Are aliens eavesdropping on us? Not likely

So says Ray Villard in an article in Discovery News.

This is a good article the problem is it appears based on like for like (comparable technologies) in other words civilisations are not hundreds of thousands of years more advanced than us. Its unlikely we would detect an advanced civilisation of this magnitude, on the other hand it would be likely they would detect us.

Any civilization within a few dozen light-years of Earth -- having comparable technological capabilities -- could be detecting our artificially produced electromagnetic radiation right now. The major component would be from the radar of our defense systems, which pours out 2 billion watts in all directions.

Umm - 2 billion watts in one direction is big in all directions its not.
Discovery news


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[edit on 7/9/2010 by ArMaP]

I'm not getting this

If another civilization with comparable technologies to us could detect us.......why would we not be able to detect them?

I also don't understand why other civilizations are not (or can't be) hundreds of thousands of years more advanced than us?

Maybe I'm missing something, but none of the OP makes any sense to me.

I think that the crux of the article is here:

But the dilemma is that our world is already growing fainter and harder to detect by extraterrestrials. We are rapidly moving into digital communications, cable and fiber optic transmission. Within 100 years Earth will be "radio quiet," save for defense radars.

Any nearby extraterrestrials would have to get extremely lucky to be able to find us in such a comparatively short window of time.

This is a discouraging notion, but not one that is new. Terence McKenna was saying 25 years ago that looking for radio signals in space was like looking for a good Italian restaurant in space; radio signals - like Italian restaurants - are culturally specific artifacts and should not be taken to be the halmark of intelligent civilizations.

An example of how a civilization even moderately more advanced than our own could pick up our radio, television and radar: Dr. Frank Drake of SETI fame has worked out that the local star of any planetary civilization could be used as a giant gravitational lens. It would gather and focus radio waves, so that even fairly low power signals could be heard from all over the galaxy. With a lens of stellar size, ~1,000,000 miles for a star not too dissimilar to our own, near-miracles of sensitivity become possible. Ross

Originally posted by majestictwo
So says Ray Villard in an article in Discovery News.

This is a good article the problem is it appears based on like for like (comparable technologies) in other words civilisations are not hundreds of thousands of years more advanced than us. Its unlikely we would detect an advanced civilisation of this magnitude, on the other hand it would be likely they would detect us.

Maybe the aliens are using invisible floating cameras to watch us? That would certainly explain remote viewing... Telepathic remote-viewing Humans might have cranially-injected alien-3G mobile phones, wirelessly-connected to invisible floating cameras anywhere on Earth. Cranially-injected mobile phones would also enable aliens to monitor what we do and think about... and where we go... with the now-standard GPS features.

I'm not entirely joking. For more insightful and humorous observations about aliens, see: www.disclosuree.com... and follow-on documents.

to say they cant because we cant its just clueless

the reality is that we dont own all the knowledge in the universe, so, who knows ... there maybe a tech available for people to do that

What most fail to realize, is that the Universe could be teeming with life, but even if ALL of them used radio waves, it would STILL be improbable that we'd find them...

Why?

Civilization A (alien) used radio waves for 200 years. They are far enough away from us, that the waves take 1000 years to get here. They stopped using radio 300 years ago. Their first signal (sent 500 years ago), is STILL on the way here, and has 500 more years to go.

Civilization B (alien) used radio waves for 500 years. They are fairly close, lets say it takes 5 years for their messages to get here. They stopped using radio 200 years ago. Their last signal (sent 200 years ago) arrived before we even had the means to detect or identify it.

Now, compound this with checking the right section of the sky at the right time.

This is the challenge faced by SETI, with radio waves, or any other form of communication. A given communication type is likely only used for a finite period of time, and as with us, they may go to more and more "quiet" means of communications.

Still though, it doesn't mean we shouldn't look....but it does mean that just because we don't find anything, it doesn't mean there's nothing out there.

Supposing that a relatively advanced extraterrestrial civilization wanted to communicate with less advanced ones, like us, they could make use of radio, even if they had something better, which we couldn't detect. Most three year olds can't read, but adults who can, can still communicate with them, verbally. Spoken language apparently evolved long before written forms. Ross

OnceReturned has it right. Searching for radio signals simply because that is what we happen to be using right now is anthrocentric nonsense. If you don't understand parabolic curves and the exponential function and how that relates to technology, you are going to have difficulty with this subject. You can't presume anything about an intelligent unknown, and what they can or can't do, or how they will do it. In the absence of proof, only agnosticism stands.