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Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET
- rdl 11y agoWow. Thank you, Yuri! I suspect even if this is unsuccessful at finding ET, it will do lots of awesome other things. And if it is successful in finding ET, then it's probably the most significant possible discovery.
- k8tte 11y agoone week Hawking warns about skynet-style AI. next week he insist of us go hunting it. good troll?
- JosephRedfern 11y agoIt strikes me that the two are very different things. ET != AI.
- k8tte 11y agothanks for pointing this out, it made sense in my head in the lines of: super civilization creates AI, AI outlives civilization, humans find trace of super civilization, eventually establish contact with the AI
- arethuza 11y agoWell, they might not be the same thing or they might - or perhaps more likely of all, some kind of hybrid society with AI and natural intelligences.
- icanhackit 11y agoFunny you say that: The Dominant Life Form in the Cosmos Is Probably Superintelligent Robots “If they were interested in us, we probably wouldn’t be here,” said Schneider. “My gut feeling is their goals and incentives are so different from ours, they’re not going to want to contact us.” That’s a welcome divergence from Steven Hawking’s claim that advanced aliens might be nomads, looking to strip resources from whatever planets they can, and that all efforts to contact said aliens may end in our own demise. “I’d have to agree with Susan on them not being interested in us at all,” Shostak said. We're just too simplistic, too irrelevant. “You don’t spend a whole lot of time hanging out reading books with your goldfish. On the other hand, you don’t really want to kill the goldfish, either.” http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-dominant-life-form-in-the-cosmos-is-probably-superintelligent-robots http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-dominant-life-form-in-t... EDIT - HN discussion for that article, 212 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8773778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8773778
- im3w1l 11y agoIn just a few hundred years, human civilization will be expanding at something on the order of the speed of light, unless we manage to blow ourselves up first. How is that not interesting?
- JosephRedfern 11y agoHah. I suppose it depends how you classify "Artificial Intelligence". It was my understanding that Hawking was concerned about humans creating skynet-style AI ourselves, rather than discovering AI created by an Extra-terrestrial.
- zamalek 11y agoSAI != ET. The idea of SAI is that it progresses at a significantly faster rate than biological processes can. For example, if humans and chimps were on a "staircase of evolution" and were one step apart; SAI would be one step above us a mere hour after it is turned on. After 2 hours it would be multiple steps above us. So the theory goes, anyway. This means that evil aliens would be unlikely more dangerous than evil SAI. Not that he's suggesting we announce our presence to aliens, merely look for them.
- randallsquared 11y agoA timescale of hours is not required for most of the AI-doom arguments; if it took a year, that would have a similar outcome.
- zamalek 11y agoIt's definitely not a requirement, it's just an example of how it could rapidly progress. Within the scope of the argument 1 hour is as plausible as 1 year - the main point is that it happens shockingly fast and continues to happen even faster.
- randallsquared 11y agoHumans being humans, one year is not nearly as shocking, which could contribute to people actually considering the possibility.
- pekk 11y agoA minor note on word usage here: usually the word "theory" is reserved for explanations with a good track record rather than wild speculation.
- batou 11y agoEither that or early warning?
- hellofunk 11y agoI think Hawking would ultimately like ET's help in the coming war against AI.
- im3w1l 11y agoHe wants us to to look for ET's, but not reveals ourselves to them: to see but not be seen. So just like in the AI question, his stance is to be cautious.
- jahnu 11y agoHawking wants to find them, but seemingly not reveal ourselves... http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/apr/26/stephen-hawking-issues-warning-on-aliens http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/apr/26/stephen...
- myth_buster 11y agoDidn't we lose that battle when we sent the Voyager with the Golden Record [1] that carries the exact coordinates [0] (with respect to nearest stars) to the origin of the spacecraft. Voyager 1 and 2 both carry with them a 12-inch golden phonograph record that contains pictures and sounds of Earth along with symbolic directions on the cover for playing the record and data detailing the location of our planet. The record is intended as a combination of a time capsule and an interstellar message to any civilization, alien or far-future human that may recover either of the Voyager craft. The contents of this record were selected by a committee that included Timothy Ferris and was chaired by Carl Sagan. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#/media/File:Voyager_Golden_Record_fx.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#/media/File:Vo... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#Voyager_Golden_Record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#Voyager_Golden... ________________________________________________________ Edit: Voyager has on board antennas and a sufficiently intelligent civilization would be quite interested in intercepting a spacecraft which seems to be on a mission to somewhere carrying <creator>-knows-what.
