Yes, the SETI project is now 50 years old!

There hasn't been too much said about it in the news apart from a few little snippets here and there. One would think that there would be a lot more fanfare.

It was 50 years ago (April 1960) that Frank Drake began Project Ozma, the first SETI search using radio telescopes. No indisputable signal of intelligent origin was found that year… and interestingly enough, none have ever been found in the 50 years since despite vast increases in the scale of the search like the Allen Telescope Array financed by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen.

Last September, Nature printed an editorial supporting SETI on the 50th anniversary of the first scientific paper on the possibility of conducting a search using radio frequencies. The editorial said:

Regardless of how exhaustively the Galaxy is searched, the null result of radio silence doesn't rule out the existence of alien civilizations. It means only that those civilizations might not be using radio to communicate.

Take the time to think about what they said here…

Firstly, if you claim to have an enquiring mind then you should have quickly concluded that with absolutely no evidence to back it up, as Nature readily admits, then their statement on the existence of alien civilizations is nothing more than pure conjecture, what you and I would call a belief. It seems inconceivable that we are the only intelligence amongst the hypothesized millions and millions of civilizations to have discovered and use radio communications. And it also raises an interesting question: If true, if they believe they are not using radio communications, then why are we still searching for alien civilizations by trying to detect their… radio communications?

Of course, there are alternatives to explain this total lack of success. For example, we may actually be at the top of the pile, that is, the rest of the alien civilizations may be less advanced than us and haven't discovered radio yet. Clearly, this scenario is pure conjecture. And there is also another obvious possibility; that there is no life out there to communicate with us after all; maybe we're all there is. And yet again, this scenario is pure conjecture. The SETI evidence clearly supports both of these alternate hypotheses as well. So, which one is correct?

The well known physicist Stephen Hawking came out a few days ago and used the same old probability argument to bolster his personal belief that advanced alien civilizations must exist all over the universe. The bottom line is this: That no matter what hypothesis you or me or Stephen can dream up, it will always be pure conjecture (an assumption, pure speculation) unless contact is made. Until then, we have absolutely no scientific evidence whatsoever that any alien civilizations exist - in fact, we never had any scientific evidence whatsoever that any alien civilizations exist.

Anyway, after 50 years in the business where is SETI going?

Good question. Let's look at the mission statement from the SETI Institute website:

The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe.

Mmm… what happened to the letter "I"… the word "Intelligence"? This mission statement is indistinguishable from the mission statement for astrobiology which doesn't care if the life is intelligent or not! Surely the scientists at the SETI institute crave to find and communicate with sentient and intelligent beings like ourselves.

If SETI is moving away from its original mission of finding intelligent life, then perhaps their acronym should be changed to SETL: the "Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life"… or better still SETLYT: the "Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life on You Tube". You don't need multi-million dollar radio telescope arrays for that; You Tube is free… and you'll find lots of incontrovertible proof for the existence of extraterrestrials…

Further evidence that the SETI Institute is moving away from its original mission can be found in the content of their news links. For example, if you visit the site regularly you will see reports on things like the Leonid meteor shower (this is about planetary science, not SETI); an interview about the ethics of space exploration (that's human space exploration, not SETI); an interview with a scientist studying extremophiles in salt ponds on Earth (that's standard biology, not SETI); an airship based investigation of climate change (political science perhaps, but not SETI); how life may have started (that's chemistry, not SETI)… and so on. With nothing of any substance to report, SETI has been forced to report regular everyday science.

So, why move away from its original mission?

You don't need to be too intelligent (pardon the pun) to figure out that those at the SETI institute are worried… worried about their jobs that is… and so they should be.

If there is too much hoopla about the project this year, then their supporters may well find out about their nice little scam of spending large amounts of money for over 50 years now to deliver absolutely nothing tangible. And, if the those naïve supporters realize this fact, lose interest and withdraw from the project... then obviously it won't be long before the cash flow… and their jobs… disappear as well.

Clearly then, this is no random "mutation" here.  In order to survive and keep their jobs those at SETI have subtly and deliberately "mutated" themselves. After all, astrobiology, or better still astronomy is a much safer scientific field to be employed in… true?

Fifty years on and over half a billion dollars spent (including a reasonable amount of taxpayer's money upto 1993) and not one single tangible result to show for it. What a massive waste of time and money… time and money that could have and should have been more wisely spent on other research projects rather than simply trying to shore up some conjecture which is driven entirely by evolutionary beliefs. From the site:

Over the last half-century, scientists have developed a theory of cosmic evolution that predicts that life is a natural phenomenon likely to develop on planets with suitable environmental conditions. Scientific evidence shows that life arose on Earth relatively quickly…

Eh? And what is the scientific evidence exactly? The so-called "evidence" that evolutionists often point to is very thin on the ground to say the least. Face it - as noted above, the search is based purely on the evolutionary belief that abiogenesis will occur spontaneously just about anywhere if the conditions are suitable… despite the total lack of scientific evidence as to how. Perhaps the money SETI has wasted searching the cosmos could have been better spent on proper scientific research into how life actually began here on Earth. With half a billion dollars and 50 years of research they would probably have had their answers by now. Rather, as we see time and time again, it's always a case of just a click of the fingers and abracadabra life exists. Then, from this bold assertion we then get the customary leap of evolutionary faith…

… suggesting that life will occur on similar planets orbiting sun-like stars. With the recent discoveries of extrasolar planetary systems, and the suggestive evidence that life may once have existed on Mars, this scenario appears even more likely.

The weight of the scientific research done so far in the scientific fields of chemistry and thermodynamics all point strongly in the "it couldn't happen here" direction. And as for the evidence of "life" from the so-called "Mars meteorite" - are they serious? It is extremely conjectural at best and many scientists who have examined the evidence in detail have totally rejected it… but do we ever hear about that? No, of course not, simply because there's no money to be made going in that direction, is there…? Oh, it's just a common meteorite…

However, go the other way and what do we have? You generate a whole new "industry" - we need to send probes and manned missions to Mars to find further evidence of life! But what is it really based on? Some conjecture about a meteorite and the belief that abiogenesis is rampant throughout the universe… despite the total lack of evidence. But no doubt the government will be conned into spending billions and billions of dollars, thousands and thousands will be employed… and those at SETI will beam with pride - NASA has learnt well from them - the Mars project was virtually dead in the water till the "Mars meteorite" came along.

SETI: Fifty years… over half a billion dollars… and nothing… not one single solitary tangible piece of evidence to point to… but they all still have their jobs, don't they?

SETI would better be called… "Some Evolution Theory Idiocy" or "Sheltered Employment Till Investigated" or "Scammed Employment Tidy Income" or better still "Sucking Everyone Totally In"… yes, that one says it all.