Archived material Access restricted Article
Rantburg

Today's Front Page   View All of Wed 09/09/2020 View Tue 09/08/2020 View Mon 09/07/2020 View Sun 09/06/2020 View Sat 09/05/2020 View Fri 09/04/2020 View Thu 09/03/2020
1
2020-09-09 Science & Technology
Astronomers find NO technological signs of alien life [they can discern] in a study of more than 10 MILLION star systems
Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.
Posted by Skidmark 2020-09-09 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11128 views ]  Top

#1 Or planets that willy-nilly radiate radio energy get the galactic Orkin Man treatment. We'll know a few hundred to thousands of years from now.
Posted by Thraling Munster5941 2020-09-09 03:02||   2020-09-09 03:02|| Front Page Top

#2 20 years ago nobody (including SF writers) could predict smart phones. But we can recognize signs of advanced civilizations?
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-09-09 05:08||   2020-09-09 05:08|| Front Page Top

#3 G(r)omgrou, I can assure you that the batwings company had plans like that since the early 80s and did "Greenhouse Simulations with real protocols" to prepare as early as 1989. The original plans were based on the old Dick Tracy comics. The mid-point was the book phone. That was reached with the web on net enabled cells in the 1997 time frame. They appeared in Japan first. Japan's water world night life required the cam so they paid for that development as one could know the whore you were dealing with really looked and talked like you expected. It wasn't possible to finance that camera capability for the western world market but it was required for Asia and Japan paid for it. Once the cam and good screen were there the full smart phone was only a short expected jump. The only question was the input mode. The failure of the Apple/Motorola jointly designed device (Newton) about 1999 left the smart phone the only development path.
Posted by 3dc 2020-09-09 06:00||   2020-09-09 06:00|| Front Page Top

#4 ^OK, maybe a bad example - but you do understand what I'm trying to say?
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-09-09 06:02||   2020-09-09 06:02|| Front Page Top

#5 /\ No, but I seldom do. It's probably my meds.
Posted by Besoeker 2020-09-09 06:03||   2020-09-09 06:03|| Front Page Top

#6 ^ń Klap van die windmeul weg hê
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-09-09 06:11||   2020-09-09 06:11|| Front Page Top

#7 Grom, when I started there in 89 my desk had this huge drawer, not to be looked in or touched, that had about a 13 inch thick manuscript in it titled "The Dick Tracy Plan". -Seriously- and the wide desk drawer had a bunch of keys not to touch. They turned out to be to the roof top broadcast towers on the John Handcock building and the Sears Tower. I had no idea what they were for until some of Japan's FCC were caught misbehaving on the roof of one of them with the keys by the Chicago Police who took the keys. They came and asked me for all the keys to the roofs and I was like "That's what those keys were for?" I locked that drawer every night so somebody ranked above me must have had a master for my desk and took them out to entertain a customer...
Posted by 3dc 2020-09-09 06:21||   2020-09-09 06:21|| Front Page Top

#8 That plan had no date on it but the color of the paper and "daisy-wheel" type font suggested maybe 1975.
Posted by 3dc 2020-09-09 06:24||   2020-09-09 06:24|| Front Page Top

#9 #7, #8 I've conceded the point (though you actually talk about cell phones - not palmtop with internet access).

So, here's other examples.
Radio during the telegraph era.
Personal computers in 1930 (I still remember being struck by sentence from one of Doc Smith's books "computers went on a coffee break").
For that matter, I remember a pal telling me in 1980es that there is this new thing - world wide net, and I should try it.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-09-09 06:36||   2020-09-09 06:36|| Front Page Top

#10 They're looking using themselves as models. The aliens must think like us. Their technology must match our way of understanding the universe. Thus any 'signs' must match ours.
Posted by Procopius2k 2020-09-09 06:46||   2020-09-09 06:46|| Front Page Top

#11 Can we say that any alien UFO-dweller studying the packets in a Wifi transmissions would find anything looking like intelligence because of the twatter, farcebook and snaptwat noise?
Posted by Bright Pebbles 2020-09-09 07:50||   2020-09-09 07:50|| Front Page Top

#12 To do research on aliens, one need not look any further than California.
Posted by Clem 2020-09-09 08:08||   2020-09-09 08:08|| Front Page Top

