SETI's Growing Pains

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, is now largely accepted as a legitimate scientific enterprise. A huge new SETI project funded by Paul Allen is currently coming online in Hat Creek, California, for example. SETI researchers, however, have had to fight for that acceptance.

Began in the early 1960s, SETI was often lumped in with UFOs in the public mind. While UFO researchers tended to be amateurs freelancing away, however, SETI researchers are scientists-- astronomers and physicists. SETI requires access to sophisticated equipment, which requires funding, which requires a certain level of respect. SETI proponenrs have historically maintained a bright libe between their work and UFOlogy, arguing on mathemarical grounds how extremely unlikely it is that aliens would be visiting Earth, and on physical grouinds. The UFO community, they point out, has produced no evidence to support their claims. Skeptics of both efforts can point out, however, that SETI programs have produced no evidence, either.

SETI as a field of endeavor is evolving. Along with more capable searches for radio signals, the effort is broadening to include other types of possible signals-- optical as in lasers, infrared, and others. Some SETI researchers are even open to the possibility of detecting signals between centers of a civilization that has expanded beyond its home star system. That accepts interstellar travel as at least a possibility, something SETI researchers have been reluctant to do.

Mainstream science has been skeptical that interstellar travel is viable, but SETI theory has been that advanced civilizations would communicate only through long distance means, like radio. Accepting the possibility of interstellar spaceships carrying crews or colonists may actually increase SETI's chances for success, but it also begins ro weaken the basic thrust of SETI.

The times, they are a-changing.