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Has SETI actually found anything scientifically useful? (This is an honest question.)

_delirium 15y ago
SETI@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 ago
Looked 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 ago
  No, 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.
  - cryptoz 15y ago
    What if your researches had been looking at only 100 cells of the billions/trillions of cells in the lungs (for example), and they said they'd like to expand to 200 of the maybe 100,000,000,000 cells available. Do you still want to discontinue the search? It seems a bit premature at this point.
    - hugh3 15y ago
      No, but I'd want to see a better methodology than the one that can only check 1e-9 of the available search space every few decades.
hugh3 15y ago
Yes, it's found a wealth of evidence that there aren't currently alien radio signals being beamed at us. At least, in the directions we've looked, at the frequencies we've checked, within our feeble human understanding of what a signal should look like, we haven't seen any signals. That's useful information. But the returns rapidly diminish. The first thirty seconds you use checking to see if your car keys are under the couch is time well spent. But if you're still looking under your couch two hours later... well, it's possible your car keys ain't there.
- cryptoz 15y ago
  SETI has scanned the tiniest fraction of the nearby places to look. We're still in the first 30 seconds of couch-looking. It'll be centuries before we're at the 2 hour mark. Also, as the exoplanet hunt gets better and better, SETI gets more and more data about which stars are the best ones to look at.
dkersten 15y ago
Personally I wish the resources were put into folding@home and other similar projects. SETI did at least create the technology for this, which is great, but I personally don't find the project itself as anything useful.

SETI@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 ago

Looked 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 ago
No, 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.
- cryptoz 15y ago
  What if your researches had been looking at only 100 cells of the billions/trillions of cells in the lungs (for example), and they said they'd like to expand to 200 of the maybe 100,000,000,000 cells available. Do you still want to discontinue the search? It seems a bit premature at this point.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    No, but I'd want to see a better methodology than the one that can only check 1e-9 of the available search space every few decades.

hugh3 15y ago

Yes, it's found a wealth of evidence that there aren't currently alien radio signals being beamed at us. At least, in the directions we've looked, at the frequencies we've checked, within our feeble human understanding of what a signal should look like, we haven't seen any signals. That's useful information. But the returns rapidly diminish. The first thirty seconds you use checking to see if your car keys are under the couch is time well spent. But if you're still looking under your couch two hours later... well, it's possible your car keys ain't there.

cryptoz 15y ago
SETI has scanned the tiniest fraction of the nearby places to look. We're still in the first 30 seconds of couch-looking. It'll be centuries before we're at the 2 hour mark. Also, as the exoplanet hunt gets better and better, SETI gets more and more data about which stars are the best ones to look at.

dkersten 15y ago

Personally I wish the resources were put into folding@home and other similar projects. SETI did at least create the technology for this, which is great, but I personally don't find the project itself as anything useful.