From: Ray Dickenson <r.dickenson.nul>
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:03:37 +0100
Archived: Thu, 01 May 2008 10:07:39 -0400
Subject: SETI's real objectives?


Hello List,

"A civilization very much more advanced than we will be engaged
in a busy communications traffic with its peers; but not with
us, and not via technologies accessible to us." --Communication
With Extraterrestrial Intelligence - Carl Sagan (ed.) 1973 p.
366

"Communication is a universal, but the use of radio is a
parochial, when we go out into the Galaxy... a radio signal will
be about as useful as a smoke signal. Communication evolves"
Evolving The Alien - Profs. Jack Cohen & Ian Stewart, 2002. ISBN
0-09-187927-2

Speculation:

i) it's likeliest that SETI aren't looking for advanced
civilizations, not even slightly advanced, because our more
efficient radio signals are indistinguishable from noise -
 unless you have the code-key. And, like those three say above,
more advanced folk won't be using radio at all;

ii) most sincere technical UFO/ET tracking & monitoring attempts
by private citizens have been forcibly closed-down by gov't
agencies, with burning of records & publications, arrests,
imprisonment and even deaths of investigators;

iii) strategically, gov't is only interested in ETs within a few
light years - if much further away they won't be coming here (in
a political life-time anyway), and we can't get there.

Putting those three together you get:

a) that SETI is really looking for nearby 'primitives' - pretty
much like us;

b) that SETI is really a covert, deniable, government agency.


Cheers

Ray D



Listen to 'Strange Days... Indeed' - The PodCast

See:

http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/sdi/program/subscribers/