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posted by martyb on Thursday October 11 2018, @12:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the CAN-YOU-HEAR-ME-NOW? dept.

Smart aliens might live within 33,000 light-years of Earth. A new study explains why we haven't found them yet.

[An] upcoming study in The Astronomical Journal, which we learned about from MIT Technology Review, suggests humanity has barely sampled the skies, and thus has no grounds to be cynical. According to the paper, all searches for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, have examined barely a swimming pool's worth of water from a figurative ocean of signal space. "We haven't really looked much," Shubham Kanodia, a graduate student in astronomy who co-wrote the study, said during a NASA "technosignatures" workshop in Houston, Texas on September 26.

[...] In their study, Kanodia and his colleagues built a mathematical model of what they consider a reasonably sized cosmic haystack.
Their haystack is a sphere of space nearly 33,000 light-years in diameter, centered around Earth. This region captures the Milky Way's bustling core, as well as many giant globular clusters of stars above and below our home galaxy.

They also picked eight dimensions of a search for aliens — factors like signal transmission frequency, bandwidth, power, location, repetition, polarization, and modulation (i.e. complexity) — and defined reasonable limits for each one. "This leads to a total 8D haystack volume of 6.4 × 10116m5Hz2s/W," the authors wrote. That is 6.4 followed by 115 zeros — as MIT Technology review described it, "a space of truly gargantuan proportions."

Kanodia and his colleagues then examined the past 60 years' worth of SETI projects and reconciled them against their haystack. The researchers determined that humanity's collective search for extraterrestrials adds up to about 0.00000000000000058% of the haystack's volume. "This is about a bathtub of water in all of Earth's oceans," Kanodia said. "Or about a five-centimeter-by-five-centimeter patch of land on all of Earth's surface area."

Those numbers make humanity's search efforts seem feeble. But Kanodia views it as an opportunity — especially because modern telescopes are getting better at scanning more objects with greater sensitivity and speed. For example, he said, a 150-minute search this year by the Murchison Widefield Array covered a larger percentage of the haystack than any other SETI project in history.

Related: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100 Million "Breakthrough Listen" SETI Project
Narrow SETI Targets by Looking at Places Where Earth Transits can be Seen
Either Stars Are Strange, or There Are 234 Aliens Trying to Contact Us
New Theory Suggests Radio Bursts Beyond Our Galaxy Are Powering Alien Starships
A New Theory on Why We Haven't Found Aliens Yet
Russian Physicist Proposes New Solution to the Fermi Paradox
Are We Alone? The Question is Worthy of Serious Scientific Study


Original Submission

Related Stories

Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100 Million "Breakthrough Listen" SETI Project 36 comments

Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner have announced Breakthrough Listen, a $100 million project that will increase the intensity of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (or their signals):

Speaking at the launch, Prof Hawking said: "Somewhere in the cosmos, perhaps, intelligent life may be watching these lights of ours, aware of what they mean. "Or do our lights wander a lifeless cosmos - unseen beacons, announcing that here, on one rock, the Universe discovered its existence. Either way, there is no bigger question. It's time to commit to finding the answer - to search for life beyond Earth. We are alive. We are intelligent. We must know."

Those behind the initiative claim it to be the biggest scientific search ever undertaken for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth. They plan to cover 10 times more of the sky than previous programmes and scan five times more of the radio spectrum, 100 times faster. It will involve access to two of the world's most powerful telescopes. - the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia.

Yuri Milner is known for his creation and funding of Breakthrough Prizes, which award $3 million to researchers for achievements in the life sciences, physics, and mathematics. Also reported at Washington Post, NPR, El Reg, and Scientific American.


Original Submission

Narrow SETI Targets by Looking at Places Where Earth Transits can be Seen 18 comments

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.]

Either Stars Are Strange, or There Are 234 Aliens Trying to Contact Us 57 comments

Phys.org is reporting on a paper which details some interesting phenomena which could be evidence of advanced civilizations.

From the Phys.org article:

We all want there to be aliens. Green ones, pink ones, brown ones, Greys. Or maybe Vulcans, Klingons, even a being of pure energy. Any type will do.

