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The search must go on
Comment and analysis–
The search must go on Why the embarrassment over the hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence? It is one of the most momentous scientific projects around, says Michael Brooks IF YOU’VE ever wondered how anyone in their right mind can get excited about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, consider this. We live on a planet swamped by life forms, yet we don’t know how life got going, or where. Discovering that it had also begun elsewhere in the universe would be an amazing breakthrough. Discovering that intelligent life had evolved elsewhere would be even more extraordinary. At a stroke, it would answer some of the most profound questions – scientific and cultural – that humanity has asked. You can understand, then, the frustration of astronomers that not one dollar, pound or euro of public money is going into SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life. The trouble is that while the SETI quest excites many of them privately, most scientists have publicly disowned it. Why? The main reason seems to be fear of ridicule: looking for aliens is seen as frivolous. One of humanity’s most momentous academic endeavours has been pushed out to the fringes. SETI acquired its fringe label for political rather than scientific reasons. NASA’s public SETI effort ended in 1993 when Richard Bryan, a senator from Nevada, tabled a late-night amendment to the NASA appropriations bill that ended up killing funding for SETI. In support of his amendment, Bryan commented that “millions have been spent and we have yet to bag a single little green fellow. Not a single Martian has said take me to your leader, and not a single flying saucer has applied for FAA approval.” A decade earlier another senator, William Proxmire, had tried a similar stunt, but the astronomer Carl Sagan talked him round. This time Bryan sidestepped scientists’ attempts to discuss the issue. It was death by ridicule. Yet searching for intelligent alien life is not ridiculous. Martin Rees, the British Astronomer Royal and president of the Royal Society, has said that if he were an American scientist 18 | NewScientist | 27 January 2007
070127_N_Comment.indd 18
testifying to Congress he “would be happier requesting a few million dollars for SETI than seeking funds for conventional space projects or particle accelerators”. Just a few weeks ago on the NewScientist.com website, Piet Hut of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, offered 50:50 odds of discovering intelligent aliens “out there” in the next 50 years. Monica Grady of the Natural History Museum in London has said finding alien life is of paramount importance. “It will help us understand our own origins so much more completely.” Since Bryan’s hatchet job, SETI has been sustained by private funding, mostly from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. If ET called tomorrow, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen could be first in line to receive the news. He has promised to fund the Allen Telescope Array, a project that should give SETI its first dedicated instruments. It is designed to pick up the kind of signal that an alien intelligence is most likely to send out into the universe: for example,
“SETI is all about understanding the vastness of the universe and the diversity of what it contains”
a series of prime numbers transmitted in binary on a very narrow spectrum of radio frequencies. Yet the project is struggling. Allen has stipulated that the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, must raise funds to match his contribution. So far it has failed to do so. The search for funding for SETI is getting desperate. This ought to shame scientists around the world. For one thing, the search for alien intelligence is a great way of engaging the public in science. The enormous success of the SETI@ home project, which invited people to donate time on their own computers to help process data, proved how interested the public is in the quest. And think what SETI is all about: understanding the vastness of the universe and the diversity of what it contains, the necessary conditions for life, the process of evolution – even the mathematical nature of language and information. If you want people to get involved in science, what better project is there? It is not too late to turn things round. According to the SETI Institute, a sensible level of funding that balances the huge importance of an alien signal being detected against its likelihood would be no more than $10 million per year worldwide. That is not a lot to ask for, and I cannot think of a better science-centred use of public funds, especially when measured against projects such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, which will cost around $8 billion to build, with running costs likely to run to hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Even if the LHC makes all the discoveries its proponents are hoping for (see page 36), it is unlikely to stir the public imagination or increase engagement with science anything like as effectively as a public SETI project would. If SETI found something, it would have hit the scientific and cultural jackpot in a way that LHC scientists can only dream of. Can you imagine Hollywood giving the nod to a movie about particle physics? The search for intelligent life beyond our own planet is one of the last truly engaging and inspiring scientific projects. We should treat it with the respect it deserves, bring it back into the centre of scientific endeavour and – most important of all – get it back into public hands. ● www.newscientist.com
