SETI Predicts Alien Detection Within 20 Years

23 Jul, 2004 at 11:33pm ET Article published in Tech

If Intelligent life exists elsewhere in our galaxy, advances in computer processing power and radio telescope technology will ensure we detect their transmissions within two decades. That’s the bold prediction from a leading light at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in Mountain View, California.

Seth Shostak, the SETI Institute’s senior astronomer, based his prediction on accepted assumptions about the likelihood of alien civilisations existing, combined with projected increases in computing power. Shostak, whose calculations will be published in a forthcoming edition of the space science journal Acta Astronautica, first estimated the number of alien civilisations in our galaxy that might currently be broadcasting radio signals. For this he used a formula created in 1961 by astronomer Frank Drake which factors in aspects such the number of stars with planets, how many of those planets might be expected to have life, and so on. Shostak came up with an estimate of between 10,000 and 1 million radio transmitters in the galaxy.

In the meantime folding at home will likely have lead research to solve many diseases that is much more practical. -KF

Source: Space Daily

Comments

24 Jul 2004 ~ 12:06am Linc Only 20 more years until they realize that if any other life exists it hasn't created any waves to be detected? That will be a landmark event...
24 Jul 2004 ~ 12:15am madmat The way I look at it even if there is life on other planets there's absolutely no proof that they would be using a means to comunicate that we could detect...for all we know they may be using quarks and other sub atomic particles as carriers for their messages just like we use radio waves.
We may be listening for sign language.
24 Jul 2004 ~ 12:23am Thrax Someone thought of something interesting, and explained it very well but my memory of it might be very long.

When you're travelling at speeds faster than light and you send anything electromagnetic, the wave of that energy experiences time dilation and the frequency of the wave is significantly lengthened thus reducing the frequency considerably.

If we're searching for life on the GHz/THz bands, and our ETs are using FTL travel or communication... We should be searching in the MHz/Hz range too.
24 Jul 2004 ~ 12:46am Camman

KingFish wrote:

In the meantime folding at home will likely have lead research to solve many diseases that is much more practical. -KF

Source: Space Daily

While I use Folding@Home and, personally, believe it's the DC client that will benefit humanity the most, I don't think it's fair or professional to make blanket statements that automatically discredit other DC project people are running.
24 Jul 2004 ~ 12:50am Nomad

Thrax wrote:

Someone thought of something interesting, and explained it very well but my memory of it might be very long.

When you're travelling at speeds faster than light and you send anything electromagnetic, the wave of that energy experiences time dilation and the frequency of the wave is significantly lengthened thus reducing the frequency considerably.

If we're searching for life on the GHz/THz bands, and our ETs are using FTL travel or communication... We should be searching in the MHz/Hz range too.

That is under the assumption they're travelling at the speed of light.
24 Jul 2004 ~ 1:03am Thrax Precisely what I said, Nomad.
24 Jul 2004 ~ 2:02am Gobbles 1. Mathmatical odds predict 100% that life can exists on other planets. Those same odds also come up with life that looks simular to us.

2. You cant travel faster than light. Breaking the thresh hold will lead you into nothingness.

3. Most likely anything traveling across the galaxy would be using something like star treks warp technology where you compress space in front of you and expand it behind you.

4. If you can do that.. you mask your communications so primative apes that fight amongst themselves cant detect it...

Beam me up scotty.
24 Jul 2004 ~ 2:06am csimon chasing aliens is like a dog chasing a car ...what the hell are you gonna do with it when you catch one?
24 Jul 2004 ~ 6:43am EyesOnly Good point cs. BTW can nothing really travel faster than light? How do we know this. In the beginning of the last centuri scientists thought that bumblebees couldn't fly but the bees didn't know this and hence they could fly. Nowadays studies have shown that bumblebees can fly but not so like how birds do it.

I think it was in the 1930:is or so the the statement was made. Of course since then we've learned alot yet many people still believed in what was said about bumblebees.. I don't know exactly how they fly, only that it was somewhat different than birds hence it seemed impossible at the time.

My point is how much do we really know about light and it's speed and what will we know about it in let's say 100 years.

In the meanwhile i for one think that we should concentrate more on making this planet a good place to live and not worry about whatever aliens might be out there. If they do understand what we've sent out in the form of radio waves or whatever i think that they would try their best at hiding from us hoping that we wont find them.

Would you want to be found by a species that does what we do to each other? I sure wouldn't.
24 Jul 2004 ~ 6:52am Sputnik now what's the point of electromagnetic communication if you're moving faster than light now? seems kinda slow to me....
24 Jul 2004 ~ 6:54am Thrax It's entirely possible that their electromagnetic communication can be sent in quite the same method as proposed FTL designs.. Fold space/time and take a jump. What's to say that can't do that to energy?
24 Jul 2004 ~ 8:13am Mt_Goat

csimon wrote:

chasing aliens is like a dog chasing a car ...what the hell are you gonna do with it when you catch one?

Piss it off so the rest of them toast the entire planet Earth!!!
24 Jul 2004 ~ 10:20am KingFish

Camman wrote:

While I use Folding@Home and, personally, believe it's the DC client that will benefit humanity the most, I don't think it's fair or professional to make blanket statements that automatically discredit other DC project people are running.

