I admit, I'm a SETI supporter, even if only in spirit these days (my CPU's are doing Folding@home, now.) This is a great book that is simultaneously a highly accessible overview of the issues and details of SETI, an argument for doing SETI, and in the best tradition of SETI, an touches on many interesting questions (What is life? Technologically, and hence culturally, where might we go from here? Etc.) ( )

Interesting book, but dry. It is good to read an unbiased view of the purpose of SETI and why it could, or could not, benefit us. ( )

Are we alone? The question haunts us, and over the centuries the interest in the topic waxes and wanes like the phases of the moon. Currently there is a great deal of interest in the topic due to the recent discoveries made by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. The quest is described as the search for "Earth's twin". However, we still do not possess the technology or, indeed, the cultural and political will to invent it to explore possible candidates. And there is the ultimate question, phrased
in the Fermi Paradox, if there are so many potential planets, where is everybody? The Eerie Silence is one of the better and more thoughtful books on the topic of whether we are alone in the universe. ( )

Every discussion about aliens is necessarily a thought experiment, given the lack of empirical evidence.

A fundamental question here is whether the idea that civilisations would see each other as rivals (or have other reasons for wanting to destroy each other) is plausible. There's no way of knowing if, say, every other civilisation turns out to have sort of fundamental genocidal impulse, but there doesn't seem to be any reason to assume this, either.

So, what other reasons might all/most civilisations be trying to destroy each other, as a default? As far as I can see that only makes sense if civilisations are so numerous as to be close enough together to be competing (or potentially competing) over scarce resources- and therefore see each other as rivals to be destroyed. Based on our efforts so far, that appears highly unlikely. It seems more likely that if other advanced life exists, the distances between civilisations means that there would be little need to compete with each other.

Now, of course, tons of assumptions go into this- but they are at least as plausible as the assumptions behind the dark forest idea.

We will never know until either friendly aliens show us the way to their intergalactic portal and deliver our first lot of replicators or a huge 1 dimensional fractal weapon obliterates our solar system.

That those looking for "life" elsewhere are delusional fantasists. That's fine, aren't we all, to some degree? We mock those standing on rain swept stations with notebooks and pencils, we wonder at stamp collections, we tut-tut at soap-opera addicts - alien hunters are in a worse position: there is no train, stamp, or Corrie, just the hope of the spectacular reversal of assumption so that they may cry: “See! I told you!”

4 points more:

- - Nothing much to explain why co-ordinating activities at SETI with the VLA (while a sensible step) should make any great leap forward or breakthrough in long standing speculation and belief. How will a supercomputer filter make difference to nil perceived detections so far?

- - Statistical probability plays as much as anything else in bringing alien detection into mainstream thinking, triggered by discovery of exo-planets as the norm and water detection elsewhere in the Solar System.

- - And risks from hostile worlds have long been warned before Hawking. H G Wells, for example, was on to that risk.

- Even if there is intelligent life out there, relativity rather spoils the chances of meeting them. If a planet is 50 light years away we'll get to exchange messages with the answer coming back a century later, and travel between us would take millennia.



Of course, the speed of light is restricted by the permittivity of free-space (the so-called Vacuum-constant). All that you have to do is build a machine that alters the permittivity of free space, and Voila! Light can travel faster, and therefore so can we. So I suggest we all get ourselves into our garden shed, and start working on it. ( )

A superb history of SETI which also asks a lot of questions such as how does life begin? Is there other life out there? If not why are we unique? What are the odds on life beginning? Has life begun on life a number of times? Maybe life did not begin on earth at all but started elsewhere and came to earth. If there are 'aliens'what would we say to them and are they millions of years more advanced? The answer to all this is we just don't know. But why is there no evidence of other life - why the 'eerie silence'? It is humbling to think we might be it - that our planet teeming with life is the only one. This is a great book and thoroughly recommended. ( )