- Zikes 11y agoBy the time Voyager reaches another star we'll have advanced sufficiently to have beat it there.
- arbuge 11y agoIt is actually far more likely than an alien civilization would detect our radio and tv broadcast signals than our space probes. Those broadcast signals have been sent out in all directions from earth pretty much continously for almost a century now, and they travel at light speed, so they cover alot more distance much faster.
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- rdl 11y agoInteresting that SIGINT tools (zero sum at best, and probably negative sum) are basically going to be useful for something which extends the ears of humanity in a positive way.
- melling 11y agoI wish someone would instead come up with a project to really capture the public's attention about space exploration. More interest means more funding. The U.S. Budget is measured in billions. The New Horizons project, for example, only cost $700 million. The Lunar X Prize might have been that project but it doesn't seem to be making progress: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Lunar_X_Prize https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Lunar_X_Prize http://lunar.xprize.org/ http://lunar.xprize.org/
- jshelly 11y agoI'd like to think the podcast Radiolab has done more for generating interest in science then any other project I can think of.
- saiya-jin 11y agosorry to break your perception (or not), but even as a space exploration enthusiast, never heard of that. but then again, podcasts generally are on outer rim of interest of general population
- juandopazo 11y ago
- z3t4 11y agoIf we ever receive radio from another world, they're probably already extinct.
- adventured 11y agoEven if they were, that would be ok. Confirmation of other intelligent life through received communication, would be a really big deal. It would likely spur a large increase in investment into science, technology in general and space technology in particular.
- codeshaman 11y agoA very noble endeavour indeed, but I still don't get it. So let's say that by examining the petabytes of data that's received from the telescopes, at some point a signal is detected. Let's say that somehow all the competing scientests and skeptics, religious and opinion leaders magically and peacefully agree: the signal is from an inteligent life form. Somewhere close, just a couple of hundred light years away ... Then what ? Do we build rockets to travel there ? Do we 'tune-in' and decipher the signal ? Do we send them our own signals in the hope that they are listening ?
- evantahler 11y agoThe answer is usually "what would Jean luc Picard do?"
- tfm 11y agoIt's certainly difficult to imagine projects that operate on a timescale beyond a single human lifetime, but it got civilisation this far!
- neals 11y agoYes. Yes we will.
- sdrinf 11y agoThere are very few pieces of information really worthy of deliberate broadcasts across star-systems in the hopes of someone catching it. One of these few might be a full dump of neural vector-states (or functional equivalent thereof), at an appropriately low-level assembly, which when successfully executed, brings not a message, but the messenger itself.
- pavlov 11y agoIn fact, any sufficiently advanced digital program can be a "messenger" rather than a "message". But how do we know what kind of execution environment is available at the destination? Aliens probably use Brainfuck [1], so we need a substantial increase in Brainfuck AI research. Some modern-day Kennedy needs to step up to this challenge. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck
- Tepix 11y agoAmazing initiative! I wish we had more of these. And it's coming right after "Armada" by Ernest Cline was released, which deals with aliens. If the livestream is overlaid with page elements for you as well, try this URL: http://livestream.com/accounts/6714632/events/4205486/player?width=960&height=540&autoPlay=true&mute=false http://livestream.com/accounts/6714632/events/4205486/player...
- ohitsdom 11y agoSeems like a huge waste of money to me. If you're interested in ET, why not invest in the space industry to advance our capabilities? It'll be hard to interact with ET when as a society we are essentially[0] earth bound. [0] http://howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/ http://howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/
- netcan 11y agoI guess that's a matter of defining "earth bound." If we don't have people in space but we have probes on all the nearby planets, moons, comets and anything with enough gravity to hold one down, does that count as earth bound? ATM, a manned mars mission is in the "very hard and expensive" file. Unmanned missions to anywhere in our solar system are doable on smaller budgets. We can use telescopes to look much further. In all cases information is being moved back and forward between earth and space.
- ohitsdom 11y agoAgreed that manned missions are hard and expensive. That is an area that $100 million could help (even in a small way). But even robotic missions are very limited. We just had our first flyby of Pluto (not an orbiter). Jupiter doesn't get an orbiter until 2016 (Juno). No orbiters around Neptune or Uranus. So, lots still left to explore and observe with probes in our own solar system.
