Because there’s bugger all down here on Earth

My friend Sharon once wrote, “I think SETI is quaint.”

I’ve always wished I didn’t agree with her, but I must admit, the program has always had its work cut out for it, even if there is intelligent life somewhere out in space. I think it’s an important, perhaps even vital endeavor, but I’m not sure its chances for success are anything I’d feel comfortable placing money on.

So it’s nice to see something, anything, that might help to better those chances:

Alexander Zaitsev, Chief Scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, has access to one of the most powerful radio transmitters on Earth. Though he officially uses it to conduct the Institute’s planetary radar studies, Zaitsev is also trying to contact other civilizations in nearby star systems. He believes extraterrestrial intelligence exists, and that we as a species have a moral obligation to announce our presence to our sentient neighbors in the Milky Way — to let them know they are not alone. If everyone in the galaxy only listens, he reasons, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is doomed to failure.

This so-called Active Seti has not been without its controversy — although, as Gerry Canavan notes, much of it has been “Sci-Fi-Channel outlandish.” I think it’s perfectly reasonable, for instance, to want a more diverse and representative transmission to be sent out, but it’s a little silly to fear the project simply because of the “possible dangers we may unleash by announcing ourselves to the unknown darkness” — not least of all because we’re always announcing ourselves to the unknown darkness nowadays:

Even if something menacing and terrible lurks out there among the stars, Zaitsev and others argue that regulating our transmissions could be pointless because, technically, we’ve already blown our cover. A sphere of omnidirectional broadband signals has been spreading out from Earth at the speed of light since the advent of radio over a century ago. So isn’t it too late? That depends on the sensitivity of alien radio detectors, if they exist at all. Our television signals are diffuse and not targeted at any star system. It would take a truly huge antenna — larger than anything we’ve built or plan to build — to notice them.

So, essentially, SETI isn’t going to hear anything unless there’s an alien species out there doing exactly what SETI itself says we shouldn’t do: send out more powerful and more targeted transmissions. We don’t have the equipment to pick up whatever their equivalent of television is, and now apparently we’ve been hoping that they don’t have the equipment to pick up ours either. What kind of search for intelligent life is that?

Our civilization is still hidden from all but those ardently searching for our kind, or those so far beyond our level of sophistication that we couldn’t hide from them if we wanted to. To date, all our “messages to aliens” are really more successful as communications to Earth, mirrors reflecting our dreams of reaching far beyond our terrestrial nursery.

We’ve been increasingly turning towards private endeavor and industry for innovations in human space exploration. Maybe it’s time to throw this open as well.

At present, the radio astronomy facilities potentially capable of producing a major Active SETI broadcast are all controlled by national governments, or at least large organizations responsible to boards and donors and sensitive to public opinion. However, seemingly inevitable trends are placing increasingly powerful technologies in the hands of small groups or eager individuals with their own agendas and no oversight. Today, on the entire planet, there are only a few mavericks like Zaitsev who are able and willing to unilaterally represent humanity and effectively reveal our presence. In the future, there could be one in every neighborhood.

Obviously there should be guidelines and oversight — it’s not impossible that there could be threats out there, and it’s not unreasonable that threats here at home shouldn’t be given then chance to speak for all of us. But in such a huge universe, in a universe that I have to believe has some other life besides us out there, it sure would be nice to have a search for extraterrestrial life that wasn’t quaint.