Look For Extraterrestrial Civilizations (Don't Just Listen)

space.com ^ | 04/15/05 | Bill Christensen

[KevinDavis]

Should we be looking for extraterrestrial civilizations, rather than just listening for them, as we do in the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project? That is the suggestion of a French astronomer, Luc Arnold, in his paper Transit Lightcurve Signatures of Artificial Objects. He believes that the transit of large artificial objects in front of a sun could be a used for the emission of attention-getting signals.

In his paper, he describes the expected lightcurve signatures expected from passing objects of various shapes across a sun. The challenge is to use a shape that provides an unambiguous signature.

[KevinDavis]

[Ff--150]

bttt

[bert]

I saw a redhead yesterday that was out of this world...... does that count?

[ClearCase_guy]

If I were an alien civilization, I would not expect other civilizations to get a visual bearing on my star in order to detect artificial satellites. That seems to be asking a lot. On the other hand, broadcasting radio signals is relatively easy to do and relatively easy to detect.

There might be a Ringworld out there for us to spot, but I think the odds favor a galactic radio station playin' all the hits.

[Jack of all Trades]

Hoagland's already got this covered. He's proposing that Saturn's moon Iapetus is a constructed spheroid composed of tetrahedral elements or some such.

[beef]

In Carl Sagan's book "Contact", the Earth was discovered by an alien civilization (maybe!) through "leaking" TV signals. Is there any plan to do SETI work at those frequencies? I suppose we would have to have an antenna in space in order to screen out terrestrial interference, but it seems that we would have a better chance of catching that kind of signal.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

This whole search for ETs is based on a huge, unfounded assumption. And now we want to increase expenditures?

[KevinDavis]

It is not costing you a dime.. So what is your beef?

[massgopguy]

James Carville is all the proof I need.

[Drammach]

Maybe we should pay more attention to the fact that if there are technologically advanced civilizations out there, they are not broadcasting their presence..

Maybe there's a reason they don't want to be heard throughout the galaxy..

Maybe we should be more reticent about advertising our presence..
There may be something (or someone) out there we don't want to know about us..

( Just a paranoid thought.. )

[Sam Cree]

"There may be something (or someone) out there we don't want to know about us.."

I pretty much agree. There's no reason, IMO, to assume that an alien intelligence will necessarily even be understandable to us, much less that it would be so similar as to care about us.

[ASA Vet]

Check his/her posting history and it will become obvious.

[garyhope]

Maybe we could fly Hillary across the sun in her pants suit. Her thick ankles could cast quite a shadow.

[silverleaf]

Iapetus = "Death Star" or galactic trash?

[ClearCase_guy]

I sometimes feel that I'm being followed by an enormous hedgehog named Spiny Norman.

[doc30]

Read "Revelation Space" by Alistair Crowely. Very interesting reason why there are no advanced civillizations in the galaxy. The ancient "inhibitors" take care of them when their presence becomes known.

[add925]

It sure has been a slow year at space.com ..... (yawn)

[Jack of all Trades]

Death Stars all around us. This one is Mimas.

We're doomed.

[ClearCase_guy]

I believe the author of "Revelation Space" is Alastair Reynolds.

Crowley wrote books of a different sort.