Comment by 7thaccount | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 7thaccount | Hacker News Reader

The key points were that he believes the scientific community is scared to discuss more SETI related research for fear of redicule and job impacts. It sounds like he thinks it is impacting the science too as someone will gladly create a proposal to look for liquid water outside our solar system, but scientists are too worried about getting shunned to look for the molecules in industrial pollution (arguably a better use of time assuming that the hunt for water was a proxy for what they really wanted to do) on those planets instead. I think looking for water on exoplanets is still pretty relevant though and is useful to know even if you believe ET doesn't exist, so I don't really understand his argument here to be honest. I agree with what he's saying regarding string theory and other related fields that are very hard to run experiments on. In his eyes, they're more outlandish than SETI research as they can be made to fit a lot of different models. He is not against that kind of research, but is arguing that if you're okay with string theory, you should be okay with SETI.

I still feel like he's being a little brash in assuming Oumuamua is an alien vessel. I think it's possible, but likely there is another possibility that we haven't thought of.

Whenever I hear someone say something like “scientists aren’t researching X because they’re scared!” my response is generally “Have you even Googled to see if such studies exist?” Sometimes these statements hold up to 30 seconds of Googling, often they don’t.

And even if they do, perhaps studies have been done searching for spectra of industrial byproduct, but the results were “we couldn’t find anything in the survey data we looked at” and the researchers had a hard time publishing it. Or perhaps there’s a conclusion somewhere in the literature about imaging providing a reason why detecting such spectra with our current tech is unreliable and we need to wait 5-10 years.

Cuz like, come on! What scientist doesn’t want to find aliens?! Anyone who discovered the slightest dispositive proof of ET intelligent life would be on a one-way train to the Nobel prize, global adoration and fame, a lifetime salary on the lecture circuit, a named element on the periodic table and everyday people knowing their name for centuries. The incentives are totally there.

I get what you're saying for sure. And obviously some scientists are searching for aliens (literally the definition of SETI), but I assume Loeb knows what he's talking about (program chair of astronomy and astrophysics at Harvard) and that he means that although SOME do it, that most are too scared, so that field of research is stifled.

You have to distinguish between SETI (listening in for communications by intelligent civilizations) and more general searches for signs of life in the universe.

SETI doesn't get much funding, because Congress blocked it in the 1990s. Career-wise, this is also an incredibly risky subject to pursue as a researcher, because the most likely result is nothing.

On the other hand, other research into life in the universe is booming. The search for "biosignatures" in exoplanet atmospheres is a major subject in astronomy. One of the main goals is NASA's Mars rovers is to look for evidence of past habitability.

It would be great if SETI got more funding, but it's not as if there's no research into extraterrestrial life. There's a huge amount of research that isn't as flashy as SETI: atmospheric chemistry of exoplanets, the geology of Mars, etc.

I think you need to take what Loeb is saying with a very large grain of salt. There's a fair amount of annoyance and disgust within the astronomical community at his misrepresentation of what other astronomers have or have not been doing, particularly given that he's only been interested in this for a handful of years, versus the decades others have devoted to it.

There's a large degree of self-congratulation and self-promotion in what Loeb is saying, and denigration of what others have been doing. The idea that this field of research is "stifled" because people are "scared" is basically bullshit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com