April 8, 2010 marks 50 years since the global search for extraterrestrial civilizations SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) exists in the world. Counting can be made from the first experiment called Ozma in 1960. The main result of half a century of work and millions of allocations: we still do not know if there is intelligent life in the universe (according to SETI)
As you know, search within the SETI framework is based on the use of radio telescopes, that is, the detection and registration of "suspiciously" ordered radio signals coming from space. About how such a project could have arisen and how it has survived to this day, despite its ambiguity both from a scientific and a practical point of view, the debate has been going on for the same 50 years as SETI has existed.
On the one hand, the chances of scientists working on a project of detecting a signal from brothers in mind seem to be completely negligible. On the other hand, the factor of chance or, if you like, luck can play into the hands of researchers. But only if the existence of other intelligent beings in the Universe is taken as an axiom. The opponents of SETI have a number of reinforced concrete arguments, the relevance of which does not decay over time.
First, it is the effectiveness of both the method itself and the tools. It seems to skeptics that relying solely on radio waves makes research in this area meaningless in itself. The following are data on the degree of probability of detecting "radio needles" in the universal "haystack". It is clear that they tend to zero, taking into account the size of the studied area, as well as the speed of propagation of the radio signal. “What will we do with the radio signal of intelligent beings, if we receive it, decipher it and understand it? They ask. - We can't answer. That is, we will be able to answer, but where is the guarantee that the addressee will receive it, especially if the receiver is located at a distance of several hundred (or even thousands) light years."
It seems that apart from a sigh of relief that we are not alone in the Universe, there will be no other effect from the discovery. It is a different matter if the message contains some valuable scientific and / or practical data.
This question is perfectly reflected in one of the best science fiction films of our time, Contact. The tape, by the way, just revealed the complexity of the attitude of individuals and humanity as a whole to the program of searching for extraterrestrial civilizations. It seems funny that, for example, Jill Tarter, director of the California SETI Research Center, seriously believes that the situation described in the film is quite likely. Recall that the heroine Judy Foster received a signal from space, containing drawings of a machine for moving in space.
There have been cases in history when misunderstood enthusiasts, "mad" scientists achieved results. But these scientists worked at their own peril, risk, and most often at their own modest means. The same cannot be said about SETI, which has a large number of funding sources, including, in the opinion of some experts, government.
The Sunday Times writes that, starting with $ 2,000 in 1960, the size of subsidies and grants, including from NASA, reached $ 13.1 million by 2010. And since NASA is supported by taxpayers' money, it turns out that American citizens are ready to pay for the search for little green men from their own pockets.
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Interest in UFOs originated in the United States after World War II. Not the least role was played by the semi-mythical story of the landing of an alien ship near Roswell. At that time, Americans everywhere "met" aliens, flew with them to the stars and even gave birth to children from them. This is probably why the SETI project that has arisen, one might say state, has evoked public approval.
Over time, the "plates" did not become less. They, as before, are all "attacking" the United States and Great Britain with alarming consistency. It would seem that with such a frequency of observations, even statistically for such a long time, there should be convincing documentary evidence of contact. But all the facts are hidden by the insidious special services. Meanwhile, SETI continues to search for radio.
Time does not stand still, neither does technology. For ten years now, there has been a SETI @ Home section within the framework of the search for extraterrestrial civilizations. Now everyone can provide their home computer for SETI calculations using a distributed computing system. Your computer will not be overstrained, but scientists are happy: by connecting computers around the world in this way, the computing power can eventually overlap the power of the world's most famous supercomputers.
But money is money - there are always few of them, and the problem of SETI as a project for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence does not seem to be in them. That is, the project, even with modest funding, is likely to work for a long time with a potential for the next 4.5 billion years (until the sun goes out) and with approximately the same efficiency as now, if everything remains as it is. The trouble with all UFO researchers and extraterrestrial intelligence seems to be different.
SETI does not seem to take into account the fact that aliens, if any, can have a completely different type of thinking and idea about the world, about the universe, about mind and life. And in this case, contact with them is impossible in principle. Most fantastic works and pseudo-scientific hypotheses also suffer from the human interpretation of the actions of guests from outer space. All aliens, no matter how they look as conceived by the authors, are attributed to the human style of thinking and hence the style of behavior.
But the Reason can take on such bizarre forms that a person is not able to identify in principle. The probability that our neighbors in the Universe think in similar categories to us is even less than the probability of their very existence. Therefore, even if they use radio communications, why should they send signals into space? If you look at the UFO reports offhand, they are full of purely human approach to any issue. We have so little information about the Universe, its structure, properties, principles and phenomena that we simply cannot imagine how the thought process of potentially possible aliens develops.
However, all of the above does not at all deny the existence of intelligent life in the neighborhood. There remains a trifle - to determine WHERE the neighbors live. What if this is not space, that is, not the space that we know? Maybe they are very close, and we are looking for them on the other side of the galaxy. It is likely that with the replenishment of our knowledge of the world around us, we will be able to quickly determine the likelihood of the existence of intelligent beings other than us. And here, oddly enough, money is needed not by NASA or SETI, but, for example, at CERN, that is, in those places where both theoretically and practically are investigated, changed, and maybe rewritten axioms describing our world.
