Scientists are planning to contact aliens

[badeskov]

13 hours ago, MWoo7 said:

Yeah I heard the AM frequencies didn't even make it very far.(I'm no expert, I heard that : )

And you would be correct in what you heard.

13 hours ago, MWoo7 said:

NICE! wow you are old (you're suppose to be laughing, yes, that was a joke : )

Old. OLD?! 

Cheers,
Badeskov

[badeskov]

12 hours ago, psyche101 said:

Bade told me about it, but the BMEWS will get you about 200 light years without degradation.

Not without degradation, but about 200-300 light years out that is when the signal from the BMEWS radars will be so attenuated that it will be buried in the background noise and impossible to detect no matter the technology one possesses. 

Cheers,
Badeskov

[MWoo7]

Quicky note not to derail focus/scope aaaah topic, Glad you get my humour,! My Daddy or uncles sure don't! and my Aunties! can't even go there, I"m always like take a pill ! they've pills for that you know hahahahahahahaha!

[MWoo7]

2 minutes ago, badeskov said:

Not without degradation, but about 200-300 light years out that is when the signal from the BMEWS radars will be so attenuated that it will be buried in the background noise and impossible to detect no matter the technology one possesses. 

Cheers,
Badeskov

So glad there's an expert at the helm    yeah it always bothered me that the profs didn't detail more on the vast distances out there, let alone in our back yard. Proxima Centuri is apx.: 4 Light Years out. Right ON TOp of us. We can't get there.
Near Neighbor Andromeda is 2 MILLION light years away. 1400 Light Years OUT THERE the stars of Orion's Belt,
 yeah the little guy up there ahahaha! and his three star belt.
What is never uttered or ever stated or ever brought up or ever discussed to the public .... what we can see
... events ... has happened a long, long, LONG !!!! unimaginable time ago.

What is a million? lets say just YARDS, if you had to walk it. Getting the picture. Could probably get the mind around 1400 quickly, how about 100,000 and that's just a trace of million. Fried Chicken Tyson Dinners kid might have mentioned it but other physicists spokespersons at events/publicTV and certainly in the education system, never drive the point home about the distances with regards to traveling light. We talk about traveling the stars THE PUBLIC / Laymen even the educated. What a joke. We are slugs on the bottom of the sea that can now just barely see out.  A picture/analogy/scenario/metaphoric, by the time a huge predator has swam over the top of us up above(in the sea) and we see the shadow, its already to late, its already swung around and down TO EAT THE SLUG.  Its like almost frozen liquid jello, if massive explosion happened between Andromeda and here, the very first light would be small like a star but we would be recording in the books for over a million years noting how its getting bigger!
in another million the books SAY! hey its expanding!

Liquid JELLO basically almost FROZEN liquid jello, our home the UNIVERSE. --MWoo

Oooooooh no, now I'm in trouble.  eeh I can't help it.

[badeskov]

12 hours ago, Tatetopa said:

True that, and our biggest radio emission years are behind us.  Cable and cell phones have cut down on escaping transmission emissions immensely.

Indeed. 

12 hours ago, Tatetopa said:

The biggest radio source in those days was the DEW line radar; US attempt to detect ICBM's coming over the pole.  USSR must have had one too.

Was and still is.

12 hours ago, Tatetopa said:

So the whole SETI project might be looking for a phenomena that only exists in an advancing technology for about 50 years; if they advance at our speed.

Maybe not. One could hope that a space faring race would actually need powerful radio and radar transmitters looking out into space. Like radars we currently use at airports, but now beaming out into space.

12 hours ago, Tatetopa said:

Badeskov, maybe you can answer this.  I believe I read somewhere that the Arecibo dish is capable of transmitting a powerful pulse signal as well as being a receiver.   I am not sure where I read that or what it might be used for since it has limited aiming capability. I think only the detectors at the focus can be moved some.

The Arecibo radio telescope can indeed be used both as a transmitter and a receiver. It is just the latter that is most useful as so far we don't really have anybody else to talk to using that. I think the most famous transmission was the 1974 message to the globular star cluster M13. On the focusing, the receiver and transmitter sits in the same "housing" and has the same focusing abilities, which are limited. 

12 hours ago, Tatetopa said:

The headline still bothers me.  Scientists can plan to send out a signal,  but planning to contact an alien civilization is hubris at this point.

Nah, not in my point of view. It is not hubris as the chances of ET catching anything we send out is thoroughly limited, and if they even catch a signal it will end before they barely start receiving it. Speak of disappointing

Cheers,
Badeskov  

[badeskov]

5 minutes ago, MWoo7 said:

So glad there's an expert at the helm   

Hahaha....I appreciate the kind words, although there are much better experts out there 

5 minutes ago, MWoo7 said:

yeah it always bothered me that the profs didn't detail more on the vast distances out there, let alone in our back yard. Proxima Centuri is apx.: 4 Light Years out. Right ON TOp of us. We can't get there.
Near Neighbor Andromeda is 2 MILLION light years away. 1400 Light Years OUT THERE the stars of Orion's Belt,
 yeah the little guy up there ahahaha! and his three star belt.

