Catalyst last night

[Merlin66]

Interesting section on a guy using the Keck 10m scope to search for laser pointers coming from distant solar systems.:eyepop:
He hopes to be able to identify the laser beam to confirm there's life out there - well at least other astronomers using high powered lasers to guide their scopes.;)
Is this feasible??? Do they have a licence? :question:

[WingnutR32]

Wow, very cool and interesting!

Do you have a link to this, Ken?

[rogerg]

The research that the segment focused seemed very iffy I thought in terms of chances of success and hence worthwhileness. I image the researcher is probably piggybacking on other research being done, using images acquired from other observations to analyze the spectra for what he is looking for? Surely he wouldn't manage to secure funding for many dedicated observations of his own for that type of project?

I really enjoyed the segment as a whole, was great to see the telescopes operate and hear about some research being done (however likely to succeed). Very inspiring to get back out to the telescope and capture some scientific data.

[Merlin66]

try this:
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3623421.htm

[mswhin63]

I think it is a nice idea and the best part is that it can be overlapped and that is not a time waster for sure. I can see this as being a good checksum while confirming planets.
Although there could be a problem with this in this as we develop more space telescopes are being used and the same would occur with any other advanced species. I am sure everyone can agree that most people see that our technology span is very short with difficult observation results and space telescope without laser requirements could be more common within a very short period of time.

The concept though is sound and definitely worth the really small amount of work required to observe this.

[ourkind]

Thanks for the link Ken! Enjoyed it :)

[pluck]

... presented at the recent AIC. This particular research comes on the back of a great deal of work he (and others) have been doing on Earth-like exo planets. The Catalyst piece may have painted him as slightly unconventional, but he is a very well regarded scientist.

Some thought Frank Drake (aka Mr SETI) was unconventional, but we (science) need those that think 'out of the box' from time to time.