Re: Time to scrap SETI?

From: Ray Vingnutte (rvnospam_at_againnospam.our.uk)
Date: 12/14/04 

Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 05:56:18 +0000

On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 20:37:26 -0500
"Terrell Miller" <millerto@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>
> "Joe Strout" <joe@strout.net> wrote in message
> news:joe-1CB257.13365413122004@comcast.dca.giganews.com...
>
> > So, either ET's not out there, or he's out there and long ago settled th
> > entire galaxy, perhaps placing us in some sort of wildlife preserve.
>
> Or: there is a technological "sweet spot" that virtually every advanced
> civilization encounters where, once they get past a certain point not too
> far from our own level, the benefits of further technological gains are
> increasingly outweighed by the costs and disadvantages. So all the ETs have
> settled into a nice, comfy existence with a tech level approximately our
> own, and have forsworn the need for anything more.
>
> Or: many civilizations have achieved interstellar travel over the eons, but
> for one reason or another they didn't like it or couldn't afford to keep it
> up. In short, because it was just not worth the effort. Maybe the sky smells
> wrong in hyperspace or the fifth partial harmonic of the Sublime Wave is
> overmodulated, or whatever.

Another angle on this is that I think a lot of people assume that space travel is easy, they see starwars and star trek and the imagination runs wild. If any race had achieved such technology over say the last couple of billion years then they should have been here by now. The fact that it would seem they have not been here does not look good for the trekky fans out there. If that kind of technology and space travel is possible then some race somewhere out there must have achieved it by now, there has been somewhere near 13 billion years, say it takes 4 or 5 billion years for intelligent life to startup that means there must have been about 8 or 9 billion years of techno space travel going on out there, but where are they????.

I agree with the last part of your post, to me it seems far more likely that space travel is just too expensive, not only in money terms but who wants to spend years, possibly decades on a space ship to get to another star only to find that when you get there it's no real different from where you left all those years ago. I think it far more likely advanced alien races would opt for the robotic approach and just do what we have been doing sending out robotic probes.

As for looking for alien signals it may just be that the distances are too great and the whole point of trying to make contact becomes unrealistic and pointless. Not sure how accurate this is but I think I read that our tv and radio signals are only going to be detectable out to about 20 or 30 light years, is that true?? anyone know for sure.

And of course if alien races evolve along similar paths as we have they just may have learnt that when a more techno advanced race encounters a less advanced techno race it does not look good for the less advanced
race and thus they have adopted the view that it may be best to keep as quite as possible and not to advertise yourself.

>
> Or: ...
>
> --
> Terrell Miller
> millerto@bellsouth.net
> "The military can't respond quickly to emergencies"
>
> - Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute in
> Arlington, Va.
>
>