#13 If we find them, how long will it take the MIC to engage them in endless wars ?
Posted by Besoeker 2020-09-09 08:15||   2020-09-09 08:15|| Front Page Top

#14 Spread spectrum signals aren't that distinguishable from noise, at least without knowing the algorithm.
Posted by Rob Crawford 2020-09-09 08:37||   2020-09-09 08:37|| Front Page Top

#15 #13 ....just as soon as the Clinton Foundation, Team Biden and Choom-Wookie Productions can sign billion-dollar deals with the aliens
Posted by Flaise Bluetooth1542 2020-09-09 08:42||   2020-09-09 08:42|| Front Page Top

#16 Any alien looking at earth's emissions wouldn't see one signal to decode. They would see the accumulation of millions or billions (WiFi, Cell) of emissions. It's not about trying to decode the the signals, it's about recognizing that the signals are not a natural phenomenon.
Posted by Thraling Munster5941 2020-09-09 09:10||   2020-09-09 09:10|| Front Page Top

#17 it's about recognizing that the signals are not a natural phenomenon.

And if they're smart enough to figure out what we're sending, they'd move on really fast.

Unless they're into reality TV.
Posted by Mullah Richard 2020-09-09 09:32||   2020-09-09 09:32|| Front Page Top

#18 Suppose the aliens had visited Earth 200 years ago. They would have detected no radio waves at all, or at least no artificial ones. They would have concluded that there was o life here and moved on.
Posted by Rambler in Virginia  2020-09-09 09:46||   2020-09-09 09:46|| Front Page Top

#19 Reasons I think we haven't found anything yet:

1.) They have advanced so far we can't detect their signals, just like ants can't talk to us

2.) They are so far away we haven't seen it yet. If a civilization is 10,000 years ahead of us, but on the other side of a 100,000 light year galaxy (Milky Way for example) we won't see signs of it for another 90,000 years.

3.) We are simply the most advanced life form so far in our neighborhood.
Posted by DarthVader 2020-09-09 10:00||   2020-09-09 10:00|| Front Page Top

#20 Its because the galaxy is flat.
Posted by swksvolFF 2020-09-09 10:42||   2020-09-09 10:42|| Front Page Top

#21 Have you considered that somebody had to be first and God has a sense of humor?
Posted by NoMoreBS 2020-09-09 12:20||   2020-09-09 12:20|| Front Page Top

#22 Can't be that hard. Captain Kirk and Spock discovered the Horta.
Posted by Bobby 2020-09-09 12:36||   2020-09-09 12:36|| Front Page Top

#23 ń Klap van die windmeul weg hê

That's sure idiomatic Afrikaans. What's it mean? Is it the equivalent of "blow me down!"?
Posted by KBK 2020-09-09 13:03||   2020-09-09 13:03|| Front Page Top

#24 Be hit by a windmill
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-09-09 13:47||   2020-09-09 13:47|| Front Page Top

#25 Be hit by a windmill
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-09-09 13:47||   2020-09-09 13:47|| Front Page Top

#26 Be hit by a windmill
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-09-09 13:47||   2020-09-09 13:47|| Front Page Top

#27 Oooops.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-09-09 13:51||   2020-09-09 13:51|| Front Page Top

#28 Yeah, I got that far, Grom, but it's clearly a colorful colloquial comment. For what?
Posted by KBK 2020-09-09 19:27||   2020-09-09 19:27|| Front Page Top

#29 Ah, OK, a link. That has to be the world's worst website!

"To not be in your right mind"
Posted by KBK 2020-09-09 19:33||   2020-09-09 19:33|| Front Page Top

23:55 gorb
23:54 gorb
23:53 gorb
23:39 Clem
23:35 Clem
23:33 Clem
23:29 Vespasian Ebbereng3110
23:16 DarthVader
22:50 Vespasian Ebbereng3110
22:42 JohnQC
21:51 trailing wife
21:20 gorb
21:07 gorb
21:02 gorb
20:46 Secret Master
20:23 Procopius2k
20:21 Procopius2k
20:13 SteveS
20:01 Ebbomoger Speaking for Boskone4589
20:01 TZSenator
20:00 Whasing Gretle5841
19:40 charger
19:39 Sholutle Uleling6061
19:36 CrazyFool









Paypal:
Google
Search WWW Search rantburg.com