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Spot ET's Waste Heat For Chance To Find Alien Life
mdsolar passes along this selection from New Scientist describing a (comparatively) low-tech means of scanning the skies for extraterrestrial civilizations: The best-known technique used to search for tech-savvy aliens is eavesdropping on their communications with each other. But this approach assumes ET is chatty in channels we can hear. The new approach, dubbed G-HAT for Glimpsing Heat from Alien Technologies, makes no assumptions about what alien civilisations may be like.
"This approach is very different," says Franck Marchis at the SETI Institute in California, who was not involved in the project. "I like it because it doesn't put any constraints on the origin of the civilisation or their willingness to communicate." Instead, it utilises the laws of thermodynamics. All machines and living things give off heat, and that heat is visible as infrared radiation. The G-HAT team combed through the catalogue of images generated by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, which released an infrared map of the entire sky in 2012. A galaxy should emit about 10 per cent of its light in the mid-infrared range, says team leader Jason Wright at Pennsylvania State University. If it gives off much more, it could be being warmed by vast networks of alien technology – though it could also be a sign of more prosaic processes, such as rapid star formation or an actively feeding black hole at the galaxy's centre.
"This approach is very different," says Franck Marchis at the SETI Institute in California, who was not involved in the project. "I like it because it doesn't put any constraints on the origin of the civilisation or their willingness to communicate." Instead, it utilises the laws of thermodynamics. All machines and living things give off heat, and that heat is visible as infrared radiation. The G-HAT team combed through the catalogue of images generated by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, which released an infrared map of the entire sky in 2012. A galaxy should emit about 10 per cent of its light in the mid-infrared range, says team leader Jason Wright at Pennsylvania State University. If it gives off much more, it could be being warmed by vast networks of alien technology – though it could also be a sign of more prosaic processes, such as rapid star formation or an actively feeding black hole at the galaxy's centre.
obligatory picture of that crazy aliens guy goes here.
Either we will have located the home world of the Quagaars, or it'll turn out to be a garbage pod.
#DeleteChrome
Even if we find an anamalous heat signature, we still can't be sure. Call me when you have a real SETI signal.
These are infrared array cameras mounted of space telescopes. How high tech do you want? http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/
Such assumptions as, that alien life has not found a way around the Second Law of Thermodynamics?
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Basically, this method of searching for aliens returns a positive whenever there is something producing heat which we don't see/understand. I have a feeling that the universe is quite full of such things. But maybe explaining these will help us make scientific advances. When astronomers first discovered a pulsar, they labeled the signal LGM for "little green men". But since then, we learned a lot about astronomy. Explaining apparent anomalies is good for science, and if you want to make the process sexier by talking about possible alien civilizations, I don't see much harm.
Aka Dyson Spheres - oh no they look just like red giants.
with waste heat. never thought of that.
An alien civilization using this technique, would certainly not be able to spot us in our current level of development. In a few millennium perhaps.
So we're looking for dumb aliens?
So, they're looking for civili[zs]ations classified as Type 3 in the Kardashev scale:
A civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy.
OK, suppose we find their galaxy, conspicuous like a flamingo. How do we hail in order to confirm?
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
This method has a difficulty. Most of the starlight from a galaxy comes from stars that will soon be gone. These are the luminous giant stars. But a big investment in a Dyson sphere would probably be made around a star more like our Sun which will stick around for a while. But even if most of the mass in stars is involved in this, it still won't get most of the light so long as it is the low luminosity stars that get the tech investment.
No one will admit to the cause though.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a...
This is not a search for plants but rather Dyson Spheres. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
Matthew 7:16: "By their farts shall ye know them"
Table-ized A.I.
Where life's emissions are easily detectable.
I'm not so sure I'd want to make contact.
... in the infrared spectrum ?
Have any of our far flung space craft look back to our planet (and all the surrounding and background stuffs) snap a photo in the infrared spectrum ?
And they are using such tech that we really can't see them, or know how they work, don't leave heat signatures, etc, I'm not sure this would be good for finding those Alien planets because chances are they got their shit together.
So it might be good to find other aliens who are as stupid as we are and don't mind polluting their planet and we love to pollute ours. I don't want to meet those people, chances are they are as fucked up as we are.
Of course, not saying we'd meet them as we are stupid and instead of spending money on science, we spend it on killing each other so a few people can make money.
Be seeing you...
Heard about this idea AT LEAST 10yrs ago...new approach as in this is the first time that someone's actually implemented it, or...?
This sounds like a great way to discover alien civilizations too huge to give a shit about us, too far away to ever talk to.
Not that we should be picky, but this is punching above our weight.
i thought they would be looking for industrial gases in the spectrum from planets. It doesnt seem like streetlights and city lights would be significant compared to the amount emitted by suns.
It's a very simple, even lower-tech approach. Unstable molecules are unstable, stable ones aren't. Life isn't capable of producing stable molecules from stable molecules. Something, somewhere down the line, therefore must produce unstable molecules.
If you use spectrometry and find a planet that has two or more highly reactive molecules (especially if they cannot coexist naturally), that planet has complex life. If you have one reactive molecule that breaks down in sunlight but is being refreshed, that planet must have at least simple life. If the planet has highly reactive molecules that don't readily form naturally, you have life that is nominally intelligent.
No requirement for any technology capable of generating a specific signature. No requirement for the absence of metamaterials. No requirement for a telescope big enough to detect the signature against natural variation.
SKA would be capable of detecting an alien civilization using Lovelock's method anywhere inside of 1,000 light years, given the size and sensitivity currently being proposed. How big would the James Webb telescope need to be to get an IR signature on the industrialized part of the US at that range?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
And it was found in New Mexico. :P
What if the advanced civilization turned out to be masters of power efficiency? An analogy from the world of computing: the first electronic computers required the power of a house simply to boot up. The smartphone in your pocket is thousands of times more powerful while using no more power than a small light bulb. Does this mean all we'll find are vacuum tube using spacefarers who use nuclear bombs for rocket fuel?
Wasn't this on slashdot already about a month and change ago?
Everyone knows the best way to find ET is to lure them out with Reese's Pieces.
There is an implicit assumption here - that ET is exothermic. What if waste heat is the "next big thing" after CO2 emissions in the development of civilization, and tech is discovered to conquer it?
Why do we think an alien civilisation would not have solved the "Waste heat" issue?
If they are sufficiently technologically advanced shouldn't waste heat not be a prominent part of their society?
Aren't we constantly moving towards efficiency and reducing energy waste through heat and other reactions?
I find that much of the search for ET life seems rooted in a Universal view that is based solely on current human society and level of advancement.
suggests that the aliens might not abandon these stars just as the energy get is getting good. He may have a point there.
First of all, life isn't going to alter an entire galaxy's heat output by much, unless it's one HELL of a civilization. Second, so you find a slightly warmer galaxy. So what? What caused the extra warmth? There's nothing strongly indicative of life in such a finding.
What's important is how much warmer the galaxy is from it's output without life. Which is not a data point we can collect.