From: Elisabeth Piotelat (league.seti_at_libertysurf.fr)
Date: Tue Sep 28 2004 - 07:53:33 PDT
Hello,
We had an interesting meeting on the Fermi paradox in Paris last week.
I made a presentation on "SETI activities".
I had two remarks :
1) From a well known astronomer :
- Can you define what's an artificial signal?
My answer was that we procede by elimination. We know "natural"
astronomical sources. We check the origin of the signal, etc, etc...
Do we have something else? We can say that no "non-artificial" signal
can use frequency or amplitude modulation.
2) From a chemist :
- What do you do with the absence of result? I can't consider SETI is a
science if there is no way interpreting the "silence". When my students
can't find a molecule in an astronomical object I tell them that this is
a "good" result and that they have to interpret this.
I answered there have been a workshop on the topic few weeks ago.
Someone else add that SETI is also a "social" science and that you can't
really compare it with what we called "hard science".
After that I wonder if some student had allready done a doctorate or
similar work on SETI ?
--- Elisabeth Piotelat SETI League volcor from France http://www.limsi.fr/Individu/zabeth http://setileague.free.fr
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