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SETI (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence): Compendium / Miscellaneous

Hang on if the company Dyson made Dyson Spheres, they'd be really difficult to clean and far too heavy like their vacuum cleaners.

Might explain black holes-intergalactic suction.
 
Assuming these structures are artificial, are we letting our science fiction dictate our perception of what they could be? Apart from possibilities we couldn't even comprehend from a civilisation so far in advance of our own, could these objects simply be individual space-born colonies?
 
Assuming these structures are artificial, are we letting our science fiction dictate our perception of what they could be? Apart from possibilities we couldn't even comprehend from a civilisation so far in advance of our own, could these objects simply be individual space-born colonies?
Yeah, they could. There are several concepts for large colony worlds that have been described in various places, some of which I've illustrated;
such as the Bishop Ring, the McKendree Cylinder, the O'Neill Island Three, the Bernal Sphere;
these all started out as serious engineering studies rather than science fiction.

In this sort of context I think that science fiction (or rather speculative fiction) is a useful tool to use when considering the possibilities; for one thing, speculative fiction, if used correctly, can be open ended and doesn't really rule anything out.
 
Do the generation ships get sent out before or after civilization reaches Dyson Sphere level technology?
 
Interesting question! If we are talking about aliens we can't really expect them to act in predictable ways.

But I would think that a civilisation that could build a Dyson Sphere would have progressed far beyond the generation ship stage. For a start, a Dyson Sphere can collect utterly mind-boggling amounts of energy - abound a billion times as much energy as we use on Earth for all purposes. If some of this energy could be diverted into spacecraft propulsion, then there would be no need for generation ships - you could accelerate smallish vessels up to significant fractions of the speed of light, allowing interstellar journeys within the span of a single lifetime. The big problem would be trying to stop these fast little ships from evaporating due to the energy flux.
 
Interesting question! If we are talking about aliens we can't really expect them to act in predictable ways.

But I would think that a civilisation that could build a Dyson Sphere would have progressed far beyond the generation ship stage. For a start, a Dyson Sphere can collect utterly mind-boggling amounts of energy - abound a billion times as much energy as we use on Earth for all purposes. If some of this energy could be diverted into spacecraft propulsion, then there would be no need for generation ships - you could accelerate smallish vessels up to significant fractions of the speed of light, allowing interstellar journeys within the span of a single lifetime. The big problem would be trying to stop these fast little ships from evaporating due to the energy flux.
That's what I was thinking, if there is a Dyson Sphere level civilization out there at this distance from us, they would almost certainly have figured out quite some time ago that there is life here...
 
...and of course, they are probably capable of (at the very least) tuning into our Internet conversations...
 
A dyson sphere 1AU across could use interferometry to map our world; they could detect our roads and major building works, at the least. I can't see any easy way for them to read our e-mails at that distance. Except maybe the ones that use all capitals.
 
A dyson sphere 1AU across could use interferometry to map our world; they could detect our roads and major building works, at the least.
Even the Roman Empire stuff? That's what they'd be detecting if they're looking today due to the distance.

I just figured that they could at least detect that there is life of some sort here, and since there is life here they'd send some probes or the like in our direction [assuming they'd be interested in life].
 
They should be able to pick up the Pyramids, and many other structures. I've just been to a buried town on Santorini that is 3600 years old; it was not unique at that time. There were dozens -hundreds - perhaps thousands of towns and villages around the Mediterranean, the Fertile Crescent, India and China that could be detected from 1500 ly away.
 
SETI Eavesdrops on Nearby Star in Smart Alien Hunt
By Ian O'Neill, Discovery News | June 24, 2016 07:25am ET

Astronomers seeking out extraterrestrial intelligence have used a powerful radio telescope to eavesdrop on a star system that is relatively close to Earth in the hope of hearing the faint radio whisper of an alien civilization.

Using the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) located in California (pictured top), members of the SETI Institute chose Trappist 1 as they know the red dwarf-type star plays host to at least 3 exoplanets. Traditional SETI searches have looked to random stars in the sky in the hope of detecting an artificial radio signal using luck and some educated guesses. But now we know certain stars play host to exoplanets, alien hunters can be a little more discerning with the selection of stellar targets.

RELATED: Sending Messages to Aliens: Could It Kill Us?

Known as "targeted SETI", the ATA has been used to "listen in" on star systems that NASA's Kepler Space Telescope and other exoplanet-hunting missions have confirmed the presence of exoplanets. Even better than that, as Kepler can identify the physical size and orbit of a given exoplanet, astronomers can deduce whether that planet is located in the star's "habitable zone." The habitable zone around any star is the distance at which a hypothetical rocky planet can orbit that is not too hot or too cold for liquid water to exist. As we know from life on our planet, where there's water, there's life; could intelligent alien life be living on one of these potentially habitable worlds? ...

http://www.space.com/33263-seti-smart-alien-hunt.html?cmpid=514648
 
China Completes World’s Largest Alien-Seeking Radio Telescope

China has just put the finishing touches on the world’s largest radio telescope, positioning themselves to take the lead in the search for alien life as well as more general exploration of the universe. The last of the 4,450 triangular reflectors was installed on the 1650-foot dish–roughly the size of three football fields–this past weekend, and it will become fully operational in the next two-to-three-years.

The $180 million telescope–named FAST, for Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope–is located in the southwestern province of Guizhou, and has been under construction since 2011. ...

