Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: Parsiminous on 05/11/2007 02:12:11
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Hi Folks, I have been doing some thinking and reading on SETI and their approach to detecting signals.
I've come to the conclusion that, well, The SETI program, as conceived and executed by The Planetary Society, U of C Berkeley, et al, is fundamentally flawed because they use antennas designed to detect radio waves, light waves, and micro waves at a distance that is beyond their capability. Antennas (including satellite dishes) collect waves that match the frequency to which they are tuned. Unbound, waves disperse over time and distance. They are called "waves" because they behave precisely like a wave in the water. A signal sent from a planet 130 light years away would have existed for 130 years before it is read, and would have weakened and stretched to a length greater than the length of any wave that can be detected by any equipment currently in use. Scientists study events that happened in the past, including what they believe to be evidence of the Big Bang singularity, by examining their effects on other things, like the rate that a specific body travels within a fixed point in space. They do not have at their disposal any instrument that can measure these events directly.
I see this leading to the conclusion that our current technology renders SETI as mere entertainment. Maybe I'm missing something fundamental here? Thanks for your input! Chris
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While I am no particular proponent of SETI, I don't really see your argument as making any sense.
You seem to be saying we cannot say much about a radio wave that has travelled 130 light years; but since radio waves are electromagnetic waves, just like light waves, so the same argument could be said of light reaching us from the same distances. Are you therefore saying we cannot be sure of the light we see that we believe to be emitted from distant stars?
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thanks for the quick reply A_S.
While I know I must be wrong somewhere in thinking about the situation, I can't figure out exactly where -it's been a while since I took a physics class:). I'm not saying that the situation is analogous to light from distant stars, and we can analyze that light for it's properties. But with SETI's detection, they are looking for non-random, or non-naturally, occurring patterns. Any pattern would lengthen out as it progresses through space to the point of incoherence on the receiving signals end, right?
Radio signals travel much slower than light. I don't know the conversion, so I'll give the benefit of the doubt and say they're the same. So they're scanning for signals sent 200 years ago. Unfortunately, radio waves spread out over time and distance, so in order for this to work, they would have to cover a very large space with their antennas, and digitally alter the signal that was sent centuries ago. If they found the beginning of a wave in the 1,200 and 3,000 MHz range right now, how long would it take to read the entire wave, assuming their antennas were locked onto it (which Project Phoenix's antennas were not capable of)? Multiply that by the chances that the wave they were chasing was actually a meaningful transmission. The answer is more than the life span of a human.
These constraints seem to point toward SETI never having a real chance of recognizing a radio (or otherwise) signal.
I'm not sure what I'm missing here, and appreciate anybody pointing it out!
Chris
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You are wrong in a number of counts.
First, all electromagnetic waves travel with exactly the same velocity through a perfect vacuum (this is a basic tenet of relativity, and if this is shown not to be so, then it will undermine much of what is believed in modern physics). Although no real world vacuum is perfect, for all practical purposes, space may be considered sufficiently much a perfect vacuum for our purposes (we know of no significant refraction in space, and if such refraction did exist, it would be something that would be observable).
Secondly, EM waves do not stretch longitudinally (as far as we are aware) as they travel through space. We would expect red shift of all EM waves due to objects that are further away from us also to be travelling away from us, causing a doppler shift (this is part of the known expansion of the universe, and is something we know about, and adjust for). That the waves will reduce in amplitude as they travel through space (unless they are focused waves) is also known, and this is what causes more distant stars to appear to be fainter (they will appear fainter in the radio spectrum just as they appear fainter in the visible spectrum).
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I do not believe in SETI not because of waves stretching or any thing like that but because of the utter futility of trying to hold any conversation with any beings 100 light years away.
The technical limits to communication are about 1000 LY but although it would be interesting to receive conformation that there is 'someone out there' two way communication is a no no.
