Two astronomers at Columbia University have suggested earthlings could use lasers to conceal the presence of Earth from intelligent life on other planets:
RAS [Royal Astronomical Socitety] notes that several prominent scientists, including Stephen Hawking, have cautioned against humanity broadcasting our presence to intelligent life on other planets. Other civilizations might try to find Earth-like planets using the same techniques we do, including looking for the dip in light when a planet moves directly in front of the star it orbits.
These events — transits — are the main way that the Kepler mission and similar projects search for planets around other stars. So far Kepler alone has confirmed more than 1,000 planets using this technique, with tens of these worlds similar in size to the Earth. [Professor David] Kipping and [graduate student Alex] Teachey speculate that alien scientists may use this approach to locate our planet, which will be clearly in the "habitable zone" of the Sun, where the temperature is right for liquid water, and so be a promising place for life.
Hawking and others are concerned that extraterrestrials might wish to take advantage of the Earth's resources, and that their visit, rather than being benign, could be as devastating as when Europeans first travelled to the Americas.
[...] According to the authors, emitting a continuous 30 MW laser for about ten hours, once a year, would be enough to eliminate the transit signal, at least in visible light. The energy needed is comparable to that collected by the International Space Station in a year. A chromatic cloak, effective at all wavelengths, is more challenging, and would need a large array of tuneable lasers with a total power of 250 MW.
Previously:
Narrow SETI Targets by Looking at Places Where Earth Transits can be Seen
Kepler Extended Mission Finds More Exoplanets
NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Earth-Like Planet In Sun-Like Star's Habitable Zone
Related Stories
NASA has announced today the discovery of Kepler-452b, an Earth-like planet in a Sun-like star's habitable zone:
Kepler-452b is 60 percent larger in diameter than Earth and is considered a super-Earth-size planet. While its mass and composition are not yet determined, previous research suggests that planets the size of Kepler-452b have a good chance of being rocky.
While Kepler-452b is larger than Earth, its 385-day orbit is only 5 percent longer. The planet is 5 percent farther from its parent star Kepler-452 than Earth is from the Sun. Kepler-452 is 6 billion years old, 1.5 billion years older than our sun, has the same temperature, and is 20 percent brighter and has a diameter 10 percent larger.
The Kepler-452 system is located 1,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus.
Despite mechanical failures, the Kepler space observatory continues to find exoplanets in its extended K2 mission phase:
Between 2009 and 2013, Kepler became the most successful planet-hunting machine ever, discovering at least 1,030 planets and more than 4,600 possible others in a single patch of sky. When a mechanical failure stripped the spacecraft of its ability to point precisely among the stars, engineers reinvented it in 2014 as the K2 mission, which looks at different parts of the cosmos for shorter periods of time.
In its first year of observing, K2 has netted more than 100 confirmed exoplanets, says astronomer Ian Crossfield at the University of Arizona in Tucson. They include a surprising number of systems in which more than one planet orbits the same star. The K2 planets are also orbiting hotter stars than are many of the Kepler discoveries.
[...] The original Kepler mission was designed to answer a specific question: what fraction of Sun-like stars have Earth-size planets around them? Unbound by those constraints — even if not as good at pointing itself — K2 has been able to explore wider questions of planetary origin and evolution. "Now we get to look at a much bigger variety," says Steve Howell, the mission's project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.
And because K2 looks at stars that are generally brighter and closer to Earth than Kepler did, the exoplanets that the mission finds are likely to be the best studied for the foreseeable future. This is because they are near enough to allow astronomers to explore them with other telescopes on Earth and in space.
Ten Multi-planet Systems from K2 Campaigns 1 & 2 and the Masses of Two Hot Super-Earths
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence could be more successful if a smaller number of targets with a higher probability of success are observed. In a new paper, two astrophysicists propose looking at the thin region of space where aliens could observe the Earth transiting the Sun, the same technique that the Kepler space observatory uses:
In a paper to published in the journal Astrobiology, and available now online, Heller and Pudritz turn the telescope around to ask, what if extraterrestrial observers discover the Earth as it transits the sun?
