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SETI Disrupted By Cell Phones in Airplanes?
Iphtashu Fitz writes "If, as recently mentioned, the FCC does allow wireless access on airplanes, could it effectively mean the end of the search for ET? NewScientist has a new article that explains how radio interference from airborne cellphones could drown out faint radio signals from space. Among other concerns astronomers have is that the second harmonic of many cell phones falls in a frequency band that reveals the molecular signature of newborn and dying stars, which is among the 2% of frequencies in this part of the electromagnetic spectrum reserved for use by radio astronomers. Michael Davis, director of projects at California's SETI Institute, stated that a single cellphone on an airplane 100 miles from a radiotelescope could exceed recommended radio noise levels by 10 times. A potential solution that astronomers have suggested is to install a miniture cell transceiver on each airplane, called a picocell, that would act as a relay using a frequency that wouldn't interfere with their work."
Shoot, this is one more reason not to have cell phones on airplanes during flight. I worry about the public's lack of concern for science especially given the extreme right wing movements going on right now in the USA, but people do not want to be remotely inconvenienced even if it means screwing science. Perhaps if the appeal can be made to them from a personal sanity perspective. I got a brief taste of how bad cell phones on planes can be last month on a flight that I wrote about it here.
Perhaps if this has to happen the picocell solution might be the way to go, but please let there be phone free zones on aircraft.
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that's you buggered then !!
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Although they are "extra-terrestrial" (in that they're not on the earth, exactly), people who use cellphones in crowded public places (like airplanes) are decidedly NOT intelligent, thus won't be detected.
Have you read my blog lately?
The earth is a hotbed of RF noise as it is. I like SETI and all, but if they can't deal then it may just have to wait until they can move their stuff offworld..
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Yep. Them aliens will be listening in on our calls. They'll finally find out how Dan Ackroyd knows they exist.
Nothing against the organization, but did they really think they can reserve the entire sky for their software?
Imagine the fun we can have with the tinfoil hat crowd!
*makes note to self to bring cell phone, and recording of War of the Worlds onto next plane trip.*
A mini cell on each plane that could play back a message saying something like "We told you not to use your cell phone, so turn it off!"
~Ilyanep
To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.
even if they do put a picocell on each airplane, would each cell phone still not emit the offensive frequency? I assume the miniature cell would allow the phones to transmit at a lower power- how much lower, and would this actually eliminate the problem?
Still no intelligent life eh?
crazy dynamite monkey
We should prevent cell phone use on airplanes because it might interfere with a project that has consumed massive amounts of computational and technical resources and has never been successful, ever.
At least now SETI will have an excuse.
Wouldn't an advanced civilization have developed a means of communication that can penetrate whatever disturbance would come from members of their civilization communicating while on aircraft?
I don't want some fat bastard screaming into my ear because his caller can't hear him over the sound of flight, and/or the air pressure pushing on his inner eardrum. It's bad enough that we're crammed into these flights like cattle as it is. I try to be considerate of those around me when flying. No huge laptops (12" PowerBook is ok), no noisy electronics, earbuds turned down to a below-reasonable volume.
The guy sitting next to me is not more important than my headache, when it comes to matters of personal entertainment (or business, even). Cellular phone use in a crowded, quasi-calm/quiet area is simply inconsiderate. Worse in a cramped, often-tense aircraft.
Informatus Technologicus
this is why the aliens gave us cell phone technology.
always mosh clockwise
You want to install what in an aircraft?
As a government licensed aircraft mechanic I could tell you that is completely infeasible because there are simply too many airplanes in the sky to see that it is installed and the govenmental approvals to install such a device (unless the airplane is experimental everything installed in an airplane has to be FAA approved) along with the costs would see that this never happens.
My question is that isn't this already happening when people forget to turn off their cell phones and it sits in standy searching for a network?
Isn't most of SETI based on handling a lot of old archived telescope data? This will affect the program in the long run, but how long will it be before this becomes a problem? Of course, it would be much better to fix the problem before it starts, rather than try to retrofit every plane out there...
Isn't it time to investigate satellites for this sort of thing? Pointing out instead of in? I know maybe this isn't ideal since the satellite is moving both relative to the earth and the sky, it would probably make it difficult to lock onto any signal that was found? I got a B's in Physics, someone help me out here.
Seems like this would solve a lot of interference problems though, and perhaps even give you much better results. Is it just the cost factor that keeps this from happening?
AND NOW we find out that these are actually being used by the extraterrestrial intellegences to pin point our small small blue planet in the expanse of space.
Well, I for one welcome our future ET rulers, and their supression of the evil mobile telephones.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Fuckwits who keep their mobile phones switched on 24-7 even in airplanes/hospitals/cinemas as an act of overinflated self-importance are equally, if not more 'cunty'.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
If you were an alien, and you wanted to communicate with Earthlings, you wouldn't choose their cell-phone frequency to do it in the first place. Duh! Those SETI guys are such drama-queens.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Isn't the opposite also true? Doesn't this add to the radio waves that an alien planet might be listening for?
Wouldn't we also want the aliens to be generating a lot of radio waves (by using their cell phones) so that we'd have a better chance of hearing something?
How can you ask the aliens to do one thing, and ask us to do the opposite?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
you can neither confirm nor deny it.
Why does not the SETI project simply build/launch a robotic radioobservatory to the side of the moon that is always turned away from us? This way they will have the entire moon as a sheld from human created radiowaves.
Also it should not cost THAT much, I mean, if nasa can send two rovers to Mars, SETI should be able to send a observatory the much shorter distance to the Moon on public donations?
Installing a picocell is in fact the only way to support airplane cellular.
I think that the whole picocell idea is dumb. Even if it both works and is economically viable, what makes you think that an airline is just going to install one? I am a non-believer in other sentient life near the earth, but even if they were, why wouldn't they be detected by satallite or other means? Why would sentient life who could visit another planet use radio waves?
Cell phones annoying when you are at a store or in the movie theatres. If the FCC allows this, not only will it disrupt one of our greatest goals, but annoy the crap out of people on the plane. If they allow this travesty to happen, I'll make sure to boycott airlines for good!
Angry Airline Customer
"C++ is to C as Lung Cancer is to Lung"
Wouldn't it just be easier to just kill anyone with a cellphone?
Seems like a reasonable solution to all of these cellphone drivers, cellphone in movies, and so on problems the world is having.
.. when the motherships get here. And then we'll send Will Smith in to say "Welcome to Earth!".
Oh no... it's the future.
Well at least he is not a registered voter.
Then of course there's the Sagan hypothesis that itellegant life has such a narrow time fram of existence before anihilating itself that either you dont overlap in time with you interplanetary peers or if you do they'll be dead by the time you manage to travel there.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Actually you argue against yourself there...
If they were smarter than us, that explains exactly why they haven't made contact.
-Pope Peter Porker, S.O.W., K.M.K.R., U.G.O.A., F.S.G.S.D.
...and get away from all the electromagnetic spectral polution here on earth!
