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FYI: The title sounds like clickbait, but is actually explained in the article. As technology improves further in the next few years, we’ll be able to scan so m

FYI: The title sounds like clickbait, but is actually explained in the article. As technology improves further in the next few years, we’ll be able to scan so many more stars simultaneously that a possible discovery would be have to be made (if they exist). Overall an interesting article by Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute.

actuallyalys 9y ago
Agreed on it not being clickbait, although I wish he went into more detail about how Sagan et al came up with their estimates, since that seems to be key to his whole argument.
- rbobrowicz 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
- goatlover 9y ago
  The Drake equation along with the Fermi Paradox are well known in conjunction with SETI's goal for the past several decades. Seth, Frank Drake, Carl Sagan and Jill Tarter have all publicly talked about their justification for being confident in SETI's eventual success. Sagan even wrote a science fiction book about it that was made into a movie.
AlexCoventry 9y ago
Maybe not clickbait, but he sure buried the lede. Thanks for the TL;DR. Wasn't clear what his point was from a quick skim.
puranjay 9y ago
I fail to see any reason behind proclaiming 2035 as the deadline within the article. The author could have very well said 2030 or 2040 and it would have been the same article.
- gooseus 9y ago
  > Within two decades, SETI experiments will be able to complete a reconnaissance of 1 million star systems, which is hundreds of times more than have been carefully examined so far. SETI practitioners from Frank Drake to Carl Sagan have estimated that the galaxy currently houses somewhere between 10,000 and a few million broadcasting societies. If these estimates are right, then examining 1 million star systems could well lead to a discovery. I think he's basing the date on the assumption that we'll have searched 1 million star systems by 2037 and there are a few million broadcasting societies. Personally I think the odds are pretty damn long, even on the optimistic end of Sagan's and Drake's assumptions. Assuming there are 200-400 billion star systems in our galaxy, that gives us a 1 in 200-400k odds of finding one by 2037? I'll take the bet. Still a great read, I'm much more fascinated by the idea of artifacts. I believe that the longer we go without finding things, the more seriously we should be thinking about leaving things.
  - jackmott 9y ago
    would need to be a few million broadcasting societies, broadcasting in a way we can detect. and there could be aliens in other galaxies! we wouldn't detect them by 2035 article was pretty nonsense imho
  - aetherson 9y ago
    On the optimistic end of Sagan's range, there are "a few million" broadcasting societies, call it 2 million. If there are 400 billion stars, that means that there's one broadcasting society per 20,000 stars. If they're evenly distributed, and we sample 1M stars, then our odds of missing with all 1M samples are negligible (about 1/10^22). (I don't think that there are a few million broadcasting societies in our galaxy. But if there are, we'd expect to find them soon.)
    - cgore 9y ago
      I have trouble believing there's more than a handful of spacefaring species per galaxy. Even without FTL travel, one species could fill up all of the habitable planets in a galaxy the size of ours in a few million years or less, thanks to the fact that we breed exponentially. And there's been Sun-like stars for a while now in our galaxy, presumably with Earth-like planets orbiting them. So it's a matter of getting there first.
cryptoz 9y ago
> possible discovery would be have to be made (if they exist). ...and if they want to be found.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
I've never understood claims like this. For all we know, the universe could be infinite. Yes, that would mean the universe contains an infinite amount of energy and that we'd find dopplegangers of ourselves if we travel far enough, but we can't be sure it's not true. We can't even be more or less confident in one hypothesis vs another. Articles like this would be more persuasive if they had qualifiers like "Within our observable universe."
- liberte82 9y ago
  A lot of people don't realize just how much bigger the universe might be than "the observable universe".
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- PoachedSausage 9y ago
  I thought it had been established that the universe, as a (hyper)volume of spacetime is finite? That doesn't mean infinity isn't lurking somewhere beyond though.
  - posterboy 9y ago
    Maybe in theory but I don't think that's something that could be empirically verified. An axiomatic theory is rather a working assumption, because anything else is mathematically intractable. How could anyone understand something that's too big to understand? My impression is that Multiverse Theories are a fad playing on semantics.
- goatlover 9y ago
  The size of the universe is irrelevant to SETI, since they're just trying to detect alien civilizations in our neighborwood, which would mean the Milky Way.
- posterboy 9y ago
  > For all we know, the universe could be infinite if an infinite number of trees fall and and nobody is there to hear it, do they make a sound?
visarga 9y ago
Sounds great, but there is slim chance of finding them, and even if we do, they will be too far away. We should instead prepare to meet the artificial intelligences of tomorrow, which are a sure bet. It will be like Lee Sedol trying to understand AlphaGo, not like the linguist professor from the movie Arrival trying to understand Alien language.