If you are interested, I can recommend the program Celestia. It is a pretty cool free download and you can do some pretty amazing star exploration giving you some very good ideas of the the distances involved.

5 minutes ago, MWoo7 said:

What is never uttered or ever stated or ever brought up or ever discussed to the public .... what we can see
... events ... has happened a long, long, LONG !!!! unimaginable time ago.

Pretty amazing, actually.

5 minutes ago, MWoo7 said:

What is a million? lets say just YARDS, if you had to walk it. Getting the picture. Could probably get the mind around 1400 quickly, how about 100,000 and that's just a trace of million. Fried Chicken Tyson Dinners kid might have mentioned it but other physicists spokespersons at events/publicTV and certainly in the education system, never drive the point home about the distances with regards to traveling light. We talk about traveling the stars THE PUBLIC / Laymen even the educated. What a joke. We are slugs on the bottom of the sea that can now just barely see out.  A picture/analogy/scenario/metaphoric, by the time a huge predator has swam over the top of us up above(in the sea) and we see the shadow, its already to late, its already swung around and down TO EAT THE SLUG.  Its like almost frozen liquid jello, if massive explosion happened between Andromeda and here, the very first light would be small like a star but we would be recording in the books for over a million years noting how its getting bigger!
in another million the books SAY! hey its expanding!

Liquid JELLO basically almost FROZEN liquid jello, our home the UNIVERSE. --MWoo

Oooooooh no, now I'm in trouble.  eeh I can't help it.

Hehehe...this kind of trouble is good 

Cheers,
Badeskov

[MWoo7]

21 minutes ago, badeskov said:

program Celestia. It is a pretty cool free download

Appreciated, was finding resource req and docs to read up, some odd link for 161 Dload and server request slapped me in the face !

"""

http://celestiaproject.net/downloads.html
Not Found

The requested URL /downloads.html was not found on this server.

"""

However, on the frontpage/HOMEPAGE that download link works. Decent site, good nav, 1 bad link, in background pic sweeeeeet! Cassiopea one of my daughters was named after that , well short , kind of rodeo like CASSIE !  Okay thanks, scanning now, seems free of any surprises, alrighty I'll check it !

[badeskov]

Just now, MWoo7 said:

Appreciated, was finding resource req and docs to read up, some odd link for 161 Dload and server request slapped me in the face !

"""

http://celestiaproject.net/downloads.html
Not Found

The requested URL /downloads.html was not found on this server.

"""

However, on the frontpage/HOMEPAGE that download link works. Decent site, good nav, 1 bad link, in background pic sweeeeeet! Cassiopea one of my daughters was named after that , well short , kind of rodeo like CASSIE !  Okay thanks, scanning now, seems free of any surprises, alrighty I'll check it !

It is a really nice and nifty little program. And you can download a ton of additions to it. Like an additional 2 million stars. And all kinds of other goodies. And the fun thing is, you can add your own objects as well. I did that a few years back and made a small video on satellites around the Earth  Have a much larger project in the works, but somehow other things keeps getting in the way of me finishing it....

Cheers,
Badeskov 

[badeskov]

2 hours ago, MWoo7 said:

Quicky note not to derail focus/scope aaaah topic, Glad you get my humour,! My Daddy or uncles sure don't! and my Aunties! can't even go there, I"m always like take a pill ! they've pills for that you know hahahahahahahaha!

Oh yeah, I get your humour. Not sure where that puts me 

Cheers,
Badeskov

[ChrLzs]

7 hours ago, badeskov said:

Not without degradation, but about 200-300 light years out that is when the signal from the BMEWS radars will be so attenuated that it will be buried in the background noise and impossible to detect no matter the technology one possesses. 

Cheers,
Badeskov

I think this point needs to be repeated, as it is critical.  The amount of electronic information we broadcast outwards is DEcreasing, as out tech gets better and more directional and efficient.  And, even for the strongest signals we've ever put out there, after that 200-300ly limit, the signal is not just lost, it is destroyed and wiped completely by the background noise.  It isn't a case of just getting a bigger receiver - there is absolutely no trace of the signal left to be detected beyond that limit.

So, unless we come up with a much 'bigger' way to send out a message (maybe a big blanket that we put near the Sun, and then move it back and forth to do Morse code...)...

Up until then, I think the chances of intelligent aliens being in the range that could detect us, is vanishingly small.

[MWoo7]

I'm LOVING IT ! THANKS BADESKOV ! (my new Celestial TOY !)

