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Astronomer: If Earth Is Average, We Should Find Alien Life Within 60 Light-Years
(www.sciencealert.com)
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this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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Futurology
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We're looking for high power radio signals leaking into space. With a structure that we recognize. Basically analog screams into the void.
But we're generating fewer and fewer of those, because it's more efficient to spread data across frequencies at low power. As we compress data and encrypt it, the signal begins to look more and more like random noise.
There were a few decades where our civilization was screaming into the void, but those are coming to an end. Because efficiency beats screaming into the void.
We're probably average. If alien technology follows a similar trajectory to our own, there will only be a brief window where it will be sloppy enough for us to detect.
That's assuming they develop technology like us. If they live in really short bursts they might never get to that point, or maybe develop something completely different. On the other hand, they might have really long lifespans, perhaps tens of thousands of years, and perceive time in a completely different manner.
We're looking for (relatively) high powered radio signals. Regardless of how alien critters evolve, they're going to have the same constraints on their radio technology as we do.
It is possible they'd have some reason for pouring a tonne of energy into loud radio broadcasts, but if they are using radio for communications (as our SETI searches assume), then they will have lots of incentives to stop screaming into the void. At which point, our searches will not find them.
Is background radiation from space just some alien looking encrypted version of their pornhub?!
That's why I have 16tb of background radiation recordings. When we figure out their video/audio/tactile/olfaction formats I'm gonna have a great time.
What about, rather than communicating with electromagnetic waves, they communicate with gravitational waves? Or something else? There's a lot of dark matter out there, what if it's alien telecoms?
🤷 We're looking for radio signals. It seems unlikely we'd detect those.