A widespread
and popular impression of SETI is that it's a worldwide enterprise. Well, it's
not, and there's something modestly puzzling in that.
The idea of
communicating between worlds is at least 150 years old. Victorian scientists
Karl Friedrich Gauss and Joseph von Littrow are both reputed to have concocted
schemes to establish rapport with Moon-men or Martians by signaling them with
light. Gauss was a German, and von Littrow was Austrian. But within a century,
the important ideas about getting in touch with aliens were coming from the
western side of the Atlantic. The fundamental
concepts for radio SETI were first incubated and hatched in America.
For three
decades following Frank Drake's first modern SETI experiment in 1960, the American
efforts had a strong and fertile counterpart in the Soviet
Union. The Soviet SETI work was frequently brilliant, occasionally
nutty, and pursued by researchers who were active and enthused.
That all
ended with the Soviet
Union's collapse. And for the last two decades, the large majority of all
SETI effort has taken place in the U.S. Yes, there have been
commendable experiments in Australia,
Argentina, India, and Italy. But only the Italians are
active today.
So what's
the story? Why is SETI nearly exclusively an American game?
The oddity
of this was brought home to me a few years ago when I held a colloquium on SETI
research at the Dutch university in Groningen
where I was once employed. The room was full — overfull actually, with students
and faculty braced against the walls. My first question was, "How many of
you think it's likely there are intelligent extraterrestrials out there in the
Galaxy?" Virtually every hand went up.
I followed
with "and how many of you are willing to spend one guilder a year to look
for it?" (That's the cost of one cup of subsidized university coffee. One
cup per year.) The hands all went down.
I was
stunned. When, after my talk, I inquired of a faculty member why the Dutch were
reluctant to mount a SETI program, his answer was, "We're too sober for
that." I didn't understand his comment, especially given the concordant
opinion that there could be something to find.
Let's be
clear: it's not that the Dutch don't have the radio telescopes or technical
smarts. They do. It's not because they don't have the money. They do.
And so do
the British, French, Germans, Canadians, Japanese and lots and lots of others.
So, as
Gertrude Stein asked, "What's the answer?" What's so singular about Americans
that only they are willing to spend a small (very small) amount of money
and a bit of time to try and answer a truly important question about life, the
universe, and everything?
My first,
naïve thought was that this was the legacy of America's frontier history.
Innovation and the occasional gamble on a long shot were necessary and
sometimes essential in an unsettled environment. So perhaps SETI sat more
comfortably on American shoulders than on others.
There's at
least some support for this inexpert speculation. Professor Geert Hofstede
(who, rather coincidentally, received his doctorate in Groningen) has researched global cultural
differences, and among his investigated traits is something he calls
"uncertainty avoidance." This is an index of a society's tolerance
for uncertainty and ambiguity, and its willingness to search for new truths.
Looking at
Hofstede's data, you'll find that when it comes to uncertainty avoidance,
Americans score 15 percent lower than the Dutch. In other words, they truly
seem to be more disposed to take on ambiguous projects. Actually, the Dutch are
closer to the Americans in this regard then many of their European neighbors.
The Greeks, French, Belgians, Italians, and Germans are even more inclined to
avoid uncertainty then residents of The Netherlands. (Only the British do
substantially better: In fact, their score is lower than the Americans'.)
Could this
greater reluctance to take risks play a role in the fact that NASA's budget is
three times that of the European
Space Agency's, despite the comparable populations of the U.S. and Europe?
Does it help explain why venture capital investment in the former is roughly
twice that in the latter?
No doubt
the social scientists can come up with the answer. Meanwhile, I note that both India and China
score lower than the U.S.
on Hofstede's index. Maybe they'll join the search. SETI, after all, is one of
the most provocative and exciting explorations of all time. We could use some
company in scouting out the final frontier.
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