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SETI Fails To Detect Signals Coming From KIC 8462852 (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: Rare excitement spread through the scientific community and the media when data from the Kepler Space Telescope indicated something strange going on around a star 1,500 light years away called KIC 8462852. An analysis of the pattern of light coming from the star suggested that a swarm of smaller objects was orbiting the planet. Scientists narrowed down the possible explanations for the data to either a swarm of comets or a group of alien megastructures. According to a story in Space Daily, an examination of KIC 8462852 by SETI, using the Allen Telescope Array, has failed to find any evidence that ET exists around that particular star.
If ET were there, couldn't there be other E-M methods that would attenuate before reaching earth? Not saying there are beings there, but just because radio waves aren't there doesn't mean they aren't.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
Just how is SETI not finding a signal in anyway shape or form news ?
In other news, I recently discovered my car wouldn't start. I've narrowed it down to two possible explanations: either the battery is dead or my cat has telepathic powers and doesn't want me to leave. I have been unable to find evidence of my cat's telepathic powers. Just thought you'd like to know.
If ET were there, transmitting on RF with the same power we use for radio/TV signals - our detectors aren't even good enough to hear it over noise.
From what I understand it's primarily going to pick up military radar or intentional "pings", signal broadcast is very weak compared to radars trying to detect stealth aircraft that is diverting 99%+ of the signal away from the source. There's not really any reason to send radio/TV signals with that power and for information efficiency we're going to encode them so they're almost indistinguishable from noise anyway. The latter is obviously the best since they're the only ones likely to have any information content we could positively identify. So at least for our current level of technology they have to want to be found.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Because there's a difference between not finding it after checking and not finding it after not-checking...?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
tl;dr: They saw something funny there at high frequencies. So it's news that they don't see anything funny at lower frequencies.
We have never had ANY reason to assume aliens of any kind use radio as we know it. Even among the life forms on Earth, many of which are very closely related to us, absolutely NONE of them have developed or discovered radio except humans. So therefore, we already know radio happens 1 in some billions of species even when they are our close relatives.
Among aliens unlikely to be anything like us, we have to assume that they may never have found radio, or use it differently. SETI essentially looks out into space looking to find ourselves. This is just ludicrous. What little we know about space and other planets tells us the universe is incredibly diverse. We aren't going to find another US out there. So no wonder they have always failed.
Sig for hire.
Just how is SETI not finding a signal in anyway shape or form news ?
Following the scientific method a negative result is an equally valid result ;)
Two different types of radio signals were sought:
(1) Narrow-band signals, of order 1 Hz in width, such as would be generated as a "hailing signal" for societies wishing to announce their presence.
This is the type of signal most frequently looked for by radio SETI experiments.
(2) Broad-band signals that might be due to beamed propulsion within this star system.
If astroengineering projects are really underway in the vicinity of KIC 8462852, one might reasonably expect the presence of spacecraft to service this activity.
If these craft are propelled by intense microwave beams, some of that energy might manifest itself as broad-band radio leakage.
They are looking for possible "engine noise" too.
So far... well... nothing.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I think he meant "non-leaking to space RF" signals (i.e. fiber optic cables). In other words, communication power is not 'lost' to space, therefore detectable by aliens.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Well SETI didn't say they weren't there, they just said they haven't found any evidence of somebody being there. Since SETI only checks radio spectrum signals - that lack of proof is limited to that domain.
Unfortunately we really don't have much technology for doing any other kind of looking right now, nor the funding to develop any, nor the political will to supply the funding.
Who knows what we may have missed (not just with this case but in the 20-odd years since SETI lost it's original budget), because we weren't willing to listen a little harder ?
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Radio is an imagined construct created through a collective agreement our population has with our reality.
Radio is the propagation of electromagnetic radiation through space.
It's the same everywhere in the universe. Mankind didn't "invent" radio, we discovered it. It's a major side effect of one of the four basic forces of the universe.
We're too distant to pick up communication (unless that communication is intentional and either aimed right at us or very powerful - or both). However, if the aliens are using microwave power or space-based RADAR, we might be able to pick that up.
Logic suggests we need to look for evidence of visual and auditory beings leveraging more than just radio waves.
We're doing the visual part (which is just higher-frequency radio, really) with telescopes. That's how they found the "objects" in the first place.
As far as auditory goes, I'm not sure exactly what you expect them to do.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
They are probably using sub-space communications......once we invent devices that work in that domain, we will probably pick up all kinds of ET chatter! ;)
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
Eh, I only agree with you in part. SETI won't find casual RF communications at long distances, and maybe not even short distances. SETI absolutely could find a species that is looking to communicate (for ill or good). This is because RF communications are a really solid way to get a message across a lot of galactic scale space, when pretty much nothing else could do so very easily. You'd have to be directing that communication, is the big catch, over most distances that are interesting, so it sort of assumes that there's at least one species within the light cone that wants to send a message AND has enough tech AND has enough energy to be beaming us their insurance ads or whatever.
The "how do other species develop" thing isn't that interesting- If you're a species asking "how do we say hello to others really far away", then RF is a pretty solid answer- even if you didn't start with the idea of radio because you never cared about what it offered you locally, because if you are trying to communicate at distance you aren't focused on how to communicate with beings that speak or think exactly like you. So if your species never used RF at all, you'd still look into it if wanted to beam a message to specific stars or something.
The flipside- detecting aliens who aren't actively trying to send a message- requires thoughts like those in your post for certain, but it also presupposes a level of tech that we mostly don't seem to have.
To my mind, the search for life would be better spent on ever better optical telescopes. We can already "sniff" the atmospheres of exoplanets to some extent, and we're probably within a few decades of being able to directly image significant features of Earth-sized planets, not to mention finding evidence of at least photosynthesizing life (which would almost certainly infer a complex biosphere on such a planet).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.