The 'WOW' rf signal now explained:

Originally posted by C J Horse
I never said any such thing or intended it. Simply a harmless comment about the pointlessness, in my view, of the whole thing.

Well hopefully, you have read the responses and changed your opinion on the matter.
SETI is not pointless.
If aliens are detected, we can learn a lot from that detection.
If they are not detected, we learn something from that too.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Well hopefully, you have read the responses and changed your opinion on the matter.
SETI is not pointless.
If aliens are detected, we can learn a lot from that detection.
If they are not detected, we learn something from that too.

In EVERY publicly or privately funded venture, there exists some appreciable benefit.
To suggest finding nothing is somehow interesting enough to warrant the yearly cost of SETI is internally contradictory.
In nearly six decades of listening, we've not heard a single thing which would suggest any life form capable of transmitting information detectable by radio telescope or any other type of detection.
Sixty years of nothing.

The only thing learned from that is man's general stupidity.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
In EVERY publicly or privately funded venture, there exists some appreciable benefit.
To suggest finding nothing is somehow interesting enough to warrant the yearly cost of SETI is internally contradictory.
In nearly six decades of listening, we've not heard a single thing which would suggest any life form capable of transmitting information detectable b ...[text shortened]... ction.
Sixty years of nothing.

The only thing learned from that is man's general stupidity.

It's a big galaxy and a bigger universe and we know if OUR equipment was on the other side of our galaxy we could hear it if the signals traveled to us in time for us to hear it.

So far we have only scratched the barest surface of the stars out there and have come up empty.

The thing is, a negative just shows how big a volume we need to cover to have a chance at an alien signal.

Of course there may NEVER be a signal but maybe that would suggest there is only one high tech culture in a typical galaxy at a time, so maybe a billion years ago there was one but of course any signals from that bunch would have gone way of of the galaxy and no longer be present to be detected at all or maybe the next high tech culture comes about 100 million years from now. Either case we find nothing.

That is still usefull information, at least it would say we wouldn't have to fear much some hostile alien space navy coming to Earth to decimate us.

But if we actually DO detect some proven alien signal, that would be VERY big news, saying we are not alone in the universe and it would say perhaps at least there is room for 2 high tech cultures in the same galaxy suggesting there may be 2 in Andromeda galaxy and 2 in the Sombrero galaxy and so forth.

It is still an interesting pursuit because you never know when a development will have some major discovery, perhaps curing cancer, perhaps eliminating war, whatever.

Just saying we don't know where ANY research will lead so there is room for all kinds of real research.

Is this thread turned into the question if SETI is good or bad? That was not the idea of the thread by the initial poster.

There are activities on earth that cost a lot of more money than the SETI project. Like wars. You can make the global famine to go away, we can cure cancer, we can solve the energy problem, and increase the SETI project ten-folds at the same time - if we don't just spend our money on wars.

SETI is nothing more than a spinoff in the science of interstellar/intergalactic astronomy. So we have the technology already. Doesn't cost any fortunes compared.

SETI stands for Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence. Search! Not communication! If our civilization want to hide from the bad guys out there, then we should immediately stop all radio on our planet. Especially radar that broadcast our existence to everyone listening in our direction. We should stop immediately nuclear testing that reveals efficiently our position. For short - we should stop anything that has to do with war.
Everyone within 100 LY from us, with a technology like ours, already knows about us.

You who oppose SETI - read up a little, will you!

Originally posted by FabianFnas
Is this thread turned into the question if SETI is good or bad? That was not the idea of the thread by the initial poster.

There are activities on earth that cost a lot of more money than the SETI project. Like wars. You can make the global famine to go away, we can cure cancer, we can solve the energy problem, and increase the SETI project ten-folds a ...[text shortened]... chnology like ours, already knows about us.

You who oppose SETI - read up a little, will you!

