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$200M gift propels scientific research in the search for life beyond Earth
- theyinwhy 3y agoPerhaps it would be better not to attract too much extraterrestrial attention.
- m3kw9 3y agoI really hope they don’t just continue to use the same methods by crunching data, they need to create different little startups and come up with something creative to find these things
- pixelpoet 3y agoOr just fund education, much needed besides, that new generations can more easily study astronomy.
- renewiltord 3y agoGuaranteed mechanism to get no outcome.
- elashri 3y agoGuaranteed seems very strong claim to aay about education of future generation and what could they do about particular field. The only thing that might warrant usage of this word is if you have a time machine, but obviously you don't.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoI think the point is that "education" as a field is so heavily infested with parasites and grifters that it can easily eat extra $200M and then have nothing to show for it.
- pixelpoet 3y agoAs opposed to Seti, who will have something to show for it? I really find it difficult to believe that 200m into science education funding will make less of an impact on the chances of finding alien life than directing it at Seti.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago$200M, even narrowed to "science education", will turn into couple bullshit grants, and/or a deal with a commercial vendor to upgrade computers at some facility, and/or (most likely) a new sports stadium, because US universities for some reason love to spend ridiculous amounts of money on sports facilities. Point being, education is a very large field, with a very large capability to burn money in operational expenses, spending it all on doing a little bit more of the same thing it's already doing. SETI, in contrast, is a small, underfunded corner of STEM R&D, at the bleeding edge of astrophysics, signals processing and a bunch of other fields. Pouring $200M there has a much greater chance of pushing some actual research or technology development, with gains flowing back to society and economy (including to science education). SETI has much less space for grifters, and it's much easier to spot money going the wrong way. Or, in short, a cup filled with water will make more visible impact when poured into a portable bottle, than when poured into a lake.
- User23 3y agoCalifornia has some of the best funded public schools in the country. California has some of the smartest technologists and inventors in the world. California has mostly crappy public schools. Clearly adding money has very low marginal utility in the current educational marketplace.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 3y agoSeems like they should collect more data and provide it to competing groups for analysis of the data lake.
- reactordev 3y agoAssuming ET’s output the same technological garbage like radio waves as we do is such a short sighted view of the universe. Assuming alien life is talking on Walkie-talkies or sending radio transmissions between ships like it’s 1944 is simply dumb science. We should invest the money into better methods of observation and discovery rather than AWS data lakes.
- macksd 3y agoIf you were given $200M and SETI's goal, what would you be investing in?
- sandworm101 3y agoShort laser pulse detection. So-called "close" SETI looking for emitters in our outer solar system.
- harveywi 3y agoThe real problem with previous efforts for finding extraterrestrial life wasn't the technology, it was the lack of competition plus the open ended and uncertain goal. A seed rounds of $50M should be given out to two groups of competing researchers: One group tries to find evidence of extraterrestrial life, and the other group tries to find evidence of the abominable snowman in the Tibetan mountain ranges. The first group to make a discovery takes home the remaining $100M and settles the SETI vs. Yeti debate once and for all.
- rvba 3y agoI would invest it in projects that kill ACTIVE SETI, because active is incredibly dangerous from rational standpoint.
- myth_drannon 3y agoGenerative AI is a good candidate for that.
- macksd 3y agoHow would you propose using generative AI to detect ETI, exactly?
- a_wild_dandan 3y agoProbably by using fleets of diverse AI agents as startups to organize, research, simulate/prototype, refine, and propose novel ETI detection systems. This approach is already used in other domains, after all. Whether it's a good angle, I don't know. But it's a perfectly reasonable one, methinks.
- macksd 3y agoWhere else is this approach being used?
- cryptoz 3y agoI've been idly wondering if it's worth it to apply to YC next batch with the idea of launching dozens of 550AU missions for solar-gravitational-lens HD photographs of nearby exoplanets. I've been wondering a lot recently about our visibility to potential life out there; they may well be watching Earth in HD since we can imagine how we might do that too. So I think a great step would be launching a bunch of long missions that will eventually return us HD video of exoplanets within like 200 ly or more distant maybe. That will reveal a lot of info about close-by worlds and may produce copious evidence for life on other planets. Would be very expensive, take a few decades at least, and the profit comes from...governments? Haha not sure about that yet. Might have to pitch it as a planetary defense company and also build tech to zap asteroids etc. Basically, NASA is doing the great hard science obviously, but is outdone in pacing and tech by SpaceX and other startups; NASA plans to send 1-5? 550 AU missions eventually. But they're in no rush. I want to rush it.
- m3kw9 3y agoStuff like that usually in billions
- cryptoz 3y agoYeah it’ll take a lot of money for sure. Needs new propulsion like nuclear thermal or something to get to target distance in our lifetimes. Would be very expensive but I think cheaper per mission, if you start off with a plan to send a lot of them. Might take in full some tens or hundreds of billions. YC I am aware will not fund on that level haha, but maybe they would have an eye for wanting to start it off.
