Truth and Lies in SETI

Let's get one thing straight, despite several well-publicized reports that the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, currently home to the European Space Agency's Philae lander, is home to an "abundance of alien microbial life:" humanity is not any closer to finding alien life. In fact, to say those claims are sensationalistic is an understatement.

The idea that 67P is home to alien life comes from astronomers Chandra Wickramasinghe, University of Buckingham, and Max Wallis, University of Cardiff. Wickramasinghe has been in the news before; he's most famous for the concept that the building blocks for life were deposited on Earth by comets with biological specimens.

He's used the notoriety to springboard other, less accepted ideas, such as the idea that the SARS virus and the airborne spores that caused rainfall in Kerala to turn a reddish hue both had extraterrestrial origins. He cites a layer of black organic crust found by Philae as evidence that life teems under the comet's icy surface. Such microbial organisms could have salts that prevent them from freezing even at temperatures of -40° C, and are responsible for the regeneration of the hydrocarbon crust, which is depleted as it speeds through space.

This created a flurry of interest in the comet and the Rosetta mission, but it was ultimately misleading. The presence of black hydrocarbons was an expected feature, predicted in 1986, naturally created by organic molecules exposed to cosmic rays and light. Wickramasinghe also said that Philae is unable to detect life, which is also not true. Philae would be able to measure quantities of organic chemicals that might indicate active biology-there are currently no measurements to support claims of life. Try as Wickramasinghe might, finding life on a comet is going to be a needle in a haystack.

Finding two needles in a haystack is twice as likely, but seemingly as improbable: that about explains the odds of the new $100 million Breakthrough Listen radio telescope campaign of finding alien life. The venture is funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, who feels the time is right to launch a massive renewed search for extraterrestrial radio signals in the "quiet zone," a spectrum between 1 and 10 gHz that is unaffected by cosmic sources or Earth's atmosphere.

The search will cover ten times more listening area than any search before. The $100 million will pay for thousands of hours of radio telescope time at the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the Parkes Telescope in Australia, as well as office and workshop space at the University of California. This immense project has attracted the likes of famous astronomers Frank Drake, Geoff Marcy and Stephen Hawking. Breakthrough Listen will also implement SETI@home, which allows amateurs to use their personal computers in the search.

Milner has accepted that Breakthrough Listen likely won't find anything interesting, as has said that he'd consider funding it for more than the current cycle. Marcy himself said it's possible that they're not even looking for the right evidence. However SETI funding has been in such a steep decline, that sometimes things like exaggerating what's been found on a comet might be necessary to pique interest. It does more harm than good to the cause in the end, but some publicity is better than no publicity.