Turn off game shows, help listen for E.T.

Monday, December 04, 2006
By Andy Kaiser
The Grand Rapids Press

Silence falls over Proxima Post at the top secret military base. Eyes grow large as the control room loudspeakers broadcast a strange, warbling, gibbering sound.

"Hold on ... Enhancing ... ."

A technician peers intently into a monitor, adjusting his glasses with one hand, slowly twisting a dial with the other. The odd noise resolves into something resembling musical speech.

"We did it! First contact! Woooo!"

"Now," the hero says, the camera zooming in, "let's get to know each other."

Fade to black, roll credits.

Reality check

This kind of Hollywood version of alien contact is unrealistic and targets the wrong thing. It's more exciting to look at the inevitable global effects, if aliens prove to exist: Science gets a jumpstart with new information about planetology, biochemistry and biology. World religions must replace or amend doctrine. New fields are created for planetary exploration and expansion. Politics refocuses on cooperative off-planet expansion. The human race better understands its own origins and place in the cosmos.

Finding evidence of an alien race certainly would be exciting and world-changing, but first realize one thing: Space is really, really big, and there are a lot of places to look when searching for cosmic phone calls. Just within our Milky Way galaxy, the sun is one star in 100 billion.

The closest star to our own sun is Proxima Centauri, 4.2 light-years (twelve trillion miles) away. No available communications technology travels faster than the speed of light. So, if an alien race lived at Proxima Centauri, caught some Earth-based radio signals broadcast today, and replied with a message, we wouldn't receive it until almost nine years from now. If we managed to hear and respond to that message, we'd wait another nine years for Centauri's reply! This best-case scenario assumes aliens live nearby. If they don't, response times could take dozens or hundreds of years. And you thought your Internet connection was slow.

The SETI@Home project (from Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) is a joint effort of hundreds of thousands of computers around the planet processing information. You can join, too: Download the free software from http://setiathome.berkeley.edu and donate your PC's unused processing cycles to the interpretation of radio telescope data.

That's fancy talk for saying, "When you're not using your PC, use it to automatically crunch numbers, aiding in the search for intelligent life on other planets."

We must learn and explore. This drive for knowledge is beyond "science for science's sake." Without this growth, we stagnate and become complacent.

The problem with SETI is a lack of immediate return, or even a promise of results within our lifetime. It's hard to swallow when there are more immediate issues. SETI research needs dedication and extensive long-term thinking. A project is only effective when measured in human lifetimes.

Perhaps the only reason aliens haven't contacted us is because we're not worth it. Do we expect contact after continual galaxy-wide broadcasts of "Deal or No Deal" and "American Idol"? Any self-respecting, intelligent alien would stay far away from those weird earthlings.