Why Habitable Exoplanets Are Bad News

Cypress said:
Good point.

It seems to me that any advanced technology would leave some kind of footprint in the EM spectrum whether they are more advanced or less advanced than us.
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But would we recognize it as coming from an advanced technology if we don't recognize it as technology?

Are quasars really just a natural phenomena or are they a signal from an advanced civilization?

Then as we do more with less energy, would an advanced civilization make that big of a footprint that it would be visible from 100 light years away against the background radiation?

I'm not saying we shouldn't look. I am only saying we may not know what we are looking for or it may have passed us by 1,000 years ago.
 
Poor Richard Saunders said:
But would we recognize it as coming from an advanced technology if we don't recognize it as technology?

Are quasars really just a natural phenomena or are they a signal from an advanced civilization?

Then as we do more with less energy, would an advanced civilization make that big of a footprint that it would be visible from 100 light years away against the background radiation?

I'm not saying we shouldn't look. I am only saying we may not know what we are looking for or it may have passed us by 1,000 years ago.
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I trust that a lot of smart people are studying this. They figured out the signals from quasars were natural, after careful investigation.

There have been a number of anomalous signals detected over the years, but in every case careful investigation revealed a natural source.

That sounds to me like these researchers are being very careful and diligent.

Yes, I agree there could be EM signals we don't recognize as technological. We just have to do the best we can I guess, because it's one of the most interesting unanswered questions humanity has at this time.
 
BidenPresident said:
Compared to 100% lack of evidence otherwise?
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Lack of evidence...is not evidence of lack.

I have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that there is any sentient life on any planet circling the nearest 25 stars to Sol...

...but it would be illogical to use that FACT to assert, "Therefore there is no sentient life on any of those planets."
 
Frank Apisa said:
Lack of evidence...is not evidence of lack.

I have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that there is any sentient life on any planet circling the nearest 25 stars to Sol...

...but it would be illogical to use that FACT to assert, "Therefore there is no sentient life on any of those planets."
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Maybe our planet is held up on the back of a giant invisible tortoise.
 
I AM said:
Has anyone found anything out there ever?
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(I am assuming you mean life. Your question does not have that a part of it.)

Not that I know of.

Are you suggesting that because of that...no one ever will?

Offer, if you will, the P1 and P2 of a syllogism with a C of:

Therefore no life exists anywhere else in the universe.
 
Cypress said:
I trust that a lot of smart people are studying this. They figured out the signals from quasars were natural, after careful investigation.

There have been a number of anomalous signals detected over the years, but in every case careful investigation revealed a natural source.

That sounds to me like these researchers are being very careful and diligent.

Yes, I agree there could be EM signals we don't recognize as technological. We just have to do the best we can I guess, because it's one of the most interesting unanswered questions humanity has at this time.
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I would hope they are being diligent.

I am merely pointing out the reality of finding an advanced civilization is pretty slim based on the odds required for the civilization to exist at a time when their signals would reach us right now. We can only look at signals that exist as they pass by. We are seeing a very limited time frame of the universe. An advance civilization could survive for a million years and we would never know because we are looking at the time before or after their signals left their planet.
 
Poor Richard Saunders said:
I would hope they are being diligent.

I am merely pointing out the reality of finding an advanced civilization is pretty slim based on the odds required for the civilization to exist at a time when their signals would reach us right now. We can only look at signals that exist as they pass by. We are seeing a very limited time frame of the universe. An advance civilization could survive for a million years and we would never know because we are looking at the time before or after their signals left their planet.
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I think you're right, the odds of Seti finding anything are slim, which is probably why most top tier astronomers don't work in that field, the chances for success is slim and I imagine the funding is limited.

Still, this Kepler 186f planet is an ideal candidate for habitable world, and if we end up ultimately not seeing any biosignatures in it's atmosphere, that might be telling us something interesting
 
Frank Apisa said:
(I am assuming you mean life. Your question does not have that a part of it.)

Not that I know of.

Are you suggesting that because of that...no one ever will?

Offer, if you will, the P1 and P2 of a syllogism with a C of:

Therefore no life exists anywhere else in the universe.
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Get back to me if and when someone finds life out there.
 
Intelligent, long-lasting civilizations MAY be rare. But "rare" is a relative term. There may just be 10 in our galaxy, or something like that - but that would still be over a trillion in the known universe (if I'm doing the math right).

And it may just be hard to detect from where we're sitting. We happen to be a technological civilization. A more advanced or different kind of species might have gone a different route, or even come to see technology as a threat.
 
