- cross-posted to:
- space@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- space@beehaw.org
“Stellar activity and plasma turbulence near a transmitting planet can broaden an otherwise ultra-narrow signal, spreading its power across more frequencies and making it more difficult to detect in traditional narrowband searches.”
Science paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae3d33
Review article: https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/10/seti_admits_its_search_for/
Broadening of specral lines info: http://www.hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Atomic/broaden.html
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FFS…
SETI PRESUMES that the way we’re going to detect extraterrestrial civilizations, is their beaming TONS of photons at us, in crisp signal.
WHY TF would they do that??
Why wouldn’t they ditch the energy-wasteful TV-style broadcast, for energy-efficient fiber-optics?
There’s, in my view, only a SINGLE century of civilization-evolution in-which tons of broadcast energy is poured helter-skelter all throughout the sky.
Before that it isn’t done because the tech doesn’t exist, & after that, it isn’t done because it’s idiotic to be doing it.
So, instead of presuming “all civilizations are broadcasting, why aren’t we seeing them??”, we OUGHT be presuming “we’re trying to see a single-century of civilized-evolution, & maybe this is the wrong method for finding other-world’s life”.
_ /\ _
They do factor all that in to their thinking and also look for things like pulsed lasers. They’re not idiots like.
Maybe there’s some alien civilization who’s actively pointing a radio signal in our direction so they can communicate with us. I don’t know… maybe the aliens are observing how friendly we are to each other and really want to connect?
Like what we do with things like arecibo.
Yeah! Like, hmmmm… was it really a storm that brought Arecibo down? Or … was the storm just used as a cover by ET hackers?
^ This!
We’re already on the edge of point to point communication without radio waves so within another 50-100 years nobody will detect us either.
https://www.aliroquantum.com/blog/quantum-entanglement-communication
We’re simply asking the wrong questions. Years ago I remember someone postulating the idea that if another civilization wanted to be found by another civilization, what they would do is find some interesting stellar object, and embed a signal in whatever radiation it was emitting.
So, another civilization would have to be a) capable of recognizing that object as interesting, b) have the capability and will to study it, and c) detect and separate a signal from the background.
The “You must be this tall to ride this ride” theory of interstellar communication.
Communication through entanglement still requires transmitting all the information you are trying to communicate through a physical communication channel like radio or some other channel like lasers or whathaveyou. The only supposed “benefit” of the communication is that it prevents undetected eavesdropping. Although, that’s hardly even a great benefit, because you want to prevent eavesdropping, not just detect it, because that means the presence of an eavesdropper would kill all communication. There is thus not even a practical security benefit for communication through entanglement. It’s largely overhyped. May have some niche use cases but not anything revolutionary.
This is an interesting analysis of IDS vs IPS.
Very good point. Having advanced life so close to us to clearly detect is wild enough, but to also snipe the direction and time window is absolutely crazy.
You had one job…
Well yeah. But that’s to be expected in astronomy, they have to keep changing the model as they learn more and more. Who knew 40 years ago that stellar atmospheres could broaden radio-frequency lines?
Fair cop … but society’s to blame !
I think the real problem with SETI is its passive nature. It is merely looking for signals that may be from extraterrestrial intelligences passively.
I quite like the idea of Active SETI where we would be sending our own signal and looking for a reply. Of course either way would also have the problem of time. It would take a while to receive a signal. So long that its entirely possible by the time anyone got it, the people that sent it are already gone.
One more thing. If ants where the dominant tech specie of this planet. Would they use radio or similar tech? Why do we presume a similar body to ours when we talk about aliens? What if they are fungui like, or bee like or polilla like or a blob that communicate trough chemical signals.
As many has pointed out, we are looking for a narrow tech advancement and also a narrow conception of body building