22/1/07 5:08:20 pm
The search must go on Why the embarrassment over the hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence? It is one of the most momentous scientific projects around, says Michael Brooks IF YOU’VE ever wondered how anyone in their right mind can get excited about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, consider this. We live on a planet swamped by life forms, yet we don’t know how life got going, or where. Discovering that it had also begun elsewhere in the universe would be an amazing breakthrough. Discovering that intelligent life had evolved elsewhere would be even more extraordinary. At a stroke, it would answer some of the most profound questions – scientific and cultural – that humanity has asked. You can understand, then, the frustration of astronomers that not one dollar, pound or euro of public money is going into SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life. The trouble is that while the SETI quest excites many of them privately, most scientists have publicly disowned it. Why? The main reason seems to be fear of ridicule: looking for aliens is seen as frivolous. One of humanity’s most momentous academic endeavours has been pushed out to the fringes. SETI acquired its fringe label for political rather than scientific reasons. NASA’s public SETI effort ended in 1993 when Richard Bryan, a senator from Nevada, tabled a late-night amendment to the NASA appropriations bill that ended up killing funding for SETI. In support of his amendment, Bryan commented that “millions have been spent and we have yet to bag a single little green fellow. Not a single Martian has said take me to your leader, and not a single flying saucer has applied for FAA approval.” A decade earlier another senator, William Proxmire, had tried a similar stunt, but the astronomer Carl Sagan talked him round. This time Bryan sidestepped scientists’ attempts to discuss the issue. It was death by ridicule. Yet searching for intelligent alien life is not ridiculous. Martin Rees, the British Astronomer Royal and president of the Royal Society, has said that if he were an American scientist 18 | NewScientist | 27 January 2007
070127_N_Comment.indd 18
testifying to Congress he “would be happier requesting a few million dollars for SETI than seeking funds for conventional space projects or particle accelerators”. Just a few weeks ago on the NewScientist.com website, Piet Hut of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, offered 50:50 odds of discovering intelligent aliens “out there” in the next 50 years. Monica Grady of the Natural History Museum in London has said finding alien life is of paramount importance. “It will help us understand our own origins so much more completely.” Since Bryan’s hatchet job, SETI has been sustained by private funding, mostly from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. If ET called tomorrow, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen could be first in line to receive the news. He has promised to fund the Allen Telescope Array, a project that should give SETI its first dedicated instruments. It is designed to pick up the kind of signal that an alien intelligence is most likely to send out into the universe: for example,
“SETI is all about understanding the vastness of the universe and the diversity of what it contains”
a series of prime numbers transmitted in binary on a very narrow spectrum of radio frequencies. Yet the project is struggling. Allen has stipulated that the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, must raise funds to match his contribution. So far it has failed to do so. The search for funding for SETI is getting desperate. This ought to shame scientists around the world. For one thing, the search for alien intelligence is a great way of engaging the public in science. The enormous success of the SETI@ home project, which invited people to donate time on their own computers to help process data, proved how interested the public is in the quest. And think what SETI is all about: understanding the vastness of the universe and the diversity of what it contains, the necessary conditions for life, the process of evolution – even the mathematical nature of language and information. If you want people to get involved in science, what better project is there? It is not too late to turn things round. According to the SETI Institute, a sensible level of funding that balances the huge importance of an alien signal being detected against its likelihood would be no more than $10 million per year worldwide. That is not a lot to ask for, and I cannot think of a better science-centred use of public funds, especially when measured against projects such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, which will cost around $8 billion to build, with running costs likely to run to hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Even if the LHC makes all the discoveries its proponents are hoping for (see page 36), it is unlikely to stir the public imagination or increase engagement with science anything like as effectively as a public SETI project would. If SETI found something, it would have hit the scientific and cultural jackpot in a way that LHC scientists can only dream of. Can you imagine Hollywood giving the nod to a movie about particle physics? The search for intelligent life beyond our own planet is one of the last truly engaging and inspiring scientific projects. We should treat it with the respect it deserves, bring it back into the centre of scientific endeavour and – most important of all – get it back into public hands. ● www.newscientist.com
22/1/07 5:08:20 pm