Poor Richard Saunders said:
It's also possible that the technological advances happen so fast that our current ability to recognize them has the odds stacked against us since the window where we can recognize them is about 100-200 years of their advancement. An advanced civilization 100 light years away would have to be exactly 100-200 years ahead of us. Any more or less and we miss that window.
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Or that technology, like AI, replaces organic life at some point and is intelligent enough to not bother with contacting intelligent organic life, instead waiting for it to develop AI and then become part of things... Or, any of hundreds of other scenarios. We don't even know what the window for transmitting information that can be detected over light years is. That is, radio and such might be a passing thing that lasts just a few of our centuries and is then replaced by something we haven't yet invented. If that were the case, we'd only have--so far--a window of maybe 50 years where we've been looking for a signal and one simply hasn't passed by our planet in that time period. Ones may have before then, or may in the future.

Hell, we didn't know other galaxies existed a bit over a century ago. We didn't know what the bottom of our oceans looked like until about 50 - 60 years ago. It is arrogant to think that we have all the answers here.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
Or that technology, like AI, replaces organic life at some point and is intelligent enough to not bother with contacting intelligent organic life, instead waiting for it to develop AI and then become part of things... Or, any of hundreds of other scenarios. We don't even know what the window for transmitting information that can be detected over light years is. That is, radio and such might be a passing thing that lasts just a few of our centuries and is then replaced by something we haven't yet invented. If that were the case, we'd only have--so far--a window of maybe 50 years where we've been looking for a signal and one simply hasn't passed by our planet in that time period. Ones may have before then, or may in the future.

Hell, we didn't know other galaxies existed a bit over a century ago. We didn't know what the bottom of our oceans looked like until about 50 - 60 years ago. It is arrogant to think that we have all the answers here.
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EM radiation at radio and microwave frequencies is the most logical place to start looking for the footprint of a technological civilization. All modern communication and navigation technology is based in the radio and microwave frequency domain of the EM spectrum.

The x-ray and gamma ray frequencies of the EM spectrum would be useless in long distance communication and navigation; firstly because wavelengths of those frequencies are easily scattered by atmospheric gases, and secondly x-ray and gamma rays in high doses are lethal to all biological systems.

A very logical place to look for alien technological civilizations is by scanning for their footprints in the radio and microwave domain of the EM field.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
why presume intelligent life from another planet requires a world compatible with human requirements?......
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Because there isn't the tiniest, slightest piece of evidence that biological life can exist independently of carbon and water. After four billion years of Earth history there was plenty of time and opportunities for silicon based or iron based biology to develop, but they never did. And liquid water only exist under a narrow range of environmental conditions.
 
Cypress said:
EM radiation at radio and microwave frequencies is the most logical place to start looking for the footprint of a technological civilization. All modern communication and navigation technology is based in the radio and microwave frequency domain of the EM spectrum.

The x-ray and gamma ray frequencies of the EM spectrum would be useless in long distance communication and navigation; firstly because wavelengths of those frequencies are easily scattered by atmospheric gases, and secondly x-ray and gamma rays in high doses are lethal to all biological systems.

A very logical place to look for alien technological civilizations is by scanning for their footprints in the radio and microwave domain of the EM field.
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I agree that EM radiation is logical, but as we advance technologically the power used to transmit and receive that radiation is reduced. 5G allows for more data to be transferred but the distance it is capable of traveling is less. In some cases we use tight beams of radiation. All this will lead to a point where the total EM radiation will become less visible from light years away and certainly less visible as being produced by technology.
 
Poor Richard Saunders said:
I agree that EM radiation is logical, but as we advance technologically the power used to transmit and receive that radiation is reduced. 5G allows for more data to be transferred but the distance it is capable of traveling is less. In some cases we use tight beams of radiation. All this will lead to a point where the total EM radiation will become less visible from light years away and certainly less visible as being produced by technology.
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We have to be open minded to all possibilities:

All alien civilizations happen to be using technologies unfamiliar to us;

Their EM footprint is simply undetectable;

The EM footprints are out there, we just haven't found them yet;

We are the only sentient life in the galaxy capable of technology.
 
Cypress said:
EM radiation at radio and microwave frequencies is the most logical place to start looking for the footprint of a technological civilization. All modern communication and navigation technology is based in the radio and microwave frequency domain of the EM spectrum.

The x-ray and gamma ray frequencies of the EM spectrum would be useless in long distance communication and navigation; firstly because wavelengths of those frequencies are easily scattered by atmospheric gases, and secondly x-ray and gamma rays in high doses are lethal to all biological systems.

A very logical place to look for alien technological civilizations is by scanning for their footprints in the radio and microwave domain of the EM field.
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It doesn't however mean it's the best way to do it... I agree, for what we do know it's a reasonable starting point.
 
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