"Scientists Claim To Have Found 234 Alien Civilizations"

[silv (Annette)]

tl;dr

Earthlings found 234 locations in space in which alien hobby astronomers also use laser pointers during their observing sessions.

http://www.iflscience.com/space/scie...civilizations/

[Atmos (Colin)]

I'm afraid that isn't going to be hobby alien astronomers, more like aliens with 100 billion watt lasers! Maybe what they're detecting is an interstellar battle!

[silv (Annette)]

the alien astronomer got you into reading. mission accomplished

Maybe what they're detecting is an interstellar battle!

yesssss! maybe!!

[silv (Annette)]

A new generation of Jedi!
With laser swords MKII!

[Stonius (Markus)]

I dont understand what theyre doing different to SETI that gives them these results. Different spectrum? Shorter transients? The FFT analysis has been used in SETI since forever.

Markus

[Stonius (Markus)]

Thought that hadn't occurred to me before; light must have an upper limit in terms of bandwidth, because a square wave consisting of the presence or absence of a photon would form a basic 'photon-bit' of information - and there are only so many photons you can send in a given time while still maintaining a square wave. Obviously this relates to the wavelength of light used,

The shorter wavelengths of light are therefore 'higher bandwidth' ie, gamma rays, as you can send more in a given time period, which leads to two thoughts;

1) This would fit with the Kardashev Scale that defines civilisations by their energy use (type 1,2,3)

2) Can we therefore expect that civilisations will use increasingly higher energy wavelengths for communication as the demands of bandwidth increase and their access to greater energy resources enables low cost / high energy / high bandwidth communications?

Yes i realise that the bandwidth we're talking about is stupidly high, but who knows what data demands there will be in future? Maybe they'll invent teleportation and need to send the precise location of every particle in a person's body before they can 'beam you up'.

Interesting to think about, anyway...

Markus

[Regulus (Trevor)]

It's just the secret Star Ships that Russia and the USA have coming in and out of warp at the solar system edge.

[DarkArts]

Well, it could just be the one civilization, with 234 teleport stations ...

[SkyWatch (Dean)]

I note that the observed light pulses are less than a trillionth of a second in duration. The alien astronomers/ Jedi knights would have to have pretty quick reaction times with their laser pointers...

[RobinClayton]

May the force be with you.

[Stonius (Markus)]

Have to admit, I kind of hope we don't find alien life while Trump is in charge. Can you imagine?

[OICURMT]

Originally Posted by Stonius

Have to admit, I kind of hope we don't find alien life while Trump is in charge. Can you imagine?

You do realize that any extraterrestrial intelligence won't know that the USA, China or Russia are "superpowers" and won't give a flying...

To them, our "leaders" would probably be seen as con-artist deluding billions of people into following them... ha ha

[clive milne]

Originally Posted by SkyWatch

I note that the observed light pulses are less than a trillionth of a second in duration.

Which implies some interesting physical constraints on the source...

Being that light travels less than 1/4 mm in that time, the object that is modulating the light must be around 1/10mm thick (or less) and the total optical path difference (assuming the beam is collimated) must be around the same as well, otherwise the waveform would be smeared.

What I don't get is how they managed that degree of temporal resolution of the incoming signal.

[skysurfer]

Originally Posted by Stonius

Have to admit, I kind of hope we don't find alien life while Trump is in charge. Can you imagine?

Maybe Trump is a being sent to Earth by extraterrestals to destroy Earth ;-)

[Stonius (Markus)]

Originally Posted by OICURMT

You do realize that any extraterrestrial intelligence won't know that the USA, China or Russia are "superpowers" and won't give a flying...

To them, our "leaders" would probably be seen as con-artist deluding billions of people into following them... ha ha

For sure, but who do you think is going to get to talk to them? The most powerful people on earth, which unfortunately includes President Chump!

Markus

[silv (Annette)]

Originally Posted by clive milne

Which implies some interesting physical constraints on the source...

