No one is trying to communicate. They are tying to find signs of life outside of our Earth. Nothing more. Sending a signal out is basically free, why not do it? They're also hoping (as humans tend to do) that they might find that sign of life nearby (within 20 or 30 light years). 10 would be even better, you almost could communicate at that distance.


Actually, they're searching in a spectrum that is well established all over the Universe. They're searching in a bandwidth that is (1) easy to make, (2) would be recognized by any civilization in the universe, since it's the frequency of the most common element in the universe, and (3) has shown to be effective in transmitting cleanly through all of the various debris that exists in the universe (other wavelengths get scattered away and are useless).

Finally, the massive parallel computing designs that they've worked on are being used in other fields of science, so even if you dismiss them as "kooks", they're contributing.

Yep that vacume between the ears is infinite for some..

Anybody who intercepts our signals would realize almost instantaneously that there is no cognitive intelligence on this planet..

WHEW...Since I never had a job, so DD can't be talking about me....

hence, radiotabs

EXACTLY....what I was talking about....

indeed

There... fixed it for you. :eek:



Saw a comedian talking about this once...

"Okay, so we all love E.T. and those cute little grey aliens in Close Encounters, but hasn't anybody thought about the possibility that there could big, mean, nasty biker aliens out there, too?"

In the vast emptiness of the universe, the speed of light is way to slow for us to communicate effectively or travel beyond a small part our own little galaxy. The next closest star in our galaxy is Alpha Centauri at about 4 light years.

Ironically, as the universe continues to expand, the spaces between galaxies are only getting larger. Our own Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across. Parallel universes and worm holes are looked at as possible shortcuts in time/space travel. The speed of light seems a snails pace when put into perspective.

The speed of light increases as well. The actual fabric of space is expanding, so the yardstick that we use to measure things is expanding with it.

So how do we know that it's expanding if our tools for measuring it are expanding as well?

And what is "tersesial"?

"extera" and "teresial"...as well as "inteligence" are words that are used to test the efficacy of Spell Chekk.

Yes----but would "extera tersesial inteligence"have spellcheck?

Much faster than they do. About 1000x faster would be nice.

Yes, C is way too slow.

Ditto.

Not as bad as Java!

I doubt they'd need it... from what I've heard and read, they use telepathic communication.

What I wanna know is do they have terlits... and if so, do they dump them every so often out there, or have they figured out a way to dump their dookie into the superfusion hyperdrive and burn it up.

LOL when I posted this I had just come off night shift and was on my 4th beer. I cant believe I butchered the title like that but when I wrote it, it looked fine. Hopefully aliens wont see this post and decide to eat us all.

Um, that's sorta like a local restaurant stating that they are "World Famous". :D

We can't agree on anything on this planet.

I don't remember the physics, but doesn't the strength of a omnidirectional radio signal diminish with the square of the distance from its origin? Has to do with the formula for surface of a sphere? So if a radio signal is "X" strong 1 mile from the transmitter, it will be 6 trillion squared or 4 x 10^25 times weaker when it reaches Alpha Centuari? I don't really see how such a weak signal can be distinguished from background noise, including that produced by Alpha Centuari itself? I can see if the signal is a supernova, but some local FM station broadcasting "Dancing Queen"? Anyone who knows the math, please explain. Thanks.