling to "think outside the box"...think outside the current paradigm.It IS good though that they are looking,but they are looking the wrong way and with the wrong idea of communication IMO..I don't think much of Mr.Seth Shostak anyway :/

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Well,IMO he is WAY off...it is not that far into the future..which 2037 isn't that far,but I'm going to say within the next 10 years..and I'm talking about REAL contact,not "we'll find an ET signal" kind of contact..radio telescopes are useless to contact advanced civilizations because they would be so far advanced they are beyond that kind of primitive communication..they would communicate on more of a quantum level I guess you could say..they would pick up radio signals,but they would most likely ignore them because they don't want to deal with civilizations that are still at the "hormonal teenager with a loaded gun" stage,which is what we are..to me,SETI is partially a good idea and partially a rotten idea..it is good to be skeptical,but the people at SETI are a bit closed minded..of course,most of them are still thinking in outmoded scientific thought(if I'm wrong on that,please post legit info that proves me wrong),and we need scientists that are wiling to "think outside the box"...think outside the current paradigm.It IS good though that they are looking,but they are looking the wrong way and with the wrong idea of communication IMO..I don't think much of Mr.Seth Shostak anyway :/

how can Seti be closed minded...if theyre searching for alien life? besides what gets missed with any kind of tech search, is any planet that has life - but no technology.

Life elsewhere might not be about advanced aliens at all. It could simply be a planet with plant life, microbial, or even animal like life forms. Europa is a good possibility in our solar system for possible aquatic life.

Its still alien of course, just not as exciting perhaps, (for some that is)

.

Edited by seeder
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