No Intelligent Aliens Detected In Gliese 581 239
astroengine writes "Using an Australian very long baseline array (VLBA) of three radio antennae, the first very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) campaign has been carried out on a SETI target star: the famous Gliese 581 red dwarf. However, after 8 hours of observing the star — thought to play host to six exoplanets, two of which are in the star's 'habitable zone' — no alien signals were detected. This result isn't surprising, as the likelihood of us stumbling across intelligent aliens living in the Gliese 581 system transmitting radio is extremely slim, but it does validate VLBI as a very exciting means of using the vast amount of exoplanetary data (coming from missions such as the Kepler space telescope) for 'directed SETI' projects."
proof? (Score:2)
The fact that we haven't detected them is proof of their intelligence, no? Would YOU want to be contacted by a race thats major claim to fame (as far as they can see) is "I Love Lucy"?
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It's odd how us cynical humans always conclude that life on other planets are smarter and better than we are. Who knows--maybe they're worse than us. Maybe we're way more advanced than them.
Re:proof? (Score:5, Funny)
If they're not smarter, better, or more civilized than we are, why would we want to meet them? Dealing with all the idiots here is more than enough, I don't want to have to deal with alien idiots too.
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Those idiots you're dealing with might be alien immigrants with really good plastic surgeons.
The Irony (Score:2)
If they ARE smarter, better, or more civilized, what makes you think they want to meet us?
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That's why we have to look for them. Duh. Think these things through. :)
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Yes, they would want to contact us much in the same way we'd be insanely curious if any other creature on this planet demonstrated creative story-telling.
I'm sorry to poop on your post but that Calvin and Hobbes cartoon that inspired your reply is over 20 years old.
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Downmodded? Why? What am I wrong about?
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Hoookay. What happened, did I respond after reading the article and embarrass you or something?
So, seriously are you saying it's mod-abuse or can you point out what's wrong with what I said in *this* thread?
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If there are space fairing races capable of FTL travel and if they are aware of us, they are terrified that a species of hyper violent savages are about to break free of their ancient battleground and bring the pain to everybody else!
Re:proof? (Score:4, Insightful)
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> Any species that was even the slightest bit more violent than humans would certainly destroy itself before reaching off-planet spaceflight.
You obviously don't read much science fiction. That subject has been fully explored in several different ways.
For example, imagine a truly advanced alien race with FTL technology that encounters a violent, savage, less-advanced race. The savages take the technology and storm the galaxy with it. See: Larry Niven's Kzin. Poul Anderson's The High Crusade. (In that case
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Re:Validation? (Score:5, Informative)
This result isn't surprising [...] but it does validate VLBI as a very exciting means
I'm a little confused as how a negative result validates the excitement-quotient. Or how this could even be validated in a more meaningul sense -- there's no way of checking the data. Maybe it was a false negative and there's oodles of aliens there.
The biggest technical problem in radio SETI is RFI. A signal from the star in question would have a very specific Doppler shift between the VLBI antennas, different from the relative Doppler shifts from any terrestrial RFI, even spill-over from a satellite. You can still have a saturated receiver if the RFI is too strong, but that is less of problem (it's easy to detect), and VLBI really reduces the chance of a false positive to almost nil. You also don't need an actual signal to show that this technique works.
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You have obviously never worked at a VLBI correlator. Trust me, if they found something, you would know.
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I find it amazing that some people are 100% sure that God doesn't exist (despite the fact that people have experienced God) yet insist just as vehemently that sentient space beings do, despite the fact that nobody has ever had any indication whatever (yet! I'd be surprised if we found none, nowhere) that any life at all exists off this rock, let alone sentient life.
Me, I think there probably is life out there, perhaps even sentient life, but if we find no life in the solar system besides here on earth, we'l
Not disproof, though (Score:2)
They might actually still be there and just be maintaining radio silence. We'll hear them eventually... when they show up in orbit around Earth.
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Also, the higher the data density that any transmission has, the harder it is to distinguish from noise. And encryption will also make a transmission look like noise.
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So that gibberish my wife spouts when she's pissed is really volumes of highly advanced information in disguise? Where do I get a decoder ring for that?