Installing a picocell is in fact the only way to support airplane cellular. However, you will still have problems because of buggy phone software.
I think SETI is one of the most serious wastes of resources ever dreamed up. All that ridiculous funding could go to something much more important than trying to find something that probably wouldnt contact us even if it could...if it even exists... nail this as flamebait if you want, but if "ET" wanted to let us know he was there, he'd find a way to get around our cell phone signals. ;)
This is just a bunch of wacko's griping because they're bored waiting for....nothing.....to happen.
Build a radio-telescope on the dark side of the moon, effectively using the moon itself as a shield from the earth's "noise" and transmit the data back to earth for analysis.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I'd rather see a kind of plugin interface on the plane. A wire ( or not ) that connects my phone to the seat i'm at. This then goes into the planes system, and then the signal is amped and sent out.
Perhaps if we did something like this instead we'd be able to tell SETI what this looks like and filter it out. Unless just the signal itself would disrupt it ( I didn't RTFA...sorry ).
The FCC could also tighten up emissions standards for cellular phones. The problem is that the phones are so damn small. Are there any space-efficient filters that provide the out-of-band attenuation of a good cavity filter?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I still can't beleive that cell phones can interfere with navigation equipment of a jumbo jet with the lastest avionics, unless you're in a small plane - and you're in the cockpit, as I have experienced. Yes, I'm a pilot, not an ATP, but I'm a private pilot - C172s and such...
From my understadning the best method to ensure cell coverage inside the cilyndrical faraday cage that airplanes are is the pico cell soultion.
All calls get picked up by the cell and retransmitted over satalite or other means. The cell singals from inside the plane should be trapped there by the metal exterior and it should be easy to retransmit from the pico cell on a non-interfering frequency.
Or you could build a robust network of space-based radio telescopes and avoid all the hassles of equipping each airplane.
Set up a listening dish on the far side of the moon, there it won't be interfered with cell phones.
But it's not just SETI that's affected by this. As the TFA says, the cell phone frequencies are very close to the frequencies that radio astronomers listen for to detect stars being born & dying. For all we know it may interfere with other things radio astronomers listen for, and not just (little|medium|big) (red|green|aquamarine) (men|women|whatevers).
It should be pointed out that the problem is bigger than just SETI not being able to hear the aliens. most of the deep-sky viewing done form earth is done using radio telescopes. the problem with cell-phones on planes is that it potentially throws a ton of interfering signal data into the telescope's FOV. nevermind that nobody needs to be talking on their cell-phone while flying, I'd rather the telescopes keep working (there's way too much space up there for us to be the only intelligent thing in it).
-It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
A typical aircraft already has a high-powered weather radar dish, several VHF transmitters for voice communications (with air traffic control, etc), a transmitter to talk with the airlines' own ground control, and usually an AirPhone transmitter (for all those $5/min phones in every seat back). With all that RF noise going on, what's a few more very-low-power UHF cell phones??
This is not the first time that this argument has been made. ...but the first time was 20-30 years before cell phones were invented.
Humanity has unleashed a veritable plethora of rf emitting devices. Television broadcast towers, satellites, anything electrical... they all leak rf that's thousands (if not millions) of times more powerful then the signals coming in from distant stars.
Banning cell phones on planes BECAUSE of this is like using a Sharpie marker to turn a sucking chest wound into a smiley face. You (the pen wielder) might feel better, but it's not going to solve the real problem one iota.
The real solution is to invest in building radio telescopy infrastructure on the far side of the moon. Either there, or in a heliocentric orbit on the opposite side of the sun at 1 AU. Those are the only two places in the universe that have are always shadowed from Earth based broadcasts.
Additionally, there are frequencies that are absorbed by the O2 in our atmosphere, so radiotelescopes in space would have better 'bandwidth' to observe.
Finally, it's unlikely that the cell phone industry will finally be convinced to go to pico-repeaters because of the inconvenience that radio telescopy scientists encounter. It'll be because pico-repeaters will make cell phones work in places they don't currently. Deep garages, underground installations, steel buildings, small valleys... these are economically driven reasons to adopt the technology. Scientists (the normal kind, not the mad kind) are usually poor, so the money just isn't there.
Pick your battles, and pick a winning strategy to get the tech you want. Radio telescopes... they ain't it.
3 scenarios guys:
1) Other civilizations are below our technological level....which means we won't see them at all.
2) They're equal to ours...and since we're unable to do much of anything beyond our little neighborhood, we won't see them at all.
3) They're far more advanced than us...which means they have the smarts to avoid detection so we won't see them at all.
Keeping this in mind, explain to me again why we need to change the entire commercial aircraft industry (FCC approval + FAA approval + thousands of aircrafts + world-compatible technology) when there are easier ways to try and avoid our RF interference (satellites, moon, probes, etc). TFA didn't impress me.
Without knowing all of the details behind how cell phones are expected to work on planes, I would have gone down the following route:
picocell on a plane, radio transmission via mux/compression over rf link (or plane to sat).
Before implementing, announce your plans (without giving away the intellectual property) and check that you are not going to cross someones wires
We have had in-plane calls for quite a while. Combine this with air to ground (or even sat) multiplexing and there you go.
I think the real "moral of the story" is don't forget to inform the neighbours before having a party
Be alert, the world needs more lerts
I'm all in favor of the phone-free zones on aircraft (hell, if we put the phone-users together, maybe they'll bug each other enough until they realize how much they're bugging other people), but a long-shot science program hardly seems reason to ban them altogether.
People want to use their phones for work, or to contact their families, and if they already had the ability to use their cell phones in the air they'd consider it a major inconvenience. Calling it "remotely inconvenienced" is an understatement.
And "screwing science" is an overstatement. SETI is a fun idea but the odds of succeeding on any given telescope or any given day are so low that it hardly seems worth shutting down the planet so you can go look for aliens. It's a tiny, tiny project tucked into the corners (free telescope time, free computer time) of the scientific world.
It's not like they're going to find anything anyway... I do care about the interference with other astronomical work, though. And as if there aren't cell phones in enough places, damn, the last thing I want is to be on a plane with 50 people talking on their cell phones.
Too bad those little personal cell phone jammers are illegal in the States. Otherwise I'd carry one around with me. I'm sick of people too busy talking on the phone to drive, or walking down the aisle of the supermarket asking some poor nitwit on the other end of the phone, "Should I buy the ice cream? It's only got 9 million calories. Oooh, trash bags are on sale."
Maybe it's just me, but I don't want to hear people talking on their cell phone anywhere, but especially not in a crowded airplane.
This is akin to the problem that pops up when data transfer is allowed over high voltage power lines and it's interference with Ham radio.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Should we then, in our search for ET switch to CB radios?
I seem to remember a documentary where a very prominent scientist suggested something of the sort.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
is there a way that I can get a picocell for my house? Requirements are that it has to cheap, small, and legal (or at least not a felony.
I thought this article was about SETI?
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
Your underlying assumption is the signals we may dectect are accidentally or incidentally broadcast into space.
Deliberate broadcasts suffer from none of the drawbacks you describe.
