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Plaything48 · Jun 3, 2004, 04:06 pm

Dave654, the reason they would be more advanced than us is simple if you think about it.

Imagine for a moment that the city you live in is the Milky Way Galaxy. Let’s further assume that you’re looking for signs of life in this urban agglomeration. It’s raining and you can’t walk the streets, so you decide to hunt for company from home by monitoring a short-wave radio. You hope that some of the life out there is on the air, either as radio hams, CB users or whatever.

Clearly, the longer the average time that the broadcasters spend blathering into the microphone, the greater the chance that you’ll stumble into a transmission as you twist your antenna and tune the dial. In SETI circles, this dependence on a society’s technological lifetime is represented by the factor "L" in the famous Drake Equation.

In the next two decades, the SETI Institute hopes to use new telescopes (including the Allen Telescope Array) to check out as many as a million Sun-like stars. If we find a signal in that sample, then we’ll know that approximately one in a million solar-type stars has a planet where broadcasters are active. Suppose that sometime in its 10 billion-year lifetime, every Sun-like star eventually cooks up some sophisticated beings. (This is highly unlikely, of course, but hold on…) Since each of these stars will last for roughly 10 billion years, then every civilization has to be on the air for 10,000 years – on average – in order for one in a million of them to be broadcasting now. If we suppose that only one in 10 of the Sun-like stars eventually produces a transmitting society, then they have to be on the air for 100,000 years for one in a million of them to be broadcasting now. And so forth.

In other words, even if we are wildly optimistic about the fraction of Sun-like stars that produce sophisticated beings, our chances for SETI success in the near term depend on broadcasting activities that last for at least 10,000 years, and undoubtedly much longer.

On Earth, we’ve been transmitting high-powered, high-frequency signals for 50 years or so. That’s 0.5 percent of 10,000 years. In other words, the chances are better (probably much better) than 99.5 percent that any ET we detect in the next decade will be ahead of us, scientifically. Ahead of us by many thousands of years. To them we will be the technological equivalent of club-wielding Neanderthals.

Jun 3, 2004, 04:06 pm	#29 (permalink) (top)
Plaything48 Igneous Magma Location: London baby, yeah! Posts: 198	Dave654, the reason they would be more advanced than us is simple if you think about it. Imagine for a moment that the city you live in is the Milky Way Galaxy. Let’s further assume that you’re looking for signs of life in this urban agglomeration. It’s raining and you can’t walk the streets, so you decide to hunt for company from home by monitoring a short-wave radio. You hope that some of the life out there is on the air, either as radio hams, CB users or whatever. Clearly, the longer the average time that the broadcasters spend blathering into the microphone, the greater the chance that you’ll stumble into a transmission as you twist your antenna and tune the dial. In SETI circles, this dependence on a society’s technological lifetime is represented by the factor "L" in the famous Drake Equation. In the next two decades, the SETI Institute hopes to use new telescopes (including the Allen Telescope Array) to check out as many as a million Sun-like stars. If we find a signal in that sample, then we’ll know that approximately one in a million solar-type stars has a planet where broadcasters are active. Suppose that sometime in its 10 billion-year lifetime, every Sun-like star eventually cooks up some sophisticated beings. (This is highly unlikely, of course, but hold on…) Since each of these stars will last for roughly 10 billion years, then every civilization has to be on the air for 10,000 years – on average – in order for one in a million of them to be broadcasting now. If we suppose that only one in 10 of the Sun-like stars eventually produces a transmitting society, then they have to be on the air for 100,000 years for one in a million of them to be broadcasting now. And so forth. In other words, even if we are wildly optimistic about the fraction of Sun-like stars that produce sophisticated beings, our chances for SETI success in the near term depend on broadcasting activities that last for at least 10,000 years, and undoubtedly much longer. On Earth, we’ve been transmitting high-powered, high-frequency signals for 50 years or so. That’s 0.5 percent of 10,000 years. In other words, the chances are better (probably much better) than 99.5 percent that any ET we detect in the next decade will be ahead of us, scientifically. Ahead of us by many thousands of years. To them we will be the technological equivalent of club-wielding Neanderthals. A man has two reasons for doing anything --- a good reason and the real reason. Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular.