THE ASSUMPTIONS OF SETI
According to an article at Wikipedia on SETI, or The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI is the organized efforts by humans to detect alien intelligance. Projects described as being with "SETI" include projects funded by the United States Government. These projects often involve surveying the sky to detect some sort of transmissions from a civilization on a distant planet. SETI projects make assumptions to narrow the search, and thus no exhaustive search has been conducted yet.
A majority of scientists do not view the goals of SETI to be trivial. Our galaxy alone is 100,000 light years across and contains about 100 billion stars. It is incredible to consider the pursuit of searching the entire sky for alien signals. SETI is only possible because its pursuit is based on certain assumptions.
A main assumption of SETI is that humans are not particularly exceptional in our intelligence and that as an averagely intelligent race, there should be other species in space both more and less advanced, and that furthermore the other species would have some interest in contacting us. If this assumption is correct then communication seems imminent.
Another assumption is that we are most likely to locate life near sun-like stars. Larger stars have short lifespans and small stars provide limited heat and their planets are tidally locked, meaning that one side of the planet is forever in light and heat and the other side is forever in cold and darkness.
Around one in ten stars in our galaxy are similar to our sun in size. This is somewhere to start looking, but as we do not know what conditions would be conducive to life, all of space must be searched.
A third assumption of SETI is that intelligent life is able to exist on its planet without destroying it. Also, there is no telling how long the species has been in existence; our species has only been in existence for a very, very brief period of time, comparable to a blink of an eye in a munite's time. If our species is around in a hundred thousand years and is constantly sending signals, the possibility of our communicating with an alien species becomes more likely. If our civilization destroys itself or if other civilizations have self-destructive tendancies, then the likelihood of our communicating with another civilization becomes incredibly small.
Another assumption of SETI is that life may be where there is water. However water is hard to detect at such huge distances.
I learned all the previously described information from an article at the website of Wikipedia, at the URL previously specified.
According to an article at Wikipedia on SETI, or The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI is the organized efforts by humans to detect alien intelligance. Projects described as being with "SETI" include projects funded by the United States Government. These projects often involve surveying the sky to detect some sort of transmissions from a civilization on a distant planet. SETI projects make assumptions to narrow the search, and thus no exhaustive search has been conducted yet.
A majority of scientists do not view the goals of SETI to be trivial. Our galaxy alone is 100,000 light years across and contains about 100 billion stars. It is incredible to consider the pursuit of searching the entire sky for alien signals. SETI is only possible because its pursuit is based on certain assumptions.
A main assumption of SETI is that humans are not particularly exceptional in our intelligence and that as an averagely intelligent race, there should be other species in space both more and less advanced, and that furthermore the other species would have some interest in contacting us. If this assumption is correct then communication seems imminent.
Another assumption is that we are most likely to locate life near sun-like stars. Larger stars have short lifespans and small stars provide limited heat and their planets are tidally locked, meaning that one side of the planet is forever in light and heat and the other side is forever in cold and darkness.
Around one in ten stars in our galaxy are similar to our sun in size. This is somewhere to start looking, but as we do not know what conditions would be conducive to life, all of space must be searched.
A third assumption of SETI is that intelligent life is able to exist on its planet without destroying it. Also, there is no telling how long the species has been in existence; our species has only been in existence for a very, very brief period of time, comparable to a blink of an eye in a munite's time. If our species is around in a hundred thousand years and is constantly sending signals, the possibility of our communicating with an alien species becomes more likely. If our civilization destroys itself or if other civilizations have self-destructive tendancies, then the likelihood of our communicating with another civilization becomes incredibly small.
Another assumption of SETI is that life may be where there is water. However water is hard to detect at such huge distances.
I learned all the previously described information from an article at the website of Wikipedia, at the URL previously specified.
posted by Caroline at 1:42 PM
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