Anonymous Coward writes:
https://www.businessinsider.com/alien-civilizations-may-have-already-colonized-galaxy-study-2019-8
The Milky Way could be teeming with interstellar alien civilizations — we just don't know about it because they haven't paid us a visit in 10 million years.
A study published last month in The Astronomical Journal[$] posits that intelligent extraterrestrial life could be taking its time to explore the galaxy, harnessing star systems' movement to make star-hopping easier.
The work is a new response to a question known as the Fermi paradox, which asks why we haven't detected signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 10 2019, @10:15AM (2 children)
I strongly suspect those gray haired old men were full of something other than science. c0lo's post about the relative power of random noise generated by Jupiter, and the earth's total radio transmissions pretty much covers the matter. That amounts to a Ham radio operator trying to pull in the faintest of signals from the other side of the world on skip, while his neighbor cranks up the filthiest, noisiest, least filtered and most poorly tuned generator in the world. The generator is unintentionally broadcasting 100 to 1000 times more energy across the radio spectrum, than that distant Ham operator has at his disposal.
Those who were born before the ubiquity of resistor spark plugs remember how hard it was to pull in nearby radio stations, let alone distant stations. https://www.ngk.com/learning-center/article/804/what-is-a-resistor-spark-plug [ngk.com] Yesterday's rural radio nerd could sometimes tell you who was driving past his home, just by listening to the static generated by the vehicle.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Tuesday September 10 2019, @05:06PM (1 child)
Hair dryers were the absolutely worst sources of RFI back in days of analog transmission through free space.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @03:34AM
Nope. Arc welder. Ask how my neighbor knows. ;)