Within the organization SETI (Search for Extra-terrestial Intelligence) there is a debate on how to approach the aliens. Should we just listen and wait for a signal or send or own messages letting them know we are here?These two strategies, active and passive SETI, both have their pros and cons. Alexander Zaitsev, Chief Scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics means that passively listening makes contact less likely.
Others like John Billingham, a senior scientist at the private SETI Institute in Mountain View and Michael Michaud, a former top diplomat within the US State Department are concerned that sending signals may attract evil aliens who will do God knows what to us.
SETI claims that if we ever get contact with some other civilisation out there it would probably be more advanced than us. This makes sense since even chimps, practically identical to us, living on another planet would not reply to radio transmissions. So they will have the upper hand, which makes the cautious approach more sensible.
But it seems to me that SETI is neglecting to mention other important scenarios. What about alien abductions? These suggests that they are already here tagging and monitoring us like we do with animals. I mean, if they’re anything like us and superior it makes perfect sense. Maybe they don’t want to communicate, but merely study us using as non invasive methods as possible?
I’m not against exploring the possibility of extra-terrestrials, but it seems to me that SETI has a narrow-minded approach to the question.
Filed under: Science, Technology | 4 Comments
Tags: alien abductions, aliens, SETI
>>Alexander Zaitsev, Chief Scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences’
>>Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics means that passively
>>listening makes contact less likely.
No, I mean that “Searching is meaningless if no one feels the need to transmit…”,
see The SETI Paradox,
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0611283
Alexander Zaitsev.
I already told several times, that in my early paper:
Sending and Searching for Interstellar Messages
http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.2368
was demonstrated that our transmissions during usual radar investigations of asteroids and comets give a noticeably more chance to detection Terrestrials by terrible Extra-Terrestrials than our transmissions during METI (Messaging to ETIs), or “Active SETI”.
But ignorant people again and again go into hysteric at some other blogs:
http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/01/16/be-vewwwwy-vewwwwy-quiet/#comment-308507
Alexander Zaitsev, IRE, Russia.
I already told several times, that in my early paper:
Sending and Searching for Interstellar Messages
http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.2368
was demonstrated that our transmissions during usual radar investigations of asteroids and comets give a noticeably more chance to detection Terrestrials by terrible Extra-Terrestrials than our transmissions during METI (Messaging to ETIs), or “Active SETI”.
I’m sorry I havent replied earlier. For some reason you got caught in the spam filter.
You say:
No, I mean that “Searching is meaningless if no one feels the need to transmit…”,
I’m not entirely sure I understand what you’re saying here. Is it that we need to send signals because if the others are anything like us they’ll be reluctant to send as well? But if they really are similar to us but superior, then surely they will think of this and send signals themselves?