You also assume that our use of the EM spectrum is the same as some other civilization's use of the EM spectrum.
Also an assumption everyone agrees with.
So your conclusion SETI won't work does not follow from your argument.
True, it probably won't work, but not in the manner you describe.
God what a nightmare that would be. Give me a freakin' break, please. Business people want to "maximize their productive time", fine, let them do it in business class. No business class on the discaount airlines? Sorry, no cell phones either.
On the other hand I don't think interference with SETI should be a reason to ban them. If that's the best argument against using cell phones on planes then the battle is already lost.
SETI is a privately funded operation, right? Well so are cell phone companies and the airlines are at least quasi-private companies (can you say govt. $3 billion bailout?)
If they ever allow cell phones on planes - and the reasons for banning them in the first place were never scientifically sound - it would be interesting to see how an airline would do if they maintained a no-cellphone policy.
I think it's remarkable that they work on airplanes at all. Faraday cage and all that while you're sitting inside an aluminum tube.
ET: "Can you hear me now?"
SETI Scientist: "Damn cell phone interference."
Shouldn't it be possible to equip cell phones with 802.11b equipment to create a giant mesh network.. Should make it a lot easier to get wireless out to cars and things like that, since in most places of the country, there's always a line of cars between base stations and highways.. Though that's not always the case here in Oklahoma. Still, it outa add a lot more wireless conectivity, not that SETI will appreciate it or anything, but the rest of the world might
Yes, by all means, lets prevent people from communicating because they might say something stupid!
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
Ignore SETI, pretend the article is not so poorly titled and makes no mention of SETI
Among other concerns astronomers have is that the second harmonic of many cell phones falls in a frequency band that reveals the molecular signature of newborn and dying stars, which is among the 2% of frequencies in this part of the electromagnetic spectrum reserved for use by radio astronomers.
THAT is a problem.
So, if the plane is on line of radio sight, it could affect 2% of data captured. So, in a day, I have maybe 5 minutes of 2% bad data searching for ET vs a very practical use of cell phone.
Not to troll, but whats next, using microwave oven disrupts SETI, so we need to stop using microwave?
There certainly in no reason for someone in the same cabin as me to use a cell-phone! I don't want to spend several hours confined with someone so goddamned backwards that they still think a cell phone is a status symbol.
This isn't just an issue for SETI but all radio astronomy. What parts of science do you deem unworthy of study for the sake of a convinience that people have managed without quite well for most of history?
I still can't beleive that cell phones can interfere with navigation equipment of a jumbo jet with the lastest avionics, unless you're in a small plane - and you're in the cockpit, as I have experienced. Yes, I'm a pilot, not an ATP, but I'm a private pilot - C172s and such...
;-)
I'm a pilot too... own my own Piper Cherokee. The biggest interference problem I've encountered is when the *idle* phone keeps switching between towers (quite often, every few seconds when flying over a city) it makes a loud CLICK-CLICK-CLICK sound that gets induced into and picked up thru my audio panel/intercom system that is quite annoying. Everyone who's kept their cellphone near their computer speakers knows this sound too, especially when you dial out, or just right before the phone rings for in incoming call or an incoming text message arrives.
I guess the phone's transmitter fires up momentarily for each tower change, and also right before each incoming call or text message.
I've also noticed that the CLICK-CLICK-CLICK interference makes the mag compass in my plane twitch around a bit but who uses a mag compass anyway outside of primary training these days?
Also, if I have my glideslope receiver on and tuned into an ILS, the cellphone briefly interferes with the glideslope indicator too, deflecting both the needles. That could be what the ATPs are probably bitching about the most. The glideslope interference doesn't bother me any, since I'm a VFR only pilot, and only use my glideslope receiver as an entertainment gadget... besides, I try not to make a habit of using my cellphone while on short final, my mind is usually on something a little more important
"What? Spend a couple of thousand dollars per airplane on some feature we don't really need so a buncha egghead scientists can look for ET? Ha! Get real. We have better things to worry about, like not going out of business!"
Imagine a very, very, very large array.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The radio signals would disrupt any Radio Astronomy that's going on, not just those that are looking for little green men with tinfoil hats.
I'm reminded of the STI Project.
I love how eggheads and academics get thier panties in a wad when societies advancing use of technology gets in their way.
The answer here is self evident. If you want to study deep space, you need a presense in...deep space. At least consider the ramifications of having an observatory unhindered by terrestrial atmosphere, radiation, noise pollution, and so on.
I'm sure they would, if they were meaning to contact us. The mission behind SETI is, among other things, to search for radio waves that will be transmitted from any sufficiently advanced civilization as we know it. Just like on earth these radio waves will be broadcast from the planet whether the people on the planet like it or not. In the same vein our civilization could be detected by others thanks to the radio waves that we've been transmitting into space over the years. Yes your favorite 80's song from your college radio station is flying through space right now at the speed of light, perhaps it will be detected one day. So it's not a question of alien civilizations having an advanced means of communication, it's a question of being able to listen for radio waves that are quite likely being broadcast by alien planets.
Fuck Seti. Bogus crackpot "science" suck my balls.
Cellphones make me wish the little interdimensional dude from James Blish's(?) story "Babel II" would come by for a visit. I particularly approve of the protagonist's comprimise at the end.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Well darn... I guess we need a moon base for that new deep space radio telescope
What about regular Air phone?
Walki talkies?
EMI from the sun!!??
Theres trillions of device causeing radio interference! What difference will cell phones make. I really dont think any alien signal will make it through our solar system and reach earth. The only way to make SETI possible is by launching radio telescopes in space, or giant repeaters, send it to like pluto or something
Just put a transmitter on the moon, linked to another one on a moon of Jupiter.
Scully is a sky marshal somewhere in the airline system. Mulder will work with her too...in the final episode.
Furthermore, can anyone tell me what a consipacy is?
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
If cellphones on planes were a legitimate problem, wouldn't it be a problem everywhere else in the world where cellphones are already allowed on planes?
I think is time to move all those radio telescopes to the dark side of the moon, seriously.
If cell phones are a really that powerful, couldn't ET just get in a plane and phone home? Or, more to the point, if there are aliens, wouldn't they hear our cell phones? (And maybe Direc TV too?)
Still, I hope this will have a positive impact on FAH.
Sol (our sun) is a 3rd generation star, in what is considered one of the original galaxies in the 13.7 billion year old universe ( http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/earth_age_04 0817.html ) Sol about 5 billion years old and located 2/3 of the way out on the Orion arm which extends some 42,000 light years from the stellar nursury at the center. ( http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/section/MilkyWay_ SizeandShapeoftheMilkyWay.asp ) IIRC, centripital acceleration slowly pushes stars out from the center towards the edge. The Milky Way is approximately 10,000 lightyears thick at the edge and 30,000 light years think in the centre.
