
Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET - saticmotion
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stephen-hawking-and-yuri-milner-announce-100m-initiative-to-seek-extraterrestrial-intelligence/
======
agentgt
One of my favorite topics is the Fermi Paradox and consequently the Great
Filter (which someone already discussed).

One of my favorite explanations is that there are other ET out there but they
are two engrossed with their own entertainment to "give a fuck"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#They_tend_to_iso...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#They_tend_to_isolate_themselves)).
I find it amusing and ironic while also seriously consider it a possibility.

From wikipedia:

It may also be that intelligent alien life develop an "increasing disinterest"
in their outside world.[71] Possibly any sufficiently advanced society will
develop highly engaging media and entertainment well before the capacity for
advanced space travel, and that the rate of appeal of these social
contrivances is destined, because of their inherent reduced complexity, to
overtake any desire for complex, expensive endeavors such as space exploration
and communication. Once any sufficiently advanced civilization becomes able to
master its environment, and most of its physical needs are met through
technology, various "social and entertainment technologies", including virtual
reality, are postulated to become the primary drivers and motivations of that
civilization.[72]

aka Star Trek holodeck.... the best drug in the future.

~~~
Pigo
That feels like too much assumption to me. The scenario described well by
Michio Kaku is the only one that seems probable to me.

"Lets say we have an ant hill in the middle of the forest. And right next to
the ant hill, they're building a ten-lane super-highway. And the question is
'Would the ants be able to understand what a ten-lane super-highway is? Would
the ants be able to understand the technology and the intentions of the beings
building the highway next to them?"

So it's not that we can't pick up the signals from other worlds using our
technology, it's that we can't even comprehend what the beings from Planet X
are or what they're trying to do. It's so beyond us that even if they really
wanted to enlighten us, it would be like trying to teach ants about the
internet."

~~~
sixQuarks
Elon Musk disagrees with that statement. He believes once intelligence gets
beyond a certain threshold (which humans have), there are no such things that
are beyond understanding. Most people don't know how to write complex math
equations, but that doesn't mean they can't understand what mathematics is.

~~~
logingone
Elon Musk is an engineer, not a philosopher, and I stand to be persuaded, but
I find using him to counter Michio Kaku ridiculous.

~~~
adventured
A philosopher would be the first to understand that no one is or can be
excluded from the realm of ideas or thought.

Being a philosopher is not an extraordinary designation, such that it puts
them beyond the mental abilities of someone of Elon's obvious mental aptitude.

~~~
logingone
Exclusion? Oh dear, here we go with the black or white. "realm of ideas or
thought" \- and the simplification. "not an extraordinary designation" \- and
dismissing philosophy. "beyond the mental abilities" \- and more
simplification. "mental aptitude" \- you'll be fine then with neuroscientists
or some such fixing the falcon.

------
nogridbag
Please excuse my complete ignorance - this is something that continues to
perplex me no matter how many times I hear it explained and I may sound like a
complete idiot here. Can someone explain how this would work in layman's
terms?

Let's say that life on another planet 150 million billion miles away wanted to
send us a message. So that's 25,000 light years away. They send us one single
1 minute duration message at t=0 and that message travels at the speed of
light as an example. And let's just say t=25000 happens to be today. Does that
mean that we have a one minute window to intercept part of the message
otherwise it's lost?

If so, let's say the life on that planet was persistent and continued to send
messages continuously directly to us and no other planets for 500 years. Then
I would assume we have a 500 year period to play with. If they started sending
signals let's say 10,000 years ago, it seems we have absolutely no chance to
receive the message unless this program is operational for the next 15,000
years or so. But our odds of receiving an intelligent signal is vastly higher
simply due to the number of planets in our galaxy. Is my understanding
remotely correct?

~~~
jessriedel
Traditionally, SETI is not specialized to messages intentionally crafted for
us (or, in fact, necessarily crafted for anyone). It's just a search for radio
transmissions that are unlikely to have been created by natural sources using
various statistical techniques.