- webwielder2 11y agoWow, a colossal waste of money. Space is far, far too vast and the time scale of human civilization far, far too small. To think of what other good uses that time and money could be spent on (that goes for SETI too)
- fridek 11y agoYou speak as if the money was yours to spend and it was misused somehow. As far as billionaires eccentricity goes, this is a great use of money.
- onion2k 11y agoFirstly, it's not a waste of money because it'll be spent on employing people, building things, developing technology, etc. They're not just pouring money down a hole. Secondly, although it's hugely unlikely they'll find anything, in the event that they do it'll fundamentally change our perspective of who we are and where our place is in the universe. The outcome, while improbable, is so huge it's still worthwhile trying.
- stefantalpalaru 11y ago> it's not a waste of money because it'll be spent on employing people, building things, developing technology, etc. The same can be said about digging holes and filling them afterwards.
- sktrdie 11y agoCould you name another good use of money that is better than SETI?
- stefantalpalaru 11y agoBuilding seawalls for the upcoming sea level rise.
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- nogridbag 11y agoPlease excuse my complete ignorance - this is something that continues to perplex me no matter how many times I hear it explained and I may sound like a complete idiot here. Can someone explain how this would work in layman's terms? Let's say that life on another planet 150 million billion miles away wanted to send us a message. So that's 25,000 light years away. They send us one single 1 minute duration message at t=0 and that message travels at the speed of light as an example. And let's just say t=25000 happens to be today. Does that mean that we have a one minute window to intercept part of the message otherwise it's lost? If so, let's say the life on that planet was persistent and continued to send messages continuously directly to us and no other planets for 500 years. Then I would assume we have a 500 year period to play with. If they started sending signals let's say 10,000 years ago, it seems we have absolutely no chance to receive the message unless this program is operational for the next 15,000 years or so. But our odds of receiving an intelligent signal is vastly higher simply due to the number of planets in our galaxy. Is my understanding remotely correct?
- MattConfluence 11y agoSounds about right. Frank Drake created his famous equation [1] to try to quantify the probability of detecting ETI, but you do need to make guesses at some of the inputs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
- nsajko 11y agoRelevant xkcd: http://www.xkcd.com/384/ http://www.xkcd.com/384/
- jessriedel 11y agoTraditionally, SETI is not specialized to messages intentionally crafted for us (or, in fact, necessarily crafted for anyone). It's just a search for radio transmissions that are unlikely to have been created by natural sources using various statistical techniques. Even for intentional messages, it's certainly conceivable that another civilization with sufficient power simply transmits the message in all direction continuously.
- codeshaman 11y agoIf we really believe in scientific progress, then we must accept that, compared to some time in the future, our current understanding of the Universe is akin to people thinking the world was flat some time in the past. Maybe the Universe's scale compared to our physical form has a purpose. Maybe it's intended to not be traversed physcally. Maybe that's the most obvious conclusion an intelligent life form might draw from analyzing it's scale ? Maybe in the future we will understand it just like the aliens we're looking for did a long time ago - that the way to communicate in this Universe does not involve physical travel or physical signals. Just look up some pictures of Pablo Amaringo - a shaman making drawings of his trips on ayahuasca. Notice the 'aliens' and the galaxies and the the distant worlds that he is visiting while tripping. Anyone who has been on powerful psychedelic trips would agree that there is a lot of stuff to explain there, besides just the brain reaction to a chemical. Stuff like traveling through time, out of the Universe, into the microcosmos, before and after life, etc. People did this for thousands of years - they used terms such as 'spirits', 'beings' and 'gods' to describe who they made contact with. But what if those substances are more than just intoxicants, what if they really trigger some unknown mind-space-time gateway which we haven't yet tapped scientifically, which makes space and time travel possible. What if we could approach this scientifically and actually make these trips predictable and repeatable ? What if the aliens are actually just high tech savages using advanced psychedelic drugs + mind machines to travel and explore time and space, while sitting in a forest around a fire ? We should start exploring the inner space just like we are exploring the outer space. When will we see $100m invested in that ? :)
- rokhayakebe 11y agoMaybe we were not supposed to cross the Sea. Maybe the reason we did not have wings is so that we do fly across nations. Maybe the reason we are different skin color and speak different languages is so that we remain each in our clan. Or maybe, the Creator just said "let me see how far these guys will go?"