If we assume that intelligence and time since your sun was born have a positive correlation, this means the smarter aliens would be further from the galactic core, and this space covers approximately 11 billion cubic lightyears of a total 169 billion cubic lightyears, about 6.5% of the space. If we assume that the galaxy's 200 billion stars are evenly distributed over this volume (they aren't, the galaxy is denser towards the center), that gives us 13 billion stars with the possibility of intelligent life smarter than us. If we assume that 1% of them actually do harbor intelligent life (and that figure is probably way too high), that leaves us with 130 million stars, spread out over 11 billion cubic lightyears. Since we have an even distribution of stars, that means intelligent life will happen once every 85 million light years.
So the nearest intelligent life with an advanced society is 85 million light years away. Unless the alien race has discovered a means to FTL travel, if they left 85 million years ago, they would be arriving right now. Serious SETI research isn't aimed at meeting ET, or having a conversation, but confirming that extraterrestrial intelligence exists.
Free MacMini
...SETI won't even find "intelligence" if they do tap into folk's calls!
Wasn't some agency looking at building telescopes on the moon? Why not just put a dish array there too ...
my geeklog
I would say that it's probably not that important whether we can hear stars very well. It's even less important whether we can hear (potentially non-existent) aliens.
Not that the search for extra terrestrial life isn't a worthy cause, but there's a better reason for picocells on airplanes.
Please, correct me if I'm wrong. When you make a connection to a cell phone tower, you'll connect to the closest towers. Usually this is only two or three. While you're on an airplane though, you tend to pick up many more (several dozen?) towers, and connect to all of them. You're also moving through a coverage area faster, taking up a whole swath of towers.
I know, boo hoo, they're using up the poor phone companies resources. But I'd rather not have to wait for a passing 747 to get out of range before I can make a call.
It makes more sense to have the plane be its own cell phone tower, and route the calls out through it and not taking up channels on normal cell phone towers. Oh yeah, and it'd be nice to cut out some of the interference.
Then again, I could be completely talking out of my ass. Hopefully someone in the know will come along and smite me or expend on this though/
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
I didn't RTA, but my initial impression is that since cell phone frequencies(and the whole set of human frequency emissions at any given time) don't cover anywhere near 100% of the frequencies that SETI does/could expect a signal might be found in, so no one should expect them to have close to a meaningful impact on SETI's chances of finding something. Human generated EM signals don't take up close to 100% of the available EM room at any given time. Both physical restrictions along with strong government regulation of cell phone/radio/television signals currently stop that from happening. Since SETI is only searches about 1% of the available sky available, even if airpanes take out a whopping 50% of the frequencies available to search in (a highly dubious proposion), they will, at a worse case scenario, be searching all of 2% of the sky. They aren't going to run out of places to look for a signal. A million bucks to start a new Seti@Home will help them 100x more than this will really hurt them.
exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis
Who cares... They could be using all that bandwidth to come up with a way to microwave a burrito so hot, Jesus himself couldn't eat it.
This is a good Idea that would also work in restaurants.
Have seating like it used to be with smoking or nonsmoking. The no-smoking symbol in the overhead could be replaced with a cell phone icon, and cell use could be allowed only in some rows.
You don't want to sit with people gabbing on a phone through most of the flight, there could be seating accommodations. It used to be a regular part of air travel to be offered seating preference.
Sagan and his predecessors postulate that this one narrow band would be used by aliens since it doesn't get absorbed the way everything else would by nebulae and whatnot and we go spending millions on listening to it.
Meanwhile, even NASA admits that the speed of light may not be a constant, warp may be possible, so no one dares think that anyone advanced enough to make it work might choose some other method of communication that worked faster than some arbitrary wavelength of radio waves?
Hello, the people on Trek have been using "subspace" for decades on television. Did it occur to no one in science to ditch the old ideas and try checking out other methods of transmitting information, such as the workings of other kinds of electromagnetic waves? Did anyone pay attention to electrodynamics discoveries?
Anyone advanced enough to be worth speaking with is not going to be talking on the same port SETI is listening on to use an Internet comparison. It's like running Telnet and the other side is trying to use SSH.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
4)They're far more advanced than us and they are on their way now to put an end to all this nonsense. After all... The noisy humans might be causing interference with the "Aliens" FCC regulations. That or demand we convert to their religion or sell us beads for Earth and give us nasty diseases like most other advanced civilizations do when they meet less civilized societies.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Then you have the cost of hauling the stuff up there. Those radio telescopes are huge. That's a lot steel to even put in orbit, much less land on the lunar surface.
I still agree that it's a good idea, but not for the cost reasons.
I would say that it's probably not that important whether we can hear stars very well. It's even less important whether we can hear (potentially non-existent) aliens.
Have you ever sat near someone who was talking on a cell phone? You think what they were saying was important???
I'm sure that cell phones will be capable of it soon, if they aren't already...
What if people, on their cell phones, on the airplane, were to be running SETI@Home?
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
How about laser radio? The antennae could just aim in the direction of the receiver in an external orbital pod on the airplane (or even internal), and just send a thin concentrated wave in that direction. Ever since I heard about masers, ordiniary radio just sounds like so much waste. Scream in all directions, and hope the listener will hear somewhere. GPS makes pointing to the received easier.
Two such directional antennaes could point to the group cell the airplane is moving away from, and the ground cell the airplane is moving towards for uninterrupted communication. Since it will not interfere with many other frequencies this way, the airplane will have much more bandwidth available for say in-flight T3 connections and PPV HDTV.
I even wonder if such a technology could be put into cellphones. instead of mechanically moving antennae, a globe of emitters could oscillate EM waves slightly timeshifted so the wave goes in one direction only... to the nearest tower. The same antennas could be used to detect where the nearest tower is. We can then have Zaruses with funky bandwidths everywhere.
Only radios and aliens trying to contact humans should be allowed to blast EM waves in all directions.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
As long as the windows are smaller than one wavelength.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
That would be cool. A "no screaming kids" zone would be a bloody good idea too.
How is a cell phone 100 miles away, in an airplane, going to cause more interference than a cellphone in someone's pocket at the lab itself?
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
There is more to radio astronomy than the search for other life in the universe. There is more to..
Aircraft move very rapidly across a radio telescope's field of view, while stars are nearly stationary. This kind of noise is yet another argument for phased arrays of radio telescopes, networked together. Their parallax should be more than sufficient to distinguish Earth noise from stellar signals. Once in phased arrays, all the other benefits, from resolution to increased coverage, will arrive. Overcoming the inevitable aerial radio noise might just be the excuse we need to get to a more useable radio telescopy.
--
make install -not war
On a long flight... considering almost everyone has a cell phone, this will get annoying real fast! I don't what it is, but people tend to talk louder on their cell phones even when the person on the other end can hear perfectly. I agree on the wireless part only for laptops, pdas, etc. I don't mind people typing ;).
http://www.talie.ca/
Come on now - SETI is supposed to catch precisely that kind of radiation, and now you deny the other side the chance of finding us?
...is that every alien species, in a bid to further their own SETI projects, outlawed EM pollution, the only means by which anyone else could see them.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
the cell phone frequencies are very close to the frequencies that radio astronomers listen for to detect stars being born & dying.
