Re: The end of Seti

Richard Burke wrote:

Lets try some quick answers here which I will not be held responsible for as this is just kicking around ideas. I will not defend anything I say in this response. Guth types go suck something.

Please folks do NOT focus on this response. I am taking it as the first and trying to use it to expand upon the idea and maybe the 60 meter premise is the bogus one. However with a long enough baseline in space I do not see what it is not possible. I do not mean classic two slit interferometry but hundreds of telescopes working together.

My original post and this response is solely to open discussion. Everyone please think and participate.

To recap rather than quote Matt's post, he mentions space-telescopes capable of discerning actual detail on terrestrial-type exoplanets - and suggests that if such a telescope is possible, radio SETI is a waste of time because direct observation will be far more efficient.

I have a few thoughts / comments:

It's probably fair to assume such scopes are possible - though the proposal for the TPF (Terrestrial Planet Finder) would only have resolved an Earth-sized exoplanet to ten pixels, IIRC. Presumably larger-scale technology could improve on this, in time. (There may be fundamental limits imposed by quantum 'fuzziness' or wavelength-vs-resolution issues, I wouldn't know.) However...

I agree I was surprised at the 60 meter resolution claim and as I said could not find it repeated. As for quantum fuzziness forget that and look at tens of lightyears of intersellar gas as fog in the morning.

1. First, you've got to find the planets. And radio searches might still useful here, because they target whole star systems.

True but we have a nothing special sun so other nothing special suns are the first candidates. And if they have no earth sized planets within a reasonable distance from the sun then we are back to the very strange earth position. But in the "average" circumstance we find potential earths. That does not mean Ariecibo can point in their direction. The future Allen array can.

2. If we detected an exo-civ, we'd quite possibly send a radio message to it rather than waiting to develop near-light-speed probes. Even if governments decided not to, SOMEONE would. So, if that's what we'd do, others might, too. Sure, these would be focussed signals, not beacons - but it still means radio SETI's worth a shot.

Why would we send if we detect by telescope? We can paint the receipt on the ground in Serbia or Nebraska and it gets back to them in the same and much cheaper, say one of their contents of whatever and let it arrive roughly the same time as an RF transmission. If you can look with your telescope array in orbit why bother with an RF? A trivial question but an important one.

3. At one time or another (mostly while making TV documentaries), I've tackled members of the radio / optical SETI community about the limits of electromagnetic searches. Even without this telescope idea, it's perfectly believable that radio / laser technology might be a passing phase: electromagnetic SETI could be looking for civilisations that are passing through a very narrow time-window - a few hundred to a few thousand years. The answer I have received has always been the same: "We search this way because it's the way we CAN search, not because we believe it's the best way possible. When new communications technologies emerge, we'll use them, too." Now, I think this deserves further examination...

I may miss your point here but this is the way every researcher works. I am interested in something therefore I use the tools available. I mean it is not as though we as scientists object to this discovery. Please see the early pulsars designated little green men. So what are those interested supposed to do?

First develop graviton dectors? Does no everyone use the tools available to them?

And by deleting the rest I do not mean it remove it from the discourse but rather to say I am no ready to comment on it and do not discourage consideration of it. I will get back to it myself maybe, eventually, depending on how the posting traffic goes.

This sounds like I am trying to control the thread and yes, that is an old job skill, but please ignore that.

--
Israel: A land filled with panic-stricked cockroaches in fear for their
existence.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3685

nizkor http://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml
Blame Israel http://www.ussliberty.org a10
.