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SETI (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence): Compendium / Miscellaneous

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!'
Yes, I think they don't want to get in touch.
 
Perhaps we need to delineate between contact and detect, with contact being an intentional transmission towards us (even if not directly towards us, but an "is anyone out there/hey we exist" transmission like we sent from Arecibo) and detect being discovering non-intentional transmission such as finding chlorophyll in an planetary light spectrum.
 
Detecting life is not the same thing as making contact with intelligent life. There is probably lots of non-sentient life in the universe; that doesn't imply that there is anything out there to talk to.
 
It used to be called CETI, with the C being for contact.
 
Are aliens communicating with neutrino beams?
June 2, 2017 by Matt Williams, Universe Today

It is no easy thing to search for signs of intelligent life beyond our solar system. In addition to the incredible distances involved and the fact that we really only have indirect methods at our disposal, there is also the small problem of not knowing exactly what to look for. If intelligent life does exist beyond our solar system, would they even communicate as we do, using radio transmitters and similar forms of technology?

Such has been the preoccupation of groups like the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute and, more recently, organizations like Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI) International. A non-profit dedicated to communicating with extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI), the organization recently suggested that looking for neutrinos and other exotic particles could help us find signals as well.

First, some clarification should be made as to what SETI and METI are all about it and what sets them apart. The term METI was coined by Russian scientist Alexander Zaitsev, who sought to draw a distinction between SETI and METI. As he explained in a 2006 paper on the subject:

"The science known as SETI deals with searching for messages from aliens. METI science deals with the creation of messages to aliens. Thus, SETI and METI proponents have quite different perspectives. SETI scientists are in a position to address only the local question "does Active SETI make sense?" In other words, would it be reasonable, for SETI success, to transmit with the object of attracting ETI's attention? In contrast to Active SETI, METI pursues not a local and lucrative impulse, but a more global and unselfish one – to overcome the Great Silence in the universe, bringing to our extraterrestrial neighbors the long-expected annunciation 'You are not alone!'" ...

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-06-aliens-neutrino.html#jCp
 
I wish I knew more about this kind of thing, but even the popular articles tend to lose me--a layman--in jargon before long.

We’ve just seen 15 new mysterious cosmic radio bursts from space

By Leah Crane

One of the most mysterious objects in space just got even weirder. A group of researchers just found 15 new fast radio bursts, all from the only one of these objects that we’ve ever seen repeat.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are some of the universe’s strangest phenomena: powerful radio signals that flash from distant space for milliseconds and then disappear. They have been attributed to everything from black holes to extraterrestrial intelligence.

Because they’re so brief, and because radio telescopes can only watch a small area of the sky at a time, only about 2 dozen FRBs have ever been detected. Of those, only one has been observed to repeat: FRB 121102, which resides in a dwarf galaxy about 3 billion light years away from Earth.


Now, researchers with the Breakthrough Listen initiative, a $100 billion search for signs of intelligent life in the universe, have detected 15 more pulses from FRB 121102.

Short Article Concludes:
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ew-mysterious-cosmic-radio-bursts-from-space/
Similar Report Here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...age-signal-alien-hunters-galaxy-a7921671.html
 
That is quite a distance. Earth was still new when that signal was sent.
 
These aren't attempts at communication - who would expect to get an answer back grom a galaxy three billion light years away? But they might be the unintended consequence of very advanced technology. A distant civilisation three billion years ago might have found out how to crack the cosmogenesis problem, and created a new universe to live in. This is incidental radiation from the creation of a baby universe.

This idea was suggested by Lee Smolin in his 'Fecund Universes' theory - new universes can be born out of old ones, leading to a process of natural selection for universes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Smolin#Cosmological_natural_selection
By tweaking the initial starting conditions, a sufficiently advanced civilisation might be able to create a universe that is more suitable for life than our own - and then go off and live in it.

One of the more unusual answers to the Fermi Paradox - sufficiently advanced civilisations create their own universes and don't bother with our, less-than-perfect, example.
 
