News

**upandaway** lop guest User ID: 91264 05-22-2012 09:06 PM

Founded in 1984, for 10 years the Seti Institute was initially part of a wider Nasa-funded search for alien intelligence, until the space agency's project fell victim to budget cuts. Since then the institute has relied on private donations and endowments to keep it going, and judging by its headquarters, they are doing ok for funding. The institute is in the middle of a huge industrial estate, albeit the richest, most innovative and manicured industrial estate in the world, otherwise known as Silicon Valley.

The search for alien radio signals is only a tiny part of the work done by the Seti Institute – most of its scientists are astrobiologists who are looking for life of a less intelligent, more microbial kind elsewhere in the solar system, mainly on the moons of the outer planets.

However, it's the image of a scientist listening out for a message from the cosmos, perhaps one who looks a bit like Jodie Foster, which tends to catch the public's imagination.

"The modern idea of using antennas to eavesdrop on ET goes back to Frank Drake's original 1960 experiment called Project Ozma," Seth tells me. That's Frank Drake of the eponymous Drake Equation. He's still a part of the institute, and although he's not in on the day of my visit, I later get a glimpse of his office.

Drake's Project Ozma focused on just two nearby stars, Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. Nowadays, SETI uses the Allen Telescope Array, funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, to monitor thousands of stars. However, even before Project Ozma, Seth reminds me, Edison, Tesla and Marconi had all considered the possibility that radio waves might be receivable from Mars or elsewhere.

But this very issue remains one of the main concerns of the conspiracy theorists, who believe that the US government wouldn't trust the public with such knowledge. According to Seth: "There are a lot of people who think that finding life would be enormously disruptive. In this country people say, well if you guys find a signal, the government would shut it down, you'd keep it quiet, and the reason given for that is that it would disrupt society. Well there's no evidence for that at all."

Of all of the many false alarms, I ask Seth, which one was the most interesting? He tells me that "there was one that we got in the summer of 1997 … It had us fooled for most of a day." It turned out to be an equipment failure, the signal coming from a European satellite

**Sunny**

I just saw the movie Battleship, I think we need to keep ourselves on teh down low doomed

**entropy**

Sunny Wrote:

I just saw the movie Battleship, I think we need to keep ourselves on teh down low

That bad?

**The Other Side** lop guest User ID: 97999 05-22-2012 09:18 PM

encephaloid Wrote:

Sunny Wrote:
I just saw the movie Battleship, I think we need to keep ourselves on teh down low

That bad?

The movie was poor storyline but major special effects. Ever see First Contact the movie...

**entropy**

I saw Contact. Read it too.
[Image: B621_4FBBE6D5.jpg]

**LoP Guest** lop guest User ID: 14479 05-22-2012 09:26 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLnWf1sQkjY

**Old Whatshisname**

Lots of conspiritards say that the reason "they" aren't telling us about the Little Purple Spaceship Guys from Arcturus is that they think "we couldn't handle the truth" (of course, the conspiritards could handle the truth because they already "know"....

But, if there actually were discovery of extraterrestrial life and the foolks who found it came out with the news, those same conspiritards would probably not believe it, because it would be a "false flag" or something.

We already see that: many conspiritards talk about great technological discoveries that are being "hidden" from us or about some incipient doom that is also being "hidden" from us.

Yet they tend not to believe real technological advances like the Moon landing (see "Moon Hoax" scam) or don't believe real potential incipient doom -- like anthropogenic climate change.

This is because many conspiritards (not all of them, of course) only believe what they want to believe, and they want to believe that they're always being lied to -- no matter what.

**The Other Side** lop guest User ID: 98004 05-22-2012 09:47 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmSYXbgcozY

**LoP Guest** lop guest User ID: 47258 05-22-2012 09:49 PM

Old Whatshisname Wrote:

Lots of conspiritards say that the reason "they" aren't telling us about the Little Purple Spaceship Guys from Arcturus is that they think "we couldn't handle the truth" (of course, the conspiritards could handle the truth because they already "know"....

But, if there actually were discovery of extraterrestrial life and the foolks who found it came out with the news, those same conspiritards would probably not believe it, because it would be a "false flag" or something.

We already see that: many conspiritards talk about great technological discoveries that are being "hidden" from us or about some incipient doom that is also being "hidden" from us.

Yet they tend not to believe real technological advances like the Moon landing (see "Moon Hoax" scam) or don't believe real potential incipient doom -- like anthropogenic climate change.

This is because many conspiritards (not all of them, of course) only believe what they want to believe, and they want to believe that they're always being lied to -- no matter what.

Hasn't it already been established that you are a paid shill for the government? I thought we cleared this up before...you are just like the character at the "other" site named CrazyJarhead...might be even the same people...

Point being...nobody cares what your shill ass has to say, so please do us all a favor and take your propaganda somewhere else.

**AC488** I got no balls User ID: 488 05-22-2012 09:50 PM

Most people would reject it so long as their worshipful authority figue denies it.

Pi Infinity User ID: 3.14159265 05-22-2012 09:51 PM

Me? Personally? Point and laugh at all the bible tards.

**LoP Guest** lop guest User ID: 44023 05-22-2012 09:52 PM

Bomb ourselves again, blame the aliens, and go to war with them.
S977