The Director of Research at the SETI Institute proposed a broader, multidisciplinary approach to the SETI search, beyond radio and optical modalities, in an article published today in the journal Astrobiology .
Phys.org says:
"Alien Mindscapes -- A Perspective on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence" authored by Nathalie A. Cabrol, Director of the Carl Sagan Center for Research at the SETI Institute, suggests the need for a sea change in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, where the full complement of physical, biological, computer and social sciences are deployed in a quest to look for life as we do not know it. Cabrol asserts that "To find ET, we must open our minds beyond a deeply-rooted, Earth-centric perspective, expand our research methods and deploy new tools. Never before has so much data been available in so many scientific disciplines to help us grasp the role of probabilistic events in the development of extraterrestrial intelligence. These data tell us that each world is a unique planetary experiment. Advanced intelligent life is likely plentiful in the universe, but may be very different from us, based on what we now know of the coevolution of life and environment."
[...] In her paper's call to action, Cabrol promotes the establishment of a Virtual Institute with participation from the global scientific community. The new SETI Virtual Institute will integrate our new knowledge to understand who, what, and where ET can be, and step beyond the anthropocentric perspective. New detection strategies generated by this approach will augment our chances of detection by identifying new survey targets. The purpose is to expand the vision and strategies for SETI research and to break through the constraints imposed by imagining ET to be similar to ourselves. This new endeavor will probe the alien landscapes and mindscapes, and expand our understanding of life in the universe.
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New technologies, strategies expanding search for extraterrestrial life:
Emerging technologies and new strategies are opening a revitalized era in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). New discovery capabilities, along with the rapidly-expanding number of known planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, are spurring innovative approaches by both government and private organizations, according to a panel of experts speaking at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Seattle, Washington.
New approaches will not only expand upon but also go beyond the traditional SETI technique of searching for intelligently-generated radio signals, first pioneered by Frank Drake's Project Ozma in 1960. Scientists now are designing state-of-the-art techniques to detect a variety of signatures that can indicate the possibility of extraterrestrial technologies. Such "technosignatures" can range from the chemical composition of a planet's atmosphere, to laser emissions, to structures orbiting other stars, among others.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the privately-funded SETI Institute announced an agreement to collaborate on new systems to add SETI capabilities to radio telescopes operated by NRAO. The first project will develop a system to piggyback on the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) that will provide data to a state-of-the-art technosignature search system.
"As the VLA conducts its usual scientific observations, this new system will allow for an additional and important use for the data we're already collecting," said NRAO Director Tony Beasley. "Determining whether we are alone in the Universe as technologically capable life is among the most compelling questions in science, and NRAO telescopes can play a major role in answering it," Beasley continued.
"The SETI Institute will develop and install an interface on the VLA permitting unprecedented access to the rich data stream continuously produced by the telescope as it scans the sky," said Andrew Siemion, Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute and Principal Investigator for the Breakthrough Listen Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley. "This interface will allow us to conduct a powerful, wide-area SETI survey that will be vastly more complete than any previous such search," he added.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 10 2016, @05:17AM
All the other intelligent races have read Cixin Liu's 'The Dark Forest'.
https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Forest-Remembrance-Earths-Past-ebook/dp/B00R13OYU6/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1468127713&sr=1-1&keywords=cixin+liu+dark+forest [amazon.com]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @05:20AM
Was it required reading at Starfleet Academy?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 10 2016, @06:35AM
That is probably another universe. Are there any Bolos there? Or the CoDominium?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday July 10 2016, @01:59PM
There really is no way to go FTL, our radio shell is now 200 light years in diameter, and the berserkers are on their way at sublight speeds......
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 10 2016, @04:38PM
There really is no way to go faster than light, based on our level of technology.
I am mindful that Russia produced aircraft engines during WW2 that were capable of "breaking the sound barrier". The US did likewise, soon after. But, no one reached mach 1, because the aircraft tended to destroy themselves. Finally, October 14, 1947. Based on technology prior to 1947, there really was no way to go faster than sound.
I expect that some really bright people will eventually look at things, one day, and see that everyone else has been looking at the problem all wrong.