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2016/07/china-completes-worlds-largest-alien-seeking-radio-telescope/
 
Stephen Hawking warns against seeking out aliens in new film
Beware responding to signals from far off stars, physicist tells viewers in Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places – a virtual journey across the cosmos
Hannah Devlin Science correspondent
Friday 23 September 2016 15.58 BST

“We come in peace” might be the traditional opening gambit for aliens in science fiction, but we should be wary about beaming back a response to any advanced life-forms in real life, Stephen Hawking has warned.
Our first contact from an advanced civilisation could be equivalent to when Native Americans first encountered Christopher Columbus and things “didn’t turn out so well”, he cautioned.

The comments are made in an online film, Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places, in which the theoretical physicist takes viewers on his own CGI spacecraft (the SS Hawking) to five significant locations across the cosmos.

On arriving at Gliese 832c, a planet 16 light years away, Hawking reflects: “As I grow older I am more convinced than ever that we are not alone. After a lifetime of wondering, I am helping to lead a new global effort to find out. The Breakthrough Listen project will scan the nearest million stars for signs of life, but I know just the place to start looking. One day we might receive a signal from a planet like Gliese 832c, but we should be wary of answering back.”

It is not the first time Hawking has warned about the prospect of hostile aliens. Launching the Breakthrough Listen project, which will scan the nearest million stars for signs of life, last year he suggested that any civilisation reading our messages could be billions of years ahead of humans. “If so they will be vastly more powerful and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria,” he said.

The 25-minute film, which appears on the platform CuriosityStream, starts at the Big Bang, which has been the focus of much of Hawking’s career. Viewers are also taken deep into a super-massive black hole, Sagittarius A*, where Hawking explains his theory of matter, and to Saturn, which Hawking calls “the most spectacular destination in the Solar System.”

Finally, Hawking returns to Earth to Santa Barbara where he talks nostalgically of his early career at Cal Tech and times spent on the sunny California coast with his young family.
“My goal is simple: complete understanding of the universe,” Hawking said. “It’s always been a dream of mine to explore the universe.”

https://www.theguardian.com/science...-warns-against-seeking-out-aliens-in-new-film
 
Giant Telescope in China Joins International Hunt for Extraterrestrial Life China

The hunt for radio signals from intelligent extraterrestrials just received an international boost.

Breakthrough Initiatives, a privately funded series of long-term astronomical programs, is teaming up with the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) to scour the skies with some of the world's most powerful telescopes, in search of signs of intelligent life.

"'Are we alone?' is a question that unites us as a planet," Yuri Milner, Russian billionaire investor and founder of the Breakthrough Initiatives program, said in a statement. Working together, the two organizations will use telescopes in the United States, Australia and China to hunt for signals from alien civilizations.

"And the quest to answer it should take place at a planetary level, too," Milner added. "With this agreement, we are now searching for cosmic companions with three of the world's biggest telescopes across three continents." [The Serious Search for Intelligent Life: 4 Key Questions (Video)] ...

http://www.space.com/34385-china-joins-international-alien-signal-hunt.html
 
If we are, our hardware is apparently incompatible with theirs. So much for hands across the galaxy... (er, if they have hands).
 
If we are, our hardware is apparently incompatible with theirs. So much for hands across the galaxy... (er, if they have hands).
Tentacles across the galaxy.

There've been significant criticisms of that work since it was published.
 
It is interesting that the stars concerned are all sunlike stars which are consdered good candidates for habitable planets. It is also interesting that the modulations (the supposed signals) seem to resemble each other, even in stars many, many light years apart.

A shared protocol for communication is one of the basic premises of the idea of the Interstellar Internet; civilisations stay at home instead of colonising the universe, and gradually contact each other to exchange data and recipes for technology and other news. If an interstellar internet becomes established in a region over many millions of years, the modulations used to carry this data would look similar from every contributing member, although presumably the content would be different in each case.

I'm a little dubious that no red dwarf stars are involved, though; this seems to conform to our own preconceptions of habitable stars, rather than reflecting a wider set of possibilities. Red dwarf stars would be attractive prospects for civilisations that wanted to survive into the deep future of the universe. Perhaps they know something we don't.


What makes me really dubious is that we can detect these signals at all. If they were laser communications between different stars talking to each other, they would be too tightly focused for us to see - the narrow laser beams would simply pass us by. If, however, these were signals sent by hundreds of communicators simultaneously trying to make contact with us, I'm fairly sure they would be brighter and easier to extract from the noise.
 
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It is interesting that the stars concerned are all sunlike stars which are consdered good candidates for habitable planets. It is also interesting that the modulations (the supposed signals) seem to resemble each other, even in stars many, many light years apart.
This could mean either that their civilisation is that much spread through the galaxy, or it could mean a federation of civilisations working together. Or, it could be signals being sent from many remote robots spread far and wide, acting as both a communications grid and a gigantic GPS for spacecraft.
 
I'm a little dubious that no red dwarf stars are involved, though; this seems to conform to our own preconceptions of habitable stars, rather than reflecting a wider set of possibilities. Red dwarf stars would be attractive prospects for civilisations that wanted to survive into the deep future of the universe. Perhaps they know something we don't.
Rimmer was too annoying for them.
 
An interstellar internet is a fascinating concept, but . . .

If you get a message from a Rigellian general asking for your banking information because he needs help getting 100 billion groodles off-planet, you should probably just delete it.
 
While I do believe in extraterrestrials and their presence on Earth for a long time, the cynic in me says 'Of course there's no contact! To aliens, we are the neighbor with junk in the yard shooting fireworks at each other!'
 
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