If such observers are using the same search methods that scientists are using on Earth, the researchers propose that humanity should turn its collective ear to Earth's "transit zone", the thin slice of space from which our planet's passage in front of the sun can be detected. "It's impossible to predict whether extraterrestrials use the same observational techniques as we do," says Heller. "But they will have to deal with the same physical principles as we do, and Earth's solar transits are an obvious method to detect us."
The transit zone is rich in host stars for planetary systems, offering approximately 100,000 potential targets, each potentially orbited by habitable planets and moons, the scientists say – and that's just the number we can see with today's radio telescope technologies. "If any of these planets host intelligent observers, they could have identified Earth as a habitable, even as a living world long ago and we could be receiving their broadcasts today," write Heller and Pudritz.
[...] Heller and Pudritz propose that the Breakthrough Listen Initiative, part of the most comprehensive search for extraterrestrial life ever conducted, can maximize its chances of success by concentrating its search on Earth's transit zone.
From The Register .
[Continues.]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @12:39AM
Won't they detect all the CO2 and stay away from this destroyed planet?
(Score: 3, Touché) by bob_super on Tuesday April 05 2016, @12:46AM
5 minutes decoding our TV signals, and we've been quarantined for at least 50 million years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @01:11AM
Good point https://youtu.be/1dyns367ExE [youtu.be]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday April 05 2016, @07:03AM
Other civilizations might try to find Earth-like planets using the same techniques we do, including looking for the dip in light when a planet moves directly in front of the star it orbits.
These events — transits — are the main way that the Kepler mission and similar projects search for planets around other stars.
Next, you will be telling my my IP address is showing! OMG, because if it wasn't, how would you know where to send the notice that it was showing to? Wankers! Now Zhogan Destructor Fleets, that is an entirely different matter. Especially as regards the poetry. God save us all, and just give 'em the damn Queen, eh, Govenor?
[how did you think the Doctor (who? Doctor Who!!) managed to find the earth. Less easy to explain is why he should show an special care for the English. God knows every one else hates them. And not just because of their cuisine. ]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @01:44AM
I declare the games open!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @01:57AM
they will give up after the first 10 cloudflare captchas ...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday April 05 2016, @01:28AM
I find it hard to believe that intelligent civilizations capable of space travel or at least building telescopes would not go through a period in which fossil fuels are used.
Unless the minds of aliens turn out to be substantially different, they will have similar phases of warfare, competition, scientific inquiry, political debates, and industrialization.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday April 05 2016, @02:13AM
"they will have similar phases of warfare, competition, scientific inquiry, political debates, and industrialization."
I agree about the scientific inquiry and industrialization. However the warfare, competition and political debates are not a given. There is no reason an alien intelligence would have to have the traits that would lead to those. Those traits in Humans stem from our evolution as omnivorous primates favoring selfish, violent and aggressive behavior to give the individual an advantage in passing on their genes.
In "Gentle Giants of Ganymede" by James P Hogan the alien's evolved in an environment that didn't have predators, and being aggressive was selected against and intelligence evolved because it kept you from killing your self by doing something stupid (hey had a second circulatory system that was toxic to the point that if the primary and secondary systems mixed it was fatal, get a bad bruise and it was game over). So the Giants had real problems understanding predator/prey conflict, in fact when their ancestors visited Earth 26 million years ago they called it "The Nightmare planet".
"The Giants" series by Hogan is a good read if your into science fiction with a solid "science" component.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday April 05 2016, @02:34AM
I agree that trust and cooperation are more productive than competition and possibly have evolutionary advantage. Perhaps we really are a rare exception. I really hope so.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday April 05 2016, @02:43AM
Science fiction is great at overthinking these concepts. I will agree that some alien species out there could be especially peaceful, but I think it is more likely that they will share similar aggressive traits due to predation and natural selection. Even the simplest forms of life are battling each other (competing for finite resources, and deploying "weapons" like penicillin).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday April 05 2016, @08:32AM
I like reading science fiction, but I find this scenario hard to align with my understanding of evolutionary processes.
If some kind of species exists, it accumulates energy. That means, if the species dies, whoever is first to be able to reabsorb this energy is at an evolutionary advantage, therefore I'd assume if there is live, scavengers will evolve. If there are scavengers, the first one finding a corps wins, so there is some evolutionary pressure to turn a sick/dying specimen into a corps; therefore I'd assume, where there are scavengers, there will be predators.
