Of Course It's Aliens, Dummy

Originally posted by whodey
Why are we to assume an alien life would communicate the way we do?

We don't. How they communicate to each other is pretty irrelevant. All that matters is that they use a transducer to convert whatever natural method of communication they have into an electro-magnetic signal. If they use some method of communication we don't know about we won't be able to detect their signal. However it's difficult to imagine a method of communication that does not involve sending an electro-magnetic signal. It's going to be in a frequency band that has a hope of getting across interstellar distances - so infra-red upwards is unlikely due to dust absorption. Radio is fairly likely, but even then we can only really listen in the band reserved for radio-astronomy. We can tell if it is natural or not. Decoding it is another matter, but it should be possible to distinguish an artificial signal from a natural one.

Originally posted by DeepThought
We don't. How they communicate to each other is pretty irrelevant. All that matters is that they use a transducer to convert whatever natural method of communication they have into an electro-magnetic signal. If they use some method of communication we don't know about we won't be able to detect their signal. However it's difficult to imagine a metho ...[text shortened]... nother matter, but it should be possible to distinguish an artificial signal from a natural one.

The bottom line is that we have no reference for what we have no exposure to.

Originally posted by whodey
The bottom line is that we have no reference for what we have no exposure to.

No, that isn't the bottom line.

If there are extra-terrestrial intelligences and civilisations then those civilisations live in the same
shared reality we do, with the same resources, and laws of physics, that we have.

This gives us a basis and foundation to build on.

Originally posted by googlefudge
No, that isn't the bottom line.

If there are extra-terrestrial intelligences and civilisations then those civilisations live in the same
shared reality we do, with the same resources, and laws of physics, that we have.

This gives us a basis and foundation to build on.

Yes, doing simple geometrics to start, or sequences, 1 pulse 2 pulse 3 pulse and so forth.

The only thing wrong with that idea is the distance to the nearest technical civilization, don't think it would statistically possible for one to be within say, 100 ly of Earth, probably more like 10,000 LY. If so it would make 2 way conversation impossible. Earthy civilizations don't last anywhere that amount of time.

Another problem would be the development of other forms of communications, for instance, what if these aliens made a modulated beam of neutrino's? Good luck intercepting those. Even if we are only 10 ly away. That is just one example.

Maybe they would figure out even more exotic communications based on say, quantum entanglement or some such. Our rules we worked out say information cannot go faster than c, but maybe a truly advanced civilization out there figure a way to break that law.....

Originally posted by sonhouse
Yes, doing simple geometrics to start, or sequences, 1 pulse 2 pulse 3 pulse and so forth.

The only thing wrong with that idea is the distance to the nearest technical civilization, don't think it would statistically possible for one to be within say, 100 ly of Earth, probably more like 10,000 LY. If so it would make 2 way conversation impossible. Earthy ...[text shortened]... er than c, but maybe a truly advanced civilization out there figure a way to break that law.....

I'm rapidly moving towards the POV that there are no spacefaring intelligent species within billions of LY.

Basically the Fermi paradox.

It's just so easy for a species to colonise billions of galaxies in such a short time frame [compared to the
age of the universe] that the fact that we don't have visible aliens in our solar system [and every other star
system] in the galaxy makes me think it's highly implausible that alien civilisations exist.

Simple life forms, those I expect us to start detecting all over the place, but nothing complex/intelligent enough
to build technological civilisation.

Originally posted by googlefudge
I'm rapidly moving towards the POV that there are no spacefaring intelligent species within billions of LY.

Basically the Fermi paradox.

It's just so easy for a species to colonise billions of galaxies in such a short time frame [compared to the
age of the universe] that the fact that we don't have visible aliens in our solar system [and every ot ...[text shortened]... ll over the place, but nothing complex/intelligent enough
to build technological civilisation.

The laws of physics may indeed limit velocities to under c. That would still be a viable undertaking for robots to convert planets to a given life form, designed by an advanced alien civilization.

The idea of where are they, could just be the universe is too young to do much beyond your own home galaxy.

Just because our instruments don't detect anything yet could just be the relatively primitive state of our technology.

It might turn out only one techie civilization happens in a given galaxy at one time.

Maybe we are the only high tech civilization in our galaxy.

There would not be much chance of seeing (with our level of tech) high level civilizations in say, even close galaxies like Andromeda or the Magellanic clouds, the latter 'only' a couple hundred thousand ly or less. Andromeda at about 2 million ly. I would think we would need resolution requiring effective size of mirrors the size of our solar system to have any kind of chance at seeing civilizations in Andromeda. And that is only the close galaxies.

When I say mirrors the size of the solar system, I mean of course separated mirrors using combining technology to get an effective resolution of the distance between the mirrors.

Right now that tech is only good for a few hundred meters separation, at least here on Earth but future tech could theoretically allow mirrors separated by millions of miles to be used as a single telescope.

Maybe only in a couple hundred years but it should happen eventually.

Even that might not be enough to detect high tech in Andromeda.