Should SETI Be Looking For Lasers Instead?

colonist writes "Frank Drake, creator of SETI's famous equation, says the detection of extraterrestrial radio signals won't work, because Earth's own radio signal will only be around for 100 years. More and more of Earth's communications use cable and satellites, with no radio-frequency leakage to space. Instead, we should be looking for intentional signals in the form of high-powered lasers that could 'outshine the sun by a factor of 10,000'. Meanwhile, Paul Davies writes that we should be conducting SETI in our DNA. In turns out that an alien message designed to last millenia should be 'inside a large number of self-replicating, self-repairing microscopic machines programmed to multiply and adapt to changing conditions', otherwise known as living cells. Are we the message?"

Comments

Re:Optical SETI

[kahei]

¥

Another place to look...

[baudbarf]

There's a place that a message has been stored in much-more-readable format than lasers or DNA, and it's been stored there for 4,000 years.

This source proclaimed that Earth was round 2,000 years before Columbus was even born. Over 200 years before the event took place, it foretold the fall of the powerful city of Babylon, even mentioning who would participate in the attack, and how it would take place. At a time when humans had no concept of sanitation, when doctors went from patient to patient without washing their hands or wearing a mask, when the Egyptians were using excrement in medicinal recipies; this source dispensed advice about sanitation that is still used today.

It's a number one best-seller worldwide, and has been for millenia. All of these points considered, doesn't it make sense that the Bible should be investigated scientifically before it is discounted as a source of extraterrestrial communication?