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SETI Needs Your Help to Resume Search for Extraterrestrial Life
- heyrhett 15y agoDo they accept bitcoin?
- kanamekun 15y agoI just went through the donation checkout process, and they only accept Visa and Mastercard.
- pavel_lishin 15y agoCan you buy anything with bitcoins other than drugs right now? edit: I know someone will roll their eyes at this comment and proceed to defend bitcoin, but seriously - what can SETI buy with bitcoins that's useful to them? And "anything people are willing to sell, man, it's just a currency!" is a trivial answer.
- blhack 15y agoIf you haven't yet seen the wonderful "Sagan Series" on youtube, start with this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHuve33yOVY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHuve33yOVY or this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxsJeND_D-k&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxsJeND_D-k&feature=relat... Honestly, watching this chokes me up a little bit. Watching the last shuttle flight, then seeing SETI have to realistically think about parking all of their listening equipment is just...sad. Too many people get caught up in the "why" of this stuff. You're looking at it wrong. Look at space travel as an expression of humanity, and a really important one. Ancient people built Pyramids, or Stonehenge, or the Colosseum. I wonder how many Romans thought building the Colosseum was a waste of money. The shuttle, or SETI are our Pyramids. It's disgusting that we can spend as many billions of dollars a year as we do on blowing each other up, but things like "Let's see what's on the other side of that proverbial mountain" get defunded because they're "pointless".
- tluyben2 15y agoCan I upvote more than once? Getting out beautiful soup and 1000 proxies
- mkrecny 15y agoWell said
- farnsworth 15y agoWeren't the Pyramids an expression of ego, and the Colosseum a sports arena? That said, I love the Sagan Series and agree with the spirit of your post.
- blhack 15y agoWasn't the Apollo program just a show of force against the Russians? Wasn't the shuttle the same thing? Wasn't SETI just a pointless project by a bunch of those pesky nerds? Do you think that the Pyramids or the Colosseum were a waste of money?
- 15y ago
- saturn7 15y agoOkay now only $1,933 after my donation. :) The Sooner we can get of this planet the better.
- blhack 15y agoThank you. Seriously thank you.
- jerf 15y agoThis does virtually nothing to get us off the planet. Yes, I can construct a lengthy chain of events whereby a discovery that wouldn't have happened without this donation encourages us to further our space program, but just mailing money to Burt Rutan is more likely to have a direct result.
- saturn7 15y agoI am in awe of you ability to construct a lengthy chain of events whereby this is possible. You must know computers and stuff,
- diolpah 15y agoI suggest that SETI attempt to pitch the research grant divison of Hadden Industries. It is my understanding that S. R. Hadden is interested in this type of thing.
- jackpirate 15y agoHas SETI actually found anything scientifically useful? (This is an honest question.)
- _delirium 15y agoSETI@Home did some meta-useful work pioneering crowdsourcing of scientific-computing resources (later used by Folding@Home and others). No idea about the actual results of the data collection/analysis, though. Obviously they haven't succeeded in the headline goal of finding extraterrestrial intelligence, but I would be surprised if they haven't found something interesting about analyzing vast quantities of signals (and anomalies in those signals) along the way. Plus, I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt because they're asking for an amount of money ($200k) that, by the standards of scientific research grants, is extremely small, so it's not taking a huge risk.
- jasonlotito 15y agoLooked it up on the SETI website. First thing I found that has a real, direct impact: > The signal processing techniques used for Project Phoenix have already been applied to the detection of breast cancer. Check it out (http://www.seti.org/ http://www.seti.org/) there are lots of thing SETI does, and not just searching for little green men.
- ceejayoz 15y ago> Has SETI actually found anything scientifically useful? Would you also reject a research grant for a potential cancer cure based on the fact that the researcher hasn't cured cancer?
- hugh3 15y agoNo, but if the hypothesis were "lemons cured cancer", and decades of evidence had failed to show any evidence of lemons curing cancer, and the researchers are still saying "Hmmm, maybe we need to cut the lemons up in a different way" then I'd be disinclined to continue funding it.
- 15y ago
- whackedspinach 15y agoFunding successful!
- drusenko 15y agoThat didn't take too long :)
- nikcub 15y agohow much longer will they operate after this fundraising drive? for eg. are they just going to have to ask for donations every year from now?
- heyrhett 15y agoBehold! The power of hacker news!