SETI Pioneer Jill Tarter Retires

With all due respect, I would probably be able to plausibly argue as an astrophysicist (but not a SETI-affiliated one) that I do have "an appreciation of the scale of the universe, the limitations that Einsteinian physics places on communication and exploration of it, the incredible odds of finding coincidental intelligent life in close proximity to us on the kind of time scale and size scale of a 14 billion year old, 14 billion light year diameter universe". After 35 years in the field, Jill Tarter probably does, too.

Your position is not an unreasonable one to adopt, even if I think that characterizing SETI as "just a time sink for big children" is unfair, sounds fairly juvenile itself and makes your argument sound weaker than it actually is.

I personally feel, however, that while the SETI effort is like looking for a nearby needle in universe full of haystacks (and the SETI folk have never claimed otherwise), the cultural, philosophical and other implications of scoring an admittedly spectacularly unlikely "hit" are worth the relatively modest investment. A big chunk of SETI's money already comes from private donations these days, anyway, and a lot more public money has been wasted on totally pointless things totally lacking the world-changing implications of something like SETI.

And in the meantime, they've (at the very least) been able to do some interesting things in terms of radio telescope technology and other research, and inspired a bunch of kids and adults to think enthusiastically about science.

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