New Search for Extraterrestrials Waits for No One, Er…, Everyone
Written by Nancy Atkinson
In a bold move, astronomers have begun a new search to understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of intelligent life in the universe. Called WETI, which stands for Wait for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, the institute employs an entirely novel approach to achieve its goals. Instead of actively searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, the idea is to simply wait: Wait until the ETs find us. "Waiting is a notoriously underappreciated method in our efforts to search for extraterrestrial intelligence," says the WETI website. "It is cheaper and less stressful than any other type of research. It is also environmentally friendly and does not cause global warming, terrorism or nuclear conflicts." WETI's overall objective? To set a new gold standard for scientifically meaningful waiting, and to provide humankind a new purpose as they wait.
The work of WETI was recently highlighted at the Dot Astronomy Conference on Networked Astronomy and the New Media. WETI officials overcame several problems, and were able to present a poster at the conference. Then they went out for drinks, presumably to make the waiting more enjoyable.
The poster introduces the very foundations of WETI, which includes the breakthrough "Brake Equation." See the poster for more details.
In the near future, whenever they get around to it, WETI will provide a downloadable computer program that will make use of the idle time of your computer to very efficiently wait in the background. "Modern computers can wait several million times each second," says WETI. "By exploiting this currently unused waiting potential we will collectively create the biggest waiting power ever applied to any problem on earth."
I contacted the WETI Institute for more information and was pleasantly surprised that I did not have to wait very long for a reply. An Aleks Scholz, the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of WETI, responded to my inquiries. When asked about the response WETI has received thus far, Scholz said," Generally positive, with a slight inclination of being confused at first, plus occasional cases of consternation. So far, however, there were no medically relevant problems related to the responses to WETI."
The history of the WETI Institute appears to be long and muddled. "We are still working on tracking down the roots of our organization," said Scholz. "Most of us, however, believe that it was Knarps Hoselton who originally provided the stimulus for the WETI movement with his inspirational piece of research 'On Some Philosophical Implications of Throwing Small Stones into a Big Body of Water' in the early 80s. Today, Hoselton is Senior Astronomer and holds the Bruno Moravetz Chair Emeritus at the WETI Institute." In more recent years, Scholz himself, an astronomer at the University of St. Andrews, picked up on Hoselton's revolutionary ideas and suggested combining them with networking technology. This was the beginning of the WETI Institute.
When asked how long we may have to wait for results from this new initiative, Scholz said, "We prefer to see each day of WETI as a 'result', providing us with one bit of information about the nature of extraterrestrial intelligence– they are somewhere else. The non-presence of aliens on planet Earth is as useful for science as their presence would be. We will not accept any notion that waiting is only useful if, finally, something happens. Instead, we consider waiting a fulfilling scientific method in its own right."
So, is this a joke? Maybe. Or maybe not. "It seems appropriate to ponder the actual usefulness of WETI" says the WETI website. "Where do we come from? Where do we go? Can we have coffee in between?" Well, thanks to the WETI Institute, the process of answering these questions turns into a social experience - a global, conscious waiting process. With WETI, everyone at least knows that they are waiting. This provides new purpose to humankinds' seemingly eternal waiting. We can all now wait with fierce determination.
If you find yourself not very adept at waiting, Scholz offered a few tips. "With our expertise, we can suggest a number of things: The long-established technique of fiddling your thumbs, for example, is a good start. You might also want to take a sheet of graph paper and fill in all the squares with a soft pencil. When you are finished, you could arrange for a nice cup of tea, just for a change. Finally, procrastination is always a valid option. Surely there is something you should be doing right now. Concentrate your energies on not doing it."
In the words of Galaxy Zoo's Chris Lintott, "This is both brilliant, and completely mad."
Update: You can now join WETI's "think tank," the Effortless Action Committee. When you do you can receive an attractive certificate suitable for framing immediately — no waiting!
Filed under: SETI
September 26th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
"Don't put on ideological blinders then contemptuously declare that anyone who disagrees with you is wrong. All you're showing is your elitist non-compromising attitude that betters no one."
What's wrong is wrong.
There is no compromising with injustice, ineptitude, and murder.
This group is a bunch of thieves, liars, and murderers and if there were any justice in our so-called democracy those who caused the death of 100,000 Iraqis in the name of freedom, the torturing of prisoners of war, and the conversion fo the US from a free state to totalitarian rule, would be facing a firing squad.
September 27th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Hmm, this started as a witty, funny refreshing change from the norm.
Posts seems to have taken it to ….. err
Not suprising though.
September 27th, 2008 at 11:44 am
I'm with Tim. Lighten up folks. I've had the chance to meet lots of astronomers and folks in the space sector, and they all have a great sense of humor, which I find endearing and just plain fun. Plus it was fun to write something tongue in cheek for a change.
September 27th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
The serious suggestion behind this funny article being, isn't the vast scope of SETI an impossible goal? Isn't it becoming prohibitively expensive to build experiments such as the LHC? Haven't cosmology and particle physics hit a road block of practicality if we can't afford to go to Mars or find the HIggs-Boson without spending the GDP of small countries? Maybe mankind is fooling itself, and it is time to look within for answers. After all, Newton and Einstein made giant leaps, not by conquering other worlds, but simply by thinking deeper into the same old world that was observable in front of their noses. The discovery of interstellar travel or time travel will happen via a pencil on paper or marker on white-board. The most fundamental discoveries happen during the downtime between explorations, in other words, more discoveries happen in the mind than in the world.
September 28th, 2008 at 1:01 am
it is 3 billion years which we are waiting! if any ufo could find our earth in these billions of years, had an effect on it. but there is nothing improvable!
September 28th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Waiting and waiting and waiting…duh I think we have all mastered it by now amidst the official obfuscation of these last many many years. Now is the time of 'disclosure' and that is not about bad science. Corso and Bob Dean and the others of serious repute have been laying out for years. Why is there still this grade 5 level posture of knowledge still being peddled?! Who is trying to prolong the denial, that we have been in contact for a long time? As Bob Dean and other have said, "they have always been here".
Ok Ok I'll go and wait some more. Sad days these are and will be recorded as for all history.
September 28th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
tick tick tick…..ok waiting is alot like human 'doing'. If I return to my Buddhist clarity, I will try human 'be.ing'. Ya that feels novel. Waiting is too much like expectation, I think I'll try just be.ing in witness consciousness. Oh darn I'll have to put that off..ie it'll have to wait.
cus I have to go feed the horse s, the dog, the cats, the baby…..ahhh the living world that whirled without end. No wait just the Now. 
September 28th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Like it or not, watching is waiting and doing; and thinking and wondering is action. Putting our computerized observation machines onto automatic look&see is intelligent. Who knows, but something might be coming. Who knows but while waiting, watching and wondering, something significant might come. Periferal vision is important, is as important as waiting, watching and thinking.
I read all this and then wrote this while listening to the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and fortepianist Geofrey Lancaster played Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. A poster on my wall says: 'Forests: a major player in climate calming'.
Why tell you this? Truth and beauty impinge positively. What is beyond the DarkPull of DarkMatter? We can only watch, wait and wonder. It will be good.