Even for intentional messages, it's certainly conceivable that another
civilization with sufficient power simply transmits the message in all
direction continuously.

~~~
scrumper
_Even for intentional messages, it 's certainly conceivable that another
civilization with sufficient power simply transmits the message in all
direction continuously._

I think that scenario would imply a relative scarcity of intelligent life:
after all, if a space-faring civilization needs to transmit powerful,
omnidirectional signals in the blind, it must be pretty lonely. Maybe, just
maybe, the fact that we're not seeing much is actually indicative of a fairly
rich sea of life in the galaxy, communicating point-to-point with each other.
Not so much to randomly overhear in that world.

~~~
RALaBarge
Personally, I am willing to bet that all intelligent life will end up being
quite lonely. Unless we find ways to bend space, there is little chance of us
ever getting out of our local solar system, let alone galaxy or the local
galactic cluster.

I am a big fan of science and science fiction, do not get me wrong. I do feel
that technology evolves and will surprise even the most tech savvy, but to
violate faster than light travel seems more far fetched than any theory out
there to me.

~~~
bhc3
I'm expecting somewhere way down the road, scientists will unlock the secrets
to prolonging our lives for nearly forever. They'll stop the telomeres from
degrading, come up with ways to address cancer quickly and effectively, etc.

At the same time, space travel technology will also have been advanced,
allowing for self-sustaining spacecraft that offer protection against the
harsh environment of outer space.

At that point, you can imagine that a hearty band of explorers will undertake
a mission of leaving our solar system and exploring way beyond our world. Who
knows how far they could get.

These are the sorts of advances I can imagine becoming real _many_ generations
from now. I wouldn't underestimate our capacity to make it happen.

~~~
S4M
If you want to speculate, how about the possibility of uploading people's mind
to a robot? Let's say that we are able to send outer space a bunch of self
replicating robots (they can travel to various planets and build a copy of
themselves using the raw materials they can find there). After some time, we
have lots of robots at many points in space, then you make a copy of your mind
and send it at the speed of light to those robots. Because of the self
replicating nature of the thing, we can have lots of robots so anybody who
wants to can upload his/her mind to one of them. That way we have a non risky
an relatively cheap way to explore the galaxy - it would just take couple of
thousands of years to have everything set up.

~~~
XorNot
Still a relatively slow way to get around. We have some co-factor here for
"median time between alien contacts" which might be thousands of years. In
which case they came, they saw, and the people who saw them remembered it as
folk tales.

~~~
scrumper
"Speed" could be seen in terms of perceived time for distance covered. No
reason with a robot-uploaded consciousness that you couldn't slow its
perception of time such that travel between the stars becomes something
comprehensible by a human-like mind. A bit like video game time acceleration,
but real.

That doesn't address what happens to the visitees, but if that kind of slow-
scale exploration becomes the default, then any civilizations on a similar
level to the robot explorers would have technology and societal structures in
place to support meaningful contact of that nature.

------
melling
I wish someone would instead come up with a project to really capture the
public's attention about space exploration. More interest means more funding.
The U.S. Budget is measured in billions. The New Horizons project, for
example, only cost $700 million.

The Lunar X Prize might have been that project but it doesn't seem to be
making progress:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Lunar_X_Prize](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Lunar_X_Prize)

[http://lunar.xprize.org/](http://lunar.xprize.org/)

~~~
jshelly
I'd like to think the podcast Radiolab has done more for generating interest
in science then any other project I can think of.

~~~
saiya-jin
sorry to break your perception (or not), but even as a space exploration
enthusiast, never heard of that. but then again, podcasts generally are on
outer rim of interest of general population

~~~
mrits
I've never heard of it either.

~~~
jshelly
[http://www.radiolab.org/](http://www.radiolab.org/)

------
jahnu
Hawking wants to find them, but seemingly not reveal ourselves...