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We can observe stars located at great distances because of the tremendous power radiated. I haven't done any calculations, but I doubt if we could detect a 50KW radio transmission, typical for commercial radio and TV stations, from a multi-light-year distance. The aliens would have to use tremendously powerful transmitters in order for us to detect the signal. From what I understand, the SETI people receive extremely low signal-to-noise ratio signals and rely on long duration signal processing and hope to average out the noise. They rely on statistical techniques to look for nonrandom components in the radio signal.
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I believe the 1000 LY range assumed 10MW transmitter, 1 Hz bandwith and Acibro size(300m) Antenna's correctly directed.
They would have to wait 2000 years to know if they got it right!
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Antennas have no limit to the 'distance' they can look. They are limited (along with the receivers) by the energy levels they can detect. This, in turn, limits the actual information they can get out of a signal they receive.
The bandwidth for SETI is very narrow, which gives them a huge help. The directions in which they can look are determined by the daily spin of the Earth.
Whilst we can't hope to carry on a conversation with anyone more than a very few light years away, we can get information from them. This could be useful or deadly - and we should have to be very careful in how we acted on anything we collected.
In our limited way, we are spreading information around the Galaxy - to a distance of nearly 90 light years!
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Here is a good analysis of the technical matters involved with extra terrestrial communication
http://home.fnal.gov/~carrigan/SETI/SETI%20Hacker_AC-03-IAA-8-3-06.doc
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Here is a good analysis of the technical matters involved with extra terrestrial communication
http://home.fnal.gov/~carrigan/SETI/SETI%20Hacker_AC-03-IAA-8-3-06.doc
I do like the notion of an intergalactic computer virus.
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Does anyone remember 'A for Andromeda"?
Scientists on Earth receive information from an Alien source on how to make a new computer. The computer then creates a new life form.
It's only through luck that the 'monster' (played by Julie Christie, I seem to remember and she can take me over any time!) fails in its task and the Earth survives.
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I remember it well, the author certainly stretched the computer technology that was available at the time.
going further back two decades there was a wonderfull series on the wireless about the Establishment of a colony on Mars, does anyone else remember that?
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'Journey into space; the Red Planet' by Charles Chiltern.
Andrew Faulds played Jet Morgan, the leader of the crew.
I was allowed to stay up for that one!
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'Journey into space; the Red Planet' by Charles Chiltern.
Andrew Faulds played Jet Morgan, the leader of the crew.
I was allowed to stay up for that one!
Good God! You people are as old as me. They rebroadcast these in the early 90s (late 80s). Syphrum, the tapes of A for Andromeda were wiped, so you'll have to rely on your memory and a Dr. Zhivago DVD.
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I heard some of J into S on Radio 7 this summer. AAAH
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This is Geezer Corner, I'll appoint myself president!
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fbestsmileys.com%2Fangry2%2F11.gif&hash=ef77c6e2d50d42acd17192a634104bfe)
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Sophie
I was a little surprised that you could remember so much detail from the age of four but I note there has been a recent re broadcast also a CD is available.
I have clear recollections of the first serial broadcast on the wireless when I was five ( The count of Monti christo ), I hope they get round to repeating this but it was before the days of tape recording.
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Hi,
Since this is a favorite subject of mine, I always have google notify me when it comes up. A possible absence of signals denoting intelligence may be for the simple reason that no creature that reaches sentience gets very far:
"Why is SETI not receiving ET signals?"
http://www.goodfelloweb.com/nature/ideas/seti_faliure.htm
Best,
Stephen Goodfellow
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Our transmitters are far too weak to reach very far at all. Even various SETI groups admit it.
I have done a lot of calculations and it suggests we would need transmitters 1000's Millions and even billions of times more powerful that we have depending on the distance you want to cover.
The other problem is when you have highly direction antennas is knowing where to point them. Even a 'smallish' dish with a one degree beam width can point at any azimuth 0 - 360 deg and 0 - 90 elevation.. So that is 360 x 90 possible directions.. = 32,400 possible directions. The chance of two similar antennas aligning is 32,400 sqrd = over 1 billion to 1.
