A research group at SETI plans to design and send messages intended for extraterrestrial recipients.
Uh oh… we’re gonna need a bigger wall.
A research group at SETI plans to design and send messages intended for extraterrestrial recipients.
Uh oh… we’re gonna need a bigger wall.
It’s amazing what can be accomplished on a deserted island when Ginger & Mary Ann are running around in short shorts….
Stupid idea. When transmitting from an omnidirectional antenna, the power gets spread out over the surface of the sphere as the signal travels. If you’re using a directional antenna, it will be based on the % of the surface of a sphere that the antenna concentrates the signal in, but it won’t matter much. A single light year is almost 6 trillion miles. The formula for the surface of a sphere is 4pir^2. So the surface of a 6 trillion mile radius sphere is 4.5E20 square miles. So if your antenna is 1 square mile (pretty damn big), and we’re broadcasting at 10,000,000 watts (the most powerful transmission I’m aware of is the SPY-1 RADAR of the Aegis system, at 7 MW), a 1 sq. mile antenna would receive a signal 1E7/4.5E20 watts, or 2E-14 watts. Well below the background noise. At 2 light years, the same size antenna would receive 1/4 that amount of power (it’s a square function), and the nearest star to Sol is over 3 light years away. If your directional antenna could restrict the signal to 1% of the surface of a sphere, that changes the power at 1 light year to 2E-12 watts, still below the background noise level.
Signal all you want, they won’t hear you. Why is SETI too ignorant to know this? I suppose as long as they aren’t wasting my taxes on it, I don’t care, but shouldn’t they let their donors know what they’re doing is spending money and electricity for no purpose at all?
Maybe we don’t want them to hear us, just spend some money.
But didn’t I just hear that the very first original broadcast of Gilligan’s Island tv signal is just now exiting the solar system?
I don’t know what you heard, but the first Gilligan’s Island transmission is around 50 light years out. Light and radio transmissions leave the solar system in, IIRC, under a week.