
SETI telescope array produces first science results - malvosenior
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17634-seti-telescope-array-produces-first-science-results.html
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presidentender
_One question the ATA aims to answer is a mystery of missing gas. Star-forming
regions don't seem to have enough molecular gas to keep up the star-formation
rates we observe._

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=763661>

It's the jellyfish.

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sfphotoarts
"..Even at 42 it's interesting..."

Somehow I find that hard to believe its just a co-incidence.

~~~
JacobAldridge
And we already know that the population of the universe is 0.

After all, there can only be a finite number of populated worlds in an
infinite universe of worlds, and any finite number divided into infinity is
effectively 0.

(And yes, I appreciate the fallacy of assuming an infinite universe while
assuming finite anything within it.)

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TweedHeads
Personally I think we should stop SETI on its tracks.

If we find intelligent life in the universe (we let them find us) chances are
they will come, if they are more advanced than us, and exterminate us for
their consumption.

As we would do if we found inferior species in the universe.

If we find monkeys on mars, rest assured we will use them for experiments and
take everything they have for our use.

So, if I were a monkey on mars I wouldn't be flashing that light to us in this
very moment.

~~~
sorbus
It seems safe to assume that, if there are any other civilizations out there
who would care (either enough to try to visit or enough to look), they'll know
that we're here - after all, we've been sending bunches of stuff out into
space for a while, mostly radio and television signals, and it would be hard
to miss it constantly (even with telescopes which only look at a very small
area of the sky, they would have a window of many decades to look at us and
notice _).

So, why bother not looking for them? At least this way we'll have a potential
warning.

Secondly, unless they've found a way around the issues with long-distance
travel (hugely energy intensive if you're sending actual bodies, takes
forever, generation ships have space for errors / cultural shifts)_ _, it's
unlikely that they'll come to visit unless they have to (for example, if
they've ruined their home planet and decided to set out in generation ships).

Also, you seem to have the misconception that SETI is going to allow other
things to find us. It won't; the fact that we're using radio waves so much
will. It will just give us a warning that there's someone else out there.

_ Not considering the possibility that they've move on from radio to something
else, existed thousands of years ago and then all died out because they ruined
their planet (and the light from the thousands of years ago when they were
alive is only just reaching us), never discovered radio, or all the other
things which would prevent us from noticing them / them from noticing us.

 __Though if they've got uploading and assemblers, they might visit - send a
tiny probe with some number of minds is stasis on it, and configured to
assemble whatever they need to communicate / destroy us all.