- furyofantares 11y ago> We should start exploring the inner space just like we are exploring the outer space. When will we see $100m invested in that ? :) We already have: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/04/why-spend-a-billion-dollars-to-map-the-human-brain/274594/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/04/why-spend-... And I'm sorry to tell you that I think brain science does a good job at explaining perception when intoxicated without invoking "other stuff out there"
- thebouv 11y agoFunny enough, I wonder what the numbers would hit if they crowdfunded something like this? I think the number would be surprisingly high.
- pinkskip 11y agoseems legit :D
- pinkskip 11y agoMy comment gets voted for having a sense of humour? Charming HN.
- dogma1138 11y agoDidn't Hawking said that actively looking for ET was reckless and dangerous and that any contact with a more advanced civilization will end up like the colonization of America with us being the natives?
- scrumper 11y agoHe said actively trying to contact was dangerous, vs. actively looking (i.e. passively listening, which is confusing!) No harm in seeing who's out there as long as they don't detect us.
- TerryADavis 11y agoI talk with God. Oh well.
- agentgt 11y agoOne of my favorite topics is the Fermi Paradox and consequently the Great Filter (which someone already discussed). One of my favorite explanations is that there are other ET out there but they are two engrossed with their own entertainment to "give a fuck" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#They_tend_to_isolate_themselves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#They_tend_to_iso...). I find it amusing and ironic while also seriously consider it a possibility. From wikipedia: It may also be that intelligent alien life develop an "increasing disinterest" in their outside world.[71] Possibly any sufficiently advanced society will develop highly engaging media and entertainment well before the capacity for advanced space travel, and that the rate of appeal of these social contrivances is destined, because of their inherent reduced complexity, to overtake any desire for complex, expensive endeavors such as space exploration and communication. Once any sufficiently advanced civilization becomes able to master its environment, and most of its physical needs are met through technology, various "social and entertainment technologies", including virtual reality, are postulated to become the primary drivers and motivations of that civilization.[72] aka Star Trek holodeck.... the best drug in the future.
- Pigo 11y agoThat feels like too much assumption to me. The scenario described well by Michio Kaku is the only one that seems probable to me. "Lets say we have an ant hill in the middle of the forest. And right next to the ant hill, they're building a ten-lane super-highway. And the question is 'Would the ants be able to understand what a ten-lane super-highway is? Would the ants be able to understand the technology and the intentions of the beings building the highway next to them?" So it's not that we can't pick up the signals from other worlds using our technology, it's that we can't even comprehend what the beings from Planet X are or what they're trying to do. It's so beyond us that even if they really wanted to enlighten us, it would be like trying to teach ants about the internet."
- agentgt 11y agoYes I generally agree that this is one of the strongest explanations. Especially if you consider the small spectrum of communication we are examining (and thats just electromagnetic for all we know dark energy may provide a superior mode of communication). I just like the entertainment one because its amusing and sort of describe a great portion of our own civilization. The reality I think/hope is there will always be explorers/dreamers/big thinkers.... I hope.
- rokhayakebe 11y agoFor now I am more interested in terrestrial life which cannot be perceived with our senses alone. Are there others roaming around next to me, but we cannot perceive one another with some additional tool?
- brock_r 11y agoCan a satellite "orbit" so that it imitates a star? Or would it have to "stand still" out there, which would make it fall back to earth?
- sounds 11y agoYou're suggesting we fake a signal? Technically, a satellite could be parked in a Lagrange Point. But the signal would have to be very, very convincing because there will be many, many very smart people looking at it.
- brock_r 11y agoBut wouldn't a Lagrange point satellite appear to move in a completely un-star-like manner over the course of weeks and months?
- dysfunction 11y agoA satellite can appear to "stand still" from the perspective of an observer on the ground, so long as it orbits at the right altitude/speed (speed and altitude of an orbit are proportional); the satellite's orbital period just has to be exactly a day long. For Earth, that altitude is about 42,000km up. However, it would still be easily determined to be a nearby satellite as opposed to a distant star by triangulation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_orbit
- brock_r 11y agoBut the stars don't stand still with respect to an observer on the ground.
- queryly 11y agoI don't think there is ET. The probability that atoms fuse together to construct a organism that is capable of turning sun into bio-energy and multiplying itself just by chance is too small to have two civilizations in this universe.
- thrillscience 11y agoHow did the Star Trek "Enterprise" communicate across the galaxy? I don't remember any specific mention of a method, though I guess today they'd say something about "quantum entanglement" or similar....
- hgfischer 11y agoI think Giorgio A. Tsoukalos would be the best choice instead of Stephen Hawking, who is against finding ETs.