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Image Credit: ESO (Artist's Impression)
For a long time, as I've written about here many times before, American SETI scientists -- with Shostak predominant among them -- have dismissed out of hand the possibility that an advanced extraterrestrial civilization has ever ventured to travel to our solar system. Unexplained phenomena such as UFO reports cannot be evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, the reasoning goes, because interstellar travel is simply prohibitively expensive regardless of a civilization's age or technological level of development. Rather than looking for signs of visitation, they insist, we should limit our search for E.T. to looking for radio and perhaps laser transmissions.
In his recent column, Shostak doesn't back off that stance explicitly. His column discusses what he views as the apparent futility of human interstellar travel, given our current and projected states of knowledge and technological development. (I'm going to set aside his main thesis, which many have questioned, including myself.)
What intrigues me is Shostak's suggestion that what may be within our technological grasp are small, smart interstellar probes that remotely explore extrasolar planetary systems and then radio the results back to Earth. While such missions may require many decades before we get the results from distant probes sent on long journeys light-years from Earth, such probes are conceivable given our current technological development.
What is intriguing about Shostak's suggestion, of course, are its as-yet unstated implications.
The SETI radio searches are based on the hypothesis that since we -- an intelligent, technological civilization -- use radio to communicate, so would an advanced technological civilization located in an extrasolar planetary system. We search for extraterrestrial radio and laser signals because we know we, as a technological civilization, are capable of sending them.
On the other hand, if we are capable of sending unmanned probes to other planetary systems light-years from our own and to wait patiently for the results, then perhaps an intelligent species elsewhere has done the same, and the evidence is hiding somewhere in our own solar system, waiting for us to discover it.
Should SETI radio searches be complemented by a systematic search for evidence of extraterrestrial artifacts in our neighborhood?
Of course they should.
6 comments:
"SETI radio searches should be complemented by a systematic search for evidence of extraterrestrial artifacts in our neighborhood."
I'll send you $20 if you can get Dr. Shostak to say that on the record.
ditto
Seems to me this Search for ETs is being done ass-backwards: What they should be doing is START with our own backyard and spend the time and resources to do REAL, HONEST, exhaustive scientific research and investigation into the UFO issue. THEN if there's nothing, start looking outward for signs. Instead they start with the most remote locations imaginable while at the same time belittling the possibility of finding something right here.
If you hear a noise coming from under your sink at home, do you open it and check it out or do you start reseaching "Common Plumbing Problems Of Northern Australia"? These scientists are running away from something. They are turning their faces deliberatly so as not to have to deal with what they obviously fear: An ExoIntelligence presence right in their own home.
If these clowns go ahead and admit that there is indeed intelligent life out there, and not only that but that this life is almost guaranteed more advanced than us, Why for the love of Pete do they then turn around and insist that the Exos cannot *possibly* come here? And here we, barely out of the Stone Age, are heading for the stars ourselves! It's mind-boggling, their stupidity. Either that or they think the average person is stupid.
I have taken the time to attempt to extend the drake equation to include figures that would demonstrate that advanced civilizations, given the time, would not only exist but would have sent expeditions to explore our galaxy. Even using the most conservative nubers currently available to us I believe that since our solar system has existed it would have been visited at least eight times. Depending on when these vists took place in the evolution of our solar system I believe it is likely that we would have been tagged for future exploration (given planets in what we call the goldilocks zone). These calculations do not require faster than light speed, merely long time frames(our galaxy has existed for at least 8 billions years and maybe longer) given time dilation effects of close to light speed travel already acheivable with ion drive engines and no need to return to our starting point(an anthropormorphic concept not necessarily shared by true deep space explorers). Given this and a civilizations ability to identify and analyze distant solar sytems for potential life (a technology we are developing) i think it highly unlikely we have not drawn attention and are being visited.to what end I'm not sure possibly just for the science.
Thank you so much for posting this. Allow me to share it on my blog.
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Take care
Claudia
Of course any probe with the smarts to explore a star-system is probably a sentient being itself - it is the ETI we're most likely to meet. With our increasing knowledge of invisibility why should we presume that such a probe will be visible without its connivance? It will be visible when it wants to be.
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