We are pretty sure there are no high tech aliens within 100 lightyears and a few hundred ly beyond. The whole idea of hostile aliens is moot anyway since mounting an attack on a civilization means going to extreme expense just for warfare when if what you are after is real estate, there are way cheaper ways to get real estate like terraforming in your own solar system, like we are talking about terraforming Mars or Venus. You don't have to worry about ships lasting a thousand years or so that it would take to get here from any reasonable distance, say even 300 ly, at 1/3c would take a thousand years to get here.

It just seems to me to be human paranoia that would contemplate such a situation.

Earth is already in middle age and we haven't had any noticable aliens come yet so if it hasn't happened in the last billion years, what is the big worry?

Originally posted by sonhouse
We are pretty sure there are no high tech aliens within 100 lightyears and a few hundred ly beyond. The whole idea of hostile aliens is moot anyway since mounting an attack on a civilization means going to extreme expense just for warfare when if what you are after is real estate, there are way cheaper ways to get real estate like terraforming in your own s ...[text shortened]... cable aliens come yet so if it hasn't happened in the last billion years, what is the big worry?

And we know all this because of SETI.

SETI is not about finding new planets to colonize, SETI is not about establish a communication with little green men, SETI says nothing about non-technological life in the universe, SETI is nothing about UFOs.

SETI is about Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, nothing more.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
And we know all this because of SETI.

SETI is not about finding new planets to colonize, SETI is not about establish a communication with little green men, SETI says nothing about non-technological life in the universe, SETI is nothing about UFOs.

SETI is about Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, nothing more.

To answer one of the big questions of humanity: Are we alone?

Originally posted by FabianFnas
Is this thread turned into the question if SETI is good or bad? That was not the idea of the thread by the initial poster.

There are activities on earth that cost a lot of more money than the SETI project. Like wars. You can make the global famine to go away, we can cure cancer, we can solve the energy problem, and increase the SETI project ten-folds a ...[text shortened]... chnology like ours, already knows about us.

You who oppose SETI - read up a little, will you!

The cost is more than what follows a dollar sign.
As you pointed out, our single biggest threat is the enmity we harbor for one another on account of sundry power struggles amongst groups and larger social structures.
However, this appears to be an inherent greed which--- at best--- can only be restrained.
It'd be great if we could project onto a vague super-powered alien the ability to visit dire consequences upon us for our expressions of anger as conveyed through radio transmissions or other acts of war, but we already have something/one exactly like that, i.e., God, and yet even that restraint or threat isn't enough.

While I personally have always thrilled at the prospect of strange new worlds and the creatures who live there, after such a resounding silence from the heavens, I've since grown up from that escapism fantasy and have come to realize any efforts which are not focused on the issues at hand are distractions from the issues at hand.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
The cost is more than what follows a dollar sign.
As you pointed out, our single biggest threat is the enmity we harbor for one another on account of sundry power struggles amongst groups and larger social structures.
However, this appears to be an inherent greed which--- at best--- can only be restrained.
It'd be great if we could project onto a vague ...[text shortened]... ny efforts which are not focused on the issues at hand are distractions from the issues at hand.

I don't know about 'resounding' since we have only been at this SETI game for a few decades and it is a REALLY large galaxy. Our volume of direct smelling of radio waves is only about a sphere say 1000 light years in diameter if that. The Galaxy is about 5000 light years thick and around 100,000 light years wide which clocks in at about 2.5 TRILLION cubic light years. The volume we have looked at, and only part of that at best, is about a half billion cubic light years, which is one part in about 5000 of the whole of the galaxy.

Note that is just OUR galaxy and there are about a trillion galaxies in the known universe and there is more to our universe than can be seen with telescopes so we have a bit to go before we can say we have sampled even one percent of our galaxy much less the whole universe. One nice thing about looking at further distances, like Andromeda galaxy is about 2 million light years away and even the large and small magellanic clouds are about 150,000 ly away. That means when you have enough sensitivity in antenna's and gain you would be looking at a much larger volume of space than relatively close in stuff like things a thousand light years away so if you aimed your antenna at Andromeda looking for artifical signals you would be listening to a larger volume of space maybe half the whole galaxy would be in the signal path of the antenna. Of course the further away you get, you get that volume advantage at the expense of needing an antenna the size of the solar system. In actuality though, the sun would be able to act as an antenna 800,000 miles wide since it focuses all electromagnetic energy starting around 50 billion miles away from the sun on the opposite side of the incoming radiation under study. So the problem there is an engineering one of propulsion to get your sensors out to 50 or 100 billion miles away from the sun where the focus starts and gets stronger the further away from the sun you go.

