Efforts to Search for and Message Extra Terrestrial Intelligences (SETI and METI) have met with a lot of opposition. Some say that there's no life out there, possibly because they view the universe as only slightly larger than the Earth with some twinkly bits at the edges, and some say that if there is we shouldn't let it know we're here, because every science fiction ever has painted them as acid-blooded blade-things who live only to pick us off one by one for sport. Another objection to these efforts is the financial cost, which is ridiculous. We've reached the point where Doritos - makers of insanely flavoured corn-chips - can afford to hire the EISCAT Space Centre to beam adverts at Ursae Majoris. When snack-food makers can pay off our space research centres, we have way worse cost and capitalism problems than the relatively inexpensive search for life. To put it in perspective: SETI's budget last year was about two million dollars, and Doritos will spend five on three ads to run during next year's Superbowl. So while one group searches for intelligent life in the stars, the other takes advantage of how there's none down here.
We're so terrified of outer-space aliens with slavering jaws and an extremely unlikely lust for our hu-man women, the few scientists who said "Screw it" and beamed out interstellar messages have been thoroughly castigated by people who couldn't even spell some of the words involved. (In a way Doritos wasn't, possibly because "Making Mountain Dew flavoured corn" outweighs physics degrees in interstellar issues.)
There are two simple facts here. One, any objection to finding other life in the universe reveals a failing in the objector, be it fear, limited imagination or sheer planetary-scale provincialism. Two, it's irrelevant - any species sufficiently advanced to receive our messages can probably detect us anyway, so we're just deciding if they judge us on our nobler intentions or our reality TV. And the fact we pay for artificially flavoured corn oil. (Source: Daily Galaxy)
