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SETI chief says US has no evidence for alien technology. 'And we never have'
News
By Leonard David published 6 hours ago
"The idea that the government is keeping something like this secret is
just totally absurd. There's no motivation to do so."

Comments (9)
a series of large white radar dishes stand alone in the desert
The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array is a radio astronomy observatory
located in the Plains of San Agustin in New Mexico. (Image credit: Getty
Images/Feifei Cui-Paoluzzo)
If all the reports of mysterious objects buzzing our skies are taken as
true encounters, the Earth appears to be under assault.

But spoiler alert: For the chief leader of the SETI Institute,
established to search for and understand life beyond Earth, there's a
need to step back and cuddle up to a cup of cosmic reality.

"We don't have any evidence of any credible source that would indicate
the presence of alien technology in our skies. And we never have," said
Bill Diamond, president and chief executive officer of the SETI
Institute, headquartered in Mountain View, California. "The idea that
the government is keeping something like this secret is just totally
absurd. There's no motivation to do so."

Related: 'It's getting closer and closer for sure.' How SETI is
expanding its search for alien intelligence (exclusive)

SETI is a key research contractor to NASA and the National Science
Foundation, and collaborates with industry partners throughout Silicon
Valley. Space.com caught up with Diamond for a close-encounter with his
own thoughts and counterpoints to claims of alien visitation and to ask
whether there's any signal in all the UFO noise.

a man in a blue vest stands in a large room before a large red piece of
equipment and a large dark circular disk towering over him.

Bill Diamond, president and chief executive officer of the SETI
Institute. (Image credit: Bill Diamond)
Thought experiment
Diamond said that, while we should not outright rule out the possibility
that we might someday discover evidence of alien technology in our
skies, "we should equally not jump to the conclusion that UFOs are alien
technology in the absence of any compelling evidence to that effect. And
there is no compelling evidence," he contends.

To help visualize why, Diamond urges people to try a thought experiment.

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The fastest spacecraft that humans have ever built and continues to head
outward from Earth is NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. It was hurled
outward back in January 2006, cruising by Pluto and is still adding
mileage to its odometer.

"If you sent that spacecraft to our closest neighbor star, Alpha
Centauri, it would take 80,000 years to get there," said Diamond. "Any
civilization that has mastered the ability to traverse the
incomprehensibly vast distances of interstellar space would have
technology so far advanced from our own as to be beyond our comprehension."

The binary stars of the nearby Alpha Centauri system, as seen by NASA's
Hubble Space Telescope. On the left is Alpha Centauri A, which is a
sun-like G-type star. On the right is Alpha Centauri B, which is a
slightly cooler K-type star.

The closest star system to the Earth is the Alpha Centauri group at a
distance of 4.3 light-years. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope snagged
this view of Alpha Centauri A (on the left) and Alpha Centauri B (on the
right), appearing as cosmic headlamps in the dark. (Image credit:
ESA/NASA)
It would be much like a smartphone to a Neanderthal, Diamond suggested.

"If such beings exist, they would likely send hardware here first and
not biology, and they certainly wouldn't crash-land in our deserts," he
said, like the alleged and highly acclaimed 1947 nose-dive of a UFO and
its accident-prone occupants near Roswell, New Mexico.

In short haul language, that's a long way to travel and run out of
braking fluid.

Where's the mothership?
"Long before they sent any craft into our sky they would have some
understanding of what they were dealing with," Diamond observed, "as
they would already know everything about our atmosphere, our airspace,
our technology and more."

It just wouldn't happen, Diamond emphasized.

"And if it did they wouldn't leave them behind. And by the way, if you
have a small craft zipping around in our airspace, where is the
mothership? And if they didn't want to be observed, they wouldn't be!"

an image of space with the words SETI INSTITUTE

For many, the SETI logo signals a universal question of 'are we alone?'.
(Image credit: SETI Institute/Trevor Beattie)
Connective tissue
All the same, in the public mind, is there some kind of connective
tissue between SETI and UFOs?

"There is definitely connective tissue," Diamond responded. "Why do
people have these beliefs? It is because they want to believe. Nobody
really wants to think that this Earth is the only place in the vastness
of space where life has emerged. Even that idea is also kind of absurd."

For example, Diamond points to the revelations cranked out by the NASA
Kepler mission, lofted in March 2009.

That hunter/data-gatherer spacecraft discovered more than 2,700 planets
beyond our solar system. Compiling deep space data for nine years, the
message from Kepler: there are billions of unseen planets, indeed, more
planets than stars.

Statistical probability
"Statistically speaking, every single star in the sky has one or more
planets around it," Diamond pointed out. Furthermore, 50 percent or more
of these are Earth-like (rocky surface and similar size) and in the
habitable zone of their host star, he said.

"That implies the existence of tens of billions of potentially habitable
worlds in our galaxy alone," Diamond said. "So indeed, the statistical
probability that we are alone in the Universe is zero. Surely there is
life beyond Earth!"

But the presence, both in space and time, as well as proximity, of
advanced alien civilizations is another matter completely, Diamond
continued. "There are innumerable variables, all of which in the
sciences of astrobiology, planetary science, astronomy and astrophysics,
we are trying to figure out."

Accidental observations
The SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array in Hat Creek, California is
now searching 20,000 red dwarf stars for signs of intelligent life.

The SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array is the first radio telescope
to be designed from the ground up to search for extraterrestrial
intelligence. (Image credit: Seth Shostak, SETI Institute)
Diamond questions why any alien civilization would send biology when
they could isntead send hardware.

"The farthest things we have sent into space are hardware. And that's
logical," said Diamond. "But if you did send beings and the most
interesting thing you can do is draw circles in crops … come on!"

One other scoop of skepticism Diamond added is that every single UFO —
now tied to the term Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) — are all
"accidental observations."

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"Therefore, they are highly unreliable. They don't have instrumentation,
technology, or methodology to discern what they are looking at," said
Diamond.

Lastly, the SETI Institute leader said if the government actually
believed in ET buzzing our planet, where's the study money?

"The lack of government funding to study UAP/UFO is evidence of either
the government being quite certain that there's nothing to these
accidental observations — or — the government preferring that we not use
available technology to closely watch our skies because of our own human
technologies that are being developed — in secret," said Diamond.

"I think that's the most compelling bit of evidence against the idea
that we've got visitors in our skies," Diamond concluded.

For more information on the SETI Institute and its programs, go to
https://www.seti.org/

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Leonard David
Leonard David
Space Insider Columnist
Leonard David is an award-winning space journalist who has been
reporting on space activities for more than 50 years. Currently writing
as Space.com's Space Insider Columnist among his other projects, Leonard
has authored numerous books on space exploration, Mars missions and
more, with his latest being "Moon Rush: The New Space Race" published in
2019 by National Geographic. He also wrote "Mars: Our Future on the Red
Planet" released in 2016 by National Geographic. Leonard has served as
a correspondent for SpaceNews, Scientific American and Aerospace America
for the AIAA. He was received many awards, including the first Ordway
Award for Sustained Excellence in Spaceflight History in 2015 at the AAS
Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium. You can find out Leonard's latest
project at his website and on Twitter.