Why Continue SETI?

" I think the SETI enterprise can best be understood as a kind of exercise in the archeology of the future. We are well aware of the archeology of the past. We find a site, a tumulus, or a ruin, and we take a spade and we dig into the ground -- and if we are lucky, we discover Ur of the Chaldees or something marvelous.

" Now we never thought that we could examine the same thing in reverse time. But in fact, in a way, we can. We know that it is possible that some other civilization, who wants to, can bring us in. Of course it will be their past, but our future, which we are investigating to some degree. Even though they are made of different chemistry, even though they have never seen our star, even though they have nothing biological in common with us, if they have radio astronomy and the kind of technology we are imagining, they have very much in common with us: the development of a culture which is unmatched in all the 10 billion species or more that have come to the face of the Earth.

" So that is the story. Maybe the spade will luckily turn up a good site one day. We hope it will. It's just a question of being patient. WHEN YOU'VE GOT THE SPADE, AND YOU KNOW THE FUTURE IS THERE, IT SEEMS VERY WRONG NOT TO DIG."

Physicist and philosopher Philip Morrison
Institute Professor and Professor of Physics Emeritus
MIT

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