I know we can see distant stars and pick up radio noise from them but like our Sun they are mind-bogglingly powerful.
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From SETI Institute...
"""If an extraterrestrial civilization has a SETI project similar to Project Phoenix, could they hear Earth?
In general, no. Most earthly transmitters are too weak to be detectable by Phoenix-type equipment at the distance of even the nearest star. To detect "leakage" radiation similar to our own will require instruments that are many times more sensitive than what we now have."""
http://www.seti.org/about-us/faq.php
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I understand that SETI mainly concerns itself with bandwidths of about 1 Hz, if the aliens had a different concept of time 1 nHz might be what was needed which of course would lead to much greater range but would be pretty meaningless to we Earthlings
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It also depends whether the alien civilisation wants to be heard. A lot of modern communications uses techniques called spread spectrum processing in which narrow band signals are sent down broad band channels using a correlation process and not a convetional carrier. If you design transmitters like this they can be virtually indistinguishable from noise.
It has been said that if there were the deep space equivalent of pirates out there looking for life forms to plunder our radio and television signals would be a beacon to drag them in so the sooner we get into spread spectrum signalling for all high power applications the safer we are likely to be :-)
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People say that radio waves go on forever and it is just a matter of the received signal being above the noise floor or not. But there must be a limit where there are simply no electroncs being stimulated by an Earth transmitter in a distant bit of metal.
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I am not quite sure what you are trying to say here. There are always limits to them sensitivity of all types of receivers but with good technology and signal processing it is amazing how sensitive they can be.
When you get down to the quantum levels for radiation that it is possible to detect individual quanta there is no limit to the range of detection of the quanta but there could be too many interefering quanta to detect any sensible communication.
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As I say at some distance from earth there will be no electrons being stimulated by a transmitter on Earth. There is a finite limit. Once you get to only one electron being stimulated the next step further out is zero. Is my flea power 2.4 GHz router stimulating any electrons in a distant planet or on the Sydney Harbour Bridge?
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next step further out is zero
No, it's not zero, it's just one electron per hour instead of one electron per minute or one per second. If you take long enough to do your energy gathering you can look further and further away and at weaker and weaker signals. There is no fundamental limit, as long as you take long enough over it and do come statistical analysis of the signals your receive.
There would be, of course, practical limits, but it's a matter of money, in the end.
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One electron per hour?
No. Drift velocity of electron is fairly slow anyway and doesn't vary much and an individual electron doesn't travel far. The impulse to get them moving travels very fast. Anyway we are talking about a high frequency signal.
There must be a point where there simply isn't enough energy being received to stimulate any electrons at all.
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No. The energy of a photon, if it gets there, is the same as when it started (less a tiny bit for the red shift). All it takes, in principle, is one photon to get one electron excited.
At very low signal levels and with low energy photons, associated with radio waves things aren't as straightforward as with optical image intensifiers (in that case, you get one 'flash' per photon). Nonetheless,signal to noise ratio never actually bottoms out - it just gets harder and harder and takes longer.
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Can't see it. My watch is a tiny tiny fleapower transmitter at 32.768 KHz barely detectable with a receiver right next to it. Is it going to be stimulating electrons in a bit of copper 1000 lt years away? Can't see it somehow. What if I put it 100 metres under water (assuming it survives. Would it still be stimulating electrons at a great distance. Of course not. There MUST be a limit.
If want you to talk photons then they are speading out covering a greater and greater area the further they travel so at some point the density beacome so low that they miss the bit of copper by millions of km.
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If one photon gets there it will have an effect.
Your idea of a 'limit' implies that NO photon will EVER get to your remote detector. In fact, there is a finite (but extremely small) probability that a photon will get there. There is a huge difference in these two views.
There will be a practical limit, of course - you will only have a finite amount of time to look for photons from your submerged watch so it probably won't be detected. But it's not a complete 'NO'.
I don't think we really have any disagreement here as long as we acknowledge it is a matter of degree - not an absolute. It depends on the amount of time you are prepared to wait for an answer from your detecting equipment; that's, effectively using a narrower and narrower bandwidth to reject the effect of noise.