Being that light travels less than 1/4 mm in that time, the object that is modulating the light must be around 1/10mm thick (or less) and the total optical path difference (assuming the beam is collimated) must be around the same as well, otherwise the waveform would be smeared.

wow! so interesting! really tiny jedi astronomers then!

What I don't get is how they managed that degree of temporal resolution of the incoming signal.

they were using bigger binoscopes, Clive.

http://www.sdss.org/instruments/

video imaging and storing the collected spectra wasn't the problem but = according to the abstract - crunching through the numbers was.
that's why they had to focus on really strong impulses for analysis, leaving out everything that was weaker.

which could mean that the Jedi did not only shoot the laser for 1 trillionth of a second but actually longer - in differing strengths within 1 application.

[OICURMT]

Originally Posted by Stonius

For sure, but who do you think is going to get to talk to them? The most powerful people on earth, which unfortunately includes President Chump!

Markus

Too much "in-the-box" thinking...

From my point of view, why would an extraterrestrial civilization think that politicians "lead" our world?

Their mindset might differ in perspective, for example:

1) Altruism may be high on their list of leadership qualities, making religious leaders ("Lord help us") and philanthropist seems like a category of humans to deal with.
2) Accumulation of hard wealth might be seen as powerful (i.e. not a human construct such as "paper" money, like maybe gold, uranium or "latinum").
3) Viruses may be seen as the dominant life-form and considered the most evolved (i.e. survivability) as they use a fragile and mobile life-forms (i.e. humans, animals etc...) for propagation and transportation. They may actually be able to communicate with what we see as a simplistic form of life.

Food for thought.
OIC!

[Stonius (Markus)]

Originally Posted by OICURMT

Too much "in-the-box" thinking...

From my point of view, why would an extraterrestrial civilization think that politicians "lead" our world?

Their mindset is irrelevant. They will talk to whoever we present to talk to them. Unfortunately those people will be products of our (not their) flawed political system.

-Markus

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by OICURMT

Their mindset might differ in perspective,

We can only hope...

Originally Posted by OICURMT

1) Altruism may be high on their list of leadership qualities, making religious leaders ("Lord help us") and philanthropist seems like a category of humans to deal with.

Philanthropists maybe but I suspect any race capable of interstellar travel have probably evolved past the "mighty creator" waffle. The scale of the distances they had to travel to get here would assure that... IMHO

Originally Posted by OICURMT

2) Accumulation of hard wealth might be seen as powerful (i.e. not a human construct such as "paper" money, like maybe gold, uranium or "latinum").

I doubt it. You can get virtually everything you need from asteroids etc. Coming a gazilion km's to mine a hostile environment seems somewhat illogical when its all just lying about up there for free. It may be a favourite SCiFi scenario but not really probable I suspect.

Originally Posted by OICURMT

3) Viruses may be seen as the dominant life-form and considered the most evolved (i.e. survivability) as they use a fragile and mobile life-forms (i.e. humans, animals etc...) for propagation and transportation. They may actually be able to communicate with what we see as a simplistic form of life.

I suspect that "they" would have evolved along similar lines and have ample virus and bacteria species of their own. You'd think they would see them for what they are.

Doubtless, anything within 60 ly with a receiver in the right spectrum and pointed our way would have been monitoring "us" for a period of time and, hence, have a lot of intel on us already. Its pretty much what we are trying to do ourselves by exploring our own system and searching for "them".

If you use a bit a bit of logic, the odds are that a sentient space faring race would do one of a few things:

1/ Swat us as a plague species!
2/ Study us as a possibly intelligent species in an early phase of evolution.
3/ Attempt to help us deal with our crap so that they have another race to communicate with.
4/ Quarantine us.

Given the fact that we are constantly at war with our own viruses/bacteria etc etc etc and we always lose in the end, they would be highly unlikely to attempt a landing.

M2cW

[xelasnave]

5. They will eat us.

Alex