[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/apr/26/stephen...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/apr/26/stephen-
hawking-issues-warning-on-aliens)

~~~
myth_buster
Didn't we lose that battle when we sent the Voyager with the Golden Record [1]
that carries the exact coordinates [0] (with respect to nearest stars) to the
origin of the spacecraft.

    
    
      Voyager 1 and 2 both carry with them a 12-inch golden phonograph record 
      that contains pictures and sounds of Earth along with symbolic directions 
      on the cover for playing the record and data detailing the location of 
      our planet. The record is intended as a combination of a time capsule 
      and an interstellar message to any civilization, alien or far-future 
      human that may recover either of the Voyager craft. The contents of this 
      record were selected by a committee that included Timothy Ferris and 
      was chaired by Carl Sagan.
    

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#/media/File:Vo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#/media/File:Voyager_Golden_Record_fx.png)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#Voyager_Golden...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#Voyager_Golden_Record)

________________________________________________________

Edit:

Voyager has on board antennas and a sufficiently intelligent civilization
would be quite interested in intercepting a spacecraft which seems to be on a
mission to somewhere carrying <creator>-knows-what.

~~~
usefulcat
No, I'm pretty sure we lost it well before that when we started spewing radio
signals. Voyager is a minuscule speck travelling in a single direction at a
snail's pace, while those radio signals are racing across enormous swaths of
space at the speed of light.

~~~
myth_buster
How about nuclear tests and explosions? Would that be drawing curiosity?

~~~
kenj0418
I wouldn't think those would be noticeable unless you were already closely
observing the earth.

I'm not a physicist, but I assume there isn't any detectable, unique signature
of an explosion that can be detected from space. Stories I've read about test-
ban treaties and non-proliferation efforts give the main mechanism for
detecting tests are the seismic effects they have.

------
codeshaman
A very noble endeavour indeed, but I still don't get it.

So let's say that by examining the petabytes of data that's received from the
telescopes, at some point a signal is detected.

Let's say that somehow all the competing scientests and skeptics, religious
and opinion leaders magically and peacefully agree: the signal is from an
inteligent life form. Somewhere close, just a couple of hundred light years
away ...

Then what ?

Do we build rockets to travel there ? Do we 'tune-in' and decipher the signal
? Do we send them our own signals in the hope that they are listening ?

~~~
SCHiM
Do you not think that actually knowing, really knowing, is a worthy cause in
and of itself? To have proof that we are not alone? Even if we can't get there
I think that certainty would be a very nice thing to have.

~~~
happyscrappy
I agree that knowing is a worthy cause, but never mind getting there we will
not even be able to have anything even resembling a conversation if you have
to wait hundreds of years for a response.

Edit: Does anyone know the current thinking of the odds that information could
be able to travel faster than light, ie a wormhole? As far as I know they are
very slim.

~~~
ifdefdebug
Anything contradicting relativity is currently out of the scope of science and
not backed by any observation whatsoever, so any travel-faster-than-light
theory has exactly the odds granted to it by it's own believers, and zero for
everybody else.

~~~
octatoan
IANAP, but isn't the only argument against faster-than-light-travel the fact
that it contradicts causality?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I don't see a problem there. The definition of causality is circular anyway.
There's no formal mathematical self-consistent proof of causality. It's just
sort-of assumed, and then there are back-arguments from relativity that say
"Well, that violates something we sort of assume."

The problem is that in science, if you assume things in a naive way ("What
goes up must come down." "Planets travel in circles") you're almost certainly
wrong - because the details of physical reality are usually counter-intuitive
and unexpected.

So what we really know is:

1\. Spacetime is a thing. It has bulk properties described by GR. 2\. Er -
that's it.

We don't know what spacetime is made of, or what you can do with the things
it's made of, or what their properties are.

So I'd classify this as "definitely not known due to lack of knowledge" rather
than "definitely not proven."

Proposals like Quantum Dynamical Triangulation, Causal Sets, and Loop Quantum
Gravity are beginning to ask what spacetime is made of, but they're barely in
their infancy.

The one thing they have in common is the idea that there's a network of -
something... - and the reality we recognise propagates across the network.

If the elements are discrete - and they almost certainly are, because of the
Planck limit - there will be some moment where an element changes state.

How fast does that happen? What's the mechanism? What limits the state
changes? (Adjacency? Some other property?)

It's completely mysterious, and I think it's unwise to make definitive
statements about it until it stops being a mystery.

------
codeshaman
If we really believe in scientific progress, then we must accept that,
compared to some time in the future, our current understanding of the Universe
is akin to people thinking the world was flat some time in the past.

Maybe the Universe's scale compared to our physical form has a purpose. Maybe
it's intended to _not_ be traversed physcally. Maybe that's the most obvious
conclusion an intelligent life form might draw from analyzing it's scale ?