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Actually, it is highly advanced information.
The problem the only decoder for that is another female brain. That's why when your wife is pissed at you in hearing range of other women, they start putting their hands on their hips and giving you dirty looks as well.
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Thing is, I don't think they're looking for content, but certain characteristics of the signal, such as signal strength and continuity of the signal. One sign a signal may be of intelligent origin is that it broadcasts for an extended period of time. For instance a radio station is on all day long and certainly our outgoing SETI signals were created with the intent to make it as obvious that there was a transmission going on.
Encryption is also a possibility, but a lot of signals we get from space may not
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Ah, but the advantage of VLBI is that, even if they were just putting out noise, it would cross-correlate between antennas and be detected (if strong enough).
Why should they make any intelligence visible ... (Score:2)
... when there isn't any at all in the direction of us.
Arrogant to presume no life. (Score:2)
Re:Arrogant to presume no life. (Score:4, Insightful)
Most life on this planet is bacteria and viruses. They don't use radio. Most of the remaining life is a higher order of some sort, but still does not use radio. You have to go very far up the tree of life to find the one little branch where we alone are the single species using radio.
To put it another way, in the 4.5 billion year history of Earth, every other form of life that has every existed or still exists hasn't had radio. None of them had it. We do, but only for the last 120 years or so and less than that for advanced forms of radio. Averaged out, not only has essentially no life form on Earth ever had radio, it has also essentially never happened. 1 species, 120 years, out of billions of species and billions of years.
It did. But by no means is this something that just happens in the course of life.
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Yeah there's only a short time between the telegraph and neutrino beams.
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I don't think even humans were meaningfully intelligent until the time we started broadcasting radio. SETI isn't looking for life, it's looking for intelligence. It takes only one species, in fact only one organism, transmitting recognizable RF for SETI to find it and meet its worthwhile goal. The rest of the planet's life might be interesting in other ways, but as long as it doesn't block RF its lack of RF use of its own doesn't mean anything.
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>To put it another way, in the 4.5 billion year history of Earth, every other form of life that has every existed or still exists hasn't had radio. None of them had it.
That's an entirely unproven assumption. In fact many evolutionary biologists believe it's quite arrogant to assume we're the first or last technologically advanced species on the planet. 97% of all species that ever existed is extinct. We have no proof that none of them achieved technological civilizations - we don't have any proof that th
No radio message != no intelligent life (Score:2)
Maybe they went into planet-wide radio silence as soon as they received our first transmissions 100 years old, and have spent the last century busy preparing their invasion fleet.
In fact, they probably landed advance scouting parties on Earth to assassinate anyone who have knowledge of their #%!@#70824645[CARRIER LOST]
Correction: no signals detected (Score:5, Informative)
Having no detectable radio emissions does not preclude possibility of a civilization. Our civilization's emissions are already mostly in spread-spectrum format, which is by design indistinguishable from noise unless you know the encryption key. The transmitters we do have usually do not radiate omnidirectionally; that would be wasteful. Antennas are designed to cover the intended audience and minimize leakage outside of it, which makes detecting their radiation unlikely at any appreciable distance.
Futhermore, natural inverse square weakening of the signal makes the signal fade into the background before leaving the solar system anyway. Our TV and radio transmitters are not going to be heard outside the solar system. It is no coincidence that our satellites communicate with highly directional dishes. Directed signals are the only ones that will make it to the next star, so what SETI is really looking for is aliens who are actively broadcasting toward Earth. I don't know why they would be doing such a dumb thing, but who knows, maybe they are a not-too-intelligent life.
Re:Correction: no signals detected (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not quite true. Some of our signals are spread spectrum, but the vast majority of licensed bands are still the age old single peak and often at insane output powers. These are very easy to distinguish from background noise, and as often is the case you could simply apply a 25kHz bandwidth and pick one of a few common coding methods and listen right in. The actual use of encryption for radio communication is rare when you're looking at the entire spectrum used over a planet. Hell if you exclude WiFi and satellite TV it's incredibly rare when you look at any major city too.