[GlitterRose]

On 12/29/2016 at 1:24 PM, badeskov said:

Which scientists exactly have ever laughed of the possibility of extraterrestrial life? I personally know of no such scientists, to be honest.

Cheers,
Badeskov

 

In fairness, I think what they were laughing at was drunken rednecks who claimed they were abducted and probed while in the woods with their buddies. 

[Lilly]

Actually, the vast majority of scientists think there is extraterrestrial life out in the universe. Now, exactly where it is and if we will ever find it is quite another thing.

[Vorg]

When telescopes get super powerful, we could probably see whether life was on a planet just by looking for it.

[badeskov]

5 hours ago, MWoo7 said:

I'm LOVING IT ! THANKS BADESKOV ! (my new Celestial TOY !)

It is a great program! Glad you enjoy it.

Cheers,
Badeskov

 

[badeskov]

7 minutes ago, South Alabam said:

When telescopes get super powerful, we could probably see whether life was on a planet just by looking for it.

Sadly, I do not think we'll ever get telescopes that powerful as the size required is simply insurmountable. What I do believe, however, is that we should be able to see the telltale evidence of life in the sense of atmospheric traces through spectral analysis. 

Cheers,
Badeskov

Edited to add: I'll let ChrLzs weigh in on this, as he is clearly the expert in this field and I am not. 

Edited January 16, 2017 by badeskov

[badeskov]

1 hour ago, Lilly said:

Actually, the vast majority of scientists think there is extraterrestrial life out in the universe. Now, exactly where it is and if we will ever find it is quite another thing.

No matter how hard I think, I cannot come up with the name of a single scientist proclaiming that we are alone in the Universe.

Cheers,
Badeskov

[psyche101]

6 hours ago, ChaosRose said:

In fairness, I think what they were laughing at was drunken rednecks who claimed they were abducted and probed while in the woods with their buddies. 

I reckon you are spot on.

This article with Stephen Hawking illustrates that well, some people seem to be vastly confused between what Alien Life is and what UFO's are.

 

LINK - Primitive Alien Life May Exist, Stephen Hawking Says

We don't appear to have been visited by aliens, Hawking said, adding that he discounts reports of UFOs. Why would they only appear to cranks and weirdoes??

 

The title of the article, and the quote taken from it illustrate this well I feel. 

[+Hammerclaw]

2 hours ago, psyche101 said:

I reckon you are spot on.

This article with Stephen Hawking illustrates that well, some people seem to be vastly confused between what Alien Life is and what UFO's are.

 

LINK - Primitive Alien Life May Exist, Stephen Hawking Says

We don't appear to have been visited by aliens, Hawking said, adding that he discounts reports of UFOs. Why would they only appear to cranks and weirdoes??

 

The title of the article, and the quote taken from it illustrate this well I feel. 

Certainly no convincing evidence. From a cosmic perspective, we've only been in existence for a blink of the eye and noticeable for but a flicker. Only a few thousand revolutions around our star separate us from the stone age. Seventy-five thousand years ago, a super volcanic eruption in Australasia almost wiped us out. Until the advent of agriculture, the entire population of the world may have been less than a million. Human technological civilization is embryonic. We are very new players on the galactic stage, still confined to this one world. 

[psyche101]

On 1/17/2017 at 1:05 PM, Hammerclaw said:

Certainly no convincing evidence. From a cosmic perspective, we've only been in existence for a blink of the eye and noticeable for but a flicker. Only a few thousand revolutions around our star separate us from the stone age. Seventy-five thousand years ago, a super volcanic eruption in Australasia almost wiped us out. Until the advent of agriculture, the entire population of the world may have been less than a million. Human technological civilization is embryonic. We are very new players on the galactic stage, still confined to this one world. 

Indeed, as you say we are new players, much to learn which is why it is an equal chance right now, there is no reason that any Goldilocks Planet would not be subject the the trials and tribulations this one has as the Universe and systems in it evolved. It might be a more than regular thing for a Goldilocks Zone planet. For all we know, we could be the forerunners, or the last cab of the rank. 

[+Hammerclaw]

2 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

Indeed, as you say we are new players, much to learn which is why it is an equal chance right now, there is no reason that any Goldilocks Planet would not be subject the the trials and tribulations this one has as the Universe and systems in it evolved. It might be a more than regular thing for a Goldilocks Zone planet. For all we know, we could be the forerunners, or the last cab of the rank. 

If widely different levels of technological achievement can exist on this one planet, alone, what could exist in a Universe of billions of stars and billions of years to develop, is incredible to contemplate. It is comforting to reduce the Universe--in our minds, at least--to human proportions, but not very realistic. It's like the double-talk FTL Drives of science fiction, mounted in starships that seem to run on clean living and righteous thoughts, far too small to carry fuel for such an immense journey.

