[X] My Assistant

[ljk4-1]

At least one SETI group is working under the assumption that ETI are using the Internet to understand humanity:

http://www.ieti.org/index.html

As anthropologists like to say, you learn a lot more about a culture by sifting through their junk than through their official records.

No wonder they haven't bothered to contact us.

[TheChemist]

At least one SETI group is working under the assumption that ETI are using the Internet to understand humanity

Darn, you blew my cover !!!
In order to prove my willingness to cooperate with the human race and avoid prosecution, here is a list of traitors that should be executed for high treason

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

WE can seriously consider that, in the assumption some extra-terrestrial civilization is actually observing us, that they will try to connect to the Internet. After all, it is the best way to have a complete view of our anatomy that they will not find on TV

The most easy to observe from outer space are military radars and large power analog TV broadcasts. They could learn much about our technology level, and anamog TV is easy to decode into sounds and images. This could be done from 100 light years and more with the extra-terrestrial equivalent of the Arecibo telescope used for our SETI. But they will have to wait still some more tens of years for receiving us...

Receiving the internet signals is another story. These signals often travel by cables, and when they go in space, they are undecipherable and mixed altogether into packets, so what they could see only a randon mixture of millions of different pages, if even they manage to decode texts and simple gif images.

So to observe the Internet, an extra-terrestrial civilization would need to INTERACT with it: to receive and to SEND signals to it. For this, they will need a probe near Earth to achieve a connexion: the probe would have to simulate a cell-phone, Wi-Fi aparatus or something like that. This is possible only if the probe is near Earth, in order to reply in no more than some seconds: on a far orbit, on the Moon, at worse on the L1 Lagrange point. And it will have to use a narrow beam, and be itself radar-stealth and black. Or they may have somebody on Earth working for them...

Once on the Internet, they can observe all our pages (shame for many) and use Google for any search and study about our customs, languages or thinking. (It would be very easy to learn most languages using Google, I even use it as an orthography corrector)

Once I had in the stats of my UFO page "unknown origin"...

But it they do so, while keeping unoticed, they will simply have to connect using a free account with an ISP which do not check for identities: Yahoo, free.fr, etc... In this case, it will be very difficult to spot them. Only a large monitoring of the activity of all the accounts could allow to detect them.

So perhaps there is actually extraterrestrial agents studying this page...

But there are however so many large "if", that this idea is rather a scifi prospect than an actual concern.

[lyford]

Of course, they would need a compatible operating system... would ET be Mac or PC or
&$(#*$@nix or what?

http://www.billhusler.com/public/commercials/powerid4.mov

Not to mention the translation issues... just ask " It is quick the ?"

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Of course, they would need a compatible operating system... would ET be Mac or PC or
&$(#*$@nix or what?

http://www.billhusler.com/public/commercials/powerid4.mov

Not to mention the translation issues... just ask " It is quick the ?"

The strength of Internet since its very beginning is that it is OS-independent. They just need to get TCP-IP to make it work. So we could arrive one day to a galactic net with completelly mixed lists of links such as http:// for Earth, vegttp:// for vega, etc...

But we are not really yet here today, please wait still a while.


I do not tell you the download time if your page is located at the other end of the galaxy. With my opinion we need something faster than light.

[lyford]

Well, it started OS independent - but with all the bells and whistles that folks add on to make their pages look cool, things get complicated quickly - as even seen ON THIS VERY BOARD amongst this august company. And don't get me started on ActiveX.....

But your earlier point about proximity needed for "eavesdropping" is very salient. Based upon a sample set of one (our technological history), it would appear that the loud emission style broadcast age is short lived - we are switching to directed, cabled transmission and low powered wireless. Which would mean that you only get a "Honeymooners to Survivor" light bubble of about 50 years to catch someone before they get quiet in the spectrum again. I shudder to think that our species is being represented to the galactic neighborhood by Jack, Chrissy and Janet.

And forget about hearing anything from the REALLY advanced races out there....

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Well, it started OS independent - but with all the bells and whistles that folks add on to make their pages look cool, things get complicated quickly - as even seen ON THIS VERY BOARD amongst this august company.  And don't get me started on ActiveX.....

But your earlier point about proximity needed for "eavesdropping" is very salient.  Based upon a sample set of one (our technological history), it would appear that the loud emission style broadcast age is short lived - we are switching to directed, cabled transmission and low powered wireless.  Which would mean that you only get a "Honeymooners to Survivor" light bubble of about 50 years to catch someone before they get quiet in the spectrum again.   I shudder to think that our species is being represented to the galactic neighborhood by Jack, Chrissy and Janet. 

