Friday, December 02, 2005

SETI and Intelligent Design

SETI and Intelligent Design
Seth Shostak (Space.com)
Well, it’s because the credibility of the evidence is not predicated on its complexity. If SETI were to announce that we’re not alone because it had detected a signal, it would be on the basis of artificiality. An endless, sinusoidal signal—a dead simple tone—is not complex; it’s artificial. Such a tone just doesn’t seem to be generated by natural astrophysical processes. In addition, and unlike other radio emissions produced by the cosmos, such a signal is devoid of the appendages and inefficiencies nature always seems to add—for example, DNA’s junk and redundancy.

Related: The Search for Scientific Cover—“Intelligent design’s” use of the SETI analogy

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