If there is a science without an object of study, that is SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, among whose maximum defenders we find Carl Sagan, Frank Drake and Jill Tarter. Since the listening program for the hypothetical broadcasts of civilizations began back in the mid-20th century, the result has been, and is, zero, leai, zero, sifre, zewo.
The latest flop is worth $100 million: the Breakthrough Listen initiative – funded by Russian-Israeli (but California-based) billionaire Yuri Milner – which started operationally in 2016 and is expected to continue for 10 years. Its objective? The usual: detect transmissions launched into space by technological civilizations on other worlds. For this they are using two large radio telescopes: the Robert C. Byrd of Green Bank, with 100 meters in diameter, in West Virginia (USA) and the Parkes, in New South Wales (Australia).
Last June, the team in charge of the project made public the analysis of 1 petabyte (or 1 million gigabytes) of data collected, both in radio and optical wavelengths, after observing more than 1,000 stars at a distance of 160 light-years from Earth. And what have the researchers said after announcing their null results? What they have been repeating since 1960: that we have only scratched the surface, that it is necessary to continue listening on other wavelengths … In essence, invoking the first line of the SETI Creed, which was so clearly exposed by Stephen Hawking on the day of the presentation in Breakthrough Listen audience: “In an infinite universe, there must be other life.” And if we don’t find it, it’s not because it’s not there: it’s because we have to look further or, as one of the researchers said, because maybe the search was done on the wrong frequencies, or because those signals were ‘covered up’ due to interference from Earth radius. Amen.
Interestingly, SETI researchers have never dared to explain their failure in the most obvious way: maybe they don’t hear anything because nobody broadcasts . Saying that is sacrilegious.
A separate issue is that SETI is a purely American passion : there is nothing like it in any other country in the world. His obsession with aliens, whether in the form of abductions, lights in the sky, or flashes in a radio telescope, should be studied. Because only then would it be understood that the famous TED gave a million dollar prize to Jill Tarter for being a creative and daring woman capable of causing global change, or that Time magazine considered her in 2004 one of the 100 most world influencers. Which has its irony: Tarter has spent his entire life – since 1979 no less! – dedicated to a line of research whose object of study is not known if it is there and without producing any other result than zero, leai, zero, sifre , zewo. Of course, it is still unattainable to discouragement.
Inadvertently, one of the members of Breakthrough Listen , astrophysicist Danny Price of the University of California at Berkeley and lead author of the paper reporting the results in the Astrophysical Journal , revealed what SETI really is: “it is a reflection of ourselves and our technology” . SETI has more in common with religious faith than with science. According to Erik Korpela – a scientist who works on the first citizen science program that appeared in the world, SETI@home – the cost of all the projects aimed at searching for ET is between 7 and 13 million dollars per year. And all for zero, leai, zero, sifre, zewo.
The argument used by SETI to defend its more than 60 years of continuous failure is the same that we can hear in the mouths of the defenders of the existence of ghosts: absence of proof is not proof of absence . The difference between the two is only one: phantasmologists, from time to time, present ‘proof’ of what they believe.