Their project was not discredited in the fact that something negative was said about the SETI project. I do believe that folding at home will be more beneficial although if they do turn up something useful I'll be the first in line to congratulate them.

KF
24 Jul 2004 ~ 12:10pm Leonardo

If Intelligent life exists elsewhere in our galaxy, advances in computer processing power and radio telescope technology will ensure we detect their transmissions within two decades.

It's amazing how we humans seem to know so much about what we don't know! Two decades? Two hundred years? Two millenia? They've no more clue on this than my pet greyhound.
24 Jul 2004 ~ 1:47pm RWB

Leonardo wrote:

It's amazing how we humans seem to know so much about what we don't know! Two decades? Two hundred years? Two millenia? They've no more clue on this than my pet greyhound.

By saying 20 years as an "intellegent" projection, they can get more grants to help them out. I do beleive SETI is scrounging for money as is, and are barely surviving. I like SETI, I think it is a good idea.. just misunderstood.
24 Jul 2004 ~ 2:27pm Nomad

EyesOnly wrote:

Good point cs. BTW can nothing really travel faster than light? How do we know this. In the beginning of the last centuri scientists thought that bumblebees couldn't fly but the bees didn't know this and hence they could fly. Nowadays studies have shown that bumblebees can fly but not so like how birds do it.

I think it was in the 1930:is or so the the statement was made. Of course since then we've learned alot yet many people still believed in what was said about bumblebees.. I don't know exactly how they fly, only that it was somewhat different than birds hence it seemed impossible at the time.

My point is how much do we really know about light and it's speed and what will we know about it in let's say 100 years.

In the meanwhile i for one think that we should concentrate more on making this planet a good place to live and not worry about whatever aliens might be out there. If they do understand what we've sent out in the form of radio waves or whatever i think that they would try their best at hiding from us hoping that we wont find them.

Would you want to be found by a species that does what we do to each other? I sure wouldn't.

Under the laws of physics as known today, drone bees shouldn't be able to fly. It's debatable weather you can travel at the speed of light, so is exceeding the speed of light. There are theories of bypassing travelling all together.
24 Jul 2004 ~ 3:00pm RWB I don't care what anyone says, the world is flat, and we ARE te center of the Universe!
25 Jul 2004 ~ 3:45am Gobbles How could anyone not believe... I mean 30 redneck abductions a year and you still dont believe....

G
25 Jul 2004 ~ 4:00am bothered

Thrax wrote:

It's entirely possible that their electromagnetic communication can be sent in quite the same method as proposed FTL designs.. Fold space/time and take a jump. What's to say that can't do that to energy?

Energy and mass are just differant states of the same thing after all.
25 Jul 2004 ~ 4:05am bothered

Nomad wrote:

Under the laws of physics as known today, drone bees shouldn't be able to fly. It's debatable weather you can travel at the speed of light, so is exceeding the speed of light. There are theories of bypassing travelling all together.

Under the laws of physics as known today drone bees can fly and can be explained. I've seen it. They bring their wings together on the upstroke, as they pull them apart it creates a low pressure above them. It will always be debatable about FTL travel untill somebody tries it.
25 Jul 2004 ~ 8:39pm EMT (1) Astronomers and the like have interesting formulas on this extraterrestrial life stuff. It sounded bogus to me but the people into it (my brother is one - not specifically extraterrestrial though) who have studied it, it sort of works out. I bet there's significant margin of error but it's not totally guesswork.

(2) Einstein theorized achieving light speed is not possible and further proved it in his theories of relativity. That's not to say it won't change; however, it's been shown that the dilation of time for example, a part of the theory, does occur at high velocities. Many other aspects of his theories have been proven in the real world. At the speed of light the dilation of time, length, and mass would be infinite - it would take infinite force to reach it. Scientists accept these theories until they find a flaw; at the moment though it seems that even force (e.g. gravity) cannot exceed the speed of light, although experiments hint that in the future we may be able to communicate information faster than light using subatomic particle states.
26 Jul 2004 ~ 12:15am csimon I guess they figure ...it'll take them 20 years to prove us wrong!
26 Jul 2004 ~ 6:11am entropy Thrax, same thing happens with sound waves. Ever wonder why a train gets higher pitched, then lower as it goes away from you? Waves get compressed at first, making higher pitches, then get expanded, making lower pitches. Radio waves would do the same thing I would assume.
26 Jul 2004 ~ 7:28am Thrax It's called the doppler effect.
20 Oct 2004 ~ 9:08am shnaz straight up, the majority of you seem to think that any new alian species would be more advanced than us, what if they were say 200 years behind us what would we do when we found them? we already have enough trouble keeping each other up with the leaders in terms of technology would be speed up this alian races evolution and thus change their history, once we found them can we ignore them? or would history repeat itself and we could turn them into slaves? i think that some of you are looking at this from a narrow minded perspective instead of thinking "when" maybe you should think "consiquenes" although i find the idea of a alien species exciting i also find it quite frightning and it would be something the world would have to make a unified argeement on, and can anyone see that happening over coffie and cake?