Maybe in the future we will understand it just like the aliens we're looking
for did a long time ago - that the way to communicate in this Universe does
not involve physical travel or physical signals.

Just look up some pictures of Pablo Amaringo - a shaman making drawings of his
trips on ayahuasca. Notice the 'aliens' and the galaxies and the the distant
worlds that he is visiting while tripping.

Anyone who has been on powerful psychedelic trips would agree that there is a
lot of stuff to explain there, besides just the brain reaction to a chemical.
Stuff like traveling through time, out of the Universe, into the microcosmos,
before and after life, etc.

People did this for thousands of years - they used terms such as 'spirits',
'beings' and 'gods' to describe who they made contact with.

But what if those substances are more than just intoxicants, what if they
really trigger some unknown mind-space-time gateway which we haven't yet
tapped scientifically, which makes space and time travel possible. What if we
could approach this scientifically and actually make these trips predictable
and repeatable ?

What if the aliens are actually just high tech savages using advanced
psychedelic drugs + mind machines to travel and explore time and space, while
sitting in a forest around a fire ?

We should start exploring the inner space just like we are exploring the outer
space. When will we see $100m invested in that ? :)

~~~
furyofantares
> We should start exploring the inner space just like we are exploring the
> outer space. When will we see $100m invested in that ? :)

We already have: [http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/04/why-
spend-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/04/why-spend-a-
billion-dollars-to-map-the-human-brain/274594/)

And I'm sorry to tell you that I think brain science does a good job at
explaining perception when intoxicated without invoking "other stuff out
there"

~~~
codeshaman
Yes yes, the brain, the mapping, the neural network... the physical, chemical,
electrical thing that if wired properly would produce consciousness...

It would be so easy if it were that easy...

And brain science can't explain too much, because it couldn't research these
substances, since they're illegal everywhere in the world.

Edit:

Long story short - take the red pill and you'll see for yourself how little we
understand about the mind and the Universe.

~~~
johnchristopher
I'll juste leave this quote here:

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe
that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Let me add:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U)

~~~
johnchristopher
I enjoyed that ! Thank you.

------
dogma1138
Didn't Hawking said that actively looking for ET was reckless and dangerous
and that any contact with a more advanced civilization will end up like the
colonization of America with us being the natives?

~~~
scrumper
He said actively trying to contact was dangerous, vs. actively looking (i.e.
passively listening, which is confusing!) No harm in seeing who's out there as
long as they don't detect us.

------
rdl
Wow. Thank you, Yuri!

I suspect even if this is unsuccessful at finding ET, it will do lots of
awesome other things.

And if it is successful in finding ET, then it's probably the most significant
possible discovery.

~~~
ohitsdom
What "awesome other things" will this accomplish? No research is being done
with this, it's just pointing a radio dish at the sky and listening.

~~~
rdl
Data/signal processing at scale.

Qasar/pulsar surveys.

Other general radio astronomy.

------
Tepix
Amazing initiative! I wish we had more of these. And it's coming right after
"Armada" by Ernest Cline was released, which deals with aliens.

If the livestream is overlaid with page elements for you as well, try this
URL:

[http://livestream.com/accounts/6714632/events/4205486/player...](http://livestream.com/accounts/6714632/events/4205486/player?width=960&height=540&autoPlay=true&mute=false)

------
z3t4
If we ever receive radio from another world, they're probably already extinct.

~~~
adventured
Even if they were, that would be ok. Confirmation of other intelligent life
through received communication, would be a really big deal. It would likely
spur a large increase in investment into science, technology in general and
space technology in particular.

------
webwielder2
Wow, a colossal waste of money. Space is far, far too vast and the time scale
of human civilization far, far too small. To think of what other good uses
that time and money could be spent on (that goes for SETI too)

~~~
onion2k
Firstly, it's not a waste of money because it'll be spent on employing people,
building things, developing technology, etc. They're not just pouring money
down a hole.

Secondly, although it's _hugely_ unlikely they'll find anything, in the event
that they do it'll fundamentally change our perspective of who we are and
where our place is in the universe. The outcome, while improbable, is _so
huge_ it's still worthwhile trying.