On earth we see that live usually extends until one of the specific resources required by the species is used up. Therefore even herbivores will start fighting for those resources one way or another (protect their territory, fight for sex-partners, etc.)
I think, aggression and violence is inherent to evolution.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by Some call me Tim on Tuesday April 05 2016, @02:17AM
If they have the technology to detect the .04% CO2 in our atmosphere from multiple light years away, don't you think they'd have the technology to adjust it up or down for their own needs? And as far as the planet being destroyed, it isn't and won't be until we get hit by a really big space rock or the sun goes nova. Humans might die out but the planet will be here long after we're gone.
Questioning science is how you do science!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @12:44AM
There are at least two big reasons why we haven't detected intelligent life outside earth's atmosphere:
1) universe is expanding rapidly, making targeted space travel (or even observation) unfeasible
2) intelligent civilizations tend to destroy themselves within an incredibly short period of time, not even geological in scale
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday April 05 2016, @12:48AM
> 2) intelligent civilizations tend to destroy themselves within an incredibly short period of time, not even geological in scale
For certain biased values of "intelligent".
Ants and Bees have been around for millions of years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @02:22AM
And whales. But I did say civilization.
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday April 05 2016, @12:55AM
Even if they exists, they probably don't want to be found and so we should as least make it as hard as possible.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday April 05 2016, @01:22AM
This shouldn't be as much of a problem for civilizations in the same galaxy. You have to ask:
1) are civilizations very rare, even among 100+ billion planets?
2) are they already here (UFO sightings)?
3) is interstellar travel difficult enough that they do not have a craft or outpost in the vicinity of thousands of different stars? ie. they don't have enough motivation to send UFOs to Earth, or due to 1), they are on the other side of the galaxy, and not coming anytime soon (keeping in mind that both civilizations have to be active at the same time for mutual detection to occur).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday April 05 2016, @01:09PM
ad (3) it could be like the Stroegatskys' "Roadside Picnic" [wikipedia.org]: good enough for a picnic, but unless you're an entomologist, not really worth it to stay and study the vicious ants.
(Score: 5, Informative) by bob_super on Tuesday April 05 2016, @01:22AM
> According to the authors, emitting a continuous 30 MW laser for about ten hours, once a year, would be enough to eliminate the transit signal, at least in visible light.
From TFA:
> with the beam directed at the star where the aliens might live
How does such nonsense get published?
IF aliens are looking for us the way we just learnt to do
IF we know where they are, and hopefully there aren't too many of them around the billions of stars in the area.
IF they haven't noticed us from the previous 4 Billion years of transits, and the 4 years to millions of years of transits already "in flight"
THEN all we need is a 30MW laser to point their way for just a bit shy of the longest time an earth-based object can point at a specific star.
Mind blown. Why did I go into engineering, when there's so much money to be made publishing atrocious ideas?
Wait, the pentagon can probably spread that one to enough states to get it funded forever...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @03:05AM
That is kind of funny. This plan amounts to literally beaming away our resources in the form of pure energy to other star systems for the foreseeable future. It is almost a perfect broken window fallacy situation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @04:11AM
1) Wouldn't a planet emitting a strong monochromatic beam look a little odd?
2) How did we conjecture the same wavelengths of light we sense are universal to aliens?
3) Directed at the star where the aliens might live... um there are billions and billions and billions of stars! Which one?
We already have the power to make such a mess on this planet, no-one can live on it. I don't think someone would launch spaceships from far away to be met with nasty atomic weapons. These things, even if their destructive power is thwarted, make one helluva mess.
I can sure relate with the fear that newcomers may likely be looking to move in and take over... some of my ancestors are Native Americans... and they know all about it. Every Thanksgiving they trot out those pictures of those "Thankful Settlers" having means of survival shared with them, and we got repaid by being run off our own land. Such was the cost of welcoming the newcomer. I think about that when I see all these laws made for the benefit of a few, but financed my many - financed by payments coerced from us by the tax code.
