Poverty should be more important than extra-terrestrial intelligence!

Poverty should be more important than extra-terrestrial intelligence!


Introduction:

Mind of human beings is always curious to dig into something unknown. This is the reason; scientists have been trying hard since a long time searching for new civilizations which are believed to exist outside our solar system.

Recently, Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner committed $ 100 million over 10 years to UC Berkeley and other participating institutions for a project called Breakthrough Listen, the most comprehensive scientific SETI project yet.

But, does it really make sense to spend your money on finding out the unkown rather than dealing with the real world problems?

Extra-terrestrial intelligence can give us more insight into our own origin

1. Search for the signs of life in other parts of the universe will provide more insight into the evolution of earth as habitable planet.

2. It will be a technological as well as scientific breakthrough to achieve something great by the humanity to know about any other life.

3. It has created and will create various opportunities for the scientists and among the students having interest in the study of universe.

4. Most importantly, if we will be able to search for extra-terrestrial life, it will provide identity to us.

5. In the pursuit for searching alien life, search can provide various findings which will be useful for solving the pressing problems of humanity.

Real world problems are more pressing.

1. World is reeling with so many problems like poverty, migration, conflicts and other problems related to humanity. Why not invest this hard earned money into solving the present misery of the people.

2. It is a kind of unknown territory where result is a distant dream. There is a need to focus on other serious issues like natural calamities, environmental catastrophe and climate change.

3. A large section of humanity does not have the resources to fulfil the basic necessities of life. Why not research and look for the solutions to solve this pressing issue facing the humanity.

Conclusion:

The purpose of science should always be to make the life of human beings better. Certainly, searching for extra-terrestrial life can give some breakthrough findings which may be useful for the humanity in the long run.

However, why not to prioritize what is more important for human beings. Is it not necessary to make their life better first before looking for other signs of life?
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    Discussion

  • RE: Poverty should be more important than extra-terrestrial intelligence! -Deepa Kaushik (07/24/15)
  • It is not exactly the poverty alone that demands attention, but we are here to discuss prioriting our expenses to have better standard of life. In a country exceeding billions of population, we are fighting hard to feed the existing mouths with the basic level of nutrition on day-to-day basis. Then, it is definitely a matter of deep analysis whether it is justifies to use the available funds on some research that could hardly resolve our hard pressing problems.

    When we use the term 'prioritising', it is not going against the research work. The scientist with brilliant brain definitely need encouragement to come up and display their talent. With lack of sufficient funds and infrastructure, our young capable brains often get depressed and this in turn leads to brain drain. We cannot see only one side of the coin; if we say fighting poverty or illiteracy or any other scenario is more important, again we the ones who stand up to shout aloud and blame Government for the brain drain.

    Poverty and thre standard of living of our citizens is definitely a matter to think about. We should ideally help our fellow beings to overcome their lower standard of life. It is not the Government alone which should increase the standard of life of its citizens. We have the equal responsibility to raise our fellow citizens. If we can avoid giving bribe, if we gain confidence and courage to stand up against corruption, then we can definitely have more funds in our Government treasure to suffice both our prioritising issues as well as providing monetasry support to our scientist to experiment the extra-terrestrial life.

    Hence, it is high time for us to stand up and support the nobel cause with courage and confidence and show our dedication towards our responsibilities for our nation.
  • RE: Poverty should be more important than extra-terrestrial intelligence! -diensh kalia (07/23/15)
  • Undoubtedly, present worlds conflict must be our first agenda especially poverty, however, to explore the universe is also essential because it gives the information about our surroundings and also the existence of other planets in the cosmos. It is the result of intelligence that moon is our natural satellite who knew it and most commonly our communication system is the also the result of such activities.

    On the other side, large money is being spent on such missions which can be used for impoverished people in our world and many pollution occurs when space shuttles commute large amount of toxic gasses produced by such missions.

    But in the desire to explore the cosmos these factors need to be taken aside.