Why searching for alien signals is a waste of time

originally posted by: anonentity
a reply to: netbound

How do we define intelligent signals? Every signal that comes in from everywhere contains information about it source. By that definition then everything that comes in from the observed Universe contains information that is intelligent. Just because it happens that self aware individuals sent it, it would contain information purely subjective to their paradigm. Which we wouldn't have a hope in Hades of understanding, because we are looking at it from our perspective. Therefore all signals that we don't understand could be alien in origin. So really we have to look for signals that don't make sense, surely a bit of a paradox, when searching for alien life..

The best way to answer this is that nature makes lots of signals in all of the different frequencies of light. However the way various natural objects in space do this, give this natural noise a distinct look.

And you're right all natural signals contain information about their source and often what it passed through or reflected off of to arrive at whatever we use to detect it. However something produced artificially might have a distinctive look which sets it apart from nature's own cacophony.

Most if not all of the searches I detailed in this thread (which makes the opposite oint of this thread's original post) have constrained the search to filter out this natural noise while also looking for that which would be expected from an artificial source given what we know about physics.

a reply to: JadeStar

Filtering out artificial noise, from the general Universal cacophony, might be an almost impossible task, its a bit like what humanity does to actually operate. Our senses are tuned , to filter out most wavelengths, and then to form a model of what we consider real from that limited input, purely for survival in our peculiar terrestrial niche . Which as a purely internalised model, would be subjective mostly to the human ape, and some simian cousins, which is what we consider to be an operational reality that works for the species. So like the honey Bee which is tuned to operate in a reality where it sees in the Ultra violet, we assume that extra-terrestrial life forms, would use a filter of the input similar to us. That's a big ask, especially at a time when communication with non human species on this earth is in its infancy, but eminently possible at even this stage of the game, to have meaningful conversations with our simian cousins. Who incidentally most of humanity would consider Bush Meat.

originally posted by: Mastronaut

originally posted by: imitator
You got that wrong ... advanced technology makes communication easy with old stuff, with a cell phone you could detect/transmit morse code almost anywhere on earth! Morse code can be decoded and transmitted in millions of ways.

I wouldn't be surprised if an advanced civilization uses some form of morse code or binary signal for contact, a little QRP exchange ... The tricky part is not missing the signal or mistaking it for something else.

My bad I did a bad example. Imagine to transmit signals with some kind of warped gravity waves.

Yeah I can imagine it ... it's still not a problem for morse code if we have a gravitational wave transceiver.

Aliens could use their star to amplify and distort space time as a binary beacon for lower intelligent life. Their message would probably be simple to decode.... it'll probably say, "Ak Ak ak." .- -.- .- -.- .- -.-

originally posted by: imitator
Yeah I can imagine it ... it's still not a problem for morse code if we have a gravitational wave transceiver.

Aliens could use their star to amplify and distort space time as a binary beacon for lower intelligent life. Their message would probably be simple to decode.... it'll probably say, "Ak Ak ak." .- -.- .- -.- .- -.-

This time it was your bad tho because my point wasn't about the encoding, but the technology for transmission, that's why my previous example was bad.
And ye I'm sure that, if we were able to receive it, it would be something that an alien species would consider "easy" to understand.

"I just don't seem to get my head around the idea that alien life will have anything in common with humanity or be anything like a human form. "
a reply to: Shiloh7
I read somewhere that more than one scientists concur that bipedal locomotion is probably likely given the physics of this universe. And using parameters which made sense (to me, at the time) they figured out the mass of an individual life form or rather, the upper limits of what the probable bipedal life form could be, in terms of mass. I'll get the link!

Well scratch that maybe. I think I was just remembering someone's sci-Fi review which briefly talked about Panspermia.
But here's an interesting discussion:
"Lastly, if we were to encounter a race of extraterrestrial beings, they would be likely to be somewhat similar to us in size, probably no smaller than a foot and no larger than twenty feet in height. As creatures grow larger and their lifespans increase, evolution slows for them. Diseases evolve exponentially more rapidly than humans because they reproduce and die so rapidly. Another reason why the height of an alien would likely fall on a similar scale to our own is because as a general formula, weight = height cubed, but strength = height squared. A low gravity world would be capable of supporting taller life forms, but less capable of retaining an atmosphere which is important not only to fulfill oxygen requirements but also to shield the planet from meteors, radiation, and temperature extremes. A heavy gravity world, by contrast, would make it much less likely for complex organisms above insect size to develop, which would strongly inhibit the evolution of life span and intelligence." link to discussion

Pardon my lack of a grasp of rudimentary physics, and the obvious lack of an Internet search... But can radio waves go through a wormhole? Supposing there are worms "out there", of course.

a reply to: Mastronaut

a reply to: kkrattiger

Well supposing there are, I think yes. But it's a big assumption.

originally posted by: Mastronaut
This time it was your bad tho

because my point wasn't about the encoding, but the technology for transmission, that's why my previous example was bad.

Right on bro lol.... regardless of how advanced these civilizations become with their technology. Just like a cell phone could be used to send morse code to an old telegraph system/ to a graviton transmitter being decoded on a tally stick, etc... it wouldn't detect the gravity waves, but possibly count the binary effects of it lol....

