The SETI project has been going for a while now and yet we still have nothing. Just a reaffirmation of how lonely we still are in the cosmos.......Or are we?

If there is super advanced civilizations out there then why would they be using out dated technology as a reply? It would be like an internet forum user responding to a distant smoke signal.

If there is other beings with technology that would respond then the search would be even more narrowed down.

Finally. Are we going about it the right way?

just my 2 pence.

Those folks gotta have the best job in the world just sit there watching shows in wait for a call that hasnt come since they started

They're looking on the wrong frequencies..they need organic spice antennas...(shroom shaped)

S.E.T.I. (Spice..Easy Tuning Internally)

Well, what's the point of spending millions of dollars on SETI when they could be far cheaper alternative ways of communicating with exotic entities. One example is the TDC Device (Trans-dimensional Communication). Have a look -

http://robinsphysicalphenomena.webs.com/thetdcdevice.htm

Here is a quote from Robin Foy of the Scole Experiments:
"It amused us greatly that some governments - such as that of the USA - had spent billions of dollars creating 'listening stations' to apprehend any communications from outer space; and had achieved nothing for their considerable investment, whereas we - with a cheap £20 cassette tape recorder - had regular two-way conversations with 'other dimensions'!"

£20!!!! Honestly, I wish these so-called experts like Seth Shostak would investigate things like the TDC device. It could be just a hoax, but we'll never know for sure unless we start researching properly.

Please try to limit such posts/opinions in the Through the Looking Glass section, as this is not suited for the Science one.

Even if there is some super advanced civilization out there that now doesnt use any type of radio communications, if they used them at some point in the past, we might still be able to pick them up.

Also, the fact that we havent found anything yet means absolutely nothing. The universe is huge, and it takes a long time for signals to get here. If you go look out your bedroom window for five minutes, how many animals do you see? Do you see any lions or elephants or sharks? No, but it doesnt mean they arent out there. The amount of the earth you see looking out your window for five minutes is probably similar in proportion to the amount of the universe we have been able to search for radio signals.

We shouldnt give up on something just because we dont get results in few years. These things need more funding, not less.

explain to me how ancient civilizations have carvings in stone depicting nonhuman visitors.. it's gotta be more than the cliche "their minds were altered by hallucinogenic plants" hypothesis

and are you insinuating that transmission of signals in the electromagnetic spectrum are outdated technology? the sun emits gamma and cosmic rays all the time. it's all about monitoring the right frequencies. radio waves travel at the speed of light, they are just less energetic

What makes people assume SETI would be willing to tell you?

The former Canadian Misister of Defence made a public statment a couple years back at a conferance stating outright that the US and canadian military has known about unidentified flying crafts for years now..he also claimed more than that but I wont get into that here. The fact that the canadian minister of defence would make that kind of a public statement though is sort of hard to just laugh at.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGyFWyNuF3s

It's not that hard to beleive really..that we are not the only ones around.

I pay no attention to SETI really..there are so many military documents of UFO's that that whole thing is way more interesting..whatever the reality of a UFO is.

The fact a type of signal transmission occurs in nature does not imply it will remain as the technology of choice for advanced enough civilizations. The time period for an extraterrestrial civilization to release indiscriminately detectable EM signals might be much shorter than we suppose. The Drake equation proposes a range between 1,000 and 100,000,000 years (!) which is imprecise enough, and yet, it stays an estimated guess.

Civilizations achieving some sort of technological singularity might be able and willing to either scramble their signals, use transmission channels we don't even consider yet, or simply transcend the way we understand biology and technology.

Think about the Fermi Paradox. According to our estimations, we should have been colonized already. Then they ask, "Where are they?". And IMO, the answer is quite simple. They are already here, they've been here for a very long time. But they are around in their own terms, for purposes we don't yet understand. And according to the glimpses we've had of their ways of traveling and manifesting themselves, we are most likely clueless about their internal means of communication as well. If they use physical channels within our three-dimensional space, that is.

