Posted on 05/05/2021 12:11:03 PM PDT by Red Badger
Are there aliens out there? Based on statistics alone, the answer should be a resounding yes. The Milky Way has at least 100 billion stars and the vast majority of these have planets orbiting them. But while the numbers are on our side, evidence remains lacking.
The Breakthrough Listen project has delivered the first results of its massive new SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) survey in search of alien civilizations. And when we say massive, we mean massive. The observations looked at 60 million stars towards the galactic center, a region where stars are more tightly packed. By looking at quite a small but busy portion of the sky, astronomers can study lots of worlds.
The team collected 600 hours of data using the Green Bank Radio Telescope in West Virginia and CSIRO’s Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia, detailing the observations in a paper accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal.
The team did not find any signals, but it's important to note that they were looking at purposely emitted signals, known as technosignatures – optical or microwave signals, laser emissions, even "megastructures" – in this search; some sort of alien beacon that says “Hey, we are here!” or given the distances involved, “Hey, we were here thousands of years ago!”
A search for a radio emission that has not been sent out on purpose requires a lot more work. The team uses the expression “eavesdropping on the leakage radiation.” While science fiction often focuses on the potential for TV transmissions to be the primary signal, from Earth the biggest leakage is actually from airport radar. So perhaps future searches will spot these kinds of signals rather than a transmission of Real Housewives of Zeta Reticuli Prime.
While the survey didn’t find aliens, it does push the envelope on what it can be achieved when it comes to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. “We compared the sensitivity of our survey to some of the prominent SETI surveys and demonstrate that our survey has remarkable sensitivity with a frequency span never before explored for SETI,” the authors conclude in their paper.
There is no one way to look for alien life but searching for technosignatures is one in which humanity has placed a lot of hope for discovery as these signals might be easier to spot than discovering particular molecules in the atmosphere of distant planets, known as biosignatures.
Alien life may even be found in simple structures closer to home; in the deep oceans of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, or maybe even on Mars.
The Drake Equation includes 7 variables. Assigning a value to any of the last 4 of them necessitates wild, mostly baseless speculation, approaching the theological. It does make things look scientific, though, being an equation, and all.
Galaxy Quest
They saw we were looking and turned off the power just to fool us.
Radio waves? Tosh, we quit using them eons ago once
direct thought transfer came in.
Only stupid civilizations want themselves to be discovered. When one looks how species operate one can easily see that the “Independence Day” scenario is much more likely than the “Day The Earth Stood Still” one.
The idea that technologically advanced civilizations would be kinder than less advanced ones has no basis in observation.
Who needs signals when you have glowies like “lou” Elizando and Podesta pimping videos of *real* ufos?
To search expectantly for a radio signal from an extraterrestrial source is probably as culture-bound a presumption as to search the galaxy for a good Italian restaurant.
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Nicely put.
Only humans are stupid enough to send radio signals into deep space:
“Here we are. Attack us at will. Eat us for food. Steal our resources. We are stupid and defenseless against your technology.”
Homo Sapiens has a severe case of Dunning Kruger:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
She would have been more fun than a barrel of monkeys
We’re either in the same boat they are, or will be quickly sold out by our “leaders” in a Vichy France scenario.
Exactly. What they're doing is like pointing Hubble at a big pot of boiling water to see if any advanced civilizations have evolved in there and are giving off technosignatures.
One need only look at our own history for the answer.
Romans/ Everybody else
Spanish/Aztecs
The Drake equation is a big chuckle. It’s an attempt to make pure conjecture appear scientific.
Maybe the aliens are smart enough to hide. They do not dress all sexy, get lubed up, and then go shouting around the neighborhood looking to be raped.
Maybe the aliens avoid us because they think our radio signals are a trap or that we are as dumb as a sack of hammers.....
There’s so many “holes” & “what ifs” related to this study that it is just barely worth reading about...
Frequency/wavelengths evaluated?
What if messages are being sent to us via drumbeat?
What range of the distant past does this data represent?
Will they repeat the every 1000000 years from now and update us?
I’m still waiting...
Also, what did they do with the thousands of hours of SETI data my computers acquired and sent to them?
Just because we can or did not “detect no signals” in no way, shape, or form proves or invalidates that alien civilizations have not, did not, or do not exist. Period. However, it does prove that our current level of technology is unable to “detect no signals.” In short, we/us enlightened and intelligence Earth beings could not detect our way out of wet paper bag with our current level of technology. OK. Got it.
They should try looking at planets not stars.
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