A press release put out by the Breakthrough Listen organization, which funded and organized the project says; “Possible explanations for FRBs range from outbursts from rotating neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields, to more speculative ideas that they are directed energy sources used by extraterrestrial civilizations to power spacecraft.”

http://www.popsci.com/strange-signals-distant-galaxy
 
A press release put out by the Breakthrough Listen organization, which funded and organized the project says; “Possible explanations for FRBs range from outbursts from rotating neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields, to more speculative ideas that they are directed energy sources used by extraterrestrial civilizations to power spacecraft.”

http://www.popsci.com/strange-signals-distant-galaxy

What SETI is putting out there worries me. We should be putting out loads of pictures of boobs and cats out there. Who doesn't like them? Those science geezers scare the shit out of me in not including a playful ambiguity in the commnication plan. While Sagan was great, I think there's also a role for Doddy in alien communications, missus.

I mean... let's look st the kitchen of a party. Who really wants to hang around with the nerds?

Why is an equation better than a great joke?
 
What SETI is putting out there worries me. We should be putting out loads of pictures of boobs and cats out there. Who doesn't like them? Those science geezers scare the shit out of me in not including a playful ambiguity in the commnication plan. While Sagan was great, I think there's also a role for Doddy in alien communications, missus.

I mean... let's look st the kitchen of a party. Who really wants to hang around with the nerds?

Why is an equation better than a great joke?
Equations are easier to translate since maths should be universal.
 
..Who really wants to hang around with the nerds?..

One could also ask who wants to be in a room full of people who think cats and boobs are suitable envoys of Earth life. Sounds like an average pub night.

'Ee Gladys, fine pair you have there; almost knocked mi pint over. I heard there are pictures of your pussy on their way to Jupiter'.

You'll be suggesting we transmit East Enders and videos of football matches next.

INT21;)
 
... We should be putting out loads of pictures of boobs and cats out there. Who doesn't like them? ...

EMSH-BeautyQueen+Aliens.jpg


ALF-sandwich.jpg
 
Well the Voyager plaques have a naked male and female, so we are trying with boobs. Don't know about cats though.
 
It seems the West has abdicated its leadership ambitions in outer space as well:

What Happens If China Makes First Contact?
As America has turned away from searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, China has built the world’s largest radio dish for precisely that purpose.

Last January, the Chinese Academy of Sciences invited Liu Cixin, China’s preeminent science-fiction writer, to visit its new state-of-the-art radio dish in the country’s southwest. Almost twice as wide as the dish at America’s Arecibo Observatory, in the Puerto Rican jungle, the new Chinese dish is the largest in the world, if not the universe. Though it is sensitive enough to detect spy satellites even when they’re not broadcasting, its main uses will be scientific, including an unusual one: The dish is Earth’s first flagship observatory custom-built to listen for a message from an extraterrestrial intelligence. If such a sign comes down from the heavens during the next decade, China may well hear it first.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin...-happens-if-china-makes-first-contact/544131/
 
Well then they'll send messages in Chinese and the aliens won't be able to understand.
 
Well the Voyager plaques have a naked male and female, so we are trying with boobs. Don't know about cats though.

PEDANT ALERT!: It's actually the Pioneer plaques. Both Voyagers are carrying golden records with "The Sounds of Earth" recorded on them. We just have to hope that whoever finds them hasn't entirely trashed their record players in favour of CDs or MP3s.
 
PEDANT ALERT!: It's actually the Pioneer plaques. Both Voyagers are carrying golden records with "The Sounds of Earth" recorded on them. We just have to hope that whoever finds them hasn't entirely trashed their record players in favour of CDs or MP3s.

The Voyagers contain photos too, though no nudism (a naked man and a pregnant lady, chosen for its "non-sexual" quality, was vetoed after outraged prudes complained about Pioneer). And their golden records come with record players and instructions. Not that it's remotely likely anyone will ever find them, it was a bit of a publicity push to drum up support for the project and justify the expense.
 
PEDANT ALERT!: It's actually the Pioneer plaques. Both Voyagers are carrying golden records with "The Sounds of Earth" recorded on them. We just have to hope that whoever finds them hasn't entirely trashed their record players in favour of CDs or MP3s.
Those gold records were bolted to the outside of the spacecraft, so they've probably got lots of micrometeor scars and they're covered in interstellar dust. Not much can be extracted from a record after that.
OK, the playing side was facing the spaceship to protect the surface, but micrometeors can go straight through.
 
I've begun to doubt the wisdom of doing this. But advanced aliens don't need a radio transmission to detect us anyway.
 
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