18
votes
Why aren't we using neutrino emissions to detect alien civilizations?
Neutrinos are difficult to detect. Much of neutrino physics starts with a gazillion neutrinos and hopes to detect a few interactions. These guys published a rough map of terrestrial emissions from all ...
- 1,421
10
votes
Why aren't we using neutrino emissions to detect alien civilizations?
Neutrino emissions are very hard to detect. There are a few neutrino detectors, but they can only detect massive events (supernova explosions etc). We haven't made any that are sensitive enough to ...
- 130k
8
votes
Accepted
Why were Sónar Calling GJ273b messages called secret?
They were called "secret" because the media doesn't really understand what "encoded" means, and in any case "secret" attracts more attention in a headline, which is what sells.
There is nothing ...
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6
votes
How obvious would an Earth-like planet be when searching for signs of life in space?
The predicate of "roughly where Proxima Centauri b is" is a bit problematic. Anything orbiting a star with activity so violent as Proxima is automatically disqualified - the range of ...
- 56k
6
votes
How likely are atomic bomb tests to be detectable by human-equivalent extraterrestrial life?
The correct question might not be: "Are the tests detectable?" (since we don't know the capabilities of possible alien civilizations) but rather "How detectable were the tests compared ...
- 1,273
6
votes
What would happen if less computing resource were volunteered for SETI @ home
SETI@home uses data collected from other projects and searches it for patterns. Pattern searching can go infinity deep as you look for increasing combinations of modulation bandwidth so for a ...
- 25k
5
votes
Why are messages to space constructed as pictograms?
It would certainly be possible to construct a message that doesn't start with pictorial elements, but certain concepts are much easier to get across if you can "point to a picture". It's also easier ...
- 172k
4
votes
Is SETI a waste of time?
Light speed does make it more difficult to have a conversation. It doesn't make it impossible though.
But SETI is about one question: are we alone in the universe? We don't need to be able to ...
- 130k
4
votes
Why aren't we using neutrino emissions to detect alien civilizations?
Stars emit neutrinos. Even if we could detect them easily (hard because as you point out they're very weakly interacting, see other answer), neutrino emissions are hardly a "clear channel" where ...
- 488
3
votes
How obvious would an Earth-like planet be when searching for signs of life in space?
The vast majority of earth-sized planets orbiting sun-like stars at earth-like distances would be impossible to detect with current technology even if the host star was relatively close to us. The ...
- 1,273
3
votes
Accepted
Are we sending data for extraterrestrial SETI/METI?
Arguably, we don't have to make an explicit effort to broadcast an intersteller "hello"; we have been leaking radio signals into space for decades. Anyone with a sufficiently sensitive ...
- 17.6k
3
votes
How likely are atomic bomb tests to be detectable by human-equivalent extraterrestrial life?
If as the quote in the question states, the brightness of a nuclear detonation is comparable to the brightness of the Sun, then an atmospheric or a high altitude nuclear detonation might be detectable,...
- 13.3k
3
votes
Was it a "Soviet military satellite not in any of the catalogs?"
As @Antony X and @Abacus Lever already said, the "secret soviet satellite" is referred to an earlier event, not to the 2015 observation. I could not find what exactly "secret satellite&...
- 9,121
3
votes
Could unexpectedly high levels of interstellar space debris be the Great Filter?
Interstellar travel isn't the issue — stars are close together and even at 10%c the Milky Way could be traversed safely in 10M years. 10M years isn't a factor. Even if it's 100x slower at 0.1%c, ...
- 209
3
votes
Accepted
Does SETI perform search of extremely low bandwidth signals?
SETI analyses signals in the 1000MHz to 9000MHz range. So you would expect communications modulated on these frequencies to utilise the high frequency to include more data rather than less.
That said,...
- 13.7k
2
votes
Why is SETI searching for unusual signal patterns, and not higher levels of randomness than found in background radiation?
Then we have no way of distinguishing that from natural random noise.
Even highly compressed data contains patterns, although their complexity is so high, that distinguishing them from natural noise ...
- 56k
2
votes
What exactly do they look for when searching for extraterrestrial intelligence?
The person that actually developed the algorithms for searching distant radio signals for signs of intelligence is Kent Cullers (portrayed as Kent Clark in the movie Contact). He worked at NASA Ames ...
- 2,621
2
votes
How likely are atomic bomb tests to be detectable by human-equivalent extraterrestrial life?
If the Aliens can have visuals on our planet that can identify the light or radiation of a nuclear explosion and distinguish it from other background radiation , they probably are advanced enough to ...
2
votes
Are we sending data for extraterrestrial SETI/METI?
Consider the millions of short wave radio listeners sitting safely and quietly at home by the table late into the night trying to pull in broadcasts from around the world.
The question imagines ...
- 151k
2
votes
Why aren't we using neutrino emissions to detect alien civilizations?
In addition to the extreme difficulty of detecting neutrinos at all, and of getting directional information from the few you do detect, how do you separate the tiny number produced by the civilization ...
- 607
2
votes
Likelihood of Neighbor close enough to detect
There are already some very good comments that address detection issues themselves (e.g., difficulty detecting signals at the necessary distances), so let me add another major factor: time.
Your ...
- 121
1
vote
Why aren't we using neutrino emissions to detect alien civilizations?
Also neutrinos are emitted equally in all directions. Neutrinos can't be aimed like electromagnetic radiation (radio, lasers). So, power of neutrino signal will decay back proportionally to square of ...
- 9,121
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