(Score: 1) by jimtheowl on Tuesday April 05 2016, @05:39AM
The actual paper starts with how an "Advanced Civilization" might cloak or broadcast itself. It then goes on talking about doing it on Earth.
http://mnras.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/03/30/mnras.stw672.full.pdf+html [oxfordjournals.org]
Despite everything, we still do not know if there are any civilizations out there. If there are, the speed of light may just be as insurmountable for them no matter how advanced they are.
Otherwise, some probably know we are here but don't care.
(Score: 2) by soylentsandor on Tuesday April 05 2016, @12:19PM
I think you might want to check the publication date.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday April 05 2016, @01:41AM
Seriously?? Someone has been watching WAY too much cheap science fiction.
Any civilization capable of crossing interstellar distances are not going to give a damn about Earth resources.
First, what does Earth have, other than a large population of rather arrogant, narcissistic and self destructive over evolved primates, that is not much easier to get from asteroids and the smaller moons of the gas giants?
Water? harvest the rings of Jupiter. Metals? asteroids. In both cases they don't need to worry about lifting against a deep gravity well. What else is there? Slave labor? Yeah right, see last point about gravity well, and we would be talking about a civilization that can cross interstellar distances in a reasonable time. I would expect them to have robots far better capable of doing what they needed.
If they wanted the Solar systems resources cloaking the Earth in one specific direction wouldn't do a damn bit of good. They would come here because it was a star with small stuff in orbit that they could mine without having to mess with gravity wells. Not to mention that they would have heard the radio/TV/HAM/etc. signals we've been blasting into space for the last 85+ years. Whats that line about barn doors?
I would be more worried about a "Berserker" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker_(Saberhagen) [wikipedia.org] class threat, but since they would have already been attracted by our radio noise and tend to go after any planet with an oxygen atmosphere once they get into a star system Earth would be hosed anyway since even a full "chromatic cloak" wouldn't hold up at close range.
Hearing real scientists talk about something like this is just embarrassing.
/rant
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday April 05 2016, @01:43AM
So much for proof reading my own comments :/
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday April 05 2016, @04:24AM
Too late, someone already read your post and made a Wikipedia page about the rings of Jupiter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Jupiter [wikipedia.org]
This is why we have the preview function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @01:55AM
FTFY
(Score: 5, Insightful) by vux984 on Tuesday April 05 2016, @01:59AM
First, what does Earth have, that is not much easier to get from asteroids and the smaller moons of the gas giants?
Beachfront property under a clear blue sky.
Tasty animals.
I figure earth won't be colonized by an alien civilization for our resources so much as renovated into a private resourt by some rich asshole alien hedge fund manager who wants his own private planet where he can bask nude without being constantly photographed by alien paparazzi. The human population will be viewed much we view an inconvenient wasp nest or ant hill, and he'll have some pest control contractor come clear us out.
We really think too much of ourselves if we think they're going to send their army to invade.
Hmm... the preceding scenario seems a little like the backstory to battlefield earth... meh; it still feels right.
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday April 05 2016, @02:29AM
As Ian Banks pointed out, this rock has a moon with angular size similar to the sun which makes spectacular eclipses. Very rare real estate indeed. Also, girls are friendly.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by melikamp on Tuesday April 05 2016, @03:22AM
These are indeed the only resources here worth going down for: the planet itself and whatever grows on it. Everything else is far cheaper in space. And aliens wouldn't have to fight at all. It would be far cheaper to trade, since that's basically all humans do: develop beach properties and wrap chicken legs in bacon. And if our history is any indication, we would also sell land, rights, and our own mothers for the right price. So in this sense the doom crowd is right: we may be just dumb enough to sell the whole planet for some shiny beads.
Except for the horrible diseases, of course, because none of their bugs will be compatible with us. The original Americans were unlucky enough to be exactly the same species, yet separated by centuries of quarantine.
Anyway, we can speculate all day about what would happen if aliens came here. Let's talk instead about things we can be relatively certain about.
――――――
P.S. I think this is good science topic, actually. I see people dissing it, but they make a good point: if we wanted to, we could camouflage our transits with a cheap laser. Do we want to? Not at the moment, but later on, who knows?
(Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday April 05 2016, @05:42AM
So in this sense the doom crowd is right: we may be just dumb enough to sell the whole planet for some shiny beads.
