omg I think we already talked about this before but do you think we would ever discover alien life in our lifetimes?
I think we did in person! But AHH my thoughts on this change all the time? I guess the cynicism of viewing all the bureaucracy in science behind the scenes, but then watching our tiny blue marble produce technology like New Horizons…
I’ll have to say yes if just to not depress myself…if I don’t have hope in the mechanisms I think necessary to discovering alien life in our lifetimes, then I don’t have hope in a lot of things? I think those mechanisms include:
international cooperation: combining technological resources and minds to solve creative problems, but also to construct collective projects like LIGO, which use multiple receivers across the globe to create immense telescope systems (something SETI folks are working on now)
efficient technology: we’re running out of resources and it will take a lot of power/labor/materials to build large-aperture telescopes and/or launch them
support from non-scientists, en masse: the need for those resources and that cooperation requires a fundamental understanding of the importance of SETI work by the public, which is tough as hell considering that even getting to low-Earth orbit was and still is incredibly contentious when we have problems like starvation on Earth (this phenomenon is…another conversation)
internal community cooperation: a lot of scientists also think SETI is a waste of time, and the misogyny and racism within science communities has effectively limited the creativity of scientific thought drastically for the past 500 years…I think the only way to achieve the kind of scientific efficiency, creativity, and output we need to discover life, is to effect a massive overhaul of the white pillars. I think we’re watching it happen now, though.
These mechanisms will lead us to the types of technology SETI folks have been waiting for for decades…we have so much SETI theory developed and these researchers know how to look, it’s just a matter of having enough man power and the right tech and the money/development to get it done. I don’t think that intelligence or lack of understanding is currently preventing us from finding alien life in 2016, so by 2050-2070? I have to hope so.
I think…if we can reach nuclear fusion by 2070? Laser communications by 2030 (conservatively! we’re really close)? And infrared SETI is currently in the works? LIGO was greatly successful in literally its first test run…I Want To Believe