On that note satellites have pointed dishes because they are incredibly weak. They have to be, it's not like we have power stations up there powering them. When talking to a satellite we're trying to pick out a whisper from an asthmatic across a noisy room. We attempt to make our ears highly directional and filter out other conversations and he in turn cups his mouth to get his little voice that bit higher. That's not what these SETI projects are looking for. They are looking for aliens who have set up multi-Gigawatt transmitters all over their planet, just like we have. The equivalent of a rave happening somewhere else in an otherwise quiet rural town.
Also the directionality equation incorporates both the receive and transmit paths. You could have a perfect unit gain transmitter sending power out equally in every direction and still pick it up line of sight from anywhere you want with a theoretical infinite gain receive antenna pointed in the right direction, providing there's no louder signal source in your frequency of interest in the way. VLBI which is what they are using here provides an incredibly amount of gain at the receive side. Lots of really good signal analysis from multiple dishes result in us using a theoretical dish with a size and gain that could not realistically be constructed.
Some real geniuses came up with these designs and I'm willing to bet they know their antenna theory enough to think that it would be possible to detect a sufficiently advanced civilisation who take a similar evolutionary route that we take.
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Wish I had mod points man.
Re:Correction: no signals detected (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't call a few kW insane. Only the largest transmitters in the world go into the megawatt range; the vast majority are things like wifi, which are small and weak, at
They are looking for aliens who have set up multi-Gigawatt transmitters all over their planet, just like we have.
You obviously don't know much about transmitters. There are no multigigawatt transmitters anywhere in the world. The most powerful transmitter in the world is the Roumoules transmitter in France [wikipedia.org], which outputs 1.4MW, three orders of magnitude less than you think. It is notable that only its longwave broadcasts can be heard past 100km, because those reflect off the ionosphere. At night, the medium waves can do that too and so can be heard farther.
Notice that most of that radiated power will be reflected from the ionosphere and won't even make it as far as Earth's orbit. But for argument's sake, let's assume a full half of the signal makes it through. The antenna is somewhat directional, though the wikipedia article does not specify the beam width. Let's be generous and say it's a cone 30 degrees wide.
This cone will form a moving beam across the sky as the Earth rotates. A 30 degree beam will illuminate any particular star in its path for 2 hours each day. The study in the article we're discussing listened only for 8 hours, which is too short to always catch it.
Even if the signal is not reflected from the atmosphere, it will be significantly attenuated. Let's say 1MW makes it through. Gliese 581 is 20 light years away, ~2e17m. The base of the radiated cone is 2e17*tan30=1e17. The area of the base is pi*1e17^2=3.75e34. 1MW/3.75e34m2 = 2.67e-29W/m2.
Minimum detectable signal [wikipedia.org] with a 1kHz bandwidth is -144dBm of the 1mW reference signal. That's 4e-15W. As a dumb estimate, we can calculate that 1.5e14m2 of continuous antenna area would be necessary to receive such a signal. That's approximately equal to the cross section of the Earth.
Of course, that's if the signal can be received at all. At low levels like that electrons in the antenna are unlikely to absorb anything at all. The ground state energy, for example, is 13eV = 2e-18J, 11 orders of magnitude lower than the signal per square meter. I find it difficult to believe that any excitation can occur here.
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You obviously don't know much about transmitters. There are no multigigawatt transmitters anywhere in the world.
I know heaps about them, but gigawatt was definitely a typo :-) Megawatt is what I meant. Incidentally the Roumoules transmitter is only the most powerful in it's band. In different bands there are transmitters several times more powerful. And even in the medium wave band in Europe it's not the most powerful transmitter ever, just the most powerful currently operating. The Germans ran a few 1.8MW transmitters throughout WW2.
The other thing is you're talking about a snapshot of our time. Things change. Austr
Re:Correction: no signals detected (Score:4, Informative)
You obviously don't know much about transmitters. There are no multigigawatt transmitters anywhere in the world. The most powerful transmitter in the world is the Roumoules transmitter in France, which outputs 1.4MW
The HAARP project [wikipedia.org] directs a 3.6 MW signal, in the 2.8â"10 MHz region of the HF (high-frequency) band, into the ionosphere. Keep trying, you'll get it eventually.