And forget about hearing anything from the REALLY advanced races out there....

Yes, it may happen that our powerful radio emissions will soon look like the steam locomotives age. We are certainly going toward a technology of discreete but all-pervasive broad spectrum radio network, very difficult to detect from abroad.

Just think that a recent radio coding system uses a fast random switching between many frequencies. And much more signals can mix that way into a given frequency range, than with the good old method -one frequency per signal-. But if you hear at such a frequency range, you get only a blank noise. Not to speak of the coding of fast digital signals, which very much looks like noise. So, in some tens of years, Earth will be noticeable only as a radio noise having an unusual spectrum (allocated radio bands, which are the result of conventions, not of physical processes).

And this still without accounting with completelly new technologies which would make radio useless for far transmissions. There are already teams in SETI who are working to detect laser pulses from near planets. And we can make prospective about using non-local quantum processes, which would work without the limitation of light speed (instantaneous like in the Aspect experiment) but which would be completelly unnoticeable for anybody else than the intended receiver. Not to speak about evolved civilizations which could go to a completelly spiritual state, without any technology.

Back to radio detection, rather than searching for spikes or discreete frequencies, SETI should try to find unusual radio spectrums in close stars (when it is possible to detect the emissions of an individual star). Eventually finding non-physically explainable rays in the spectrum of a star (or a whole galaxy) would indicate a smart radio network. The problem is that stars make much more radio noise than their civilizations (The magnetosphere of planets alone emits much more radio noise). But there are perhaps some "magical frequencies" allowing to get relevant spectrums. For instance a spectrum with regular spikes and gaps would indicate an intentionnal frequency allocation. All the more if these features exhibit doppler shifts in relation with the movement of a planet... But aren't radiotelescope sensitive enough to separate planets from their stars?


Back to Internet, it is really a pity that there are many interesting things we can do, but which work only with given OS... if not only one, you guess which. On my sites I already have to make a browser detection system in order to do simple things like a window size. So when we come to 3D worlds...

[lyford]

Richard, your points are all very good.

I am struck though by how contingent any search like this is upon our current state of technology - it wouldn't be so long ago that a SETI search would consist of looking for fires burning in geometrical patterns on the Moon or Mars....

It could be that Earth is being flooded with signals but in a technological medium that we can't even realize yet.

But it seems to even make the odds worse that we would be listening at the right time AND in the right way at the exact space/time coinciding with a species sending a message.

While I think it doesn't hurt to keep your ears, eyes, sensor platforms, etc, open, (and I do have SETI@home running on one of my boxes), now that I consider it I think I would rather donate my spare CPU cycles to a NEO hunt or something more practical if it existed.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Richard, your points are all very good. 

I am struck though by how contingent any search like this is upon our current state of technology - it wouldn't be so long ago that a SETI search would consist of looking for fires burning in geometrical patterns on the Moon or Mars....

It could be that Earth is being flooded with signals but in a technological medium that we can't even realize yet.

But it seems to even make the odds worse that we would be listening at the right time AND in the right way at the exact space/time coinciding with a species sending a message.

While I think it doesn't hurt to keep your ears, eyes, sensor platforms, etc, open, (and I do have SETI@home running on one of my boxes), now that I consider it I think I would rather donate my spare CPU cycles to a NEO hunt or something more practical if it existed.  

There was not so long ago, there WAS proposals to burn fires in geometrical patterns, hoping to be seen by Moonians or Martians! Some will find this funny, I rather find this moving.

After some time of prospective reflection about future civilizations, the SETI search as it is done today may seem less useful. I say SEEMS. It may still be useful, if somewhere somebody uses large radio emissions for some purpose. But detecting the leakage of an Earth-like planet seems less probable for now.

But I still think their core job is very useful. What they do essentially? They develop techniques to extract relevant signals from noise, all along the processing chain: receivers, amplifiers, signal processing, analysis algorythms, search strategy... They are gathering an unequaled expertise in this domain. (Just like Google developed an inequaled expertise into finding content, which makes them leaders in this business for many years ahead). So, if in some years there is some technological breaktrough, new frequency range or more accurate suspicions at certain stars, their expertise will be indispensible. And it could make the difference.

My SETI suggestion right now would be to make a database of tiny unexplained features in star spectrum, in any electromagnetic range. Analysis of these could lead to select spectrums which could result of a frequency allocation.