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SETI is flawed because it's pointless. It's the biggest waste of processing power in the world today.
Even if we detected something it could be long dead. If it wasn't long dead, we have no way of establishing contact. Even if it had it's own search for intelligent life going on, it might well not see anything we send.
The only purpose it could possibly serve for us to know that there is intelligent life somewhere else is so that we can all look up and say "We are not alone"... What a waste of time. Oh...oh... and think of the carbon footprint :lol:
The processing power being used would be far better used to process things that advance or change our understanding of things that we are technically capable of, try folding at home... that's at least working on a field that we can do something with.
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Can't see it. My watch is a tiny tiny fleapower transmitter at 32.768 KHz barely detectable with a receiver right next to it. Is it going to be stimulating electrons in a bit of copper 1000 lt years away? Can't see it somehow. What if I put it 100 metres under water (assuming it survives. Would it still be stimulating electrons at a great distance. Of course not. There MUST be a limit.
If want you to talk photons then they are speading out covering a greater and greater area the further they travel so at some point the density beacome so low that they miss the bit of copper by millions of km.
Look for recent threads about that subject, for example
"Direction of Radiation Emitted from Atoms":
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=11872.0
and you'll find interesting things. You can, for example, have a look to jpetruccelli's 6th post:
<<Classically light is a wave. If you put a detector in the way, it will catch all the energy from the wave that would pass through the space it occupies. Two people can see the light bulb from different distances because they are both absorbing different parts of the wave. If I stood right behind someone else, they would absorb all the light coming to me, and I wouldn't see the light bulb.
If you go to quantum mechanics, the light comes in packets which move about according to probability waves. for each photon that gets emitted, each detector has a probability of seeing it that's proportional to the amount of probability wave it intercepts. If we both look at source that emits a single photon, only one of us will see it. However, as lots of photons are emitted, we'll each see some in proportion to the probability we expect to see. >>
By the way: welcome in Quantum Physics! (Your could be a question from a 1900 physicist!).
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Some figures.....
A broadcast FM receiver might work down to 10E-15 Watts (including a bit of aerial gain).. A tiny signal.
A transmitter might be 100 kW.ERP (Effective power with transmit aerial gain).. 10E5 Watts.
So the signal path loss maximum is 10E20 times (diff between power transmitted and that received) . A very big number.
There are on-line calculators to work at the path loss at different frequencies.. At 100 MHz 10E20 (200 dB) occurs at a distance of 2.5 Million Km..
http://wireless.per.nl/reference/chaptr03/fsl.htm
Speed of light is 300,000 Km /sec so the signal will travel for about 8 seconds before becoming too weak.
2.5 Million km is 1/4,000,000 of a light year. So not very far at all.
Narrow band communications will travel much further but even then I think the record distance for communication with a space craft is only 1/600 of a light year.
As someone said signals get a bit garbled over such long distances. They have probs communicating with spacecraft.. There is a 'group delay' problem maybe partly due to the ionosphere but over such large distances very slight differences in the speed of propagation at the different frequencies in a wideband signal cause different bits of the signal to arrive before others.
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Some figures.....
A broadcast FM receiver might work down to 10E-15 Watts (including a bit of aerial gain).. A tiny signal.
A transmitter might be 100 kW.ERP (Effective power with transmit aerial gain).. 10E5 Watts.
So the signal path loss maximum is 10E20 times (diff between power transmitted and that received) . A very big number.
There are on-line calculators to work at the path loss at different frequencies.. At 100 MHz 10E20 (200 dB) occurs at a distance of 2.5 Million Km..
So, if an extraterrestrial civilization 100 light years away from us would send all the signal's power towards our solar system, we would have plenty of power to perceive it...
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Another thing to consider is that the aliens may be afraid to contact us. After all, we're aliens to them. They might worry that we would be dangerous. We humans are so peace-loving, you know :)
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===So, if an extraterrestrial civilization 100 light years away from us would send all the signal's power towards our solar system, we would have plenty of power to perceive it...===
Eh? Only if they had transmitter powers of many Suns.