Of course, the author I cited would probably agree with you. His invading force is moving toward earth at sublight speeds. That's why I haven't been able to read the conclusion of the story yet. :^)
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday July 11 2016, @04:04AM
The V-2 rocket [wikipedia.org] was supersonic.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 11 2016, @04:10AM
Granted - the Germans did it before we did. My bad. But, no one rode a V-2, that I'm aware of.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday July 11 2016, @04:36AM
Right, I wasn't certain you meant that.
There was a story here not long ago about a British scheme, which came to naught, to have someone travel inside a modified V-2.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 11 2016, @04:41AM
Wasn't that Doctor Who? :^)
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday July 11 2016, @01:37PM
Faster than sound was always an engineering limit. There are plenty of examples of things that are faster than sound in nature.
There are no examples ever of anything, anywhere, that goes faster than light.
The best you can say is that some theories don't actually prohibit it, but I none of them say how you can do it.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @06:52AM
They read SoylentNews comments and recalled their diplomat en route.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday July 10 2016, @04:45PM
No way, the e-book is over half the price of the hardcover. I'll bet the author only gets a buck out of that twelve, publisher gets four and Amazon gets seven.
And why does everyone link Amazon when talking about a book? You guys all have something against B&N? I'll bet my library has a copy, maybe even in e-book form so I wouldn't have to actually go there. Hey! It does! [sirsi.net] So does B&N, and their hardcover is a buck cheaper.
Amazon killed off most of the indie bookstores, don't help them kill the only other major bookstore.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 4, Interesting) by julian on Sunday July 10 2016, @05:37AM
Yes, for certain tragically irrelevant definitions of "yes".
There are compelling statistical reasons to believe we are likely inhabiting this universe with other life (even if just single cell-like organisms) but the distances are so vast and the speed of light appears to be such an uncompromising bitch that we are all effectively isolated from each other. Even communications would be too slow to be meaningfully useful beyond existence proofs--which while profound would still be very unsatisfying.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @05:53AM
There's no life out here on the sidewalk. I've walked for miles and miles and seen nobody! Maybe I'll keep walking. Damn the speed of feet is an uncompromising bitch. I put one foot in front of the other and running is the fastest I can do.
(Score: 2) by julian on Sunday July 10 2016, @06:32AM
Your size and speed scales are all wrong, rendering your analogy inapt.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @06:53AM
The scale doesn't matter. The sense of alienation is what matters. In a world of drivers, a pedestrian might as well not even exist. A pedestrian could take an hour to walk to a store while everybody else drives there. Drivers can drive to the store and back before a pedestrian even arrives. The drivers ignore the pedestrian who moves too slowly to bother noticing.
Oh fuck it. Here's your obligatory xkcd, you asshole.
http://xkcd.com/638/ [xkcd.com]
Haw haw. It's the familiar shit. You like familiar shit. So fucking apt, that xkcd.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @07:38AM
Oh, it's a car analogy. Now it makes sense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @10:05AM
Your size and speed scales are all wrong, rendering your analogy inapt.
My size and my speed have rendered me inept ... and oftentimes inert.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday July 10 2016, @08:07AM
There's no life out here on the sidewalk.
What, you don't see any weeds growing up out of the cracks?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 10 2016, @08:13PM
Damn the speed of feet is an uncompromising bitch. I put one foot in front of the other and running is the fastest I can do.
This is not even remotely relevant. We would have plenty of evidence, such as sound echoing off the side of a building, that things can go faster than one can run. We have yet to see anything physical go faster than the speed of light.
(Score: 2) by srobert on Sunday July 10 2016, @03:15PM
The distances aren't so much if there's other life within our solar system. We really haven't explored that much of it yet to rule it out.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday July 11 2016, @01:08AM
You're blinded by our collective impatience and youth. We've been civilized for a mere 5000 years or so, and it's only in the past 100 years or so we've figured out we're in a spiral galaxy approximately 100,000 light years in diameter. I've noticed that most popular SF has some form of faster than light travel, so the characters can bounce from star system to star system in mere days. It's cheap on a number of levels. Can keep recycling the same old characters, no need to think up new ones. At the same time we're treated to comfortably familiar, largely unchanging characters much like ourselves, particularly on lifespan, we get to visit exotic worlds full of novelty. That novelty and strangeness may require isolation to develop. Yet there is no Isolation if FTL travel is possible.
