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Did we miss the boat to detect ETI's?

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TheVictim

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As the world of wireless communication gets bigger and bigger, the signals are getting smaller and smaller. We are cramming millions of devices in a small area and by necessity we are using Uber Wideband QAM-16384 Mulipathing Spread Spectrum (OK, that isn't a real modulation form, but it will be next week, and then it will be obsolete the week after that).

The point I am trying to make is as population density and technology reach a peak, the "radio sphere" our planet is emitting is eventually going to be undetectable. AM radio and other broadcasting will eventually cease to be. Broadcasting will still be around, it is just going to be directed at individual devices. This really isn't going to take a long time to happen. Even the poor 3rd world contries will eventually progress, they will be forced to from population density. 100 years would be VERY conservative. This will give our planet a detectable radio spere less than 300 light years wide. RF emitted from the Earth will soon be indistinguishable noise especially when compared to all the other cosmic radiation.

We can assume any Extra Terrestrial Intelligence that has entered the wireless era will take the same path if their population density increases enough and they have the technology to match.

It will be like trying to find your lost kid in Disneyland. Your brat was at the Haunted Mansion 20 minutes ago, but by the time you get there, he has already moved on to It's a Small World. It is quite likely that our radio sphere will never cross another planet's during an era in which it is able to detect it. The aliens would have the same problem trying to detect us. If they miss the 300 light year or so window (extremely short in cosmic terms), they will never know we are here by listening to whatever version of SETI they are running.

The bottom line is we not only need to keep listening, but we need to direct high power AM and CW transmissions out into space for as long as we can.
 
First, why do you assume that being 'found' would be a good thing? How do you know that ET didn't screw up his own world (like we seem to be doing), and seeking a new home.
Second, perhaps ET already knows we are here, and has visited a time or two.
 
That's roughly the equivalent of asking every human being on the planet to shut up so that two people on opposite sides of the globe can see if they can hear each other yelling. The cost/benefit is so completely off the scale of sanity as to be laughable (no offense) I'd have to side with Harvey, while I do support programs like SETI as even if they never succeed in their primary goal they still provide a lot of information about different parts of the sky. But saying we need to intentionally radiate massive radio signals for a few thousand years so that some ET can notice us is just plain silly.
 
Why won't earth stand out as the planet that is transmitting white noise on a very wide spectrum or will background noise cancel it out?

On a different tack, why can't we look for the spectra of beingmade materials in the spectrum of red giants. If we find the spectrum for Rutherfordium, or other non natural elements, then doesn't that prove that intelligent life inhabited a planet that was swallowed by the red giant. BTW, when our sun swallows earth will we leave a similar clue?

Mike.
 
Perhaps a satellite or moon based transmitter can be launched to direct RF out into space without interfering with Earth based communications.

The question of spectra is interesting, I wonder if we have produced enough of whatever can be detected?
 
I disagree, there a laws in place to stop the spectrum from getting overcrowded. The last time I tuned an FM and AM radio there was lots of blank space between stations.

I agree some bands are pretty crowded particularly the short wave and mobile phone bands but there are huge empty chunks of spectrum.
 
Extra terrestrial intelligence.

Maybe "they" are aware of our presence but "they" are intelligent
enough not to contact us. :D

on1aag.
 
even if we do use advanced modulation for all our RF communications, I was told by my proffessor that the combined white noise of our transmissions far exceed the thermal noise of our own sun. So an advanced civilization aiming their radio telescope at our solar system would detect our sun but also detect a large broad peak in the radio spectrum that a star of our sun's type should not be producing. This would certainly catch their attention.

Likewise, astronomers have catalogued the emmissions from many types of stars in our solar system. We have a pretty good idea of what the total eletromagnetic spectrum for a star should look like from gamma rays to radio waves. If we should find a star producing unusually high numbers of radio waves compared to what a star should be producing, it would certainly catch our attention.

Although who knows, maybe in the future we'll abandon radio waves completely and use neutrino beams and send messages through the earth rather than around it. At such a time we'll be completely silent in the radio spectrum and our solar system would then drop to having typical thermal emmissions. Maybe intelligent life out there has already done this.


"Any sufficiently advanced civilization would have cable."
 
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Pommie you might want to think about that man made element idea first, if you could figure out how to detect the miniscule quanitites of this substance that an alien society may have created, you'd probably win a nobel prize, not to mention that it has a half life of 13 hours.
 
Sceadwian said:
Pommie you might want to think about that man made element idea first, if you could figure out how to detect the miniscule quanitites of this substance that an alien society may have created, you'd probably win a nobel prize, not to mention that it has a half life of 13 hours.

If we can detect a planet due to the wobble in a far away star by looking for a frequency change in the light it emits then looking for spectra should be a cinch. :D

As for Rutherfordium, I just picked that because I could spell it.:D

Seriously, as the heavier elements have uniquely high shell numbers, doesn't this mean that there emissions would be unique as well. To detect them would simply:)rolleyes:) require detecting the unique colour emitted when an electron went from say band 8 to 7.

BTW, what makes you think advanced civilisations wouldn't have tonnes of these elements?

Mike.
 
These elements would have to be present it absolutly huge quantities to be detectable, they're not produced in nature and there's no reason to produce them in large quantities for any reason. Any sufficiently advanced civilization would be able to deal with energy on a much more basic level rather than heaving around clunky heavy elements.
 
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A hundred years ago no one could imagine why any civilisation would process tonnes of silicon! We can't start to imagine the uses that mankind will employ substances in 100 years from now.

Also, an advanced civilisation may live only one hour of our time and so studying a substance with a 13 hour half life is perfectly feasible. Conversely, they may live for 1,000,000 years and see us as too short lived to be intelligent.

We humans must try to image races that are not constrained by our physical limits.

On the detection question, can't we detect single photons and wouldn't we only need to find one proton with the right energy? When they pointed the hubble telescope at empty space for 10 days, everyone was surprised at the outcome.

Mike.
 
That's the problem Pommie, you're thinking like a human being... There is a very high degree of likley hood that ALL forms of 'life' on any conceivable scale are all so completly unique on EVERY scale that there is no method of direct communication possible. And the problem with the detection of single photons is that in order to detect one there has to be billions or trillions or who knows what number actually being emitted at the source to get here, unless they're actually aimed. If that's the case, there will be NO mistakeing an ETI call.
 
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