actuallyalys 9y ago

Agreed on it not being clickbait, although I wish he went into more detail about how Sagan et al came up with their estimates, since that seems to be key to his whole argument.

rbobrowicz 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
goatlover 9y ago
The Drake equation along with the Fermi Paradox are well known in conjunction with SETI's goal for the past several decades. Seth, Frank Drake, Carl Sagan and Jill Tarter have all publicly talked about their justification for being confident in SETI's eventual success. Sagan even wrote a science fiction book about it that was made into a movie.

AlexCoventry 9y ago

Maybe not clickbait, but he sure buried the lede. Thanks for the TL;DR. Wasn't clear what his point was from a quick skim.

puranjay 9y ago

I fail to see any reason behind proclaiming 2035 as the deadline within the article. The author could have very well said 2030 or 2040 and it would have been the same article.

gooseus 9y ago
> Within two decades, SETI experiments will be able to complete a reconnaissance of 1 million star systems, which is hundreds of times more than have been carefully examined so far. SETI practitioners from Frank Drake to Carl Sagan have estimated that the galaxy currently houses somewhere between 10,000 and a few million broadcasting societies. If these estimates are right, then examining 1 million star systems could well lead to a discovery. I think he's basing the date on the assumption that we'll have searched 1 million star systems by 2037 and there are a few million broadcasting societies. Personally I think the odds are pretty damn long, even on the optimistic end of Sagan's and Drake's assumptions. Assuming there are 200-400 billion star systems in our galaxy, that gives us a 1 in 200-400k odds of finding one by 2037? I'll take the bet. Still a great read, I'm much more fascinated by the idea of artifacts. I believe that the longer we go without finding things, the more seriously we should be thinking about leaving things.
- jackmott 9y ago
  would need to be a few million broadcasting societies, broadcasting in a way we can detect. and there could be aliens in other galaxies! we wouldn't detect them by 2035 article was pretty nonsense imho
- aetherson 9y ago
  On the optimistic end of Sagan's range, there are "a few million" broadcasting societies, call it 2 million. If there are 400 billion stars, that means that there's one broadcasting society per 20,000 stars. If they're evenly distributed, and we sample 1M stars, then our odds of missing with all 1M samples are negligible (about 1/10^22). (I don't think that there are a few million broadcasting societies in our galaxy. But if there are, we'd expect to find them soon.)
  - cgore 9y ago
    I have trouble believing there's more than a handful of spacefaring species per galaxy. Even without FTL travel, one species could fill up all of the habitable planets in a galaxy the size of ours in a few million years or less, thanks to the fact that we breed exponentially. And there's been Sun-like stars for a while now in our galaxy, presumably with Earth-like planets orbiting them. So it's a matter of getting there first.

cryptoz 9y ago

> possible discovery would be have to be made (if they exist). ...and if they want to be found.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

I've never understood claims like this. For all we know, the universe could be infinite. Yes, that would mean the universe contains an infinite amount of energy and that we'd find dopplegangers of ourselves if we travel far enough, but we can't be sure it's not true. We can't even be more or less confident in one hypothesis vs another. Articles like this would be more persuasive if they had qualifiers like "Within our observable universe."

liberte82 9y ago
A lot of people don't realize just how much bigger the universe might be than "the observable universe".
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
PoachedSausage 9y ago
I thought it had been established that the universe, as a (hyper)volume of spacetime is finite? That doesn't mean infinity isn't lurking somewhere beyond though.
- posterboy 9y ago
  Maybe in theory but I don't think that's something that could be empirically verified. An axiomatic theory is rather a working assumption, because anything else is mathematically intractable. How could anyone understand something that's too big to understand? My impression is that Multiverse Theories are a fad playing on semantics.
goatlover 9y ago
The size of the universe is irrelevant to SETI, since they're just trying to detect alien civilizations in our neighborwood, which would mean the Milky Way.
posterboy 9y ago
> For all we know, the universe could be infinite if an infinite number of trees fall and and nobody is there to hear it, do they make a sound?

visarga 9y ago

Sounds great, but there is slim chance of finding them, and even if we do, they will be too far away. We should instead prepare to meet the artificial intelligences of tomorrow, which are a sure bet. It will be like Lee Sedol trying to understand AlphaGo, not like the linguist professor from the movie Arrival trying to understand Alien language.