ET Artifacts Could Be Camouflaged as Natural Objects in the Universe

World-leading Physicist: "ET Artifacts Could Be Camouflaged as Natural Objects in the Universe"

Source: Daily Galaxy

Found this article posted today and found it pretty interesting, here are some of the main points it delves into...

According to the British physicist Stephen Wolfram, intelligent life is inevitable. But there is a hitch.

As evidence Wolfram points out In order to compress more and more information into our communication signals - be they mobile phone conversations or computer- we remove all redundancy or pattern. If anything in a signal repeats, then clearly it can be excised. But this process of removing any pattern from a signal make it look more and more random - in fact, pretty much like the random radio "noise" that rains down on Earth coming from stars and interstellar gas clouds.

So basically when the first T.V and Radio signals were broadcast we were sending out pretty easy to decipher signals. With the advent of all our broadband needs and the necessity to cram as much data into as small a space as possible we encrypt, we condense, and just jumble up all our information as of late. If any ET were to try and listen to us right now it would come out as white noise, just a mess of random bits of data.

This seems to me what we usually receive from places we try and listen to. I guess we are just supposed to sit and listen for a signal that we can decode to hit us...

But the reality is it would be it easier and more efficient for an ET civilization to stay at home and use a computer to search the computational universe for useful programs rather than try to get the same information by hunting for ETs to talk to among the 200 billion or so stars in the Milky Way. "It's a simple numbers game," says Wolfram.

Thoughts?

[edit on 27-7-2010 by CalibratedZeus]

As much as I would support the SETI program and its mission; I ve always felt very skeptical about it's chances for success. Sometimes it almost seems designed to fail. This is one more reason why a newly technological civilization has little chance of intercepting signals (of whatever sort) from advanced civilizations. We could not have known this when SETI started. Our best bet would ve been nearby civilizations at a very similar state of technological advancement but the chances of that were very low (though not impossible, good to have tried). I highly doubt any truly advanced civilization (and lets face it, SETI implicity depends on the other guy having the nice toys) would use conventional radio waves. With new discoveries involving quantum entanglement and such we are starting to see how much more advanced communications could really get.

This is interesting...
I have never felt that the SETI program was meaningfull in the inception ...
the radio frequencies we listen into, make logical sense to US....but...it does not nessessarily follow that radio waves are the prefferred communications band of the galaxy, let alone the whole universe.
It seems the speed of light is far far too slow for any meanig to get through after centuries of awaiting a return hello from some far flung star system.
Though, in principal i DO think the program is looking for something that in all probability exists,the time spans would negateccommunication other than recieving a signal of a civilisation passing through that stage(which is not garanteed to happen in every case.)
It is not really up to the physicists alone,to come up with other means and other ways of recieving what well will find out eventually IS the right channel.
Who knows what kind of method will eventually provide interstellar communications in more like real time?Thescience has not quite been envisiaged yet,but i think we may be closer than we think......
Somewhere, wrapped up in the mystry of entanglement / telepathy, is very probably the place to look for such a means of contact.(how often do we get reports of telepathic beings, compared to other encounters....?)
Remote viewing may also be part and parcel of the universal channel: but i sincerely doubt ordinary radio will do much but perhaps confirm that at some point in time another set of beings passed that way.....
A lot of money being spent to find a fossil however emotionally important it may be...id rather see them spend it digging in more fertile ground.

Hi UFO fans.

Don't forget that the fact we **think**, is another way for "them"
to detect us.

Sooooo, we have been broadcasting since MANY years ! B-)

Blue skies.

Talk about right underneath our noses and these are just addressing the mediums that we actually know about.

Telepathy aside.

Originally posted by CalibratedZeus

... hunting for ETs to talk to among the 200 billion or so stars in the Milky Way. "It's a simple numbers game," says Wolfram.

Thoughts?

First, it doesn't make sense to hunt among the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, the main focus should be on the closest stars within say 100 to 250 light years. Why? Because the further signals are the harder they will be to detect (according to some estimates it might be nearly impossible to detect ET signals at 1000 light years or more unless they are using transmitters more powerful than we imagine).

Second, I think he has a point, up to a point. Yes we are compressing our data, but even with compression there are still patterns in the data. This means the patterns may be more difficult to detect than the uncompressed signals, but not impossible.

However it does mean that the algorithms used by SETI might be improved, however, since we don't know exactly how the aliens might compress their data, deciding on what patterns to search for becomes more challenging.

Third, I think a bigger concern than this one has been raised. Remember that in the early days of TV there were powerful antennas broadcasting signals omnidirectionally. Then we evolved to cable which could theoretically bypass any need for a broadcast antenna, and even satellite technology is far different than the old TV antennas, the satellite is basically broadcasting a directional signal toward the Earth, so it's not even going out into space.

So if our own technology development is any indicator, there may be far bigger concerns than just data compression, the wireless signals may not be there (as with our cable TV) or may be not be aimed out into space like our satellite broadcasts are not aimed out into space.