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The thing that I wonder about, and have never seen any hard numbers on, is just what it would take to transmit radio signals between stars. Take our current SETI rigs and figure out exactly what a theoretical alien civilization would have to do to stand out from the background on them. I remember reading somewhere, and I wouldn't be surprised, if it would require a multi-gigawatt transmitter with a highly directional antenna pointed at Earth, essentially a transmitter more powerful than anything we had ever
Dixie Cups (Score:2)
Distance a factor? (Score:2)
I wonder if anyone can answer this, though - how far away, is that star system? I ask because we've only been using radio waves ourselves for about what, the past 150 years or so? So that means other planets looking for us would have to be less than 150 light years away* in order for them to detect our broadcasts. Basically what I'm saying is, is that doesn't listening to that star system only prove that intelligent life that used radio waves didn't exist x amount of years ago, with x being how far away the
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How sensitive are these detectors? (Score:2)
A large criticism that keeps coming up is that, if they're "more advanced" than us, they might not use radio waves for transmission of data.
But I assume no matter how advanced we as a society get, we'll continue using electricity, and the same could be presumed for other intelligent life. Transmitting power across power lines should generate SOME level of EM-spectrum signal, no? Could we detect that?
Okay, fine. Let's say they no longer use power lines and, say, transmit power wirelessly. Could we detect tha
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Re:How sensitive are these detectors? (Score:4, Informative)
FTA :
From our results we place an upper limit of 7 MW Hz1 on the power output of any isotropic emitter located in the Gliese 581 system, within this frequency range.
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That means they could detect a 7 megawatt carrier tone with very narrow bandwidth of 1 HZ (or a 70 MW signal spread over 10 HZ, etc.) BUT, that is isotropic power. If the ETI was using something like the DSN antennas, much less something like Arecibo, they might have a gain of 60 dB, which means we could detect a signal down in the 10 Watt range. This search has enough sensitivity that there are lots of broadcasters on Earth (weather radar and airport radars, for example), that could be detected by this survey, if there happened to be a clone of our civilization at Gliese 581.
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Even if we beamed our strongest transmitter at them and used the entire planets power to send a 200 giggawatt signal into a 56db gain dish array at them.
What happens if their dish happens to be large and more directional than metal tooth fillings? Then they get signal well above the noise level.
of course! (Score:2)
After all, if they let us find them that easily, they wouldn't be very intelligent now would they?
Summary better than the paper (Score:2)
the first very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) campaign has been carried out on a SETI target star:
Here is a rare case where a Slashdot summary is better than the original article, which simply claims to be "The First" VLBI SETI, which it isn't, not by a long shot.
This is spectral line VLBI, and I bet almost everyone who has correlated spectral line VLBI has thought "maybe this time..." they will get lucky and see an ETI signal. I know that when Demetrios Matsakis was doing ultra-narrow band spectral line searches for the US Navy in the early 1990's, we used to joke that it was "applied SETI," as it was
no intelligent life (Score:2)
There's no intelligent life there, just "I Love Lucy" reruns and presidential campaign commercials.
We can't detect the signal at the distance (Score:2)
The problem is not that we can't detect the signal. We got all the hardware. The problem is that we might be well outside the radio signal range to be detected, as radio signal can only be carried so far by its power. But the best option for accurate detection would be to place a radio monitoring hardware just outside the orbit of Pluto for that purpose.
http://www.computing.edu.au/~bvk/astronomy/HET608/essay/ [computing.edu.au]
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Radio signals carry infinitely far, given enough time. Detecting them depends on the sensitivity of the detector. We now detect signals from stars that started out 13 billion years ago, intercepting a tiny spot of power stretched thin on the surface of an expanding sphere that's about as big as our entire universe. Gliese 581 radio signals are far more powerful than that given its proximity (20 light years), unless we're looking for a single cellphone.
And what you just said about "just outside Pluto's orbit
Leaves three options for that system (Score:2)
no radio signature (Score:2)
Telepathy doesn't have radio emissions, that's why you can't 'see' any life in the Universe.
Wrong eight hour period? (Score:2)
Perhaps that 8 hour window coincided with their sabbath.