That's why whenever a mysterious signal or energetic fluctuation arrives from somewhere in the cosmos and hits one of our many telescopes, headlines erupt across the media: "Have We Finally Detected An Alien Signal?" or "Have Astronomers Discovered An Alien Megastructure?" But science-minded people know that we're probably getting ahead of ourselves.

[...] What we're talking about here is a new study from E.F. Borra and E. Trottier, two astronomers at Laval University in Canada. Their study, titled "Discovery of peculiar periodic spectral modulations in a small fraction of solar type stars" was just published at arXiv.org. ArXiv.org is a pre-print website, so the paper itself hasn't been peer reviewed yet. But it is generating interest.

The two astronomers used data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and analyzed the spectra of 2.5 million stars. Of all those stars, they found 234 stars that are producing a puzzling signal. That's only a tiny percentage. And, they say, these signals "have exactly the shape of an ETI signal" that was predicted in a previous study by Borra.

Prediction is a key part of the scientific method. If you develop a theory, your theory looks better and better the more you can use it to correctly predict some future events based on it. Look how many times Einstein's predictions based on Relativity have been proven correct.

The 234 stars in Borra and Trottier's study aren't random. They're "overwhelmingly in the F2 to K1 spectral range" according to the abstract. That's significant because this is a small range centred around the spectrum of our own Sun. And our own Sun is the only one we know of that has an intelligent species living near it. If ours does, maybe others do too?

The authors acknowledge five potential causes of their findings: instrumental and data reduction effects, rotational transitions in molecules, the Fourier transform of spectral lines, rapid pulsations, and finally the ETI signal predicted by Borra (2012). They dismiss molecules or pulsations as causes, and they deem it highly unlikely that the signals are caused by the Fourier analysis itself. This leaves two possible sources for the detected signals. Either they're a result of the Sloan instrument itself and the data reduction, or they are in fact a signal from extra-terrestrial intelligences.

Are these signals just evidence of some, as yet undiscovered, property of stars, or are these "transmissions" the alien equivalent of an episode of "The Bachelor"?

2012 paper predicting the signals reported on by Borra, et. al.


Original Submission

New Theory Suggests Radio Bursts Beyond Our Galaxy Are Powering Alien Starships 34 comments

Since their discovery ten years ago, fast radio bursts have confounded astronomers. These intergalactic pulses of radio energy have defied explanation, but a new theory suggests a technological origin, whereby aliens use these beams to propel their ships through space. Extremely speculative stuff, to be sure, but it's an idea worth pursuing given just how weird these pulses are.

The idea that Fast Radio Bursts are produced by advanced alien civilizations in order to drive spacecraft through interstellar space sounds like something a UFO conspiracy site might cook up—but it's actually the serious suggestion of a new paper published by Avi Loeb and Manasvi Lingam from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Of course, much more evidence is needed before we can attribute this unexplained phenomenon to artificial sources versus a natural astrophysical process.

With no good theory to go by, Loeb and Lingam wondered if extraterrestrials might be involved—and not without good reason. In a word, FRBs are weird. Like really weird.

http://gizmodo.com/wild-new-theory-suggests-radio-bursts-beyond-our-galaxy-1793130515

Additional coverage at ScienceBlog.com and Phys.org

Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Journal Abstract: Fast Radio Bursts from Extragalactic Light Sails


Original Submission

A New Theory on Why We Haven’t Found Aliens Yet 115 comments

After decades of searching, we still haven't discovered a single sign of extraterrestrial intelligence. Probability tells us life should be out there, so why haven't we found it yet?

The problem is often referred to as Fermi's paradox, after the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Enrico Fermi, who once asked his colleagues this question at lunch. Many theories have been proposed over the years. It could be that we are simply alone in the universe or that there is some great filter that prevents intelligent life progressing beyond a certain stage. Maybe alien life is out there, but we are too primitive to communicate with it, or we are placed inside some cosmic zoo, observed but left alone to develop without external interference. Now, three researchers think they think they[sic] may have another potential answer to Fermi's question: Aliens do exist; they're just all asleep.

