Searching for extera tersesial inteligence
 

I was watching the discovery channel many months ago and they were talking about SETI searching for extra terrestrial intelligence or something. They had really big satellite dishes and I guess they listen for a signal from space. As cool as it would be to get get some alien pr0n, I thought radio waves only went so far.... Am I wrong?

No they pretty much go on indefinitely in a vacuum.

There is no extra terrestrial intelligence - there's not enough to go around as it is. The sum total of all intelligence is finite, but it's getting spread between more and more people, which helps explain why younger people seem so stupid.

The real limiting factor with radio waves is their slow speed.

Wow, that explanation really would explain a lot.

Idiocracy

radio waves can travel forever. but they move very slowly. any radio transmission we pick up might be hundreds of thousands of years old.


what frightens me are the dullard scientists broadcasting signals out into space. one in a million that there is space faring intelligent life out there. one in a quadrillion that they're nice and want to be friends.

I have a friend who's been out of work for a while.

These days, he's so deeply steeped in extraterrestrial intelligence, the idea of off-world beings landing on Earth, cover ups, conspiracies, Roswell, and the like, I can barely have a conversation with him, as this is all he chooses to ramble about.

He didn't use to be this way when he had a job. SmileWavy

worse yet, our commercial TV and radio broadcasts.

Tell me about it. Spanish radio or milquetoast hits from the 80s and 90s is our menu here. That'll be our representation to the universe.

Right about now, they're getting the Ed Sullivan Show and I Love Lucy. But, when they start receiving The Jeffersons or All in the Family, the invasion of Earth is on. :eek:

Judging by your thread title, I'd say we better search for terrestrial intelligence first.






:D

Slow? Um...how fast would you like them to travel?



SETI is a small group that is essentially independently funded now. They use equipment that was mothballed, and run low power, low man-power jobs with it. I wouldn't call them "dullard" by any means. Yes, they are looking for coherent signals from other planets, no they don't particularly expect to find them, but looking is pretty easy.

over interstellar distances, i'd like a means of communication that doesn't take twenty generations of waiting for someone to say hello back when you say hello.


they are searching in a spectrum that any advanced civilization would find useless. might as well be looking for smoke signals from other worlds.

Apparently, c=too slow...
All electromagnetic radiation -- from radio waves to x-rays -- travel at the speed of light.

Imagine there is a predator out there that feeds off biologically developed planets, and it's main tool of detection is receiving radio waves.

dinner time!

Why? Don't Extera's(sic) have an ECU?

I used to run SETI@home as my screensaver (great idea) but Berkley U. has completely screwed it up. Now it's some convoluted gobbleygook "BOINC" interface that nobody short of a CS major can understand. I fought with it for an hour and said "screw it".

I'm going to be (sic)