Now THERE's a reason to fall back to last millenia's standards of comfort and communication. We might miss detecting a star being born a thousand years ago a thousand light years ago. Wouldn't want to miss THAT bit of highly useful information.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Cell phones work by handing off your phone call between cells as you, the humble cellular customer, travel across the surface of the Earth.
... if my calls get dropped when I'm doing 80mph in a car, imagine how often my calls will get dropped when I'm doing 500mph in a 747! Especially given that the cells I'm talking to could be 4 or 5 miles straight below me! Even if my phone can maintain 2-way communication with cells, it will need to transmit at full power simply to cover that distance (and punch through the tons of metal that surround me in the aircraft.) At that signal strength, the cell phone very well could interfere with the aircraft's RF instruments.
Occasionally, when the network of cells is congested, or when some technical difficulty prevents your call from being handed off fast enough, your call will get dropped.
As you might expect, the faster you move, the more often your call is handed off. And the more often your call is handed off, the greater the chances of your call getting dropped. Cell phone companies try and compensate for this phenomenon by providing plenty of capacity along the routes of major freeways. Nonetheless, I've noticed that my calls get dropped more often when I'm moving than when I'm stationary.
Now then
Cell phone communication simply won't be reliable or safe enough without the use of cells onboard the airplane. Of course, this means that the airline has full control over your communications link to the world. Your cell phone will become just another way to access the fantastically expensive onboard phone service that most airline carriers have provided since the mid 1980s.
I'm relieved that this is the case. The only thing preventing the cabin of a jumbo jet from turning into social hour at the mall food court, is the exhorbitant $1-per-minute surcharge the airline levies on you for the privilege of making calls while in the air!
This seems like a losing battle for those wanting to perform science here. The masses like their cellphones and they want them everywhere all the time. Why not put something like the Paul Allen Radio Telescopes on the most remote island in the world. There shouldn't be any airplanes, cellphones and towers with-in hundreds if not thousands of miles. Better yet lets put it on the backside of the moon.
With Vongae's move to as wi-fi VOIP phone, plus airlines move to wi-fi on board, the cell phone debate may be overcome by events.
Personally, I like the VIOP solution because:
The airline can control availabilty with th ethrow of a switch; and
Most people won't use it so we'll have fewer idiots on the phone for an entire flight.
As someone who flies alot, cellphones in flight are a bad idea - it's bad enougfh when the idiot next to you insists on making conversation even when you are buried in a book and have noise reduction headphones on; add cellphones to that mix and you'll see air rage come back in vogue. (or cell phone jammers will become a hot item).
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
"Looks like I'll be about an hour late getting to Atlanta . . . "
"I hate flying."
"Man, this person sitting next to me is talking on a cell phone! The nerve . . . "
Maybe it's just me, but this is still a tad bit more interesting than listening to static.
Whose idea was it that extraterrestrials, assuming they exist, would decide to communicate with us in this fashion? I mean, is there precedent for alien communication via radio? Why wouldn't the aliens stick to tried and true methods of communicating with inferior species; i.e. good old fashioned crop circles and cattle mutilations?
SETI is cool and all, but I'd rather be able to use a cell phone in an airplane than worry about their SNR. Now, if they were in active communications with some aliens then I'd be more worried about blocking their signals.
Now why would any telecommunications provider or airline want to spend money installing extra equipment just because those astrologers can't use their wacky contraption thingamabobs? Who cares if they can't do their science if it gets in the way of making $$$?
Or something like that.
Okay, so that's a pretty stupid idea, I admit ... but its the sheer stupidity that almost guarantees it WILL be on fox next season.
or else!
It seems you have failed to take time into account.
If they are more advenced then now, that means sometime in there past they weren't. so the radio waves reaching us now would be from a technologically older period.
They could also have less technology becasue of the collpase of there civilization, but the radio wave from previous years would still be travelling through space.
I see no reqason why more advanced = hidden. POint in fact, I would think just the opposite. If they are more advanced, they would want other civilizations to know they exist...so they can take steps to insure there survival of the species. This doens't need to be violent. That would depend on there culture.
Now, the real issue here is the fact that radio astronamer have the rights(as granted by the FCC) to that space. This is why the cell phone side should be changed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why can't they just hook their software up to the airline traffic and filter out things coming from airplanes. It's not like they're going to miss that much of the sky because of that.
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
rendering an opinion and looking like a fool.
SETI is privatly paid for, no tax dollars are used.
About detecting:
The point is to find a signal that is evidence that another intelligent race has existed at sometime.
In that vain, they are looking for evidence, not direct transmissions. Like residual radio signals.
Talking would be great, not likly.
"if you want, but if "ET" wanted to let us know he was there, he'd find a way to get around our cell phone signals."
considering the power requirements to reach long distances, maybe not.
Just for clarification Just becaues you find evidence of another race, doesn't mean they have the capabilities to get to you.
there have been one or two unexplainable signals over the years. However if it's not repeatable, it's chalk up to noise.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Call me a pragmatist, but why would it matter if ET exists if nothing can come from that knowledge?
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
...that people aren't using cell phones in planes now? Just because you aren't allowed to used them on commercial flights doesn't prevent any private pilot from doing so in his Cessna. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that it happens all the time.
Just another day in Paradise
I will gladly give up the convenience of connectivity on airplanes (something I look forward to) if it means causing problems finding life in space.
And if you give any answer other than that, you have NO RIGHT to be reading Slashdot!
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Re: your sig - I'm confused. Did Mr. Churchill somehow meet Dubya at some point? He seems to have been describing him fairly accurately in that quote...
Flame away you neo-con bitches!!
It is a ruse- the Alpha Centaurians are using Nokias to cover up the signals from space. I'm not scared though- I've made a hat from tin foil!!
Your project cost a little bit more...
I do radio astronomy sometimes (VLA), and I always have to throw away data due to interference. Cell phone signals are a major part of this interference.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
No effort has been made to extend cell phone service to the Sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest. This will result in a digital divide between Homo Sapiens and the Yeti population.
Likewise, there are no airlines that will serve them, either...
Not a group of amateur radio guys. Decisions should be based on what servers the community better in a whole. Cell phones and broadband affect millions and millions of people, amatuer radio is reserved for a few thousand hobbyist. As for radio astronomers, i'd be more concerned about finding funding. The best array(Big ear) SETI had going was shutdown 1998. And i would really like to see a stat about how many people accidently leave their cell phones on while flying, i bet there's a few hundred in the sky at a given time.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Gaining knowledge should always trump some obnoxious lady in a grocery lineup asking her husband if they need more diapers. Frankly I think a good deal more constraints should be put on cellphones. No one should be allowed to drive and use one. No one should be allowed to get calls in movie theaters from one, and nobody should block legitimate scientific research. The thought that a generation of self-indulgent, self-important communication junkies would start screwing with astronomy is enough to make me sick.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
http://www.phobe.com/yeti/
From the website:
YETI@Home is a scientific experiment that harnesses the power of hundreds of thousands of Internet-connected computers in the search for giant ape-like creatures (YETI). We, the YETI team members who founded this experiment, are experts in the field of cryptozoology (the study of animals that do not exist). You can participate in this historic study by running a free program that downloads and analyzes video & sound captured from your very own backyard.There's a small but captivating possibility that your computer will detect the faint footsteps of a hairy monster.