No Aliens != Validate VLBI (Score:2)
If the VLBI scan had found alien intelligence, that would have validated the technique. How does failure validated it? There's no way to distinguish between "no aliens" and "bad test" in this case.
If they're not smart enough to figure that out, would they count as "intelligent" to the aliens scanning us? I sure hope not.
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It's more about detecting existing signals, rather than waiting for a reply to ones we JUST sent out. I think they know what they're doing and don't need to drop by /. articles with our comments for confirmation of their methods
Re:Are you guys stupid or something? (Score:4, Informative)
Erm... do you even know what SETI is ? Or the concept of a round-trip ?
1) If we had sent a signal, it would take 20 years to get there, and we could expect a reply in no less than 40 years. Twice your estimate.
2) That doesn't actually matter however since we didn't send a signal at all. All we did was listen for signals coming from there. In other words - we were hoping maybe they sent us a signal 20 years ago - or more likely just generally sent out a signal in case *anybody* answers, or even more likely that we could catch a listen-in on a signal that was never intended for outsiders to begin with. If an alien race has satelite television - then any of the beamed-up signals that don't quite hit the target keeps going through space - SETI is really about trying to pick up any that may have come our way.
The most likely result we could get from SETI would probably be accidental signals - on the basis that any aliens running a seti project is most likely to get such signals from us (we sent a lot of signals into space, none of it is actually intended for alien consumption).
A signal intending to be picked up by other species (as in Sagan's Contact) would be a bonus.
That is actually the biggest problem I have with SETI. We're just listening hoping somebody else is bothering to talk or we pick up some stray signal. Truth is, we may well end up in a situation where half a dozen intelligent species are doing the same. All listening to space, waiting for the other one to actually say something.
Re:Are you guys stupid or something? (Score:4, Informative)
One could argue that the Arecibo message [wikipedia.org] was designed for alien consumption.
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But that had nothing to do with the SETI project now did it ? And these Australian dishes in question weren't involved in that either.
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I am not aware of any connection between the two, other than perhaps the Arecibo message was an inspiration for the SETI project. It's not that SETI is listening for the replies to the Arecibo message. It would be too early for that anyway. But if some alien civilisation send out messages similar to the Arecibo message, we might pick it up.
I was just pointing out that stating none of the signals were intended for alien consumption is slightly i
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Yeah, sounds like it. I thought it had been send a few times, but I may have been mistaken about that. If we seriously want alien civilisations to see it, we need to send it more often, and be more careful about the direction in which it is sent.
I'm not sure what repetition really confirms. The more interesting question is whether we were able to decode the signal in the first place.
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2) That doesn't actually matter however since we didn't send a signal at all.
But we did [hellofromearth.net]!
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Unrelated event. That message wasn't sent to this star as part of this search. This was a listen-only exercise.
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More like an intergalactic version of "Should I call her, or wait for her to call me" ?
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The point is if they are in a similar place in their technology as us, we would be receiving their 20 year old signals and there aren't any which is the problem with looking for folks like us. An intelligent life form could speak in a language made of chemistry (the way are cells talk to one another), and we won't hear that. They could be more primitive then us and we won't see that or hear that. They could be tremendously more advanced than us, and using our own advancing technology as a guide, would be pr
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1. Presumably, if post singularity species want to be found, they will, and if they don't, they won't.
2. We can't talk scientifically about such entities, as if they exist, they can pretty much manipulate the scientists into concluding whatever they want. Science studys the natural order - a species whose technology is equivalent to magic will be functionally just as 'supernatural' as though they were genuinely so.
3. If a post singularity alien society doesn't want us to detect them, they may well also not
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Interesting observations. There is a particularly interesting line of thought suggesting that if a post singularity society were to disassemble all or most of the matter in their solar system to convert into "computronium", that they would have to inhabit a limited region surrounding their star for energy reasons and limited from their distance from inner shell to outer shell for reasons of minimized time lag between the communication between inner and outermost shells.
Since the only radiation making it out
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Maybe the various galactic civilizations are "teaming" with each other to make sure the amazingly primitive life on an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet orbiting a small unregarded yellow sun in the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm doesn't detect them.
