SETI just got €100mil to look for Aliens

_Tombstone_

Russian billionaire Yuri Milner just gave the hunt for alien life a giant cash infusion a $100 million investment. Over the next 10 years, the new Breakthrough Listen initiative will vastly expand the scope and reach of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, called SETI for short.

Whats going on here then?

They promise to tell the world if they find anything. Hmm.

The first of two initiatives announced today, Breakthrough Listen, will be the most powerful, comprehensive and intensive scientific search ever undertaken for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth. The second, Breakthrough Message, will fund an international competition to generate messages representing humanity and planet Earth, which might one day be sent to other civilizations.

Breakthrough Listen

Biggest scientific search ever undertaken for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth.

Significant access to two of the world's most powerful telescopes – 100 Meter Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, USA ("Green Bank Telescope")1 and 64-metre diameter Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia ("Parkes Telescope").

50 times more sensitive than previous programs dedicated to SETI research.
Will cover 10 times more of the sky than previous programs.

Will scan at least 5 times more of the radio spectrum – and 100 times faster.

In tandem with a radio search, Automated Planet Finder Telescope at Lick Observatory in California, USA ("Lick Telescope")2 will undertake world's deepest and broadest search for optical laser transmissions.

Initiative will span 10 years.

Financial commitment is $100,000,000.

http://www.breakthroughinitiatives.org/AreWeAlone

Frynge

WOW!

_Tombstone_

They should get together with NASA NExSS Coalition.

NASA is bringing together experts spanning a variety of scientific fields for an unprecedented initiative dedicated to the search for life on planets outside our solar system.

The Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, or "NExSS", hopes to better understand the various components of an exoplanet, as well as how the planet's stars and neighbor planets interact to support life.

NExSS will bring together these prominent research communities in an unprecedented collaboration, to share their perspectives, research results, and approaches in the pursuit of one of humanity's deepest questions: Are we alone?

The team will help classify the diversity of worlds being discovered, understand the potential habitability of these worlds, and develop tools and technologies needed in the search for life beyond Earth.

Duiske

Frynge wrote: »

WOW!

Almost 38 years have passed. More likely to be WTF or OMFG next time.

Second Toughest in_the Freshers

I'd be more interested in Breakthrough Message, and what we might send out.

I wonder what we would have made of a message like this if we had received it, with no colour coding or explanation, just a binary sequence,
https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message

Capt'n Midnight

The main message we are sending out is a huge spike around 3GHz from navigation radars.

Thanks to digital TV and the phasing out of analog radio the broadcast bands have dropped a lot in power , there's a lot less spillover and are now sending out white noise.

We have nearly reached the point of Star Trek the motion picture where an analog radio signal wouldn't be picked up unless someone was looking for it.

_Tombstone_

VOYAGER’S GOLDEN RECORD FOR ALIENS NOW AVAILABLE ON SOUNDCLOUD

SpaceTime

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The main message we are sending out is a huge spike around 3GHz from navigation radars.

Thanks to digital TV and the phasing out of analog radio the broadcast bands have dropped a lot in power , there's a lot less spillover and are now sending out white noise.

We have nearly reached the point of Star Trek the motion picture where an analog radio signal wouldn't be picked up unless someone was looking for it.

We actually send out one hell of a signal on 50 & 60Hz as power grids are more and more synchronised over large continental systems due to interconnections.

_Tombstone_

How SETI Will Understand Messages Broadcast by an Alien Intelligence

Capt'n Midnight

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

How SETI Will Understand Messages Broadcast by an Alien Intelligence

Did any earth bound scientists manage to decode the Aecibo message when they tried it out ?

namloc1980

Would much prefer to see $100m going into actual space exploration than this needle in a haystack effort (assuming the needle even exists).

Into The Blue

If all the bandwidth I've donated to them since 1999 hasn't found anything.. nothing will. Time to power down lads.

Maximus Alexander

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Did any earth bound scientists manage to decode the Aecibo message when they tried it out ?

In the one hand I think it's nonsense and no ETI is going to understand it, but on the other hand it's pretty obviously an artificial signal.

Thargor

The prime number component would be instantly spotted by any alien scientists or computers. All of the math stuff would be.

Capt'n Midnight

Thargor wrote: »

The prime number component would be instantly spotted by any alien scientists or computers. All of the math stuff would be.

Yes if they could receive the full message they could figure out the pattern , but would they make sense of it ?

Look at the yellow blocks. It includes a planetoid.

_Tombstone_

I see a red man.

Second Toughest in_the Freshers

how about now?

StonyIron

The main thing you'd want to send inititially is a signal that looks very definitely artificial.

Decoding it may well be entirely impossible as we aren't likely to be viewing the universe from the same point of view. We could have evolved very differently and have a totally different set of senses and perception.

My sense is that at best we'll just be able to detect ETI exists and that's about as far as it'll go.

( unless one party decided to pay a visit or send a probe)

_Tombstone_

Are we looking for ET all wrong?

_Tombstone_

GOOD NIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT: ADVANCED ALIEN CIVILISATIONS RARE OR

ThunderCat

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

GOOD NIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT: ADVANCED ALIEN CIVILISATIONS RARE OR

Is it not a bit naïve of us to think we would know what a type 3 civilizations energy emissions look like. If they are so incomprehensibly more advanced than us then surely their technologies would also be incomprehensible to us. We shouldn't pre-empt what they are seeing as we aren't even regarded as type 1 intelligence yet.