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===So, if an extraterrestrial civilization 100 light years away from us would send all the signal's power towards our solar system, we would have plenty of power to perceive it...===
Eh? Only if they had transmitter powers of many Suns.
In your previous computation which gave 2.5 millions km as the max distance of the source, I assumed that the signal was not collimated but emitted in all the 4π solid angle.
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It is purely based on spreading out of the RF....Square law basically.
So if 100 kW will reach 2.5 km... to reach 1 ltr year which is 4,000,000 times further then you need 4 million squared times more power. 16 x 10E12 x 10E5 Watts.. = 16 x 10E17 Watts.
or 1,600,000,000. GW. I think the max ouput of all the UKs power stations is about 78 GW.
All in all many times more than all the World's power stsions.
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Don't knock Seti; they're doing less harm than the Government is doing with all my personal details. The screen saver looks nice too.
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Do your personal details have a higher carbon footprint than a computer that's wasting it's time processing random static, in the vain hope that one day someone will be able to look skyward and say "We are not alone" and know that he's right... you do realise that's probably all we will be able to do with any discovery that SETI makes don't you ?
FAH do a screen saver version too [;)]
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It is purely based on spreading out of the RF....Square law basically.
So if 100 kW will reach 2.5 km... to reach 1 ltr year which is 4,000,000 times further then you need 4 million squared times more power. 16 x 10E12 x 10E5 Watts.. = 16 x 10E17 Watts.
or 1,600,000,000. GW. I think the max ouput of all the UKs power stations is about 78 GW.
All in all many times more than all the World's power stsions.
If the signal is more collimated you don't need more power at all.
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collimated
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We are talking about low frequencies here...very long wavelengths...not light. It will always be a diverging beam even if you had parabolic dishes of enormous size. If it is diverging then square law applies.
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Every 'beam' diverges. The term 'collimated' is not absolute. The inverse square always applies but, sometimes, the origin of the transmission is a' virtual' one; waves diverge as if from this point and follow the ISL. The principles of optics and waves apply to every transmission. Have you heard of the concept of Antenna Gain?
As far as I can see, there are plenty of potential sources within the range of the Seti receiving system. It's just a matter of bandwidth and the rate at which you want to receive the information.
The recent discovery of many stars with their own solar systems is increasing the probability that we will get something from someone.
Home computers will always be used inefficiently and left idle for, at least, minutes on end, even if they are not left on overnight. Productive screensavers will always be justified for use in such circumstances.
In addition to the 'long shot' of discovering alien intelligence, there is the other possibility of discovering other regular signals from, as yet, unknown and unexplained, natural phenomena. Seti can reveal these, too.
There are many other things to have a more justifiable rant about.
Give nerds a break.
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collimated
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We are talking about low frequencies here...very long wavelengths...not light. It will always be a diverging beam even if you had parabolic dishes of enormous size. If it is diverging then square law applies.
Yes, but sending 1W of power in all directions as a spherical wave (solid angle = 4π) it's different than sending the same power in a very small solid angle; you say that it will always be a diverging beam but this phrase is meaningless, as sophiecentaur wrote; what counts is how much you can make it collimated, that is, how small you can make the solid angle of the emission. Yes, it's a radio signal and not light, but as we are able to make MASERs (Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maser
a technologically advanced civilization could make "RASERs" (Radiowave Amplification...).
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Doesn't matter how small you make the beam (usually defined as the angle between 3dB points) square law still applies. Even with a very tiny angle the beam will be very wide in km at the distances we are talking about. Double the distance and it will be twice as wide and the RF has to cover 4 times the area. We talk about ERP..Effective Radiated Power. ERP = Transmitter Power x Antenna Gain. The distant receiving point (in the beam) doesn't know whether the transmitter is high power with a small antenna or a lower power transmitter and high gain antenna (more focussing).