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And only an AC emphasis on the C, would make such a deal about a typographical error... I can't remember hearing many idiots discussing the Drake Equation which either mean your IQ is 300 and you're comparing the conversation with your own lofty intellect, or you're just an insecure twit who adjusts their petty sense of self worth by pointing out ridiculous trivialities like typographical errors. Kudos on you blazing wit, perhaps next time you'd show more than half.
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Not stupid at all. There was no broadcast. We were listening with our hands to our ears, not trying to phone them up. We were hoping to hear something from 20 years ago. That's a heartbeat on the scale of sapient civilizations. The likelihood that they'd develop radio sources precisely during the 20 years just before we start listening is pretty slim. More likely is that they heard US first and have 'gone dark' to keep us from hearing them when we'd inevitably get curious.
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SETI listens, they don't broadcast!
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The problem is how distingishable was most of it from background noise just outside the solar system, or 20 light years away, even if you are trying to focus what comes from here specifically.
Anyway, if what we send away are our tv shows, they will conclude that here there isn't intelligent life too.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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I should think any year now we'll be having probes wandering all over the solar system driven with ion drives, pointed every which way. Some collimation of the exhaust is presumed for best performance, but it's exhaust and tuning it like a cutting laser seems excess optimization. It seems unlikely to matter over interstellar distances. Some 50 years hence we'll be moving megaton asteroids with the things. You ought to be able to see that from a long way off if it's pointed at you. I would think that fr
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You ought to be able to see that from a long way off if it's pointed at you.
Yeah, but directly?
The problem with that, probability-wise is that space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen...
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We picked up broadcasts of Alien Idol, that's how we know theres's no intelligence over there.
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I would think they should be looking for ion engine signatures. That seems a more likely signal to span the distance.
And gamma-ray bursts!
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Re:Are you guys stupid or something? (Score:5, Informative)
This is true. Nearly all of what we have ever broadcast has been trashed into junk RF by the time it passes through our own heliopause. Voyager 1 and 2 are helping us learn that it is a fantastic filter aggressively scrubbing and sterilizing radio. Perhaps only a few terrifically strong military radar signals or intentional interplanetary signals (i.e. the powerful Arecibo transmissions) might have made it through. Decades of TV and radio have not. For practical purposes, our Sol system is silent. We are not emitting potent enough repeating signals of the sort we ourselves are seeking.
It is logical to expect a similar result for other planetary systems where something like a heliopause exists. RF would be trashed and never make it into interplanetary space.
For even more discouragement, remember that most of life on Earth does not use radio. A planet teeming with life might yet have nobody emitting even weak signals. Radio derives from the human need to communicate, constantly. Especially while driving. It is entirely possible that another similarly advanced species might not have that need to talk talk talk and entertain at a distance.
Anyway, the universe is a very big place. It's a long way down the road to the pharmacy, but that's nothing compared to the universe. Most of it is empty. On average, we don't actually exist at all. Sigh.
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>Most of it is empty. On average, we don't actually exist at all. Sigh.
That's derived from a Douglas Adams joke which went as follows: there are an infinite number of planets in the universe since there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. Not all of them have life. x/0 = infinity, therefore x/infinite =0 therefore the average number of planets with life = 0.
It's quite funny but the mathematics is actually wrong. Even if we assume the physics were right (the universe probably isn't REALLY in
Re:Are you guys stupid or something? (Score:5, Informative)
You might want to reread that quote from Adams. He did not express any of the erroneous formulas that you stipulate. Here's the full quote in all its glory:
It is known that there is an infinite number of worlds, but that not every one is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite nuber of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so if every planet in the Universe has a populations of zero then the entire population of the Universe must also be zero, and any people you may actually meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
So what he's actually saying is this:
X = # of worlds;
Y = # of inhabited Worlds;
X = infinite;
Y = finite;
infinite number >>> finite number (infinity has a higher magnitude than any finite number)
It follows: X/Y = 0 - epsilon, where epsilon approaches 0 infinitely close.
Thus: Average density of life per world so close to zero, that it functionally IS zero (remember, just like: 0.99999... = 1)
Summary: Any life one sees must be the product of a deranged mind. You could even go so far as calling it imaginary.
Actual summary: Expressing humorous quotes in terms of maths is exactly what it takes to take the humour out of them.