[psyche101]

1 hour ago, Hammerclaw said:

If widely different levels of technological achievement can exist on this one planet, alone, what could exist in a Universe of billions of stars and billions of years to develop, is incredible to contemplate. It is comforting to reduce the Universe--in our minds, at least--to human proportions, but not very realistic. It's like the double-talk FTL Drives of science fiction, mounted in starships that seem to run on clean living and righteous thoughts, far too small to carry fuel for such an immense journey.

Oh exactly, we only have the observable Universe at our farthest reaches, and "The Universe" as we have worked out is much bigger than that. Does it have a leading edge? Has it evolved to the same levels as it has on a theoretical leading edge? Seems unlikely? Even Physics may alter across the expanses, as they seem to in Black Holes, such a vast place, all we can speak of is what we know, and what we can observe. I would think any discussion revolving around the Universe would for all intents and purposes be pretty much restricted to the observable Universe, and even nearly all of that is out of our reaches. There might be technologies we never imagined, we might be the most technologically advanced species in the Galaxy or even Universe. With the size of the Universe, that is something we can never know, but what we can see and what we do know tells us that even if there is other life, it might just be too far way to contact. I hope we find a way, but realistically, it just may not be possible. 

Edited January 18, 2017 by psyche101

[+Hammerclaw]

1 hour ago, psyche101 said:

Oh exactly, we only have the observable Universe at our farthest reaches, and "The Universe" as we have worked out is much bigger than that. Does it have a leading edge? Has it evolved to the same levels as it has on a theoretical leading edge? Seems unlikely? Even Physics may alter across the expanses, as they seem to in Black Holes, such a vast place, all we can speak of is what we know, and what we can observe. I would think any discussion revolving around the Universe would for all intents and purposes be pretty much restricted to the observable Universe, and even nearly all of that is out of our reaches. There might be technologies we never imagined, we might be the most technologically advanced species in the Galaxy or even Universe. With the size of the Universe, that is something we can never know, but what we can see and what we do know tells us that even if there is other life, it might just be too far way to contact. I hope we find a way, but realistically, it just may not be possible. 

Traveling between the stars will require engineering and technology on a scale and level that will dwarf anything human kind has thus far achieved. Starships as portrayed by mass media are frail and puny and totally inadequate to the task. If rock and ice can travel between the stars naturally, the way flotsam drifts over the ocean, so can man, but not on a human timescale. Ways will  be needed of propelling sufficient mass to make a crossing, something on the order of a small moon or asteroid. Miles of shielding of stone and ice will protect them from the worst of the radiation, and the ice and stone will be the basis for water and fuel. Generations will pass before the traveler's faces are bathed in the light of an alien sun. Until then, they have to take a small facsimile of their world with them.

[psyche101]

38 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

Traveling between the stars will require engineering and technology on a scale and level that will dwarf anything human kind has thus far achieved. Starships as portrayed by mass media are frail and puny and totally inadequate to the task. If rock and ice can travel between the stars naturally, the way flotsam drifts over the ocean, so can man, but not on a human timescale. Ways will  be needed of propelling sufficient mass to make a crossing, something on the order of a small moon or asteroid. Miles of shielding of stone and ice will protect them from the worst of the radiation, and the ice and stone will be the basis for water and fuel. Generations will pass before the traveler's faces are bathed in the light of an alien sun. Until then, they have to take a small facsimile of their world with them.

I would agree, although I did see Passengers recently, and it was a much better concept of a starship, it really is huge.

And an excellent film I thought.

Yes, I would agree that seems the only viable concept at this point in time. As you say, any such journey would require an immense amount of time, a ship of that size and construction surely seems the best option for conventional travel. We have theorised Interstellar Comets and Asteroids, but as far as I know, we have never identified one. I looked into that some time ago actually, fascinating though really. Actually, if i remember correctly there was one Chondrite in question, I must look that up again and see what that was about. 

Edited January 18, 2017 by psyche101

[lost_shaman]

1 hour ago, Hammerclaw said:

Traveling between the stars will require engineering and technology on a scale and level that will dwarf anything human kind has thus far achieve. Starships as portrayed by mass media are frail and puny and totally inadequate to the task. If rock and ice can travel between the stars naturally, the way flotsam drifts over the ocean, so can man, but not on a human timescale. Ways will  be needed of propelling sufficient mass to make a crossing, something on the order of a small moon or asteroid. Miles of shielding of stone and ice will protect them from the worst of the radiation, and the ice and stone will be the basis for water and fuel. Generations will pass before the traveler's faces are bathed in the light of an alien sun. Until then, they have to take a small facsimile of their world with them.

Ok.  That is quite obvious.

Glad Mass Media do NOT design Spaceships! I agree!

What is a "Human Timescale"?