According to a new research paper accepted for publication in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, extraterrestrials are sleeping while they wait. In the paper, authors from Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute and the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong, and Milan Cirkovic argue that the universe is too hot right now for advanced, digital civilizations to make the most efficient use of their resources. The solution: Sleep and wait for the universe to cool down, a process known as aestivating (like hibernation but sleeping until it's colder).

Understanding the new hypothesis first requires wrapping your head around the idea that the universe's most sophisticated life may elect to leave biology behind and live digitally. Having essentially uploaded their minds onto powerful computers, the civilizations choosing to do this could enhance their intellectual capacities or inhabit some of the harshest environments in the universe with ease.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/07/maybe_we_haven_t_found_alien_life_because_it_s_sleeping.html

[Related]:
The idea that life might transition toward a post-biological form of existence
Sandberg and Cirkovic elaborate in a blog post
The Dominant Life Form in the Cosmos Is Probably Superintelligent Robots

Where even 3 degrees Kelvin is not cold enough, do you think that we would ever make contact with any alien ?


Original Submission

Russian Physicist Proposes New Solution to the Fermi Paradox 139 comments

"Alexander Berezin, a theoretical physicist at the National Research University of Electronic Technology in Russia, has proposed a new answer to Fermi's paradox — but he doesn't think you're going to like it. Because, if Berezin's hypothesis is correct, it could mean a future for humanity that's 'even worse than extinction.'

'What if,' Berezin wrote in a new paper posted March 27 to the preprint journal arxiv.org, 'the first life that reaches interstellar travel capability necessarily eradicates all competition to fuel its own expansion?'" foxnews.com/science/2018/06/04/aliens-are-real-but-humans-will-probably-kill-them-all-new-paper-says.html

In other words, could humanity's quest to discover intelligent life be directly responsible for obliterating that life outright? What if we are, unwittingly, the universe's bad guys?

And if you are not sure what the Fermi paradox is then the link should help, and there is a long explanation of that one in the article.


Original Submission

Are We Alone? The Question is Worthy of Serious Scientific Study 75 comments

Are we alone? The question is worthy of serious scientific study

Are we alone? Unfortunately, neither of the answers feel satisfactory. To be alone in this vast universe is a lonely prospect. On the other hand, if we are not alone and there is someone or something more powerful out there, that too is terrifying.

As a NASA research scientist and now a professor of physics, I attended the 2002 NASA Contact Conference, which focused on serious speculation about extraterrestrials. During the meeting a concerned participant said loudly in a sinister tone, "You have absolutely no idea what is out there!" The silence was palpable as the truth of this statement sunk in. Humans are fearful of extraterrestrials visiting Earth. Perhaps fortunately, the distances between the stars are prohibitively vast. At least this is what we novices, who are just learning to travel into space, tell ourselves.

I have always been interested in UFOs. Of course, there was the excitement that there could be aliens and other living worlds. But more exciting to me was the possibility that interstellar travel was technologically achievable. In 1988, during my second week of graduate school at Montana State University, several students and I were discussing a recent cattle mutilation that was associated with UFOs. A physics professor joined the conversation and told us that he had colleagues working at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, where they were having problems with UFOs shutting down nuclear missiles. At the time I thought this professor was talking nonsense. But 20 years later, I was stunned to see a recording of a press conference featuring several former US Air Force personnel, with a couple from Malmstrom AFB, describing similar occurrences in the 1960s. Clearly there must be something to this.

With July 2 being World UFO Day, it is a good time for society to address the unsettling and refreshing fact we may not be alone. I believe we need to face the possibility that some of the strange flying objects that outperform the best aircraft in our inventory and defy explanation may indeed be visitors from afar – and there's plenty of evidence to support UFO sightings.

See also: Released FAA recording reveals pilot report of a UFO over Long Island
I-Team Exclusive: Nevada senator fought to save secret UFO program

Related: Pentagon's UFO Investigation Program Revealed
UFO Existence 'Proven Beyond Reasonable Doubt': Former Head Of Pentagon Program
Newly-Released Video Shows 2015 U.S. Navy Sighting of UFO


Original Submission

New Technologies, Strategies Expanding Search for Extraterrestrial Life 5 comments

New technologies, strategies expanding search for extraterrestrial life:

Emerging technologies and new strategies are opening a revitalized era in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). New discovery capabilities, along with the rapidly-expanding number of known planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, are spurring innovative approaches by both government and private organizations, according to a panel of experts speaking at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Seattle, Washington.

