🚀 go-pugleaf

road_w...@my-deja.com wrote...

>Since I'd not heard this story in the news I was wondering
>if it was just another urban legend or if someone actually
>had the cajones to pull off such a shenanigan.

There really was such a hoax.  Someone around here should still have
the URL...

>Still, I question the need as a recent article in SciAm
>indicated that well over half the space where we might
>reasonably expect ET to be found has already been
>searched and found empty.

Empty only with a very specific frequency being checked.  The entire
rest of the RF/EM spectrum remains to be investigated.  Just because
we haven't found anything _yet_ doesn't mean there's nothing to be
found.  Searching for a needle in a haystack is one thing, but
searching for the same needle from the other side of the world, using
a black and white camera with a pinhole aperture that can only
pick up one wavelength of light and can only be used during a full
moon... that's another animal entirely.

The SETI project has been going on for... what, 40 or 50 years?
And in all that time, all we've accomplished was to search a single
frequency, and only 1/2 the space we're expecting to contain some
form of life.  Hell, we're just now starting to get warmed up.  Give
it a chance to at least get started before giving up on it.

>SETI is little more than a faith search for some magic sky pixie
>for which we have no evidence whatsoever.

Why do we need evidence to believe that Terra isn't the only planet
that life exists on?  Shall we instead arrogantly presume that only
this planet, this sun, this galaxy, could possibly hold life, that
not one single other planet in the universe could ever develop a
form of life that's at or above the level we've reached?

We still don't have direct proof of what a star is really made of
or is like on the inside.  We have nothing but theory on sub-atomic
particles.  But we accept the indirect evidence, measurements, and
inferrences that tell us about these things.  Why should it be such
a leap of faith to believe that if life can develop here, it can do
so elsewhere as well?

Finally, with all the planets orbiting all the stars in all the
galaxies, it's almost statistically _impossible_ for life _NOT_
to exist elsewhere.  Do the math yourself and you'll see what I'm
talking about.

Dran
--
"Listen, missy, I gots some killin' to do.  You can either come along or
not, but make no mistake -- killin' *is* gon' git done." J.E. Sawyer (BIS)