Allen Space Array

Exciting moves to find ET. the new Allen space teleascope array has been switched as of yesterday. See this thread:

Tuning In To ET !!

Personally i think it is another step to full disclosure of ET presecene. Give it 5 years and i am sure we will get a signal. What do others think?

They are going to collect alot of data quick! I wonder if they are going to have a system like seti@home to help analyze it... I would use it!

Already been posted further down the page here:


www.abovetopsecret.com...

But I'll repeat myself;

The only problem with this is that it assumes Alien life uses RF to communicate.
Which band do they use? Short wave, AM, FM?
If they use RF at all, it would probably be spread spectrum, and simply sound like white noise unless we had the correct 'key' for that broadcast.
What if they communicate with light pulses instead of RF?
Thought?
Hand signals?

I wish them luck all the same.

Hey, what if we started receiving all the LOST 'I love Lucy' episodes?






[edit on 12-10-2007 by Alexander the o.k.]

reply to post by Alexander the o.k.


Here's a good analogy...

We may be like an Amazon tribe -- one who communicates with drums and smoke, while totally oblivious to the radio transmissions that are all around them.

...and if ET IS watching 'I Love Lucy', I hope they don't judge the worthiness of our whole civilization on the antics of Lucy and Ethel!

Oh, Lord.
I sure hope they're not watching reruns of "Lost in Space".
Or "Batman".

If so, we may be annihilated....

What was interesting about the announcement was the mentioning
of hearing an alien signal by the year 2020 or in that range, like they
already know the signal is out there.... just strange they'd mentioned a date.

Originally posted by anhinga

What was interesting about the announcement was the mentioning
of hearing an alien signal by the year 2020 or in that range, like they
already know the signal is out there.... just strange they'd mentioned a date.

Well if you read an excellent book by Timothy Good called Above Top Secret and Ailen Liasion, he discusses an aborted programme by the US Govt to "come out" with the truth of ailen life in the galaxy. There was to be an announcement followed by a roadshow with a model of ailen craft and a dead ailen, together with a history of events. I very much suspect what we are witnessing now is a new attempt, call it Comsic Journey project II. What better way than to make gradual disclosure kicking off with a signal from space? No immediate threat to Earth as such and people wont panic as a result. I would expect after the signal announcement, say five years after there would be a phyiscal First Contact situation. Specualtion of course but i think you would agree a logical course of action to take.

reply to post by Alexander the o.k.
Energy changes in hydrogen atoms caused by spin state transitions cause electromagnetic (radio) emissions at a wavelength of 21cm., equivalent to a frequency of 1420.41 MHz. A lot of our radio astronomy is done around this frequency, because emission sources are common all over the galaxy; alien radio astronomers would use it to; any technologically advanced race that watched the skies would know that others, if they exist, are watching this frequency and would, most likely, use it to transmit signals they hoped would be picked up. Hence this would be a logical frequency at which to search.

The Allen Array is set up to search a very wide range of frequencies at once. The hydrogen band is smack in the middle of the range.

The ATA has... complete instantaneous frequency coverage from 0.5 to 11.2 GHz... The instantaneous frequency coverage of more than 4 octaves is unprecedented in radio astronomy

- from the Allen Telescope Array Fact Sheet

As for this,

Originally posted by anhinga
What was interesting about the announcement was the mentioning of hearing an alien signal by the year 2020 or in that range, like they already know the signal is out there.

Actually, the report just says that the creators of the ATA 'hope it will help spot definite signs of alien life by 2025'. 'Hope', not 'expect'. So calm down; what they probably mean is that, by 2025, they'll have swept some calculated percentage of the sky, which will give them a probability of greater than 1/2 of spotting a signal if it is there.

Great news about the alien radio array! About time SETI had a dedicated one. Anyway something was bothering me slightly, We are looking for civilizations using radio waves right? What if all of them, if any, are further advanced than using radio waves, perhaps they have found a much more efficient method of broadcasting, or communicating?

Just something that was sitting at the back of my head.

Great news about the dishes being switched on.


Just one thing, what if everyone and everything was listening out on 1420.41 MHz?

As an aside, what was the frequency of that signal we sent out many years ago with those simple white squares reprisenting things?

I find this very interesting. So now, we can search much faster than before but we are still searching for the same thing.

The radio was invented in the late 1800s. So, we've been communicating by radio for about a century. But, we also communicate over the internet by fiber optics. We use fiber optics because it has greater bandwidth.

What mediums of communication will we be using in another century?

Perhaps the next great breakthrough will not use the frequencies that we are searching for. So, I think that not only are we searching for something that will be hard to find but a society may only produce radio waves for a very short time in their development.

But I still wish them well.

reply to post by Wirral Bagpuss


I think it's very exciting, and may turn out to be important, but it's not to detect an alien presence. It is looking for very signs of a very distant alien civilization.

[edit on 17-10-2007 by b309302]

Correct, and they hope to find a civilization out there by 2025, thats a pretty neat date nd i think they are being a little too hopeful, but that aside this is the first array they've had full time, SETI had limited time on the other arrays and didn't have full control, this should change all that though, and you never know we may get a signal! Imagine the threads on ATS if we did receive another WOW! signal!