New approaches will not only expand upon but also go beyond the traditional SETI technique of searching for intelligently-generated radio signals, first pioneered by Frank Drake's Project Ozma in 1960. Scientists now are designing state-of-the-art techniques to detect a variety of signatures that can indicate the possibility of extraterrestrial technologies. Such "technosignatures" can range from the chemical composition of a planet's atmosphere, to laser emissions, to structures orbiting other stars, among others.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the privately-funded SETI Institute announced an agreement to collaborate on new systems to add SETI capabilities to radio telescopes operated by NRAO. The first project will develop a system to piggyback on the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) that will provide data to a state-of-the-art technosignature search system.

"As the VLA conducts its usual scientific observations, this new system will allow for an additional and important use for the data we're already collecting," said NRAO Director Tony Beasley. "Determining whether we are alone in the Universe as technologically capable life is among the most compelling questions in science, and NRAO telescopes can play a major role in answering it," Beasley continued.

"The SETI Institute will develop and install an interface on the VLA permitting unprecedented access to the rich data stream continuously produced by the telescope as it scans the sky," said Andrew Siemion, Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute and Principal Investigator for the Breakthrough Listen Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley. "This interface will allow us to conduct a powerful, wide-area SETI survey that will be vastly more complete than any previous such search," he added.

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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @12:48AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @12:48AM (#747217)

    ICE will find aliens, expand the scope of the agency.

    • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @12:56AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @12:56AM (#747224)

      Watch out, Anunnaki-Americans! We're coming for you!

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday October 11 2018, @12:51AM

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Thursday October 11 2018, @12:51AM (#747219)

    I have always hoped that we haven't found aliens because we put almost no effort into looking, but of course there are son many variables involved that maybe there is not much point.

    Also, we have hardly even explored our own solar system, let alone any others. It's like doing stocktake in a huge warehouse by squinting through the keyhole.

    There's also this problem:

    “Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:02AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:02AM (#747227)

    Our SETI technology is not actually all that sensitive. Sure, we could detect a powerful beacon sent at us from some highly advanced civilization that really wanted to make contact. But if there was an identical copy of our planet and civilization at Alpha Centauri, we'd barely be able to hear it. Anything much farther than that and we wouldn't have a chance. We're not sending out those beacons - at least not very often - so why do we think they are?

    And as technology gets more advanced, we are actually getting quieter. Lower power transmissions let us pack more signals into our space, and faster data transmissions look increasingly like noise to an outside observer that doesn't know the protocol (or the compression and encryption). We're getting harder to hear. Technologically advanced aliens would naturally follow the same progression, so there's a relatively short period of time in which a civilization could be detected if they aren't actively trying to establish contact.

    We probably have a better shot of seeing evidence of alien biology in their planet's atmosphere with advanced telescopes. Of course, that's also only possible with planets that are relatively close by, and positioned the right way.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:08AM (2 children)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:08AM (#747232) Journal

    Technologically advanced aliens would naturally follow the same progression

    Because every culture in the universe would follow this progression?

    Every culture *on earth* doesn't even follow such a progression.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @10:29PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @10:29PM (#747688)

      Please, show me a culture on Earth that started with high-speed digital communications and migrated to low-resolution analog ones. Or were you just trying to show off your superiority by regurgitating the old "we don't know what aliens will do!" line without bothering with any actual thoughts? You don't have to answer.

      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday October 13 2018, @06:36AM

        by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Saturday October 13 2018, @06:36AM (#748197) Homepage
        They're all fucking analogue, you retard.
        You're confusing the *payload* for the *transport*. All RF communication, and everything over copper, it a perturbation of a wave function in an electromagnetic field, and inherently analogue.
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:54AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:54AM (#747245)

    It's not :(

  • (Score: 1) by Barenflimski on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:57AM

    by Barenflimski (6836) on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:57AM (#747246)

    These guys need to be listening in on sub-space if they want to hear aliens.