Zillah

ThunderCat wrote: »

Is it not a bit naïve of us to think we would know what a type 3 civilizations energy emissions look like. If they are so incomprehensibly more advanced than us then surely their technologies would also be incomprehensible to us. We shouldn't pre-empt what they are seeing as we aren't even regarded as type 1 intelligence yet.

Best comparison I've heard is: you send a guy into a modern office with a walkie talkie and tell him to check if there are any signals. He confirms no. Meanwhile everyone is sending vast amounts of data around via SSM, MMS, bluetooth, WhatsApp, Wifi etc.

Radio use could very well be a tiny sliver of a civilisation's history.
(obviously not heat-specific but relevant nonetheless)

jacksie66

This post has been deleted.

StonyIron

Zillah wrote: »

Best comparison I've heard is: you send a guy into a modern office with a walkie talkie and tell him to check if there are any signals. He confirms no. Meanwhile everyone is sending vast amounts of data around via SSM, MMS, bluetooth, WhatsApp, Wifi etc.

Radio use could very well be a tiny sliver of a civilisation's history.
(obviously not heat-specific but relevant nonetheless)

Yup, a 1950, 60s, 70s radio engineer probably would conclude that there was a lot of static and nothing else. The radio transmissions would be totally unintelligible digital pulses that might even seem random of you'd no idea what they are - more recent protocols in particular would definitely seem like static or background noise.

Considering an advanced civilisation might need ultra long distance communications they could be using gravity or quantum entanglement to communicate or any number of methods we mightn't even be aware are even possible.

Encoding signals in radio waves might not even be an obvious way of doing things if you'd discovered some other method first. We're assuming too many things will be just like us.

You've also got the possibility of a species that's evolved biological telecommunications that might be based on physical phenomenon other than light or speech. That would basically be telepathic communication from our perspective.

It's perfectly possible that something as sophisticated as that might have evolved biologically.

You've also got serious possibilities of artificial intelligence being out there existing as fully sentient beings.

I mean, when you think about it, we're basically software - everything from DNA to conscience is just data being processed by organisms in very sophisticated ways. It's quite possible and advanced civilisation would have long since blurred the lines between biology and technology.

We really just beginning to peer into the darkness.

Also when you consider we can't find a large airliner on earth that went missing last year, it just shows we could even have completely missed life in this solar system never mind on exoplanets.

mickmackey1

Yes but having said that, any advanced aliens would obviously be capable of dumbing down their technology if they actually wanted a conversation with us. The fact that we don't use mobile phones to talk with our pet cats and dogs, doesn't stop us from 'communicating' with them.

StonyIron

Yes and no.

When you think about it, we share most of our DNA and evolutionary history with our pet cats and dogs.

We've the same senses, almost identical physiology just laid out differently and we have different versions of the same brain. We've even got basically similar psychology and we understand each other. With pets it's even more extreme as they've evolved (in the case of cats) or been artificially bred (in the case of dogs) to be companion animals for thousands of years.

We're just different versions of the same family of animals - mammals.

Then when you go into other advanced vartibrates like birds we're still remarkably similar and still related.

Try interacting with an octopus or a colony of ants and you start to see how it might be challenging to communicate with an alien species.

Having a chat with fluffy your pet cat, it basically chatting with a distant cousin.

mickmackey1

Well I was referring there to the faint chance that aliens would use radio to communicate with us, even though they may have advanced far beyond that technology in their own societies.

But I get your point about a species being based on physical phenomenon other than light or speech, although it's so much in the realm of speculation that any discussion along those lines seems utterly futile.

Myrddin

mickmackey1 wrote: »

Well I was referring there to the faint chance that aliens would use radio to communicate with us, even though they may have advanced far beyond that technology in their own societies.

I'm sure they could, but they'd need to have picked up our signals first...& if radio is archaic to them, well, they may not be listening via radio. Consider smoke signals, there could be someone down the end of your street trying to communicate with you via smoke signals...you'll never know though, because you're not sitting in your garden watching for them....you're sitting by your smart phone instead...

StonyIron

Myrddin wrote: »

I'm sure they could, but they'd need to have picked up our signals first...& if radio is archaic to them, well, they may not be listening via radio. Consider smoke signals, there could be someone down the end of your street trying to communicate with you via smoke signals...you'll never know though, because you're not sitting in your garden watching for them....you're sitting by your smart phone instead...

It also assumes that radio is an obvious choice. It's quite possible we've missed some fundamental bit of physics and stumbled on radio waves while some other species could easily have done something totally different by discovering some other useful physical phenomena.

The fact that we communicate using sound-waves made radio waves kind of a simple solution for transmitting voice initially.

Analogue encoding of human speech into radio signals was very straight forward. If we communicated using something else it might have led us to some other technology.

Myrddin

StonyIron wrote: »

It's quite possible we've missed some fundamental bit of physics and stumbled on radio waves while some other species could easily have done something totally different by discovering some other useful physical phenomena.

Very true.

_Tombstone_

deGrasse Tyson chatting with Edward Snowden this wk. Covers Alien communication and lots of other stuff.

http://www.startalkradio.net/show/a-conversation-with-edward-snowden-part-1/