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Why We're Looking For ET All Wrong
StartsWithABang writes: When you consider that there are definitely millions of planets in the habitable zones of their stars within our Milky Way galaxy alone, the possibility that there's intelligent life on at least one of them, right now, is tantalizing. But we're in our technological infancy, relatively speaking, having only been broadcasting electromagnetic signatures visible by an alien civilization for around 80 years. Unsurprisingly, we're looking for exactly the types of signals we're capable of sending, but what if that's totally wrongheaded? Based on how technology is evolving and what the Universe is capable of, perhaps we should be looking not at electromagnetic radiation, but neutrino or gravitational wave signals from the distant Universe to search for alien civilizations.
It's the one life we know exists, if we find aliens with a totally different physiology or totally different technology that's nice but we have no idea of what to look for. It's unlikely that aliens expect us to tap into their communications, if they are trying to ping us they probably do it using all possible channels. And we know at least one of them, it's unlikely a civilization that can do what he proposes hasn't invented the radio.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
... when we have neutrino or gravitational wave telescopes capable of detecting such signals. Which we don't. Current neutrino observatories are very crude, and we have yet to detect gravitational waves of any kind.
While we have been sending radio transmissions for 80 years, the modularion has changed dramatically, which has negative imolications for finding ET, even if they are using our same frequency bands.
Early on we used FM and AM. Both end up with a strong easy to identify carrier tone. As time has gone one and DSP has become a cheap commodity we moved to more efficient modulations (relative to Shannons's limit). Digital modulations look more noise like and have no carrier as such. GPS is below the noise floor as received due to the energy being so smeared out, and that is from medium earth orbit. Your voice calls are recieved below noise as well in a CDMA system.
So if ET is similarly good at math, they will have moved on to signals that are similarly noise like and may simply be undetectable. There may only be a 100 year or so window to detect Earth, and similar may be true for ET.
The methods we have been using so far have always been based on our own technology level and therefore an assumption that other civilisations will be using the same methods.
One such assumption was sensing infra-red emissions, though the problem there is that a civilisation sufficiently advance may be using technology that has low emissions, due to optimisations. Though, at the same time we need to take note of different technology levels that different civilisations may be using for themselves and those they may be employing for their mutual search of 'extra terrestial' life. What I mean by this, is that they may be employing optimised radio technology, such as lasers and high encryption methods (which may be hard to distinguish from background noise, for us) for communication, but still using wide beam/wide spectrum, unencrypted radio in their search?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
For most advanced civilizations, this may turn out to be pretty short. Between the discovery of radio and the development of efficient (below the noise floor) methods of modulation, this era may last a few hundred years. So if we are looking for inadvertent radiation, the probability of seeing it must be reduced by this factor.
The latency problem: Any sufficiently advance civilization will certainly understand the latency problems involved with communications at the speed of light. They might set up a beacon to advertise "Here we are" with no expectation of receiving an answer. But then again, probably not. They might run into the same problems we do with such 'science'. Funds will be better spent elsewhere, so why bother with the gigawatt beacon?
One possibility: A sufficiently advanced civilization might develop the technology to generate wormholes. Not big enough to physically traverse (due to the energy requirements). But large enough through which to inject photons. And if they can pop them open in the vicinity of candidate solar systems, they could find us in a reasonable (compared to light speed communications) time. So, they've found us. The next step would be to pop open some wormholes where we could actually 'grab' one, observe it for an intelligent optical signal and return one of our own. That would be a useful, two way, low latency link.
We don't have to understand the physics of how one goes about generating such tiny wormholes. Or aiming them at remote points in our universe. All we have to do is figure out how to detect one, confine it and couple it to optical instrumentation.
Have gnu, will travel.
Any extraterrestrial civilization that has survived into interstellar travel is probably willing to invest a great deal of its time and energy into NOT being discovered by us. What could be more dangerous than a species that has learned some technology yet turns every technological advance into a weapon against others of its own kind? And we've been advertising that aspect of ourselves to the universe ever since we discovered radio waves.
Any civilization that can travel between star systems will be so advanced that it will not need to plunder whoever is at their destination. Generally there are two interstellar travel options.