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Errata (just like in any good book about maths): X/Y = 0 + epsilon
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but is this not a function of multiple-values-of-infinite, as like Hilbert's Hotel?
Infinite number of worlds, only (lets say) 1 in 1 million are inhabited. So inhabited worlds = infinity/1,000,000, which is still an infinite number. So there are an infinite number of inhabited worlds (A), and an infinite number of worlds period (W), but W is 1 million times larger than A.
Which I think is basically what you said, but I disagree with your conclusion- W/N=A is not "very close to zero",
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They didn't speculate that aliens have planet-wide telepathy. They just said aliens might not have the need to constantly communicate at a distance. In fact that speculation excludes planet-wide anything for communication, because that would be "at a distance".
You're stupid, especially for calling them stupid. Turn off your computer and take a long walk.
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Somebody in this thread needs a hug,
or reading glasses.
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Yes. You transmit in a band, so if you looked at a RF power by frequency chart, it would look like a (rounded) picket fence with the signal power going up and down on the pickets as the RF sources have / don't have data to transmit.
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Re:Are you guys stupid or something? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually we are broadcasting VERY little now, and most of what we are transmitting won't leave our own system. this is why if other life exists its gonna be hell to catch a signal as there is a very small window between finding out how to broadcast and switching to digital, if other life follows a similar pattern.
"Radio Astronomy" by John Kraus has a section on this topic. Well obviously he predates the digital transition. Not all that surprisingly large scale planetary radar has the best range, but the strongest long term signal used to be the constant (hopefully stable freq) of AM radio transmission carriers. You can integrate the carrier over months I suppose if necessary, detectable long below the data level
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Just because you have demented fantasies about Hilllary Clinton that you insist on injecting into a conversation to which she's totally irrelevant doesn't mean anything about whether "we" are intelligent. Projecting meth heads like you don't subtract from the others of us who are intelligent. Like those of us now communicating with entangled quanta instead of with radio waves.
I will make Clinton relevant by pointing out that she's surely done more to help America's R&D into entanglement than you possibl
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The real challenge would to spend a month in New England and claim some sort of intellectual superiority. (It's always funny when the actual residents do)
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George Bush Sr, will you ever stop whining about getting beat? It was 20 years ago!
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No one seemed to recall he was so stupid as a Governor that, he took the press with him on a hunting trip and when no game appeared, he began shooting random birds, most of them the Texas state bird, the Killdeer.
The real stupidity though are those who continually portray the Democrats and Republicans as being opposites or even enemies because of petty differences in policy meant to obscure important issues. Rather, they are one and the same party, ruling this country unopposed for more than a century now.
T
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Yeah, a great representation of the glory of our country, NOT. It was a bigger joke than the Carter administration with Billy pissing on the runway and avoiding the Libyan hit squad while Miss Lilly spat fourth cute Alzheimer induced bytes to the press. But then, Jimmy tried to set a good example for Hillbillary as a diplomat, by giving away the Panama Canal to China in order to enable them and screw us to the mat harder.
Yeah, some good example the Clintons were, might as well have urged the cast from "Marr
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Can You beat up their God, God?
God says...
fled, and escaped.
19:13 And Michal took an image, and laid it in the bed, and put a
pillow of goats' hair for his bolster, and covered it with a cloth.
19:14 And when Saul sent messengers to take David, she said, He is
sick.
19:15 And Saul sent the messengers again to see David, saying, Bring
him up to me in the bed, that I may slay him.
19:16 And when the messengers were come in, behold, there was an image
in the bed, with a pillow of goats' hair for his bolster.
And the leather of his breeks was old and the feathers of his headdress almost as the swirling snow, his knife and spear point worn and dull. The old mother had taken pity on him as the olden wolf had taken pity on her in her young womanhood.
The ice is falling away from her claws as maggots squirm in her eyes! The spirit of the Mikvah has eaten her soul!
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Actually, the cosmic microwave background is not really the afterglow of a big bang. Rather, the aliens have found out the ideal encoding for long-range space communications, which happens to look like 2.7 Kelvin thermal radiation if you don't know how to decode it. :-)