- floxy 3y ago>Needs new propulsion like nuclear thermal or something to get to target distance in our lifetimes. Here's a cool video describing solar sails that are supposed to be able to accelerate up to a final velocity of 22 AU/year, which get things to 550AU in 25 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQFqDKRAROI&t=883s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQFqDKRAROI&t=883s This video was based on the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08421 https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08421
- flatline 3y agoWhere is the financial incentive beyond the seed funding here? Big scientific efforts like this have always been well-suited to government funding, or in some cases industrial R&D by a big established group with a separate profit center. When you have a project with a 20+ year time horizon for any meaningful progress, I just don’t think the capitalist model is going to yield fruit. I agree with your other point that data crunching is not necessarily going to help. Low-power RF emission from lightyears away will be well below the noise floor. Some more innovative, speculative approaches would be a better use of that money, even if they all lead to dead ends.
- msie 3y agoImagine if 200M was committed to novel ways of imaging the human body.
- erulabs 3y agoPor que no los dos?
- a_wild_dandan 3y agoImagine...our current reality? If you insist! ;)
- alluro2 3y agoWhy not instead imagine spending small 10% of world's annual miltary budget, $150B every year, on any worthy scientific endeavor.
- golergka 3y agoImagine game theory implications of all countries agreeing to something like this, monitoring to make sure they actually do this and eventual fraud that will take place. No thank you.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoThat's yes thank you from me - the game-theoretic implications of such scenario being successfully pulled off, would allow us to solve climate change and poverty and peace next.
- golergka 3y agoDefine “successfully”. UN also started with great promises and now it has Iran representatives heading human right councils.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoMutual consensus among multiple - say, at least 5 - nations chosen for maximum mutual hostility, that leads to proportional reduction of military spending by sum of 10% of world's total military spending, done honestly and in a way that doesn't alter the balance of power. I.e. the kind of coordination game theory decrees as effectively impossible. Were such event to happen, whatever mechanism drove it could be used to reduce emissions and implement effective climate change mitigations pretty much on the spot. And if it generalizes as solution to coordination problems, it would literally solve all major issues plaguing humanity to date.
- abdullahkhalids 3y agoThe scientific journey of our place in the cosmos is a humbling one. - Many thought Earth was at the center of the universe. First we found it circled the Sun. - Next, we found our solar system was nothing special in the Milk Way Galaxy, and the Milky Way was nothing special in the universe. - Many thought humans were distinct from other animals. Then we discovered that all animals just evolutionary descendants of some primordial cells. The journey cannot stop. The search for extraterrestrial life might succeed or it might not. But what it does is that it humbles us. It reminds us that we must not be the only life in the Universe. Only by searching for that life can we truly acknowledge our humble position in the cosmos. And counter the arrogance of the Homo Sapiens.
- carabiner 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it a lot and we've had to ask you this multiple times before. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- YossarianFrPrez 3y agoFunding for the sciences is always welcome; it's going to be interesting to see what SETI does with this money. Seeing this news makes me wish more donors donated to science at the department level, or to every lab in a given department. Money is so incredibly tight in Academia that the entry level job (being a graduate student) typically gives people around minimum wage or less for five years to make a life with. This is an absolutely terrible incentive for attracting some of the best and the brightest to enter the funnel of knowledge production workers (e.g. grad students, post-docs, researchers, and professors.) I don't know how this can be fixed systemically, but donors could help change the incentives and improve the quality of science for all.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- falcor84 3y agoAs an adversarial opinion on this, I don't think that good science is bottlenecked in any way by a dearth of grad students. Conversely, society probably already has enough of the "best and brightest" in academia, and it should do more to funnel them to other, more directly practical, endeavors.
- YossarianFrPrez 3y agoInteresting point; thanks for providing the opposite opinion. It's not that no one is applying to grad school, it's that brilliant, creative people with good job prospects are being "pre-diverted" away from the sciences. For everyone who complains about the quality of the scientific literature, the replication crisis, the golden quarter, I think part of it ultimately stems from the way the funnel is set up.
- nradov 3y agoThose problems are real, but they aren't caused by a lack of the best and brightest in the sciences. The problems are structural due to misaligned incentives. Intelligence isn't particularly correlated with ethics or conscientiousness.
- chubot 3y agoNot knowing much about non-profits, I wonder if donations this large ever create political problems for the recipient? Like I imagine tons of people will be hitting them up for pet projects of varying quality after this announcement. Though looking at Wikipedia, they have been around since 1984, with many high profile donors, so maybe they are institutionally able to deal with huge variations in budget? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI_Institute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI_Institute My (uninformed) guess is that $200 M must to be the biggest gift by an order of magnitude, or maybe 2. Or are these kind of estate gifts split up over multiple years, with strings attached? Either that or you just get one huge check :)
- spindle 3y agoI've worked for a few medium-sized non-profits that fund research. Getting lots of money once you're already established has no downsides. You probably already have a contingency plan for how to spend it, and if not you and your board establish a new process for calling for and approving projects. It's not rocket science (sorry - I don't want to appear dismissive of your post - I just couldn't resist that joke).
