While we haven't yet found any evidence for alien life, there are a
group of dedicated radio scientists who listen to the skies, hoping to
find some evidence of intelligence outside of Earth. The cost of this
search isn't easy to justify — which is why a new paper suggests using a
combination lottery and savings bond to keep funding flowing. This searching might lead us to true aliens.
Jacob Haqq-Misra, a research scientist at the Blue Marble Space
Institute of Science, suggests that people could purchase a lottery bond
that would give them a chance of a big cash prize if and when SETI
(Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) finds evidence of life
elsewhere in the universe. Unlike a conventional lottery ticket, the
SETI lottery ticket would function like a bond, with ticketholders
receiving a small percentage of its value every year, making the value
of the ticket grow.
"The SETI Lottery Bond is a fixed rate perpetual bond with a lottery at
maturity, where maturity occurs only upon discovery and confirmation of
extraterrestrial intelligent life," Haqq-Misra writes in the paper,
which was published in the journal Space Policy and is available in preprint version
on Arxiv. "Investors in the SETI Lottery Bond purchase shares that
yield a fixed rate of interest that continues indefinitely until SETI
succeeds — at which point a random subset of shares will be awarded a
prize from a lottery pool."
Down the road, if you'd rather invest elsewhere, you could sell the bond to someone else.
"The total amount of money raised this way would be managed by a
financial firm to grow with time, just like mutual funds and other
financial products are managed today," Haqq-Misra explained in an email
to Seeker.
"In addition to paying back investors a percentage of interest each
year, this would also provide periodic payments to sustain SETI
research," he added. "The fund managers would also ensure that enough
money was kept in reserve for the lottery prize pool."
An artist's impression of the
view from Proxima Centarui b, a newly discovered Earth-sized planet just
four light-years away. It is unclear if there is intelligent life in
the universe, but searches continue to find Earth-sized planets in the
habitable zones of their respective stars.
While there would be some complications in implementing the system,
Haqq-Misra said that the payback would be a funding model that, unlike
much of science funding, is geared toward long-term success. If it takes
several generations to find life, the bond holders could pass them down
to their children or grandchildren. If individual bonds prove
expensive, Haqq-Misra proposes that some of the money could be raised by
crowdfunding.
The drawback, however, is that the United States does not have
financial institutes that are authorized to engage in gaming and
banking, which would force SETI to look at options such as offshore
investment groups.
"There is evidence that lottery bonds are popular in some parts of the
world, and further evidence that there is demand for such a product in
the US," Haqq-Misra added. "A SETI Lottery Bond is a further step toward
long-term savings, and it could be a novel way to increase
participation in science as well as financial savings."
originally published: livescience
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