Shiny beads? How about immortality for everyone who is currently alive on this planet, in exchange for moving out, onto any of 100,000,000 other populated planets, and living in a synthetic body of any desirable construction and features, or as a computer program, whenever and wherever you want? What if the aliens offer us this kind of a deal? For them it may be a trivial effort, just as shiny beads were for europeans, since robots do all the work, and the science is a spent effort already, and the existing population of the Commonwealth (say, 1e17 beings of all shapes) will not be seriously affected by our puny 6e9.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @10:15AM
Well, the current evidence points towards a consistent penchant for anal probing by aliens, or seemingly careless and rushed vivisection in the field.
Those were just compatibility tests and prostitution may be in our future.... or we'll be eaten either way.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Tuesday April 05 2016, @09:50PM
(Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday April 05 2016, @10:47PM
And, perhaps, that's the explanation of the Fermi Paradox. Not too many beings want to choose to die if they can also choose to live. Only young civilizations don't face that choice. However immortality, as it seems, is just a technical matter of building faster computers and of reading the neurons' state. No FTL required, or other likely impossibilities. Brain, despite being large, is finite, and probably not all that complex, given that it exists in every animal on this planet. Perhaps thought is a natural output of any sufficiently large self-organizing computing system, just as gravity is a natural output of any sufficiently large mass, or as a chain reaction is a natural outcome of bringing two pieces of a fissile material together.
Going back to your question, however. What would a society look like if its members are immortal? Your concern relates to the case where the members are also immutable, unchanging, no matter how long they live. Will it be the case? I don't think so. We can look at humans. They don't live forever, but their life term is long enough, and it is stable enough if we disregard the childhood and the terminally old age. Do old men study alongside with youngsters in halls of universities? Who plays basketball or football? Who reads complex books? Who raises a child? Who enjoys time *after* raising a child? Humans are changing all the time, even though in the end they die. Why would they stop changing if they cross 100 years of life? I cannot imagine that they would be interested in what young people do. Most likely they would become experienced leaders of new colonized worlds. The society would greatly expand, and those old - but physically strong - people would be on the forefront of that expansion. Knowledge and skills would be accumulating in individuals instead of dying with them.
Would a 400 years old Isaac Newton be a distraction for a 200 years old Einstein? Maybe, or maybe not. I don't even know if Newton would be still interested in physics. My own interests change and develop over time. Maybe Isaac would be breeding horses these days, for a century or so, while learning the art of traditional chinese painting? Furthermore, very old people will not be met with respect that they (sometimes) get today if they are all immortal. How much more respect does a 21 y/o man get from 20.9 y/o friends? That's what will happen in the society - the age will stop being a factor; only the quality of your work will matter. As every work is hard, particularly in mental aspect, I do not expect anyone to remain in the same position, doing the same job for a very long time. There can be laws about that too, just as there are laws about holding the top elected office in practically every country.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Wednesday April 06 2016, @04:17AM
Reading the wiki on Fermi Paradox... LOL, what a heap of conspiracy theories. Anyway, my take on it is down the list: do not panic, it is too expensive to spread physically throughout the galaxy + humans are not listening properly. Let's try detecting bacteria first, who easily modify the abundance of elements in the atmosphere. And this, by the way, will probably be settled within our lifetimes, very exciting: we will be relatively sure how spread out are the bacteria in our galaxy.
Concerning immortality, granted there is a whole spectrum. I was thinking narrowly about "freezing" the aging process, but of course we can imagine "lossy" ways to live forever which gradually change the person. Like exporting then importing the brain state, like you said... or nanobots constantly "upgrading" parts of the brain, so that in 100 years you cannot recognize a person (essentially, it is a different individual, who inherited some thoughts), but from the person's point of view, the life simply goes on. These options are much better goods for trade :)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @04:39AM
> renovated into a private [resort] by some rich asshole alien
Wait a minute. A being with orange skin and hair, who loudly proclaims his distaste for aliens so we won't notice he is one...oh my God.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @02:48AM
If you read the summary carefully, you will find the current author's do not express concern about being detected by aliens, and may in fact be trying to bring about that very thing. What they describe sounds more like a beacon than a camouflage. It sounds like they want to give Earth a technicolor dreamcloak that "masks" the transit signal with something far more flamboyant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @03:28AM
Yes, this looks like the idea:
"Accordingly, we propose that a civilization may deliberately broadcast their technological capabilities by distorting their transit to an artificial shape, which serves as both a SETI beacon and a medium for data transmission. Such signatures could be readily searched in the archival data of transit surveys."
