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from the international-calls-take-on-a-new-meaning dept.
Twenty years ago today, an invisible object circling an obscure star in the constellation Pegasus overturned everything astronomers knew about planets around other stars. No, the fallout was even bigger than that. The indirect detection of 51 Pegasi b—the first planet ever found around a star similar to the sun—revealed that they had never really known anything to begin with.
At the time, even the most adventurous minds blithely assumed that our solar system was more or less typical, a template for all the others. 51 Peg b threw a big splash of reality in their faces. The newfound world was bizarre, a Jupiter-size world skimming the surface of its star in a blistering-fast "year" that lasted just 4.2 days. Its existence ran counter to the standard theories of how planets form and evolve. It answered one big question: Yes, other planetary systems really do exist. But it raised a thousand others.
How long before we discover signals from one of those planets, and what will it mean for our civilization?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by dak664 on Sunday November 01 2015, @05:45PM
Even if they have something far superior they will have passed through electromagnetic signalling and will know how simple it is to detect a low power narrowband signal having no doppler shift relative to the galactic center. Seems an obvious choice for them to broadcast if they want to be detected, or to monitor if they are paranoid about up-and-coming lifeforms who are on the brink of dangerous technology.