  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday October 11 2018, @02:00AM (2 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Thursday October 11 2018, @02:00AM (#747248) Homepage Journal

    -s

    About three light years - the closest star is 4.3. Our most powerful signal is the US/Canada Distant Early Warning Line radar

    The fellow explained that SETI was dependent on a more advanced civilization that wanted to be found

    Consider that a more advanced civilization would be more efficient. Here on earth we now prefer fiber optic to satellite communication

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @02:59AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @02:59AM (#747272)

      I was thinking along the same lines. If I'm running a SETI program in the Alpha Centauri system, and I'm listening to the Sol system, I might only have 200 or so years before the humans stop being so noisy. But the universe doesn't revolve around the humans, so I might be starting my SETI program around the time Aristarchus was just figuring out that the Earth goes around the sun or thousands of years in the future... assuming there are even humans left to detect. A thousand years goes by very quickly on the cosmic calendar. Blink and you'll miss it. How long will my fellow Alpha Centaurians carry on my work and keep listening to the Sol system?

      In all likelihood, my Alpha Centaurian SETI program will probably be be hundreds of millions of years either too late or too early to detect the humans.

      Also as other comments have pointed out, that Distant Early Warning Line might not even be bright enough to be detectable to my SETI program. It could be more likely that I'll spot an object or two making their way from the Sol system, and only then probably when their signal is no longer being drowned by Sol itself. So it could be more likely that when the humans make first contact by sending a probe over, it'll be news to me that there's a technological civilization hanging out around Sol.

      Even then, how many hundreds of years will it take for even a very fast probe to make it to the neighbor's? Can the humans or even any technological species plan a mission that will take many, many multiples of their lifetimes to complete?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @03:01AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @03:01AM (#747274)

        Also as other comments have pointed out,

        Whoops! And GP comment! Must be getting close to bedtime....

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @02:03AM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @02:03AM (#747249)

    Once a species starts colonizing space it expands remarkably fast, colonizing a whole galaxy in only a million years which is short by cosmic timelines.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 11 2018, @02:41AM (6 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday October 11 2018, @02:41AM (#747268)

      Any assumptions about things you don't know in there?

      What's the practical interstellar speed limit if you want a 90%+ chance of arrival at your light years distant destination without fatal damage? Hint: it ain't even close to 0.9C.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday October 11 2018, @11:33AM (5 children)

        by deimtee (3272) on Thursday October 11 2018, @11:33AM (#747385) Journal

        Doesn't matter. Any species which sends colonists to other stars at even 0.01 C will colonise the whole galaxy remarkably quickly.
        It's a bit like evolution, there's a selection effect.
        Some won't get there. Doesn't matter. Others will.
        Some that get there won't send any further colonies. Doesn't matter, they become irrelevant.
        The societies that send colonists that send further colonies will quickly fill the galaxy. The GP's million years is probably about right.

        The problem of 'where are they?' is known as the Fermi paradox.

        --
        If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
        • (Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Thursday October 11 2018, @11:49AM (4 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 11 2018, @11:49AM (#747391) Journal

          The GP's million years is probably about right.

          At 0.01 C it would take 10 million years to reach the other side of the galaxy, give or take. No way it would take a million years without some really fast spacecraft in use.

          • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:25PM (2 children)

            by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:25PM (#747413) Journal

            Bump it down to 0.001c. If an intelligent civilization formed billions of years ago, such as on an older planet than Earth, then it would have the time to spread. The mystery remains.

            --
            [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
            • (Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Thursday October 11 2018, @02:21PM

              by shrewdsheep (5215) on Thursday October 11 2018, @02:21PM (#747431)

              Oh, these orders of magnitudes! The universe is ~12 Bio yrs old. Life needs 2nd generation stars (heavy elements or metals how the astronomers say; ~ 2 bio yrs) + planet formation (1 bio yrs) + evolution of life to intelligence (~4 bio yrs). If you toss in a 3rd generation (more heavy elements) you are about where we are now. So it does matter whether it's 1 billion yrs or 1 million yrs. I would see 1 mio yrs as totally unrealistic. 1 billion yrs might mean, they are not yet here but will arrive some time soon.
              We discussed that at length before, there are other solutions to the Fermi paradox: aliens would be undetectable (you need to be small to travel efficiently, no sci-fi starships would be involved). Also, it does not make sense for biological life to travel in space (why?, that's left as an exercise to the reader).