This is not to say that the SETI program should be dismantled. It's an exciting project and definitely one of the most relevant scientific initiatives in the last century. But the failure of the SETI program in its current approach should not suggest we are alone in the galaxy, at all.

http://www.youtube.com/w...I7Fo&feature=g-all-u

I saw this yesterday and thought the end (go to minute 10) was pretty funny, and somewhat relevant

Contact, the book/movie is an example of how it might not be entirely pointless. FTL travel/communication is not a certain impossibility. How that plays into seti i can't speculate, but its a start. No matter how rough and crude it may be, i don't think it should be something we just give up at because our current models don't provide a viable rationalization of its usefulness, assuming we actually heard something.

But we do have a long way to go, before i think any kind of contact will happen, be it us to them, or them to us. Were at the very begenning of interstellar travel, we've sent a few probes outside of the heliosphere, and thats about it. We have alot of problems at home to take care of, we are just begenning. I think if any intelligent life has observed us, they would prob just let us run our course. That could mean self destruction, or stepping up to interstellar travel/communication a few hundred years down the road, if at all, assuming its possible.

Why would high ranking people like Canada's former defence minister be comming foreward admitting that contact is something that happened already years ago though? I mean, these people are definatly in a position to knwo far far far more about it than you or I..and I cant seem to see what he can gain from making up lies about it, unless it is to cover up something bigger..which is pointless to really get into here becasue thats all just speculation.

The fact that him and others would even take the time to adress the situation formally this way should lead people to conclude at least something weird is going on.

In reguards to Mckenna..I am not sure Mckenna had any idea what he was talking about really..he just seemed to talk about it. I think he adressed what was relevant to him and sort of threw the rest away. His statements about it being too human etc are sort of like..so what? There are literally tons of ancient stories and depictions of crafts and beings that would seem to be in support of what Mckenna argued against. Why is it so impossible that there could be life out there that is actaully that much like us? You cant argue this with science so it is sort of pointless but is it all a coincidence that so many ancient cultures talk about man being genetically tampered with etc by beings from the stars?

I like Mckenna but this has always been one issue where I think he chose to see only one aspect that related to him..to validate his ideas.

Mckenna is getting far away from SETI anyway. My point is that it seems really weird that people still sit around talking about what if's and when this will happen etc when there is already people in governent comming foreward and there are offical military files on UFO's going back for years. Noone needs to come to concusions..other than that we should accept by now that at least the military seems to take the whole thing seriously.

I dunno about SETI..I just cant take SETI seriously.

McKenna makes a few stimulating points, but by bringing up some of the freak circuses we can find in the ufology world he is belittling the consistency behind a significant amount of the abduction and UFO sighting reports. In this I agree with jamie, TMK is of course going to fall in the same intellectual loop we all know and eventually try to adjust reality to his own mindset.

But I think what he says about the "humanity" of some experiences is relevant.

"Contact" and the SETI program are answers within the current state of events, they are steps in the way, but they are human, and that means somewhere between being clueless and understanding completely.

Think about our biology. A few hundred years ago, our concept of life was extremely narrow. We saw life the woods, in the soil and in the surface of the sea, but we did not even fathom what bacteria were. Observing an independent, alive cell without a nucleus was for sure as mind-bending as detecting a quark. But to do that, we needed a good enough microscope.

I think SETI is in a way trying to spot animals by plain sight. If it's not successful, that should help us develop further and figure out new ways of looking, and then we'll stretch our concept of alien intelligences. And maybe in order to really invest our energies in new ways we have to completely rule out the old ones, because we are stubborn like that.

Maybe psychedelics can be seen as a tool, as a revolutionary lens for a new microscope, that might help us broaden our concept of life. Some life forms might be even more different to ourselves than a bacteria is to a dog.

I also dont get why people assume that the entities people encounter with psychedelics, and the entities people claim abduct them must be the same..or dont cover a much wider arena than simply one or the other and dont just overlap in some areas..I mean we dont know anything really.

Surely the universe is much larger than what we try to fit into this or that little box.

Sorry to chime in late hut I saw this thread and would like to comment.