- samdcbu 3y agoSETI received ~$28m in donations and contributions in 2022, according to their tax filings [1] As mentioned in the press release, contribution will be used at least in part as an endowment, providing perpetual funding for ongoing programs. Also, it is my understanding that large philanthropic gifts, particularly from estates, often come in the form of non-cash assets such as stocks or other financial instruments. So probably not a $200m check, but a very nice nest egg to fund SETI projects for decades to come. [1] https://www.seti.org/about-us/financials https://www.seti.org/about-us/financials
- mikepurvis 3y agoI think past a certain size it doesn't matter, but my small church let me know that it would be ideal if a gift could be split across two tax years to avoid them hitting some kind of threshold that would trigger an audit they'd have to then pay an accountant a bunch of money to deal with. I offered since my bank had already pitched me on establishing a charitable gift fund that would allow me to claim the tax credits this year but disburse the money to registered charities in the future.
- simonebrunozzi 3y agoI've never met Franklin Antonio, but for the ones that don't know, he co-founded Qualcomm, and I assume he made most of his money that way. He died last year, casue of death was uncertain. [0] Wikipedia somehow separates him from the "original" seven founders, though: [1] > Qualcomm was created in July 1985by seven former Linkabit employees led by Irwin Jacobs. Other co-founders included Andrew Viterbi, Franklin Antonio, Adelia Coffman, Andrew Cohen, Klein Gilhousen, and Harvey White. It seems that he's been a long-time supporter of SETI. Glad that this money will go towards scientific research. EDIT: the source cited by Wikipedia [2] actually includes Franklin Antonio among the original seven founders: > The company was founded in 1985 by seven communications industry veterans -- Franklin Antonio, Adelia Coffman, Andrew Cohen, Klein Gilhousen, Irwin Jacobs, Andrew Viterbi and Harvey White. [0]: https://www.seti.org/longtime-seti-champion-franklin-antonio-dies https://www.seti.org/longtime-seti-champion-franklin-antonio... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm [2]: http://edition.cnn.com/2007/BUSINESS/08/10/qualcomm.facts/ http://edition.cnn.com/2007/BUSINESS/08/10/qualcomm.facts/
- imustachyou 3y agoHe also left $200M for the Summer Science Program. https://www.forbes.com/sites/marybethgasman/2023/10/12/200-million-bequest-will-support-science-research-for-high-schoolers/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/marybethgasman/2023/10/12/200-m...
- mcshicks 3y agoI worked with Franklin for a short while in the late 90s. He was an intimidating, if fair person. Very little tolerance for bs or people who wanted to look good. But if he asked you something and you didn't know the answer he was fair if you just said so (which I had to do on at least one occasion). Did not know he passed, or that he was involved with SETI. I remember reading in a local SD paper a few years ago that he gave quite a bit to a local charity for the homeless. He was a very independent thinker, so not so surprised that he might make some unconventional choices in how he gave away his money.
- wesleychen 3y agoI think the "other" in the Wikipedia articles refers to that the six listed (Andrew Viterbi, Franklin Antonio, Adelia Coffman, Andrew Cohen, Klein Gilhousen, and Harvey White) are in addition to the "leader" Irwin Jacobs, not that they are in addition to seven unlisted founders.
- kosolam 3y agoInteresting. They have been operating since 1984 - thats almost 40 years. It would be interesting to read what achievements they made so far. Especially, did they find any sign?
- gfodor 3y agoIf SETI wants to make an impact, they should first do more work to disprove the hypothesis that there are small voids within the Earth's crust housing small grey hominids in a breakaway civilization who primarily live in simulated environments, sending UFOs to the surface out of the ocean. It's far more likely we'll find them down there hiding from us than we'll find intelligent life walking around on the surface of planets orbiting natural stars. The former comports with a variety of reports of "extraterrestrials" while the latter contradicts most reasonable assumptions of the game theory around extraterrestrials, if they exist at all.
- NelsonMinar 3y agoTheir financials show a budget of about $25M a year last three years, with $17M in assets in 2022. So this will be an enormous one-time increase but presumably spending will be spread out. Nice chunk for an endowment.
- qntmfred 3y agoI happened to watch Contact the other night. God bless the S. R. Haddens of the world.
- nomdep 3y agoI suppose the “dark forest” hypothesis is not very popular amongst them
- Zigurd 3y agoWhatever happened to Yuri Milner?
- jkmcf 3y agoRelevant book released last week: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-little-book-of-aliens-adam-frank https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-little-book-of-al... I just began reading it with my 10yo daughter. The beginning discusses how Fermi raised the important question "where are they?", and we just started on how the Drake equation provides a set of smaller, more obtainable questions to answer.
- floxy 3y agoSo it looks like it is around $100M for a Falcon Heavy launch. What kind of satellite can be built for $100M? Put one at L4 with a radar/mm-wave receiver, and have another on Earth for your phased array, to have a pretty large synthetic aperture / high resolution? Or maybe partner with someone on a lunar crater radio telescope on the far side of the moon? https://www.nasa.gov/general/lunar-crater-radio-telescope-lcrt-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon/ https://www.nasa.gov/general/lunar-crater-radio-telescope-lc...