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.

Comments

Same reason we're looking for earth-like life

[Kjella]

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.

Re:Same reason we're looking for earth-like life

[thinkwaitfast]

An interesting paper on xenopsychology by Robert A. Freitas (a senior fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing in Palo Alto, California.).

See see Sentient Quotient

At present, human scientists are attempting to communicate outside our species to primates and cetaceans, and in a limited way to a few other vertebrates. This is inordinately difficult, and yet it represents a gap of at most a few SQ points. The farthest we can reach in our "communication" with vegetation is when we plant, water, or fertilize it, but it is evident that messages transmitted across an SQ gap of 10 points or more cannot be very meaningful. What, then, could an SQ +50 Superbeing possibly have to say to us?

Get back to us on that...

[PvtVoid]

... 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.

The RF era

[PPH]

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.

Re:Yes, let's ignore 3Million+ alien abduction cas

[AthanasiusKircher]

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