The point is it's all correlated, and vice versa.

a reply to: imitator

Ok I think I have a better example tho limited.
Imagine you have a tribe that communicate with sound (drums, horns, whatever) at distance. They want to test if there are other civilizations in space so they point their ears to the sky. You can throw at them whatever EM frequency and they'll never hear anything because their receivers are acoustic they will only hear the sound coming from the interactions of the waves in their atmosphere. So it could take thousands of years before they could find a pattern that discerns between the variables in their atmosphere and the interaction of the signal, even tho the signal can have a much easier pattern to detect with the correct instruments.
And we would never use an acoustic signal to transmit a message.

We actually can't know what is the (and IF there is) a different tech to transmit signals across the universe, so we are limited to find civilizations that are in range and at a similar tech level. We may use EM waves for the next 100k years to transmit signals, but we can't predict the future, the only thing we know for sure is that if such signals reached Earth 300 years ago, even assuming they were discernible from the background, focused on this planet and coded so that even a baby can find a pattern they would be lost.

Signal and carrier are correlated yes, but we can only predict the future tech based on our current tech and theories. So the chances that our current methods are going to work even assuming a much bigger density of civilizations than we expect can take an enormous amount of time.

NOTE: ofc focusing the sky with radio telescopes to check for patterns is not just a matter of finding alien messages. So it doesn't mean we shouldn't do it at all, but having a focus on some particular frequency to find aliens is imho futile.

Fun thing: I also imagine an equal alien civilization finding our pattern and organizing conferences about a new space object with particular physics to match our signals and drawing a lot of artist impressions of how such a star would seem to them (think about pulsars and other periodic objects for ex).

originally posted by: game over man
You realized we haven't started looking?

You realize that we've been looking ever since we were cavemen staring up at the night sky?

a reply to: Mastronaut

Oh, hey, you utilized my favorite example by Arthur C. Clarke. A star for you!

Keep in mind that an intelligent civilization that might be a few thousand years more advanced than us. An absolute possibility. They would have moved on beyond mere radio signals but would understand that this is how we communicate and thus could be using them to try to signal the possible habitable planets they have found. Just like we have found with Kepler. Also not only could they be trying to reach us or communicate with us from they're home planet, they will have send probes, dozens, hundreds or thousands of years ago that could be closing in on us with the only mission of transmitting radio signals at earth. Who knows what a planet thousands of years more advanced than us could or would do.

Again, not futile at all. But this is merely the first step.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

There are lifeforms right here on our planet, we can't see or hear. Some we can see and hear but can barely interact with, if at all.

We are limited not just in our intelligence, we are grossly limited in our range of vision and hearing. We have terrestrial life we can't see or hear and we know it is here.

It is sad but true. Our egos prevent us from the most likely. If there is intelligent life out there that has the ability to communicate with us, why would they want to?

Searching may not necessarily be a complete waste. It is just not very likely to yield the results we are hoping for.

originally posted by: kkrattiger
Pardon my lack of a grasp of rudimentary physics, and the obvious lack of an Internet search... But can radio waves go through a wormhole? Supposing there are worms "out there", of course.

a reply to: Mastronaut

They can. And if wormholes exist they do. Because radio waves (and all EM waves) travel across the surface of space time. If there is a tunnel which provides an inner "surface" as a wormhole would then these waves might be expected to bend around them or into them.



In fact, this is an idea on how a real wormhole might be detected through gravitational microlensing of radio and other wavelengths in a distinct, identifiable way:




It would cause a "double peak" in a light curve and a specific shape in an FFT display of a radio signal:

Light Curves

a reply to: JadeStar

I understand that the problem with wormholes though is that their entrance is essentially at the event horizon of a black hole. Thus there's the issue of finding and using a sphere of exotic matter to open the "throat" of the wormhole to make it safely traversable. I assume that's something we just can't find lying around just anywhere, right?

originally posted by: Kojiro
a reply to: JadeStar

I understand that the problem with wormholes though is that their entrance is essentially at the event horizon of a black hole. Thus there's the issue of finding and using a sphere of exotic matter to open the "throat" of the wormhole to make it safely traversable. I assume that's something we just can't find lying around just anywhere, right?

Yes, that is it exactly.

Wormholes can exist in theory but they require either negative mass or negative energy (the same thing really under relativity).

We do not know how to make negative mass or negative energy but that doesn't mean someone else or perhaps even mother nature haven't done so.

So we search.

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: Kojiro
a reply to: JadeStar

I understand that the problem with wormholes though is that their entrance is essentially at the event horizon of a black hole. Thus there's the issue of finding and using a sphere of exotic matter to open the "throat" of the wormhole to make it safely traversable. I assume that's something we just can't find lying around just anywhere, right?

Yes, that is it exactly.

Wormholes can exist in theory but they require either negative mass or negative energy (the same thing really under relativity).

We do not know how to make negative mass or negative energy but that doesn't mean someone else or perhaps even mother nature haven't done so.

So we search.

It might be as simple as balls of electrons, a lot of reported anomalies, seem to show a ball of energy. In the static sense when atmospheric conditions are right electrons would bunch together, and attach to each other because of the same charge, when the density increases so their is only an electron orb, the protons in the surrounding matter would keep the ball shape going because its repelling them. Then asking what do electrons do?, they have the ability to instantly jump shells when orbiting a nucleus, like leave space time? as their positions in space time is indeterminate. So if their was enough of them in one spot, hey presto a time anomaly? if their is a time anomaly then automatically their is a space anomaly.