OT: Aliens in the heavans (was Re: seti@home)
"Ron Johnson" <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> writes:
> On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 14:13, Gary Turner wrote:
> > I've been running setiathome on my winboxes and am considering adding my
> > linbox to the mix. So, the question is what is the appropriate
> > directory to unpack and run this little bippy? How does the graphical
> > mode do?
>
> Have you looked at http://www.distributed.net? Instead of scanning
> the sky for aliens broadcasting into the heavens, it tries to brute-
> crack an RC5-64 cypher.
>
> P.S. - If we expect _others_ to broadcast, why don't we broadcast
> in all directions around the globe, hoping that someone else hears
> us?
Hate to tell ya this but we broadcast straight out to the heavens
constantly. That's how we uplink to satellites. You realize that the
radio signals we send out to those birds aren't exactly like a laser
beam, right? Even the narrowest-beam radio-frequency broadcast, aimed
with extreme accuracy at the intended satellite, is going to "spill"
quite a bit out to space. Think about satellite TV systems. One bird
in space can cover a lot of ground on the Earth's surface. Same
prinicipal in the opposite direction.
Not only that, but there's probably a lot of omni-directional antennas
in use for surface-to-surface broadcasts as well. This means they send
as much signal straight up as they do to surface targets. I'm
simplifying it a lot (mainly because it's been so long since I studied
this stuff), but suffice it to say we "leak" a *LOT* of radio signal
out into space. It's safe to assume that any other civilizations out
there, with of the same technological means, do the same and I'm sure
that's what SETI is targeted at finding.
There are plenty of reasons to question the worth of the SETI project,
just not on the grounds that an alien civilization would have to
intentionally broadcast a signal to us for us to detect it.
Of course if you're being sarcastic then I just wasted too much time
replying, and you need to use smileys! :)
Gary
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