Interview so Sethom Shostakom o hľadaní mimozemských civilizácií

Interview with Seth Shostak about SETI and searching for extraterrestrial civilizations

The question „Are We Alone in the Universe?“ has been fascinating us for thousands of years. SETI is the oldest and the most active organization in search for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations in the world. We asked Seth Shostak, a popular SETI Institute Senior Astronomer a few questions about SETI and extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI).

pc.sk: I guess we both agree that the search for ETI is not sufficiently financed. What do you think is the reason that any government is not interested in sufficient financing of this field?

Seth Shostak: You know a part of it is because federal funding for SETI was stopped in 1993. And there´s been very little funding since then for SETI from the government. So it has to be done via private donations and that´s quite difficult, you know, to find that kind of money. Because we can not guarantee success. That´s impossible to do, all we can do is to say we will do the best we can and if we don´t look we won´t find anything but there is no way to guarantee success so that´s the problem.


pc.sk: Previous days we saw a couple of articles about SETI Congressional hearing. As far as we know, SETI is financed from private sources. Will it change in near future?

Seth Shostak: Well, I don´t know, I mean, I don´t think anybody knows. And in particular I don´t think that even the members of the commitee know. If they wish to do something about this, for example to ensure that NASA has some small SETI program, I suppose they could do that. But I think it is rather unpredictable, after all you´re talking politics so it´s unpredictable what will happen.


pc.sk: If SETI had, let‘s say, one thousand times bigger budget as it has actually, what will be the impact on your research?
Note: in that case SETI search would be financed by a budget similar to the one for Higgs research

Seth Shostak: Well, I think that with that kind of budget we could build the kind of receiving equipment that will allow us to examine several million star systems over the course of the next ten to twenty years. And I think that that would be a meaningful search. Looking at a few thousand star system as we´ve done so far it´s a nice start, but you can´t conclude anything from that. If you could examine millions of star systems than you´ ve actually done a survey that tells you something. Either you find them or you don´t, but it will tell you something.


pc.sk: Could you explain the Fermi paradox to our readers?

Seth Shostak: Yes, the Fermi paradox suggests that there is nobody out there because we don´t see any nearby signs of ETI, they haven´t colonized the galaxy for example. And that´s a very big conclusion made from a very local simple observation that we don´t see anything that tells us that they´re there. I mean, when I flew into the airport in South Africa, I didn´t see any elephants near the airport, but I didn´t conclude that there are no elephants in Africa. So I think the Fermi paradox is a nice thing to talk about but I don’t think it offers any very good evidence one way or the other about the existence of extraterrestrials.


pc.sk: One speculative question. Let‘s say that we will spend enough sources for ETI research in the next years. We will not find any signal or sign of ETI existence in statistically significant amount of stars. No radio signal, no pollution in atmosphere of extraterrestrial planets, no sign of city lights and so on. And let‘s say that we will find microbial life in solar system on Mars and Europa. Then we will know that life is common in the Galaxy and that there is still no sign of ETI. Could this be a warning for us then, that we should be very careful as a civilization, as species, that we should be more responsible?

Seth Shostak: Well, some people may take it as an indication that that´s the case. I personally would not. I would simply say that´s an indication that we´re using the wrong technique to try and find them. That we‘re doing the wrong experiment. It would not convince me that intelligence was rare, no.


pc.sk: Assume that we will receive a signal from another civilization. What should we do according to you?

Seth Shostak: I think we should just follow up and learn as much as we can. And I´m sure that would happen. I think that every observatory in the world would be observing in the direction from which the signal came. We would want to learn as much as we could. You know, is there a planet there, what can we tell about the planet, that sort of thing. But also we would make it much easier to find other places from which signals are coming because now we would have an example, now we would know what we´re looking for.

pc.sk: Should we reply?

Seth Shostak: Well, you know, in a way we have replied. We have transmitted broadcasts for 75 years and any society that´s advanced enough for us to detect would be able to pick up those signals. But keep in mind they might be a 1000 light years away and so, you know, conversation is a very slow business.


pc.sk: Gabriel G. De la Torre in his recent article published (in Acta Astronautica) a reasoning that we are actually not ready to communicate with other civilizations. Can you comment it on?

Seth Shostak: Well, I think that´s kind of a silly argument actually. Maybe Julius Caesar would have said the same thing, w´re not ready for extraterrestrial contact and maybe 10 000 years from now they will still be saying we´re not ready for extraterrestrial contact. Would you have said that Christopher Columbus shouldn‘t find any new continent because we´re not ready for contact with other cultures? I don´t know what that means and I don´t believe that myself.


pc.sk: What do you think has been the most surprising discovery in the field (ETI search and connected fields) in the last years?

Seth Shostak: I think the most surprising thing is a very high percentage of stars that we now think might have habitable planets. That might be 1 in 5, and that´s a very high percentage.


pc.sk: In your opinion, which movie or book describes the scenario of the contact with extraterrestrial civilization most realistically?

Seth Shostak: Well, how do we know? Nobody knows because to describe it accurately you need to know what it really is. I honestly don´t know what it is, nobody does, so that´s a question you really can´t answer. I would only say that in terms of the technology of the search that Conact, the novel and the movie, was the most accurate, but that´s because Carl Sagan knew of this work (the movie Contact is a film adapted from the novel). But because we do not know what contact would be like and that sort of thing, of course we can´t say.


pc.sk: Did you find Gaia hypothesis from James Lovelock interesting/plausible or you look at it as a kind of New Age nonsense?

Seth Shostak: Well, no, I don´t think it´s New Age nonsense. I mean, you know, I think that what you can derive from their work is that biology has rather radicaly changed this planet. And the planet now has obvious mechanisms that kind of guarantee that it can´t become uninhabitable very easily because of the feedback of the biology that is on this planet. I think it´s a very valuable insight. It also of course means good for SETI and it tells us how we could find life on other worlds because their biology is likely to do something similar to their planet so it´s useful I´m pointing out that biology is not just sort of a decoration on this planet but is has changed this planet.


pc.sk: Could you, please, tell us a few words about your last book “Confessions of an Alien Hunter”?

Seth Shostak: In that book I tried to explain to people who are not experts why we think aliens are there and how they´re looking and what they might be like. And so a lot of it is a speculation, but it´s an effort to explain SETI to people who are interested, but don´t have much knowledge of this subject.