            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 11 2018, @03:39PM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 11 2018, @03:39PM (#747465) Journal

              Bump it down to 0.001c. If an intelligent civilization formed billions of years ago, such as on an older planet than Earth, then it would have the time to spread.

              Actually at that point, they could still be spreading and just haven't arrived yet.

          • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday October 13 2018, @01:41AM

            by deimtee (3272) on Saturday October 13 2018, @01:41AM (#748136) Journal

            True, and it also doesn't account for the time to build the infrastructure at each new system. But (big but) that selection effect will also apply to speed. There are enough stars in the milky way to apply evolution at the colony level.
            Given an expanding species, the slightly faster descendants will colonise more systems. Eventually a wave of settlement will be marching across the galactic disk, at the optimum speed for [surviving the journey | building new ships | building more ships | building faster ships].

            --
            If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Thexalon on Thursday October 11 2018, @02:33AM (2 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Thursday October 11 2018, @02:33AM (#747263)

    ETs picked up on of our TV broadcasts and were very excited. Unfortunately, that TV broadcast was Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and decided they wanted to have absolutely nothing to do with us.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 1) by petecox on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:13AM

      by petecox (3228) on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:13AM (#747307)
      Not true.
      Obligatory The Orville [youtube.com]
    • (Score: 3, Funny) by Webweasel on Thursday October 11 2018, @09:33AM

      by Webweasel (567) on Thursday October 11 2018, @09:33AM (#747353) Homepage Journal

      This show makes no sense! Why does Ross, the biggest friend simply not eat the others?

      --
      Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 11 2018, @03:00AM (2 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday October 11 2018, @03:00AM (#747273)

    There's a half acre of grass back there, all within 300' of my door, and I see evidence of moles, but only twice in five years have I ever actually seen a mole (and those only because our cat caught them...) Also underground are wasps, once a hive of bees, and all manner of other things that I can only begin to guess at. All within 2 minutes' walk of my door and 6" of the surface. Then there are things theoretically visible but still relatively unknown in the trees above. Humanity as a whole has taken enough interest in similar places to my backyard that we can make educated guesses about what the readily available evidence is telling us, but it would be several major lives' work of an undertaking to completely catalog all the life above and below ground just within 300' of my door.

    By comparison, the Earth is 5 orders of magnitude bigger in diameter (15 orders of magnitude in volume), and all of humanity is just barely beginning to scratch the surface of understanding what's here, in our "backyard."

    The solar system is a little more sparse, but there are millions upon millions of objects larger than my backyard there - Jupiter alone is about 11 times the Earth's diameter, well over 1000 times the Earth's volume - another 3 orders of magnitude just to cover Jupiter, and to completely cover the solar system would be yet another 18 orders of magnitude, for a total of 36 orders of magnitude bigger than my backyard - which, I might assert, could keep all the effort poured into SETI completely occupied for years just figuring out, exactly, what's going on in it. Expand to this 33,000 light year diameter and that's another 21 orders of magnitude in volume for a grand total of 57 orders of magnitude bigger than my already unknowably large backyard.

    Granted, we're fast approaching a population of 8 billion, and that's a big number, but if we divide and conquer this search space, that's only 10 orders of magnitude, leaving each and every one of us 10^47 backyards to search.

    Repeating the most insightful Douglas Adams quote: Space is big...

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday October 11 2018, @08:37AM (1 child)

      by bradley13 (3053) on Thursday October 11 2018, @08:37AM (#747334) Homepage Journal

      There are really three categories to consider:

      - A technological civilization that actively wants to be found. They would broadcast high-powered, focused signals at specific wavelengths dictated by physics. They would broadcast to all nearby stars. Our current SETI programs would almost certainly detect these signals.