I can't see a maser generating a very narrow beam without a large parabolic dish. They don't seem to be used for transmission. They have been used as low noise amplifiers but probably modern Gallium Arsenide devices are much simpler and better.
Long distance lasers need large lens and even then there is divergence...
From a site.... Like all electromagnetic beams, lasers are subject to divergence, which is measured in milliradians (mrad) or degrees.
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Diffraction will always occur as waves go through an aperture. For a Maser, Laser or whatever, the 'divergence' of the beam will be affected by how wide it is. To get a Maser with low divergence, you would need a large diameter, in wavelengths.
I'm not sure that a maser is of any benefit for a transmitting system; it is easy to produce high powers levels of coherent microwaves with other means, these days and Masers are hideously inefficient - as are lasers.
Maser amplification may still be good value for low noise receivers (with noise temperatures of 10K).
A large dish - many km across would give gain / directivity but we all (?) agree that there is divergence, whatever you do.
Signal to noise ratio is the issue. You can get some information out of any signal as long as you are prepared to wait, using a narrow enough bandwidth. The receiver noise performance is also very relevant.
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Home computers will always be used inefficiently and left idle for, at least, minutes on end, even if they are not left on overnight. Productive screensavers will always be justified for use in such circumstances.
In addition to the 'long shot' of discovering alien intelligence, there is the other possibility of discovering other regular signals from, as yet, unknown and unexplained, natural phenomena. Seti can reveal these, too.
There are many other things to have a more justifiable rant about.
Give nerds a break.
Rant? Who has been ranting ?
It's still a waste of processing power! You could be using it to much better effect, helping to advance something we can work on, instead of dreaming of ET.
As a geek I resemble that statement LOL
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Diffraction will always occur as waves go through an aperture. For a Maser, Laser or whatever, the 'divergence' of the beam will be affected by how wide it is. To get a Maser with low divergence, you would need a large diameter, in wavelengths.
I'm not sure that a maser is of any benefit for a transmitting system; it is easy to produce high powers levels of coherent microwaves with other means, these days and Masers are hideously inefficient - as are lasers.
Maser amplification may still be good value for low noise receivers (with noise temperatures of 10K).
A large dish - many km across would give gain / directivity but we all (?) agree that there is divergence, whatever you do.
Signal to noise ratio is the issue. You can get some information out of any signal as long as you are prepared to wait, using a narrow enough bandwidth. The receiver noise performance is also very relevant.
Ok. What if they exploited a massive object's focusing power?
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If you compare light with a 3 metre wavelength I have been on about then a 30mm (quite small) reflector for light would become a 180km reflector..rather large.
The problem is with a very narrow angle beam is the difficult of keeping it on track with the movement of Earth and the target 'world'....that is if you know where to point it in the first place.
Some SETI people think the only chance is using a very low carrier frequency (0.1 Hz) and consequently an extremely low data rate. As there is a wavelength term in path loss caluclations due to lower frequencies having physically larger antennas... For the same field in volts per metre then a very long 0.1 Hz diople antenna would produce a billion times the voltage of a 100 MHz antenna.... A billion billion times the power. And dipoles produce a very broad beam. However the only place you could build such antennas would be in space and they would be 3 milllion km in length!
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Quote.....
------100 How far away could we detect radio transmissions? -----
-------It should be apparent then from these results that the detection of AM
radio, FM radio, or TV pictures much beyond the orbit of Pluto will be
extremely difficult even for an Arecibo-like 305 meter diameter radio
telescope! Even a 3000 meter diameter radio telescope could not
detect the "I Love Lucy" TV show (re-runs) at a distance of 0.01
Light-Years!------
http://stason.org/TULARC/science-engineering/astronomy/100-How-far-away-could-we-detect-radio-transmissions.html
3000 metres is 30 times bigger than any dish we have on Earth.
They seem to have ignored that very little of the AM transmissions would get through the various layers of the ionosphere.
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Talking about wasting electricity; How many of our contributers play computer games?
I question whether they are even a tiny bit more worth while than Seti.