The mobile telecom and airline industries are both economically vital and beneficial to our society. These technologies allow us to connect with people across the globe and are directly responsible for many of the great things we enjoy today (and take for granted).
SETI, on the otherhand, produces nothing of value for society. Since its inception, has SETI even produced any evidence of alien life? Just what is SETI's impact on society and the economy? SETI does not spread wealth. SETI does not connect global economies.
In short, should society retard progress and trade it with some silly search for aliens? We might as well go back to horse and buggy.
Confirmation of the existance of an ET would spur investment into either paranoid defense or into programs like SETI. We might see another scientific renaissance that produces things like a way to reach FTL travel. Like anything else, if you know something is possible then you know you aren't wasting your time.
"especially given the extreme right wing movements going on right now in the USA"? Yea, that's why you can't use your cell phone on an airplane! The future of our great country with this kind of wisdom!
that leaves us with 130 million stars, spread out over 11 billion cubic lightyears. Since we have an even distribution of stars, that means intelligent life will happen once every 85 million light years.
Can't be. The diameter of the Milky Way is only about 100,000 ly, so the average star-to-star spacing of any set of stars within it simply can't be 85 million ly. Check your math.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Cell phones work OK inside airplanes. I, personally, never turn mine off when in flight. It just sits there in my pocket, turned on. I don't talk, if someone calls me I send an SMS back. It works allright.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Well by eliminating cell phones -Ring-Ring-Ring
....
....
Hold on let me take this call, it's more important than you...
ya hey... what do you mean it's canceled....oh sorry I lost you in the bad reception.... hold on I'm losing you.. wait ok now I got you... your going to be where.... oh ok later!!!
oh yeah, that was my friend. He's a corporate executive, yeah more important than you... I have to go meet him, later you loser
GCS/MU d- s: a--- C++ W+++ w+ M-- PS--- PE++ t+ R+ tv b+ DI++ G e- h! !y
If we assume that 1% of them actually do harbor intelligent life (and that figure is probably way too high), that leaves us with 130 million stars, spread out over 11 billion cubic lightyears. Since we have an even distribution of stars, that means intelligent life will happen once every 85 million light years.
Plugging your figures in google calc I get 1 civ every 85 cubic light years. You lost some digits in your calcs, and didn't convert down as was cubic light years not a direction.
This is the query that I sent.
what is (11 billion cubic lightyears) divided by 130 million) in cubic lightyears.
Also the actual arms contain nearly all of the stars there are large portions of really empty space even within your small guestimate of volume.
Banning cell phones on planes BECAUSE of this is like using a Sharpie marker to turn a sucking chest wound into a smiley face. - I like the way your metaphor came out, makes me smile about a few things...
You can't handle the truth.
So the nearest intelligent life with an advanced society is 85 million light years away
The milky way is only 100 thousand lightyears wide.
Unless the alien race has discovered a means to FTL travel, if they left 85 million years ago, they would be arriving right now
Well, if they discovered FTL (as in *FASTER* than light) travel then they could have left as early as this morning and be here by dinner time.
They're trying to get in touch with us with radio waves, because they don't have the technology to find us and fly to our planet and meet us.
Wait a minute, did we forget to send our own radio signals into outer space, with our message so the aliens could find us?
I'm sorry but the whole idea is too preposterous to me.
Step back and have a little perspective. If the timeline of the planet earth was 1 mile long, human life on the planet would span less than a sixteenth of an inch, and the time that humans have had radio would be less than the width of a human hair.
Now expecting some other planets timeline to coincide with ours, assuming [ass u me] they use radio, in their atmopheres, assuming they are more evolved than bacteria, or animals, assuming they care to contact us, asuming they even exist etc, the odds are so infinitesimally small, as to be very nearly proposterous.
It's about the weakest excuse against using cellphones in flight I've ever heard.
SETI doesn't work?! What about the signal that came from Vega?
To be inside a metal box/microwave oven/airliner with not one, but dozens, maybe hundreds of microwave transmitters all flooding the cabin with microwave energy??!?!?
Its going to happen because it makes money.
No one with a vested interest (1B$ and up) has any published proof of any near term or long term biological damage.
So that makes it OK, right?
How about some Open Source style research on the immediate effects of cell phone use on humans?
I would paypal to any group that looked serious. We can't wait for gov or industry funded research.
t.
There is no such thing as a "picocell". There is, however, a microcell. They are used all the time to fill in the gaps in cell coverage. There is one in every cellular retail shop.
Deliberate broadcasts suffer from none of the drawbacks you describe.
Are we delibrately broadcasting coherent radio signals that are explicitly designed to be picked up by another civilization?
Why not?
QED.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Isn't there a really massive gravity well at the center of the galaxy pulling the stars slowly inward? At first, they thought it was a bunch of black holes in the center, but now, they're not so sure.
I thought the older stars were closer to the center, but that might just be science fiction talking.
The ability of other people to chat with their friends (adjacent or miles away) is what they get for not being in school and under the auspices of an annoying teacher.
They don't have to be quiet for you.
If you want quiet, the solution is ear plugs for you, not the forced silencing of the rest of creation. Airlines should probably hand them out, if they don't already.
I also think it's hilarious how everyone I know that is opposed to cell phones in airplanes is fine with them on buses, which is the same damn thing.
The selfish people are the ones that are unwilling to wear two small pieces of rubber, and would instead have EVERYONE ELSE obey their will.
And the fact that it will disturb SETI actually does make me sad. But not sad enough that I think it's worth taking away a *great* ability (the ability to communicate with your friends and family, no matter where you and they are).
SETI is at best a shot in the dark. Cellphones are telepathy made practical, real, and affordable. Even with their flaws, they are one of the best chunks of technology to ever hit humanity.
IIRC, centripital acceleration slowly pushes stars out from the center towards the edge.
'Fraid you don't recall correctly. Gravity provides the centripetal (towards the center) acceleration needed to keep the sun in a roughly circular orbit about the center of the galaxy. The sun was born near its present orbital radius (about 8 kpc = 30,000 light years from galactic center). There are some old stars way out there in the galactic halo, but there are others much closer to the galactic center than us.
The upshot is that you want to look towards regions with lots of stars -- in the plane of the Milky Way, and towards the galactic center.
I don't want to hear people talking anywhere period, on cellphones or not.
So lame, when people talk. Much better for them to shut up and not bother us with their inferior speaking.
Seriously, why does everyone do this? Is it in vogue to just hate everything?
"What would happen if anyone could talk to anyone else, anywhere, anytime?"
"Oh, I know, a bunch of smarmy folks would get all uptight about it, and it would be in vogue to rail against change!"
Yeah I hate it when I have some fucking businessman screaming at some guy in Japan next me for 6 hours while I'm are trying to sleep...