      - A technological civilization that is not actively trying to be found. Like ours - we are not pinging all the nearby stars with MW transmitters. It's all well and good to talk about "I Love Lucy" broadcasts, but they will disappear into the background noise more than a couple of light-years out. Our current SETI programs are not even capable of detecting our own civilization, if it were around another star!

      - Life that is not a technological civilization. How would we know if there are, for example, algae on a planet around another star? We don't have the technology to detect life that far away, even assuming we really know what to look for.

      It's not about the search space - that's a red herring. If a civilization actively wants to be found, it's pretty clear what kind of signal they would send. The problem is: why would any civilization invest the time and effort to do that?

      In the end, the only way to find out what it out there, is to go look.

      --
      Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:23PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:23PM (#747412)

        If a civilization actively wants to be found

        As a civilization, we've only made a couple of very weak attempts at being found, some unimaginably tiny fraction of the space-time search space covered by "here we are" signals.

        The magnitude of the search space is not a red herring - even if we, as a society, attempted to beacon "we are here" to the universe with one will and 20% of our GDP, it will take much longer than we have been a technologically capable society for that message to reach the first miniscule fraction of potentially habitable objects in the proposed search space. In my 10^47 analysis above, I neglected the other important component of space-time: time.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @03:28AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @03:28AM (#747276)
    Why should we even spend much time and resources to look that hard? It's just idle curiosity at this point. With our current tech we wouldn't even be able to detect a civilization like ours in a planet far away.

    And so what if we managed to? What should we do? We are unlikely to even be able to communicate with them. We don't have FTL communications. We could send a message and it would be a different bunch of aliens receiving it and by their reply reaches Earth we might be extinct.

    As for the "we are alone/not alone" BS there are already plenty of existing intelligent non-human creatures on this planet. So we are not alone. Furthermore it's not like we are treating most of them that well...

    If we want to learn to talk to alien creatures we can go learn how to talk to an octopus (or other "alien" creatures). Heck we only just recently figured out a possible way that they might have color vision even though their retina is "monochrome".
    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday October 11 2018, @03:56AM (2 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday October 11 2018, @03:56AM (#747280) Journal

      If there are very obvious alien civilizations nearby, building Dyson swarms, then maybe the "technosignatures" group will be able to find them. Otherwise, we could be able to find them by detecting anomalies in exoplanet atmospheres. If that doesn't work, we can fall back on looking for liquid water and evidence of vegetation on exoplanets. The technologies needed to at least start those searches will be built within the next 20 years.

      Have we really ruled out an intelligent civilization within a 50 light year radius? It would be reasonable to send a message to an exoplanet within that range.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @04:32AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @04:32AM (#747287)
        Just wait for discussion of the "Three body problem" trilogy. It's all there.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @07:12AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @07:12AM (#747317)

        The benefits for biology would be huge if we would discover any (intelligent or not) alien life form. It would be interesting how evolution would progress in two isolated systems, even if a few variables would be slightly different. Is it mostly the same (restricted by same physics/chemistry)? Or completely different (aliens in movies are based on an earth reference window)?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:05AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:05AM (#747305)

    space is big.
    space is dark.
    it's hard to find a place to park.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @07:17AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @07:17AM (#747320)

    So, do the SETI initiatives just randomly scan the sky, or do they point to the centre of the Milky way? To me it seems that if we have a hard time to scan the complete sky, it might be better to point at the centre of our galaxy, to potentially get more signals passing by in our view (on both sides of the centre). I assume the contents of the galaxy rotate around the centre, that's the case, right?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @08:53AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @08:53AM (#747344)

      do they point to the centre of the Milky way?

      Yeah, let's look at the black hole, sure we'll find life there..

    • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday October 11 2018, @12:37PM

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 11 2018, @12:37PM (#747402) Homepage Journal

      The centre of the galaxy may well produce enough noise that signals are drowned out.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:30PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:30PM (#747416) Journal

      I don't know what past SETI projects tend to look at, but there's a recognizance that some locations may be better than others:

      Narrow SETI Targets by Looking at Places Where Earth Transits can be Seen [soylentnews.org]

      Also consider that our solar system may be in a "quiet" part of the Milky Way that isn't as hostile to life. The center of the galaxy is thought to be full of existential risks to life.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
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