The nice thing about SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) projects is that it makes very little difference if we don’t find anything. It’s not as though any conclusion can be drawn from a failure to find anything. We will just indulge in another round of speculations as to why we don’t. It’s not always clear why this is a science and not a religion. But hey.
Tag: SETI
Is Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) gaining respectability again?
Sarah Scoles: Proper science is now more willing to embrace SETI… Don’t just ignore all the outliers as outliers, in other words: Important truth, if not whole truth, can lurk inside of them too.
SETI aims to become more “respectable”
And get government grants. The thing is, we do not actually have any evidence-based reason to believe that ET is out there. Why should government fund a search for ET as an alternative to, say, health care and affordable housing, for which we needn’t search very hard to see the need?
Why are scientists “terrified” to do SETI research?
We need more “speculative work”? No, we don’t. It seems as though the enthusiasts don’t understand that people can just lose confidence in a failing program and there is nothing wrong with them on that account.
Why SETI is asking the public for help in dealing with ET
At the Royal Society summer exhibition. They are trying to create a legal framework that assumes ET’s existence without evidence.
SETI: Four origin of life scientists imagine the beginning
Bring your own snacks and pillow.
Is SETI an “occult cult with money”?
Much information is offered here: Astronomer Jill Tarter discusses the search for intelligent life (Phys.org). Jill Tarter, one of the queens of SETI, was given royal treatment in a Harvard interview. The interviewer could have asked some hard questions, but one never treats royalty that way. “For me, after millennia of asking priests and philosophers Read More…
SETI finds more creative ways to keep looking
The aliens, we are told, are needles in a cosmic haystack: A new calculation shows that if space is an ocean, we’ve barely dipped in a toe. The volume of observable space combed so far for E.T. is comparable to searching the volume of a large hot tub for evidence of fish in Earth’s oceans, astronomer Read More…
SETI reacts to the new study that says not to wait up for extraterrestrials
From SETI’s Seth Shostak, who surely doesn’t welcome this news, at NBC: A recent paper by three researchers at the University of Oxford is throwing shade on those who feel confident that the cosmos is thick with extraterrestrials. … If we own up to the true extent of these uncertainties and do the requisite math, Read More…
Debating Darwin and Design: A Dialogue Between Two Christians
A couple of months ago, I agreed to take part in a written debate with a good friend of mine, Francis Smallwood. Francis, like me, is a commited Christian. Unlike me though, he is also a neo-Darwinist. On his blog Musings Of A Scientific Nature he writes on many different scientific issues, although his primary Read More…