A paper pointed out to me by one of the scientissts here shows at around 200 billion miles from the sun the gain is over 100 DB. That is a gain of ten million times that which your own antenna provides so if you have a 60 DB antenna (a large number for ANY antenna) then you have 160 DB of gain or 100 Million times voltage gain. There are people frothing at the mouth to get antenna's out to that distance to probe the universe. It doesn't stop at radio waves though, ALL EM waves are focused, including IR, visible light, UV, Xray, gamma rays.

It would be a dream place for any astronomer.

Stephen Hawking is 100% against SETI and that stupid record that sagan sent..in like 100 languages, like to an ET it will make and difference.

Originally posted by ogb
Stephen Hawking is 100% against SETI and that stupid record that sagan sent..in like 100 languages, like to an ET it will make and difference.

Hawking points to the potential peril in broadcasting signals to other star systems. I agree.
But is he against the SETI project? I don't know. Can you give a source of this?

Sagan's message 1974 towards the Hercules cluster was immediately criticized. By me too. But this was not a part of project SETI because in this project nothing is sent out in space.
The harm is done but minor as the cluster is 25,000 light years from us, and 'nothing' in between. Will the message be recognized as intelligent signals when it enters the cluster?

Originally posted by ogb
Stephen Hawking is 100% against SETI and that stupid record that sagan sent..in like 100 languages, like to an ET it will make and difference.

Stephen Hawking also said the universe's most intriguing mystery is...

women.

That's a science none of us dare touch, but we do anyway.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
Stephen Hawking also said the universe's most intriguing mystery is...

women.

he was being humorous. You did know that, right?

Originally posted by humy
he was being humorous. You did know that, right?

I rather think not.

But Hawkings objection to SETI is bollocks anyway since we are only recieving and it is only our 200 light year wavefront moving through the galaxy that would be any indication of us in the first place and the likelyhood of there being hostile aliens that close are pretty much zero. We can't stop our advancing wavefront but it will and is as we speak diminishing in intensity due to the use of satellites for communications which are between us and a satellite but still there is RF going out all the time but with more reliance on other wavelengths like IR and lasers, the radio wavefront will be replaced for the most part with higher and higher frequency sources.

Which will probably still be detectable and in fact if they see the progression of frequencies upwards intelligent aliens can deduce how much our sciences advance.

My guess is there are very few if any scientifically advanced cultures in the whole galaxy. Which would make Hawkings concern a bit moot.

Even if there were say 10 or so in the galaxy, the spacing would literally be ten thousand light years apart and unless they have perfected propulsion going a million c they wouldn't even hear us for thousands of years and who knows where we will be by then, so far advanced as to not have to worry about hostiles in the galaxy or at the other end, back to Neandertal or extinct.

Either way, we don't have to worry about hostile aliens.

Originally posted by sonhouse
But Hawkings objection to SETI is bollocks anyway since we are only recieving and it is only our 200 light year wavefront moving through the galaxy that would be any indication of us in the first place and the likelyhood of there being hostile aliens that close are pretty much zero. We can't stop our advancing wavefront but it will and is as we speak dimin ...[text shortened]... radio wavefront will be replaced for the most part with higher and higher frequency sources.

Radiocommunication is one thing. Levels are quite low compared to radar.
An other thing is radar waves. They are strong and expose us very effectively. There is nothing natural about radar, only an 'intelligent' race could be the source of this.

If we would see a signal resembling our radar signature from extraterrestrial sources, then we would know, beyond any 'WOW', that there are someone out there.