So what if travel or communication is only possible at the speed of light or slower? It's still possible. At the least communication will be done. Colonization of the galaxy-- if there are empty niches available, we decide to try to fill them, and we haven't run into some other problem-- will take thousands of years, but that is still relatively fast. We've imagined hostile aliens able to swoop in at any time and do anything they like to us and Earth, usually extermination, with us completely unable to resist because their technology is advanced far beyond ours. However, that has surely been true for the entire 500 million years there's been multicellular life on Earth as well as the approximately 4 billion years there's been any life at all. That danger is basically a fear fantasy. Much more threatening to our existence is ourselves. Another danger I think under appreciated is boredom. Could highly intelligent aliens have gotten bored with life and elected to kill themselves off, and that's why we haven't and won't stumble over any? Perhaps bored aliens seek novelty, and find recently civilized life that is still ignorant of the existence of aliens a rich source of entertainment, in which case the last thing they'd want to do is kill us off. Revealing themselves to us would be second on the list of things they don't want to do, as that would spoil the novelty.
I agree that there's probably other life out there. I suspect there's a lot.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday July 11 2016, @08:24PM
"Too much space" is an understatement.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Zz9zZ on Sunday July 10 2016, @05:45AM
I won't quibble, I feel it is a certainty that there is life elsewhere. As for communicating, I can only hope we are missing some rather big breakthrough. I think it is very cool that we can have some decent science behind predicting different types of intelligent life, and try to predict some of the problems we may run in to. It is likely to be total hogwash, since intelligent life can shape a lot of its own development. Regardless, the act of imagining differences will make us more open and capable to accommodate some of the *ahem* alien cultures and mental processing we may encounter.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @05:50AM
it's just you, me, the Cat, Holly, and a whole bunch of smegging rocks
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @05:57AM
Kochanski is hot.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Sunday July 10 2016, @09:52AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @02:30PM
Ouroboros!
I liked when he met his own actor :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @07:33AM
This exactly what hundreds of SF authors have done
Some were even made into movies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain [wikipedia.org]
List any relevant titles you can think of.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday July 10 2016, @08:42AM
Sounds like this guy has thrown in the electromagnetic SETI towel and is planning to spend the rest of his wasted life peering into a bottle.
Seriously, I've seen more meaningful problem statements and plans emerge from a cloud of marijuana smoke.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday July 10 2016, @09:29AM
She holds the title "Director of the Carl Sagan Center for Research at the SETI Institute" so it would be entirely fitting if she happens to be a pot-head. She seems to be calling for an lengthy process of brain-storming about SETI; worse things have been proposed.
There are other emanations besides electromagnetism: there are gravitational waves, neutrinos (mentioned in the older phys.org article [phys.org]) and cosmic rays. I'm not sure about the last, but astronomers are "looking at" neutrinos and gravitational waves already, although not mainly as a SETI thing. The phrase "beyond radio and optical" seems to encompass other EM bands.
Someone who looked at the Earth spectroscopically could notice that its atmosphere has both oxygen and methane. That sign of life could have been detected any time in the last few hundred million years.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday July 10 2016, @11:43PM
There are other emanations besides electromagnetism:
Any civilization capable of manipulating gravitational waves would already have visited us, and wouldn't use something that slow to communicate.
Not saying they haven't visited us. There are field mice in the park nearby after all. Such subtlety!
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday July 12 2016, @05:56AM
They may have.
Read the Bible... book of Ezekiel.
Also, Genesis has several accounts of "interbreeding with fallen angels".
I cannot rule out we have been planted here by someone else.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @10:16AM
Seriously, I've seen more meaningful problem statements and plans emerge from a cloud of marijuana smoke.
Someone: Dude, do you think there's life out there?
Someone Else: Out where?
Someone: Out there.
Someone Else: I hope so or our pizza is never gonna get here.
Someone: You think they have pizza out there?
Someone Else: Dude, that's it! That's why they came to Earth - for our pizza.
Someone: Man, I'm hungry. Let's order a pizza.
Someone Else: Sounds like a plan, dude.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @12:38PM
It's been too long since I was high. :(
I never should have listened to that psychologist who convinced me to stop using it. It's so easy to quit, too. I don't think I've ever had cravings except the craving to be free of this heavy depression. I didn't even notice it until a couple years had gone by, and then there was nowhere for me to get it. I woke up early, unrested and couldn't sleep. I was seriously contemplating suicide again.
