You are not logged in.
Pages: 1
Good. It's funding has still been very erratic though. I don't expect they can kill it at this point but a higher priority would be nice.
Yeah, I know about SIM and Kepler. Ive been following the TPF since 96 when it was supposed to be launced by 2012-2015. heh. As of 2006 it was deferred indefinitely. Wiki says there was an effort to fund it in the House but no money materialized. Heres something from USAtoday on the tpf
he big hope for finding an Earthlike planet, NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) mission, has been scaled back in the proposed 2008 budget for NASA, a move that observers attribute to the agency's plans to explore the moon and Mars, which are bleeding money from its science missions. TPF's big goal is to deliver a speck of light and a chemical spectrum from an Earth-like planet to a computer screen sometime around 2020.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/co … hade_x.htm
I didnt even know it had *any* funding at all at the moment. This new idea of the occulting sun shade version is pretty interesting sounding. Looks like there are three seperate ideas now:
TPF-I (interferometer)
TPF-C (coronograph)
TPF-O (occulting sun shade)
I'd only recently heard about the sunshade version, which they are hoping to get NASA interested in. Still, give them more money!!!!! Light from earth-sized worlds trumps moon rocks.
I just wish they could dig up the change to get back to work on the terrestrial planet finder. I'd rather see that than another dude golfing on the moon.
I think project phoenix examined 800 nearby stars over a range of frequencies and determined that "we are in a quiet neighborhood". There are maybe 14k stars within 100 ly and most are unknown, let alone examined for signals. I dont know how many other systems have been directly observed but its not many. The sample size is just so small that its difficult to say much.
The other type, deep sky scans, tend to look for a very specific frequency and pretty much assume a distant ETI with a very powerful beacon wants to be found.
I think Ive read that carrier signals from tv could be detected quite far out. Heres a link that suggests they could detect them out to 50 ly with a 15 square mile tv antenna array. We may have the square kilometer array built in the next few decades so it's not totally farfetched.
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/0802 … -them.html
There are so many variables:
Did they search for light first and find our atmosphere suitable?
Have they sent and we havent searched the right star?
Have we guessed the proper frequency?
Are they using radio to respond? Or lasers? or something else?
Are they interested in actively signalling us?
I read an article where it was suggested that an ETI civ using data compression to maximize efficiency would cloak any message and make it seem like background radiation. We can already do that. We arent just looking for ET, we are looking for extroverted ETs who want us to find them. I'm much more optimistic about finding simpler life using telescopes than an ETI looking to make a friend.
I think it's hard to say what ID is exactly because they have their big tent model. Many of the "ID" supporters you meet online are just young earth creationists who use the ID name to get themselves another hearing. They start off ID, ID, ID, and then 3 minutes in are telling you the universe is 6k old. heh.
But at the highest levels it is more of an "evolution assisted by god" type of thing. I know behe admits common descent, not sure about the others.
Another way we can detect life is with the next generation of interferometer telescopes. In 20+ years we'll have NASA's tpf or ESA's darwin and whatever comes after them. These will let them image the light from earth-sized worlds out to 50+ ly and learn about their atmospheric composition. Our own atmosphere is maintained by biology so if we see something similar, that would be interesting.
Eventually (in 100 years +) we could have planet imagers that give us views of the cloud cover, surface features, etc. Without ever leaving home. I believe the SETI@Home guy has pointed this out as a reason why aliens might be sending radio traffic to us, they could have been watching us from the comfort of home for millions of years. Our atmosphere has been "broadcasting" for a long time.
Interferometer stuff:
http://collab.digitaluniverse.net/wiki/ … from_Space
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/TPF/tpf_index.cfm
Johnson was referring to the TOE, which doesnt cover abiogenesis, of course. But the point of his quote was to say that no, they don't have a theory yet capable of competing with the TOE. He's being pretty honest about it here. He also goes on to say that they wont be getting into public schools any time soon after the disaster at Dover. The Discovery Institute didnt even back that move as it was clearly a loser from a legal standpoint.
One potential reason for no contact is that we simply havent searched the right place yet. SETI has only targeted a few thousand stars directly iirc and the deep sky scans are very specific in what frequency they check. They are often guessing that ET is intentionally broadcasting with powerful transmitters on channels meant to be deduced by us. Lots of guessingi involved.
The Drake Equation is just a guess that generates many values. Anything form 1 to 10k (drakes last guess) ETI civilizations to higher. Assuming Drakes wild ass guess is right that would be one per 20 million stars so we really need a much larger sample before ruling anything in or out. IIRC the head of the seti@home group suggests that he expects something by the middle of the century. Or at least that we should be getting sufficient sample sizes by then to make some guesses.
Just for kicks I'll rez this. OP suggests oil at $90 is bad.
Oil at $126 today. Analysts suggest $200 plus possible. National average of $4/gallon by summer is expected.
Those figures might seem quaint within a year so this thread might have some historical comedy value.
You may like the concept or promise of the ID movement but it's hard to compare it with the theory of evolution at the moment.
Even the founder of the modern ID movement, Philip Johnson, has said that ID doesnt have a scientific theory yet, while TOE is a "fully worked out scheme". He goes on to say that ID doesnt have a "product" ready to compete in the educational market.
I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to prove…No product is ready for competition in the educational world.
Overview here but there is a pdf from the Berkeley Science Review online somewhere. I just lost the link.
Pages: 1