Posted on 03/17/2018 4:21:03 PM PDT by Kaslin
In the scientific community, there is still a great deal of energy devoted to “listening” for evidence or hints of intelligent, extraterrestrial civilizations out among the stars. Most of you are probably familiar with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and their decades of work in this field. They’re still at it and, in fact, are upping their game with a new generation of laser sensors. These projects drew fresh attention after the discovery of Tabby’s Star and the frantic speculation over whether or not some ancient civilization had built a Dyson Sphere around their own sun. This has led one team to train all of their listening sensors directly on the star in hopes of picking up some indication of advanced technology there.
So what is it they’re listening for? Radio waves, for the most part. We’ve been producing them for more than a century ourselves so the traditional thinking is that advanced, potentially space-faring civilizations would as well. But radio wave transmission has a host of problems and challenges which come with it, both for using it ourselves and listening for it from others. First of all, while these waves travel at an impressive clip (the speed of light, actually) that’s still sort of slow in terms of space travel. When we were sending radio commands to New Horizons as it approached the planet Pluto it took 4 hours and 25 minutes for the signal to reach the craft and an equal amount of time for the response to get back to us so we knew if it had worked. That doesn’t exactly allow you to turn on a dime.
Also, since waves propagate outward as well as forward, they weaken over distance. The signal strength coming back from New Horizons was barely above the background static levels. Listening to Tabby’s star means that we’re hoping to “hear” a signal which has been traveling through space for roughly 1,300 years and has faded to nearly nothing.
That’s what got me to thinking about all of these “listening” projects. I’ve been mulling this over for a while now while reading various opinions from experts and, while I find such research projects perpetually exciting, I’ve slowly been coming to the conclusion that there’s one significant downside to all this listening. It’s probably not going to work.
We’ve had technology in the form of being able to at least work metals for barely 3,000 years. That’s a long time in terms of human lifespan, but less than the blink of an eye in galactic or even geological timeframes. We only developed the ability to directly communicate further than line of sight would allow less than two centuries ago. In the relatively short timespan since then, we’ve arrived on the verge of being able to employ faster than light communication using direct counterfactual quantum communication. Using a system such as that, no interception or random discovery of the communications would be possible since you have to be on one end or the other of the conversation. There are no particles or waves being transmitted to intercept and the communications happen instantly no matter how after the participants are.
Despite having come this far in a couple of hundred years, how much further do you think we’d have to advance before we could build a
Dyson Sphere or a ship capable of interstellar travel? If other hypothetical, alien civilizations have mastered such feats, don’t you suppose they’d have figured out quantum communications (or something even more mind-bogglingly advanced) long before now?
The point is, once you are able to conceive of the idea of instantaneous communications over the vastness of space, the idea of sending antiquated old radio waves, laser beams or particle streams of any sort which are clunking along at only the speed of light seems preposterous. If we’re listening for the aliens we suspect might be building Star Wars type empires out there closer to the bustling center of the Milky Way or buzzing our Navy ships when they get bored, we’re probably not going to pick them up because they’re almost certainly using some form of communication beyond our comprehension.
If we are somehow lucky enough to intercept some radio waves from another star which wind up being an interstellar greeting, their version of reality television programming or the latest crossover pop music hit, who do you suppose sent it? Odds are that we’re listening in on some other schmucks who are barely past the point of figuring out how to start a fire without waiting for a lightning storm, and they won’t be sending any ships to deliver the secrets of unlimited, free, clean energy or the secret of anti-gravity to us any time soon.
Does that mean we should give up on SETI and related programs entirely? Not at all. They’re almost entirely privately funded these days
anyway and you never know what sort of fascinating signal they might pick up which could deliver some new scientific breakthrough. Or, if nothing else, we can watch the Alpha Centauri version of the Kardashians.
What?
Can I take it that you are NOT a fan of guessing and wishing?
Seems to be. Just does not seem to be billions and billions of signals coming from intelligent life. Our own planet sends a 50/60hz 12 hour shifting signal 50 times brighter than the sun for the last 100 years. So far, nothing like that has been found to say nothing of actual data containing signals.
I tend to be pragmatic, I will believe it when I see it. Does not mean it does not exist. But the lack of signals does not indicate that it does exist either.
Guess we will just have to see wont we?
I also do not believe that if you had a billion monkeys banging on typewriters you would get a book, I figure you would get a billion broken typewriters.
FReegards.
Yeah I read that article!
Good article! Thanks for sharing !
You’re more industrious then I am on this topic!
I am holding out for the “Planet of the Sex-Starved Amazons” myself!
The 10+ dimensions right here on earth are the key to everything. We can't observe/see those extra dimensions, but we know that they're there.
The closest star is 4 light years away. The nearest galaxy is 25,000 light years away. The most distant galaxy is 30 billion (I apologize since you find that word offensive) light years away.
There could have been life in that galaxy for a billion years... 20 billion years ago.
The vastness in time and space makes the statistical odds of us detecting some other civilization infinitesimal, and any that we did detect would likely have existed millions of years ago.
So in a billion years some space alien will hear Barry Manilow and say WTF or will they say “start a band stand”.
The 25,000 LY distant is the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, yes? That appears to be one that was swallowed up by the Milky Way. I grew up thinking the large Magellanic Cloud was the closest, but these dwarf galaxies seem to have usurped that distinction. I think there is a close one in Sagittarius as well (?).
My only point was the vastness of the universe and the in terms of space and time.
Last I tried that was with an atheist at Thanksgiving. He just talked over me and said some derogatory things. But he knows all. Doubt I'll be invited back as being thankful for our very existence is out of the realm of possibility.
This is the reason why a quest for other intelligent life in the Universe will fail, at least in the short term for perhaps 100,000 years. Isaac Asimov and other science-fiction authors have written stories of humans seeking intelligent life out there, and failing. The odds are truly against it. Not just life, but intelligent life existing elsewhere (and discoverable) at this mere sliver of time. We're casting fish hooks into rain puddles seeking big fish.
If they do contact us, and we ask them real nice, maybe they will tell us how they built the pyramids.
I understand. I was just asking specifically if that was the one you were citing. I since looked it up and it seems to be the case.
“The reason we find nothing is because there is nothing . God chose only to create MAN on the Earth. God created the heavens AND THE EARTH. Get it?”
So if we wake up tomorrow with positive proof of intelligent alien life you would conclude the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob does not exist??
‘God designed and created that matter.’
perhaps...
‘He created a lot of things and no one helped him.’
again, perhaps...
So the incredible complexity of even the tiniest subparticle of matter, not to mention atoms and molecules and the intricate ways they can combine and interact is purely accidental?
‘So the incredible complexity of even the tiniest subparticle of matter, not to mention atoms and molecules and the intricate ways they can combine and interact is purely accidental?’
why not...? You have evidence stating otherwise...?
Thank God you weren’t around, say 1490 AD, or so. BTW, the Earth ain’t flat. Flame away!
Somebody with the intellectual capacity of a toad would certainly think it could happen by accident.
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