18Sep/093
The Search
by Jeff
Image text: I am so excited about the Kepler mission. This is the second most important thing our species has ever done, right behind inventing the concept of delivery pizza.
The Kepler mission is a NASA-led research mission in which a telescope was launched into orbit around the sun. The focus of the telescope is to find other "Earth-like" planets that could sustain life.
The comic is saying that our search for life is as futile as the ants searching a dozen floor tiles in someone's kitchen. If those ants were in my kitchen, they wouldn't have to go far before finding my sentient life and feeling the wrath of my spray can of RAID.
Additionally, the Kepler Nasa site looks like it is from 1996.
September 19th, 2009
I’d think it is more how the ants look for intelligences that they can understand – that communicate with pheromone trails, ignoring the fact that they could live a totally different life than ants, relying on sight and sound. In the same way, we are looking for intelligence as we know it, ignoring all other possibilities.
September 19th, 2009
Also relevant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant#Communication
September 19th, 2009
I think you are getting it wrong: this is a direct blow at the SETI program that assumes that if there’s intelligent life out there, we should be able to capture their radio transmissions. Assuming ET intelligence communicates through radio is like the ants assuming other intelligent life should communicate by use of pheromone trails. Because ants cannot see, they can’t just look at the humans in the kitchen.
In the other hand, the Kepler mission is looking for exoplanets, a more basic assumption that if there’s life out there it probably lives in a planet not too hot (where most molecules become gas), no too cold (since life must need energy) and not too big (where the atmosphere reduces all complex carbon chemistry to simpler hidrogen compounds)
It’s as if the ants stopped looking for pherormone trails and looked tried to solve where all that food in the kitchen comes from…