First, Einstein speed of light restrictions hold, and it takes a minimum of hundreds of years to make the trip. Maybe thousands or more. The technology required means that the travelers can maintain themselves in raw vacuum for very long periods. They have access to power sources that will last as well. If they are going even 10% of the speed of light they have some amazing shielding from the added radiation they encounter from their speed. If they are going slower, 1% or 2% of the speed of light, they have equally amazing biological technology to support themselves and whatever biosphere they need. Same thing for some sort of hibernation. If they have this level of technology, they need nothing from us. Perhaps some raw materials, but those are more easily accessed from rocks and such in the solar system, not down a gravity well. The invasion scenario is ridiculous.
A similar argument holds for FTL travel. The technology is so advanced from our point of view it might as well be magic. There are one or two speculative models where FTL works under the Standard Model of physics, but they require exotic matter and mind bending abilities over matter and energy. Any technology beyond the Standard Model is ever more mind bending. Magicians need nothing from us.
The conqueror models is a projection of human history into space. It doesn't hold over interstellar distances. The distance scales and radically different physical environment of interstellar space invalidate any reason for an invasion.
Why is Snark Required?
One day, scientists and their followers will feel like complete idiots, when it becomes obvious aliens have been here all along.
Okay, one can play this game about any widespread "belief." Let's try, shall we?
One day, scientists and their followers will feel like complete idiots, when it becomes obvious God and Jesus have been here all along.
Citation#1: US presidents have known about UFOs here on Earth, even seen them:
Since the beginning of the US, US Presidents have been -- and continue to -- invoke a superior supernatural deity acting on Earth, usually to our country's benefit.
Citation#2: If 200+ NASA, Ex-Military, Ex-US government high ranking employees coming forth and willing to testify before congress isn't enough for you, then your mind is too closed:
I can find thousands and thousands of NASA, Ex-military, Ex-US government high ranking employees to talk about how belief in the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ is not only present in the world, but often is responsible for their entire success in life.
Citation#3: How many pilot witnesses with radar evidence to back it up does it take before you belive that UFOs are real and here on Earth?
How many miracles certified by the Vatican does it take for you to believe in an almighty deity? (The Vatican employs lots of actual scientists and doctors to certify these too.)
Citation#4: Is 3 Million alien abductions in the USA alone enough evidence for you, or are you waiting around for a nice round number like 10 million?
Yes, and hundreds of millions of people around the world believe that bread or a wafer is magically transformed into the body of someone who lived 2000 years ago, and by practicing ritual cannibalism and consuming his body and blood, they will be saved an afterlife of eternal torment. And hundreds of milions of others think the first group is crazy, but they believe in their own tradition pointing to a supernatural god or gods. Etc.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm NOT saying God isn't real, nor am I saying definitively that aliens have not visited earth.
But you have to admit that there are good reasons why many scientists have become increasingly skeptical of religious claims in the past few centuries -- largely due to the nature of the "evidence," which always seems a little fleeting or hard to capture in controlled experiments or whatever.
It is indeed rational to present a similar skepticism to claims like millions of people in the US are supposedly "abducted." How? When? Don't other people in their families notice? Why would aliens be doing this? How many government officials would have to be in on this conspiracy theory to keep it quiet? Why hasn't anyone been able to produce clear evidence of these things?
Here's the problem -- there are other explanations. You go back more than a century, and rather than alien abductions, people believed in other kinds of noctural weirdness, from incubi to succubi to various other demons or ghosts or fairies or whatever. There are well-known phenomena of sleep paralysis, which occur when your body's motor control turns off, but sometimes the conscious brain is still a little aware. This has happened to me a number of times in my life -- and I've even had dreams and nightmares that correspond to those times, sometimes where I've "felt a presence" or whatever nonsense... but I recognize these things as nightmares combined with well-known physiological phenomena... I don't blame them on aliens.
Isn't it interesting that all of these "abductions" started soaring just about the time that UFOs and sci-fi stories became all the rage? And the old stories about demonic visitation, etc. just happen to disappear at the same time?
Humans have an incredible propensity to look for patterns in randomness, and to try to ascribe meaning to phenomena even if t