Oh, wait, I don't want the cellphones gone for greedy reasons like that. Its the science. I swear. The annoying businessman is in the way of SCIENCE! Not only that, he's a Terrorist. Lock him up.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
The byline for the story has me puzzled.
Here's the deal. The SETI project is listening right around the hydrogen line (right around 1420MHz, or 1.420GHz if you like).
Now, let's look at a typical US-based cellphone. They're dual-band capable, operating at approximately 850MHz or 1.9GHz.
The second harmonic of 850MHz is 1.700GHz, nearly 300MHz above where SETI is listening. As for 1.9GHz, its second harmonic is way the heck up at 3.80GHz. When you get up past the third harmonic of any signal, the amplitude is usually so low as to be insignificant.
Now, I don't claim to have all the answers, but it seems to this long-time ham radio op that the possibility of cellphones interfering with SETI hardware is pretty darn slim.
Unless I'm missing something? Perhaps there's an RF engineer, or someone who's seeing something that I'm missing, that would care to comment?
Keep the peace(es).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
The real solution is to invest in building radio telescopy infrastructure on the far side of the moon. Either there, or in a heliocentric orbit on the opposite side of the sun at 1 AU. Those are the only two places in the universe that have are always shadowed from Earth based broadcasts.
Thank you for finally coming up with a reason why we should return to the moon. Bush needs someone like you helping him out with ideas, but then, maybe he doesn't depend on ideas for persuasion.
That's an X-File. If it was true, Sagan would have been silenced.
If they discovered FTL, they could have left tomorrow afternoon and arrived here in time for breakfast last Wednesday.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
...unless the alien race has discovered a means to FTL travel, if they left 85 million years ago, they would be arriving right now. Serious SETI research isn't aimed at meeting ET, or having a conversation, but confirming that extraterrestrial intelligence exists...
that would be existed 85 million years ago
Voyager I & II send a coherent signal that's free of noise from earch, for example.
-Reid
The revise number makes ET visiting in the realm of possibility, but still not likely.
On the topic of FTL travel, whether a ship leaving this morning gets here in time for dinner tonight or tea yesterday is dependent on whether the ship is actually traveling at a superluminal velocity or is "cheating" According to physics, particles that move faster than 3E8 m/s move backwards in time. Such particles theoritically exist and are called tachyons. However, most FTL space travel in science-fiction is based on the concept of taking a shortcut through warp space. Inside of warp space, it is assumed that you are traveling at a finite sub-luminal velocity and, as such, moving forward in time.
On the topic of whether stars in the galaxy move outward or inward, if anyone has some more information on this that they could link to, it would be greatly appreciated. I'm willing to admit to the possibility of being wrong.
Free MacMini
A preprint discussing some of these problems is available in the preprint archive Galactic Gradients, Postbiological Evolution and the Apparent Failure of SETI.
Worth noting to the person who suggested that planets with advanced civilization migrate outward within the galaxy... The idea is on the right track but as the paper above points out -- advanced civilizations can migrate their solar systems anywhere they want. People who really want to understand galactic gradients and the probable location (and ages) of planets similar to Earth should research the papers by Charlie Lineweaver's group. Their work suggests that there are many many "Earths" in our galaxy. Many would be quite a bit older than ours if the intelligent civilizations they might have spawned chose for some illogical (nostalgic?) reason not to disassemble them.
All of this is not to say that the PicoCell or Bluetooth or other alternatives are not good ideas for airplanes for the simple reason of preventing radiotelescope interference (i.e. *real* radioastronomy rather than radioastronomy involving the questionable pursuit of ET. Of course having no-cell-phone zones (or even no-fly zones) in locations above radiotelescopes seems to be a much simpler solution. And then of course anyone who wishes to use a cell phone on a plane should be required to use a "cone of silence" (for those of you who remember "Get Smart"). :-;
What ground-breaking discoveries? It's a losing battle trying to explain to the entire world why they should deal with a pretty major inconvenience (for a lot of people) for some arcane science like radio astronomy which by definition isn't going to benefit them.
Personally I don't want cell phones on planes because it's inevitable that I'll end up beating the shit out of someone using one. It's bad enough when you touch down and half the plane has to commemorate that event by calling everyone they know.
Are we delibrately broadcasting coherent radio signals that are explicitly designed to be picked up by another civilization?
Why not?
We've only had the technology for a century and we're immature and scared.
SETI is therefore only looking for signals from civilizations who aren't.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Voyager I & II send a coherent signal that's free of noise from earch, for example.
Voyager 1 and 2 send that signal back to here, or were designed to originally. And the signal strength on that is extremely small. Your average rock radio station puts out way more power.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
We've only had the technology for a century and we're immature and scared.
Interesting theory. Not actually true, but interesting nonetheless.
We're not sending radio signals designed to be picked up by other civilizations because it would be pointless to do so.
a) It'd take 4 years to get to another star, and that's one that we're pretty sure lacks life anyway. To get to the best candidates, you're looking at 50-100 years or so. Given the rate of technological advance, it seems almost more plausible that we'd figure out a way to *go there* faster than the message would get there. Okay, those nasty laws of physics are indeed a problem, I admit.
b) There's two ways to send a signal: Directional or not. An omni-directional signal makes the most sense, given that you want to contact anybody, but in that case the power drops by the cube of the distance, meaning that the power you need to pump into it to be heard that far away is somewhat staggering. We don't have that kind of power. We could do it directionally, because then it falls off much less, but in which direction do you point your signal? Pick a star.
c) What signal do you send? You can postulate a lot of ways to send a signal that would be universal enough to be picked up, but they all suffer from the same flaw, that being that you're just guessing. You really don't know if some other species will really be able to recognize it for what it is.
So, it takes a long time, and a hell of a lot of power, with an uncertain, but probably very very small, chance of success. Now, is it really so hard to figure out why we don't send coherent signals but just listen instead?
What SETI is listening for is both coherent, obvious, signals that might be sent by somebody out there, but they're not stupid. They're also listening for anything that's non-random noise. A lot of what we do send out incidentally is noise-like, but only at first glance. It has a non-random component that analysis can identify. What do you think the whole point of SETI@Home is? It's to identify sources of noise that are not random, to see where to pay more attention to.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Your average rock radio station doesn't have the advantage of being in space, where there is mostly just thermal background radiation to contend with.
The real reason that seti probably won't work is because even an isolated signal from the edge of the solar system isn't too likely to be detected by someone many lightyears away.
-Reid
So, which would you think is better then? A megawatt radio broadcast from the ground, which then has to travel through a couple hundred miles of atmosphere (which is largely transparent on those frequencies, BTW) and out into space in an omnidirectional manner, or a floating space probe with about as much broadcasting power as a lightbulb, but with nearly no interference to get in its way? Which will be more detectable at, say, 10 light years away?
If you answered the rock station, then you win a cookie. However, if the question was based on, say, 100 light years or so, then it would have been a trick question, as neither one would have been detectable by somebody with our current level of technology.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
i work for a company where all we do is make microwave filters that filter interference- perhaps there is a way to get around cell phone interference this way
I don't really see the signal being detected even 10 light years away. When intensity goes as power over distance squared.