I support the SETI program. I agree with Jaime that if contact is made there are Govt. protocols before the information would ever be released. I think the information would still get out though.

SETI is a long shot but one worth taking. The confirmation of other Intelligent life forms would be the greatest discover of humankind. Like someone said its a huge freaking universe and not only that its also big in time. The signals SETI listens for travel very slow in relation to the size of the observable universe so even if there were say a thousand different intelligent life systems all directly beaming signals right to earth the odds of them reacing us in this lifetime are quite low. Even from close within our own galaxy.

So its a long shot but if we hit the jackpot it would be a very big moment in our species history.

The other thought I had reading this thread is that physics research like M-theory is showing that its quite likely that there could be very different forms of " intelligent life". Some of this universe and some not at all can or do exist in our physical world.

SETI is a good idea, do I think they will make contact? No, the time it would take for radio waves to reach the earth or for ours to reach them is longer than any of us will live. I do agree with the others in that they should definitely vary the 'type' of transmissions.

Human technology to us seems rather advanced but there are things happening in quantum physics research that make Newtonian physics seem primitive. Any advanced civilization beyond our own probably uses a communication technology so far beyond our that we cannot imagine it yet.

Do I think there is life beyond the earth? Yes I pray so but I think we are thousands of years too young to think that they will make contact with us. I hope I am wrong, I really do and I hop e they'll give me a ride off this planet.

I think the SETI search is worthwhile as long as it doesn't take too many resources. It never hurts to look . . .

But, . . . any truly high tech civilization will most likely not be using radio signals (as was pointed out above).

Also, sci-fi authors have posited and I think it's an interesting idea, that once cultures reach a certain level (if they are in any form that we might be able to hope to recognize or communicate with)they turn inward into cyber-worlds or download themselves into entire worlds that are deeply buried or protected and have no contact with "the outside Universe."

I think to dismiss the usefulness of it, at least in the short term, because our scientific models do not account for the possibility of greater than C transmission of energy/mass, is the same as saying no, the earth does not revolve around the sun, lets hang the guy that says otherwise.

Likewise, perhaps theres another structure outside of this energy/mass system we occupy, and its not unacessable. Lets call it hyperspace/subspace/etc for the sake of argument. FTL might be possible within that framework. But yeah, if not, then you have a ~100 light year radius for intelligent life to hear our electromagnetic transmissions. Its expanding obviously, but it also means however many light years away they are, thats how "late" the signal is arriving vs. being transmitted. And 100 light years is small beans, and statistically not very likely life exists and is listening within that radius. Then theres the time to send something back, either energy or matter.

I think the belief that the THEORY that FTL is impossible makes alot of people say its pointless. But there is no certainty in theorys, and in all likelyhood those theory's will be revised or obsolete in the future. Just willful ignorance, based on the fear of the unknown. But thats being whittled away at more and more as people see how scientific progress has changed their lives. The more people that cross over, and discard that outdated, primitive rationalization for the unexplainable, or abrasive to currently accepted models, the more computing power we collectively have as a species to move foreward.

Perhaps thats what an intelligent lifeform is waiting for. Because they know we are not ready to come to terms with such an abrasive realization/change in accepted theory, IE FTL transmission of information/matter. They might know making contact prematurely is counterproductive or irresponsible, or have done so, and like in contact we rationalized away the reality of what was going on as hallucinations, insanity, or whatever. You do see that alot with the collective dissmissive attitude of ET claims people make. Though occams razor has to be taken into account as well.

We are still very premature to be able to deal with contact. Those who would contact might know this and take it into account. IE, the "protected sanctuary" theory about how intelligent lifeforms purposely do not make themselves known to humanity.

..those that say advanced civilizations wouldn't use primitive electro-magnetic forms of comm.,
don't forget in 1977 on Voyager we sent off a gold gramophone record, plus heiroglyphs.. (and unfortunately, if there's nasty ones out there, our dna patterns!)

..

ps. entities people call 'aliens' on dmt experiences may be way more 'alien' in the physical sense than most contemplate..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal

Just sayin'