~~~
stefantalpalaru
> it's not a waste of money because it'll be spent on employing people,
> building things, developing technology, etc.

The same can be said about digging holes and filling them afterwards.

------
rokhayakebe
For now I am more interested in terrestrial life which cannot be perceived
with our senses alone. Are there others roaming around next to me, but we
cannot perceive one another with some additional tool?

------
rdl
Interesting that SIGINT tools (zero sum at best, and probably negative sum)
are basically going to be useful for something which extends the ears of
humanity in a positive way.

------
brock_r
Can a satellite "orbit" so that it imitates a star?

Or would it have to "stand still" out there, which would make it fall back to
earth?

~~~
dysfunction
A satellite can appear to "stand still" from the perspective of an observer on
the ground, so long as it orbits at the right altitude/speed (speed and
altitude of an orbit are proportional); the satellite's orbital period just
has to be exactly a day long. For Earth, that altitude is about 42,000km up.
However, it would still be easily determined to be a nearby satellite as
opposed to a distant star by triangulation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_orbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_orbit)

~~~
brock_r
But the stars don't stand still with respect to an observer on the ground.

------
thebouv
Funny enough, I wonder what the numbers would hit if they crowdfunded
something like this? I think the number would be surprisingly high.

------
hgfischer
I think Giorgio A. Tsoukalos would be the best choice instead of Stephen
Hawking, who is against finding ETs.

------
ohitsdom
Seems like a huge waste of money to me. If you're interested in ET, why not
invest in the space industry to advance our capabilities? It'll be hard to
interact with ET when as a society we are essentially[0] earth bound.

[0]
[http://howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/](http://howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/)

~~~
netcan
I guess that's a matter of defining "earth bound." If we don't have people in
space but we have probes on all the nearby planets, moons, comets and anything
with enough gravity to hold one down, does that count as earth bound?

ATM, a manned mars mission is in the "very hard and expensive" file. Unmanned
missions to anywhere in our solar system are doable on smaller budgets. We can
use telescopes to look much further. In all cases information is being moved
back and forward between earth and space.

~~~
ohitsdom
Agreed that manned missions are hard and expensive. That is an area that $100
million could help (even in a small way).

But even robotic missions are very limited. We just had our first flyby of
Pluto (not an orbiter). Jupiter doesn't get an orbiter until 2016 (Juno). No
orbiters around Neptune or Uranus. So, lots still left to explore and observe
with probes in our own solar system.

------
k8tte
one week Hawking warns about skynet-style AI. next week he insist of us go
hunting it. good troll?

~~~
JosephRedfern
It strikes me that the two are very different things. ET != AI.

~~~
icanhackit
Funny you say that:

 _The Dominant Life Form in the Cosmos Is Probably Superintelligent Robots

“If they were interested in us, we probably wouldn’t be here,” said Schneider.
“My gut feeling is their goals and incentives are so different from ours,
they’re not going to want to contact us.”

That’s a welcome divergence from Steven Hawking’s claim that advanced aliens
might be nomads, looking to strip resources from whatever planets they can,
and that all efforts to contact said aliens may end in our own demise.

“I’d have to agree with Susan on them not being interested in us at all,”
Shostak said. We're just too simplistic, too irrelevant. “You don’t spend a
whole lot of time hanging out reading books with your goldfish. On the other
hand, you don’t really want to kill the goldfish, either.”_

[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-dominant-life-form-
in-t...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-dominant-life-form-in-the-
cosmos-is-probably-superintelligent-robots)

EDIT - HN discussion for that article, 212 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8773778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8773778)

~~~
JosephRedfern
Hah. I suppose it depends how you classify "Artificial Intelligence". It was
my understanding that Hawking was concerned about humans creating skynet-style
AI ourselves, rather than discovering AI created by an Extra-terrestrial.

------
queryly
I don't think there is ET. The probability that atoms fuse together to
construct a organism that is capable of turning sun into bio-energy and
multiplying itself just by chance is too small to have two civilizations in
this universe.

------
pinkskip
seems legit :D

~~~
pinkskip
My comment gets voted for having a sense of humour? Charming HN.

