No Transmitting Aliens Detected In Kepler SETI Search 197
astroengine writes "By focusing the Green Bank radio telescope on stars hosting (candidate) exoplanets identified by NASA's Kepler space telescope, it is hoped that one of those star systems may also play host to a sufficiently evolved alien race capable of transmitting radio signals into space. But in a study headed by ex-SETI chief Jill Tarter, the conclusion of this first attempt is blunt: 'No signals of extraterrestrial origin were found.' But this is the just first of the 'directed' SETI searches that has put some very important limits on the probability of finding sufficiently advanced alien civilizations in our galaxy."
Is there any reason.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Thirst Toast (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, suppose hypothetically there is another civilization that reached the point we are at now over 100,000 years ago, and they happen to reside near a star that is a million light years away. In such a scenario, we won't hear a peep from them for another 900,000 years.
The only other possibility is that they use some form of communication that is faster than light, which would mean they are using something other than EM based communication. EM based communication is all that we have the capability of looking for.
Due to the sheer size of the known universe, it is inevitable that there is sentient life beyond earth. Even if what we have here is merely a pattern of chemicals, that pattern is bound to have repeated elsewhere, if not identically then very similarly.
Re:Stealth became a necessary tactic (Score:4, Interesting)
What more advanced communications technologies are there without altering the laws of physics? On one hand, those who speculate on , overunity energy which requires undiscovered physics are called lunatics, and yet, people freely speculate that there is undiscovered physics for a non radio communication system.
Re:Is there any reason.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, we don't do much directed broadcasts so even that is a stretch. Less than a couple dozen directed transmissions so far that would actually be detectable when they reached their destination. Only one of those has reached its destination, and even if there happened to be aliens living there (which seems even less likely given what we've learned about the star since then) we wouldn't have heard a response back yet.
Fact (Score:5, Interesting)
Fact:
The largest single aperture radio telescope in the world is the Arecibo Observatory.
It's maximum power output at 2380 MHz is 20 TW
If a matching radio telescope were placed on a planet orbiting our nearest star Alpha Centauri (4.2 light years away) and broadcast at full power, directly at earth... the signal would be too weak by the time it arrived for Arecibo to detect it.
We can't even detect our own radio signals with the best equipment we have at interstellar distances. I think it likely that we'll be well out of the radio age by the time we can... The fact that the sky isn't flooded with alien Television stations isn't because there are no aliens, it's because there's a better way to transmit that we haven't figured out yet.