At 10 light years, 10^6/(10^16)^2 spells mighty slim odds for our radio station ever being noticed.
Thanks for the cookie.
-Reid
Detectability is actually probably much better than you think, because artifically made radio signals have a tendancy to be polarized, whereas natural ones generally don't.
But yes, you're basically right. An omnidirectional source at 10 light years would need to be a billion watts to be received by something like Arecibo. However, if it was highly directional and sent by something like Arecibo, then it would only need to be a kilowatt.
If you assume that your receiver has done something like scatter some receivers out in space and made an interferometer about 1 AU wide (stick some radio receivers in the same orbit on the other side of the sun, for example), you can get to where you can detect that 1 megawatt on an omni from 10 LY. We don't have that sort of thing, although it's not beyond our capability to build it if we wanted.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It must be boring to watch that movie over and over again to see if it's smart or not. I don't know about everyone else, but I thought it was pretty good.
I mod down pyramid schemes in sigs.
Och... I hate quoting magazine articles which I lack cites for, but there was an article in Discover magazine that demonstrated that, with our current understanding of the mineral makeup of planets, Earth may be unusually rich in the proper types of elements for construction of radio equipment. ^_^ With the current debates on Intelligent Design, I'm surprised that hasn't come up...
"And note that Earth, the one planet that we know of that supports life, also has unusually high amounts of mineral deposits that allowed for man to develop higher technology. Clearly, there was intelligent design at work here."
Personally, I prefer the (probably mis-attributed) quote by Ben Franklin, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Supposedly the major annoyances in cell phone conversations isn't how loudly the other person is talking, but the fact that you only hear one side of the conversation. The human brain just doesn't like that. I'd quote the study (which was mentioned on Slashdot IIRC), but I've forgotten where to find it.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
"Why would intellifenge life in the Mily Way have to be smarter than us."
"IIRC, centripital acceleration slowly pushes stars out from the center towards the edge. The Milky Way is approximately 10,000 lightyears thick at the edge and 30,000 light years think in the centre."
"Since we have an even distribution of stars, that means intelligent life will happen once every 85 million light years."
I think this post itself embodies the answer to its first sentence.
a) It'd take 4 years to get to another star, and that's one that we're pretty sure lacks life anyway... Okay, those nasty laws of physics are indeed a problem, I admit.
We're pretty sure at this point there's never going to be another way to do it. With our knowledge of physics at this point, if we're ever going to do it, this is how we're going to do it, Sci-Fi channel notwithstanding. It's not "romantic" to think the answer won't come back in your lifetime, but science isn't romance.
the power you need to pump into it to be heard that far away is somewhat staggering. We don't have that kind of power
Exactly right, so we can't do an omnidirectional radiator.
We could do it directionally, because then it falls off much less, but in which direction do you point your signal? Pick a star.
That's easy. The closest one. Then the next closest one, then the next closest one. Or if it's a fixed antenna plot a course through the sky that maximizes the close ones.
What signal do you send? You can postulate a lot of ways to send a signal that would be universal enough to be picked up, but they all suffer from the same flaw, that being that you're just guessing. You really don't know if some other species will really be able to recognize it for what it is.
The guys who work on this stuff have good ideas based on number systems we think are required to build a radio receiver. It should be recognizable as a non-noise signal if anyone is listening. It may take untold round-trips to establish communication.
So, it takes a long time, and a hell of a lot of power, with an uncertain, but probably very very small, chance of success. Now, is it really so hard to figure out why we don't send coherent signals but just listen instead?
I believe this is the crux or your argument - the chances of success are low. That's unarguable - it's a matter of payoff, risk/benefit loss/reward. SETI people are pretty accustomed to low-return projects.
They're also listening for anything that's non-random noise. A lot of what we do send out incidentally is noise-like, but only at first glance. It has a non-random component that analysis can identify. What do you think the whole point of SETI@Home is? It's to identify sources of noise that are not random, to see where to pay more attention to.
Nothing that we send out that has noise-like characteristics is going to make it out of our solar system, at least with any detection technology that we know about. If an alien is sending out noise-like signals that happen to make it here they're using way too much power. The only thing that should make it here is an intentional signal.
See, in some neighborhoods, you move in and everybody brings you a pie. In other neighborhoods, you have to bring the pie.
My suspicion is that if they're out there they're going to wait for us to say 'hello' first. That would be a sign of our maturity.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
We're pretty sure at this point there's never going to be another way to do it. With our knowledge of physics at this point, if we're ever going to do it, this is how we're going to do it, Sci-Fi channel notwithstanding.
Yes, well, the smart money isn't on your "pretty sure" bet. We really don't know as much about the ultimate nature of reality as you think we do.
The guys who work on this stuff have good ideas based on number systems we think are required to build a radio receiver. It should be recognizable as a non-noise signal if anyone is listening. It may take untold round-trips to establish communication.
The problem here is that you're still just guessing. You can come up with ideas based on numbers all you like, in the end, you still really don't know. You cannot possibly know. Perhaps its a very good guess, but it's still a guess.
Nothing that we send out that has noise-like characteristics is going to make it out of our solar system, at least with any detection technology that we know about. If an alien is sending out noise-like signals that happen to make it here they're using way too much power. The only thing that should make it here is an intentional signal.
Again, you're guessing. You know absolutely nothing about this other hypothethical species, and yet you're saying that they won't be detectable? That's just a guess. Might not be right. You can't even quantify the odds on that guess.
My point, overall, is that you think you know more than you actually do. In point of fact, you really know nothing at all about what this alien race might be or do. It's all a web of guesswork. You may think it's got good odds of being the truth, but in reality you cannot possibly know the truth so anything you say about it is just your opinion. Others disagree.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
My point, overall, is that you think you know more than you actually do. In point of fact, you really know nothing at all about what this alien race might be or do. It's all a web of guesswork. You may think it's got good odds of being the truth, but in reality you cannot possibly know the truth so anything you say about it is just your opinion. Others disagree.
You're right - we're both guessing. I'm just basing my guesses on current scientific knowledge and what we know about how radio communications work on Earth, with the way we've evolved our technology.
Admittedly, it's a sample size of 1 - but that's more data to go on than a sample size of 0. There are an infinite number of alternate hypotheses that have no grounding in reality, but you don't want to base a research project on them.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If you look at the SETI front page, somewhere they link to their happy go cluky stat of 2358927549821743981273498172349721397432197 computer hours so far!!!111thirteen!
Computers using 30-60 watts, with seti, they run at FULL blast, and 24 hours a day. (and during work they run with high CPU in background.
If you calculate how much polution SETI has generated, and other tasks that lock the CPU to full blast (and fans) then you will be amazed. I did some napkin equations and sent them to Mr Electricity online.
So, as far as I am concerned, SETI can piss off, people only use it to get points, and try and win a game. If the points weren't there, noone would do a thing.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com