Topic: =/\= need a telescope array? anti-helium discovered!

[stoneyface]

first up is a great story involving "STAR" experiment at a smaller collider, brookhaven labs to be specific. it has found "anti-helium 4". it wasn't easy. this lab is good at finding heavy anti particles. they found anti-triton and anti-helium is made at a significantly lower rate than anti-trition using gold/gold collisions. read more here: http://scienceblog.com/44642/anti-helium-discovered-in-the-heart-of-star/

so, need a good telescope array? in a truly sad story to me, the allen telescope array has gone into hibernation as they have run out of funds. it needs to be improved with more dishes to compete with other larger arrays. i hate to see science and science tools wasted. read here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=budget-crunch-mothballs-telescopes-2011-04-24
just sad if you ask me...

[knightstorm]

I know I'm probably going to step on several toes here by saying this, but I think SETI is a waste of money, and I think there are other endeavors more worthy of government funding.

[Bonk]

I agree with you on that knightstorm. I don't expect that any advanced alien civilisation would attempt to communicate over interstellar distances using electromagnetic radiation. Extremely unlikely.

That said, there are still plenty of uses for huge radio telescope arrays.

Antihelium, cool.  (horribly titled article though, quite misleading, not a star, but an accelerator). Detection is one thing, storage is another. But, we get closer. I have a theory on an implementation of an alcubierre warp drive using stored energy (a lot of it).

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) experiment, scheduled to be launched on one of the last space-shuttle missions to the International Space Station, is an instrument designed to do just that. A principal part of its mission is to hunt for distant galaxies made entirely of antimatter.

Mind goes boom!  That would be so far out. With our luck, if we were to detect such a beast, that is where we will find intelligence.

[knightstorm]

I agree with you on that knightstorm. I don't expect that any advanced alien civilisation would attempt to communicate over interstellar distances using electromagnetic radiation. Extremely unlikely.

What makes it even more insane is that SETI has actually conceded that point.  They don't generally send messages for that reason, yet somehow expect that other intelligent civilizations wouldn't reach the same conclusions.

That said, there are still plenty of uses for huge radio telescope arrays.

Once more, I agree, but ATA doesn't seem to have been involved in anything at the moment that couldn't have just as easily been done elsewhere.  Hopefully, the array will be completed one day, and do something worth justifying the cost of its completion and operation.

[stoneyface]

i disagree entirely. i think that SETI is some of the most important work of mankind. i believe you really have a problem with their implementation. sure radio waves are not the best but at the time that was the technology we had developed to significant levels that we could send and receive from space at the fastest speeds. i think it is time for new ways of communication to be explored. but if we ever find life outside our  small blue ball, i firmly believe that we will get a signal from a distance first. not john q. alien opening a hatch and saying "asd,j,mat,kao,flaha!".
i would also state this thought. what if seti had succeeded sometime in the past. something like the "wow peak" signal. what if that was not the only signal of unexplained origin but it was the first of many signals from some outside intelligence. if they had succeeded, seti would have been lauded as the most important work of mankind in history. i firmly believe there is life out there. i know it. i have "seen" it in my minds eye. someday we will have contact and programs like seti will be seen in a whole new light. i am sick of the school of thought in science that thinks that "no results = failure". "it takes 100 failed experiments for 1 to succeed"

[knightstorm]

My problem with SETI is that with existing technology, you're not going to pick up "terrestrial" broadcasts, because the signal is too weak.  They would only detect intentional high powered signals, and they have conceded the fact that such communication is impractical by the fact that they rarely send out signals.  So they are basically saying "its a waste of time for us to send out signals, but maybe the aliens are idiots."  Needless to say, I don't really agree with their logic.

If they had succeeded, seti would have been lauded as the most important work of mankind in history.

And if Columbus wasn't an idiot, his name wouldn't have gone down in history.