Search for Aliens Is on Again but Next Quest Is Finding Money
SETI: Is It Worth It?
Information technology's arisky long shot that burns upwardly money and might never, ever pay off. So issearching for intelligent creatures on unseen worlds worth the candle? Afterall, aren't there ameliorate ways to utilize our monies and technical talents thantrying to find something that's only posited to exist: sentient beings in thedark depths of space?
This is aquestion that surfaces more often than expressionless fish. "Why should my preciousdollars exist used for SETI when there's so much suffering in the world?"
Information technology deservesan reply.
To beginwith, let me to go a technical misunderstanding off the table. As manyreaders know, SETI is not paid for with your tax dollars. At to the lowest degree, not if you'rein the United States (where most SETI is conducted). Since 1993, when Congresskilled the NASASETI program, the search for signals from other societies has been fundedby private donations. To be candid, even earlier that appointment, the corporeality of taxthat was SETI-bound was only about three cents per year per citizen. But let'snot argue whether that was a heavy burden or not: the facts are, it'southward currentlyzero. If yous don't want to contribute to SETI, then it costs yous nothing.
That smalltruth hardly silences critics, however. They look at SETI donors, and wonderaloud why these folks don't write those checks for medical enquiry, foreignaid, or other humanitarian programs. In other words, the critics' plea is thatwe put all our coin where our collective mouths are.
Well, sucha circumstance has never been the case, and never should exist.
A cursoryglance at history shows that, even when people are routinely dying of hunger inthe streets, some fraction of any civilized nation'southward resources accept gone toseeking new things, or creating new things. Donors and patrons will alwaysspend some monies on activities that, when analyzed on the crassest, basest levelis "useless for club." They do that for lots of reasons –burnishing their image, love of Bulgarian ballet, or possibly only a want tosave fresh-water otters. But that's beside the indicate: if you give money to thelocal center association, peradventure it's because y'all're thoroughly altruistic. Orperhaps, deep down, you figure it might assist you or your family in the long run.Either way, it'south a skilful thing from order's standpoint.
Yes, butisn't "good" relative? Shouldn't there exist a cost-do good calculationhere? Shouldn't philanthropists opt for the well-nigh effective project, in terms ofsocietal comeback? That may sound skilful, but even aside from issues of freewill, that argument leads to a terminally murky boxing on what's important andwhat isn't. And sometimes what's unimportant today can become very importanttomorrow.
Considersome examples. In Italy at the offset of the 17th century, Medicifamily members Ferdinand and Cosimo proffered a regular allowance to anambitious academic from Padua, Galileo Galilei. The guy found spots on the Sunand moons effectually Jupiter. You could have bought some meals with that moneyinstead. But Galileo's work turned our worldview upside down by showing thatCopernicus was correct. I'chiliad glad he got the florins.
Two hundredyears later, Emperor Joseph II of Austria ponied up some coins to fund WolfgangMozart. Was this a adept idea? Mozart was simply writing music, for goodness sake.Yous can't eat music (unless you lot're a goat). Just I can feast on it, and I do.
Then thereare SETI's analogs from the get-go years of the twentieth century: the multipleattempts to pierce the heart of Antarctica and attain the South Pole. Theprincipal men who led these forays into the lethal landscape at the lesser ofthe globe – Shackleton, Scott, and Amundsen – did and then for approximately the samereasons that motivate anyone with appetite: career advancement, glory,gamble, or but to show that they had the right stuff in the white stuff.But we're not talking about their motivation: we're asking why anyonewould fund these guys. All iii had donations from individuals. James Caird, a wealthy Dundee jute manufacturer, gave Shackleton a hefty hunk of change; steel magnate WilliamBeardmore funded Scott on his first expedition; and Lincoln Ellsworth, son ofan American industrialist, wrote checks for Amundsen.
At that place's hardly any mystery about why theseprivate citizens would ship explorers to realms that offered only frostbite anda flake of national pride in return. Yep, they were in it for the prototype building– the celebrity that would rub off on them if their boys brought back the salary(simply Beardmoreseems to have expected to make a profit.) But these sponsors, similar their prot?g?s, were also driven bycuriosity – an inherent interest in exploration, in learning about the unknown.They wanted to know what was out there. For these folks – people who couldn'tbreach the frontiers themselves – it was exploration past proxy.
So, andperhaps as well apparently, information technology'due south not inevitably about financial return. Simply information technology'salso not always nearly new cures, new products, or even the alleviation ofsuffering. As Richard Feynman once said well-nigh physics, "it'southward like sex. Sure,it may requite some practical results. Just that'south non why we do information technology."
And really,I think the same is true of the quest to find a point from the stars. Fundersof SETI are non putting their boodle on the table for commercial or nationaladvantage. They're non hoping we'll be able to proselytize the aliens, nor dothey await an opportunity to beat out their chests with satisfaction if we findthem. And while in that location'south always the possibility that we'll learn wonderfulthings from an interstellar manual, SETI speaks to a quintessential humanneed even without that carrot – the quest to know. More to the point: to knowhow we fit in. What is our part in the enormous cultural tapestry that wesuspect threads the star fields of the Galaxy?
Are wetruly biologically or intellectually special? Ane radio whistle from the cosmoswould answer that question. Fifty-fifty if a discovery deflates our egos, it's stillsomething that would exist incredibly interesting to know. Ignorance is not elation– information technology's simply ignorance. When Copernicus argued that our view of anEarth-centered universe was parochial and incorrect, he cracked a door in a stuffyhouse. SETI could blow out every window in the place.
Astechnologist Paul Allen said while commissioning the first elements of the newtelescope that bears his name, "I similar to phone call SETI the longest oflong shots. Just if this assortment picks upward a indicate, that would be an amazing thing– a culture-changing result."
Surely, that'sworth the candle.
- VIDEO: Listening for Life with Seth Shostak
- VIDEO: Figure the Odds of Eastward.T.!
- All About SETI
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Seth Shostak is an astronomer at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Plant in Mountain View, California, who places a high priority on communicating scientific discipline to the public. In add-on to his many academic papers, Seth has published hundreds of popular science manufactures, and non just for Space.com; he makes regular contributions to NBC News MACH, for instance. Seth has likewise co-authored a college textbook on astrobiology and written three popular science books on SETI, including "Confessions of an Alien Hunter" (National Geographic, 2009). In improver, Seth ahosts the SETI Establish'due south weekly radio evidence, "Big Picture Scientific discipline."
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