http://m.mnras.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/03/30/mnras.stw672 [oxfordjournals.org]
Regarding the cloaking, they note the issue of monochromatic laser light, but I do not understand how they dismiss it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @03:37AM
Also,
"Since we do not here present a means for disguising a radial velocity signa- ture, the presence of such a signature without a correspond- ing transit could raise suspicions that the planet’s transit was deliberately cloaked, thus inadvertently indicating the presence of a technologically advanced civilization."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @03:51AM
This was right on. The goal here is the exact opposite of cloaking. The paper repeats multiple times that cloaking will not work and instead it will draw interest.
(Score: 2) by julian on Tuesday April 05 2016, @05:13AM
I would expect them to have robots far better capable of doing what they needed.
I would expect them to BE robots.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @12:15PM
The rings of jupsaturn effectively have a deeper gravity well than earth, as when you're in the rings you're actually stuck in the gravity well of a gas giant: http://xkcd.com/681_large/ [xkcd.com]
However, this whole paper is shrouded with so much bogosity, there's no point in pretending to have a sensible scientific discussion.
I blame the aliens.
(Score: 2) by Some call me Tim on Tuesday April 05 2016, @02:04AM
30-250 Megawatts? We're going to need a really big shark!
/taking one for the team ;-)
Questioning science is how you do science!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @02:13AM
So desperate to publish even stupid ideas? Laser light is very unlike star light or light from planets. What next? Paint a bullseye somewhere?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @04:13AM
N-oron: Hey, Zonq'ars, look at this dataset...
Zonq'ars: The gravity induced wobble of this star indicates a planet should exist in its habitable zone. Hmm'xv, but the spectrogram shows absolutely no sign of a planet.
N-oron: Interesting, isn't it?
Zonq'ars: Yes. Designate this system for investigation by the self replicating galactic terraforming fleet.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Tuesday April 05 2016, @07:24AM
And then after they found us anyway:
"There is a civilization that is actively hiding."
"But why?"
"I don't know, but if they did nothing wrong, they would not have anything to hide, don't you agree?"
"Yes, that's convincing. I'd say we better eliminate it as long as there's still time to do so."
"Agreed. Send the destroyer ships!"
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @04:55AM
Isn't this wrong too? I mean that might work if we know precisely where the fucking alien watchers are. I mean our planet is constantly between our sun and the watcher if he is suitable placed. Meaning that we should constantly forever beam from the dark side of the planet...
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday April 05 2016, @07:31AM
Planetary Security - How to Hide the Activity of an Entire Planet
If by activity you only mean "going in front of its star."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Tuesday April 05 2016, @11:40AM
Even if they won't see the planet dimming the light from the sun. The wobble of the sun due to the connection via gravity will tell that we are here. And the spectrum of the laser light is also likely a giveaway. Though it might be a good idea to refrain from sending signals out to space. Ordinary radio signals are said to go below the thermal noise floor at 2-3 light years out.
Any ideas for how to cloak the wobble? :p
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Tuesday April 05 2016, @05:04PM
Very Large Magnets?
Or a Beowulf Cluster of Weebils used to counter-wobble?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2016, @12:14PM
May I humbly point to the fact that TFA was published on the first of April?
(Score: 2) by Bobs on Tuesday April 05 2016, @12:36PM
"The original article was published on April 1. "
Mod parent up!
The concept is ridiculous because you have to aim the 'camouflage' laser at a specific point in the galaxy and it won't affect any other point.
We don't know where the aliens are, or will be by the time the light reaches them, and if they are a threat they will be at multiple locations.
This is a joke, boys.
Earth humor. Arr Arr!
(Score: 2) by Bobs on Tuesday April 05 2016, @12:40PM
Okay, but a big laser cannon might be useful for zapping the aliens when they show up.