Planetary securityIt is almost certain there are aliens out there, but can we find the money to find them?
UC Berkley Professor Dan Werthimer last month updated members of the House Subcommittee on Science, Space and Technology on the search for extraterrestrial life, and provided a generally upbeat evaluation: ET microbial life likely is ubiquitous throughout the galaxy, and new technologies have improved the chances of detecting signals from advanced alien civilizations.
One of SETI's radiotelescope arrays // Source: thanhnien.com.vn
Dan Werthimer thinks his testimony last month before the House Subcommittee on Science, Space and Technology went pretty well. As director of the SETI Research Center at Berkeley, Werthimer updated committee members on the search for extraterrestrial life, and provided a generally upbeat evaluation: ET microbial life likely is ubiquitous throughout the galaxy, and new technologies have improved the chances of detecting signals from advanced alien civilizations.
“They were quite engaged,” Werthimer says of the representatives, members of a Congress notorious for its ideological partisanship and not particularly renowned for a deep commitment to science. “They asked reasonable questions, and they seemed disinclined to go at each other.”
On the other hand, Werthimer acknowledges that it is discouraging that the current science subcommittee has convened more hearings on extraterrestrial life than on climate change.
“This general backlash against science is frightening,” he says. “(Denying climate change) is like playing Russian roulette with 99 bullets in the gun. I suspect it’s because all the research indicates we’re in trouble. People want to stick their heads in the sand.”
But back to the happier (hopefully) topic of aliens. A UC Berkeley release reports that part of the reason Werthimer made the dreary trek to the Hill was, unsurprisingly, money. It is something that researchers at SETI — an acronym for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — need more of if they’re going to continue probing the cosmos.
“There are maybe two dozen full-time SETI researchers in the world, and we’re all operating on shoestrings,” he says. “We don’t need a zillion dollars for this work. Our research is quite inexpensive, but we do need some money. More to the point, we need reliable funding. The fluctuations in funding have been more problematic than the amount of money. For example, sometimes we get money from NASA and sometimes we don’t. That makes it difficult to plan experiments.”
Werthimer has been involved with SETI since 1972, and he is not disheartened that no alien yawp has yet been detected. He never really expected, he says, to discover ET in his lifetime.