Do suicides really go to hell? Or is it just a final end to the pain? Have I been suffering all these years, afraid of hell, when I could have been dead and free?
There is no loving god. Existence itself is horror and pain. Weed makes that different, but having weed just makes me a filthy pot head. How dare I be happy?
If I lived in Colorado, I could have some. It will never be legal here. I can't afford to move to Colorado. All my money gets sucked into just living expenses, especially a parasite living with me I'm too cowardly just to throw out on the street so they can starve homeless already. Death seems like the only thing I may have.
I hope I die soon “naturally” so I don't go to hell.
Nobody will ever understand why I need weed. People hate me for wanting weed. I have an IQ of 160 and it does me no fucking good. I don't want to be smart. I want to feel joy again. I never will feel joy again. Nobody wants me to feel joy ever. They just want to use me because I'm soooo smmmrrrrt.
Please let me die soon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @01:17PM
There is no Hell except for your suffering on Earth. If weed helps you maintain a healthier mindset, and feel better in general, then do yourself a favor and find a source.
Marijuana is not for everyone, but if some of its many medicinal properties improve your quality of life then do right by yourself.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by butthurt on Sunday July 10 2016, @02:03PM
To echo what the other commenter wrote, if getting high helps you cope or just makes you feel better then go ahead and do that. No one will think you "filthy" for doing so. Also please consider speaking to someone at a suicide prevention line; I've linked to a list of them at the bottom of my post. The feelings you're having could be a real danger to you.
http://www.suicide.org/suicide-hotlines.html [suicide.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mcgrew on Sunday July 10 2016, @05:43PM
Have I been suffering all these years, afraid of hell, when I could have been dead and free?
This [mcgrewbooks.com] might (MIGHT) answer your questions. However, God didn't give you your disease, Satan did. If you live in a state with medical marijuana you might want to look into that. If not there are other (although more harmful) medications, various SSRIs like Paxil and Xanax.
As The Pietasters say in their live album, "Xanax. Because life's too good."
People hate me for wanting weed.
Why should you care? It's none of their damned business. Oh, and throw out the parasite, my life got a whole lot better when I excised the human parasites from it.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11 2016, @02:12AM
Thanks very much. I'll keep trying alternatives.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 10 2016, @04:44PM
Naval gazing is for old sailors who wish they could go back to sea, to re-experience their youth.
Navel gazing is for the lotus eaters, I think.
Peering into a bottle is for old drunks.
But, I suppose you can bring all of those traits together in one person. Add some marijuana, and the younger generation will accept him as some kind of mystical relic.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Sunday July 10 2016, @02:07PM
The new SETI Virtual Institute will integrate our new knowledge to understand who, what, and where ET can be, and step beyond the anthropocentric perspective.
This is what SETI investigators have always tried to do. The fundamental idea has been to find universal physical constants that are invariant for any intelligent species. If a species wants to communicate, and is intelligent in a mutually compatible way, they will identify the same invariants. If they don't want to communicate, we almost certainly don't have the technology to detect them.
We are also restricted to the sensors available. Idle time on a radio telescope? It's pointing where? In what frequencies? Well, it's better than nothing, so it makes sense to give it a try.
I am all for SETI, and I ran the SETI radio analysis client for many years. However, at the risk of being cynical, this sounds like a funding tactic. "We're running out of funding from astronomy and cosmology, but if we involve more people - maybe they will give us money." The few specific ideas mentioned, like searching for "bizarre microorganisms", are already being done [wikipedia.org], just not under the SETI hat.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Sunday July 10 2016, @10:02PM
While it seems increasingly unlikely that we are "alone in the universe," I think it's far more important that we focus on what we are sure about. It seems pretty certain that humans are a very irresponsible species and are killing their own ecosystem quickly. As such, humanity should be looking to save it as well as looking to build alternative ecosystems and/or alter what it is to be human. The solar system has some interesting locations we may be able to alter to be suitable for humans but getting to other Earth-like destinations will require a fairly unethical multi-generational investment, an absurd advancement in our understand of physics, alter our physiology (a quantum leap in genetic engineering), a large advancement in cryonics, supplement our existing cryonics technology with nanites that can repair the damage or just turn ourselves into data/machines. Anyway it goes though, we need to look forward to expanding where and what we are if we are going to survive as a race.