Note also that the search for narrow spectrum spikes seems less useful now: broadband emission necessarily has a broadband frequency range, undiscernable from noise. Only the overal frequency distribution could hint at a frequency allocation, or at a source movement different of that of the star (in orbit around it). At least, this could perhaps be the best mean to detect Earth-like planets, as anyway planet emission are much stronger than civ emissions.

[ljk4-1]

SETI and Intelligent Design

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_in...ign_051201.html

Many readers don't know that SETI research has been offered up in support of
Intelligent Design. Let's take a minute to fix this, shall we?

[Rakhir]

I think I would rather donate my spare CPU cycles to a NEO hunt or something more practical if it existed. 

More practical projects do exist.
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

SETI and Intelligent Design

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_in...ign_051201.html

Many readers don't know that SETI research has been offered up in support of
Intelligent Design. Let's take a minute to fix this, shall we?

Yeah I take SEVERAL minutes to fix this.



First of all it is to be said that it is the ID (Intelligent Design) supporters who try to involve SETI as a support for their claim. SETI scientists themselves are not "guilty".

There is already a thread about ID here in this forum. On a science point of view, ID, the idea that the universe and living beings were designed by a god, is only a speculation, supported by faint evidences (such as anthropism) and counterbalanced by large evidences (the evolution of life). People should be free to do such speculation, but so long as they do not present them as "scientific facts". The problem is that ID is rather a large manipulation by "religious" integrists who try to take over a "scientific" speech to try to justify their "religious" dogmas. For this they raised a large reaction against them. Sane reaction, so long as it does not forbid in turn to make real science about an eventual divine origin of the universe.

As the article in the link explains, what SETI searches is evidences of intentionnal signals, or discriminating artificial signals from natural ones. There are some difficulties in doing so, but it is perfectly feasible. And this purpose is basically different if the manipulations of the ID proponents.


But if you look in depth, what the ID proponents say, like here http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-01o.html is that there is NO extraterrestrial life NOWHERE, still for nut dogmatic "religious" reasons, the same they burned Giordano Bruno for.

So they do not lack some cheek, to be AGAINST the very purpose of SETI, while still USING SETI to back their views!! So it is clearly an attack against SETI, by confusing it with kook theories in the public's mind!

That SETI was impeded by rationalistist opponents to extraterestrial life, we are now accustomed to this. But that it is attacked by folks who claim to be spiritual, it is completelly weird.

[ljk4-1]

Paper: astro-ph/0512013

Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 03:28:14 GMT (229kb)

Title: Biological Effects of Gamma-Ray Bursts: Critical distances for severe
damage on the biota

Authors: Douglas Galante, Jorge Ernesto Horvath

Comments: 27 pages, 3 figure, submitted to Astrobiology
\\
We present in this work a unified, quantitative synthesis of analytical and
numerical calculations of the effects caused on an Earth-like planet by a
Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB), considering atmospheric and biological implications. The
main effects of the illumination by a GRB are classified in four distinct ones
and analyzed separately, namely the direct gamma radiation transmission, UV
flash, ozone layer depletion and cosmic rays. The effectiveness of each of
these effects is compared and lethal distances for significant biological
damage are given for each one.

We find that the first three effects have potential to cause global environmental changes and biospheric damages, even if the source is located at great distances (perhaps up to ~ 100 kpc). Instead, cosmic rays would only be a serious threat for very close sources. As a concrete example of a recorded similar event, the effects of the giant flare from SGR1806-20 of Dec 27, 2004 could cause on the biosphere are addressed.

In spite of not belonging to the so-called 'classical' GRBs, most of the
parameters of this recent flare are well-known and serve as a calibration for
our study. We find that giant flares are not a threat for life in all practical
situations on Earth, mainly because it is not as energetic, in spite of being
much more frequent than GRBs.

\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0512013 , 229kb)

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

This is interesting info. With this kind of data we can assess the probability of successfully completing the long duration evolutionary steps necessary to the appearance of life, multicellular life, and civilization.

Unfortunately if only one gamma ray burst is able to sterilize a whole galaxy, that makes this probability very weak. But they speak of environment change, not of complete disappearance (anyway only one side of a planet is directly illuminated). So there could be rather mass extinctions, or strong evolutionary pressure. The most critical period being between getting out of water and the appearance of civilization, which on Earth was fast, only 300 million years.
Anyway zone of intense stellar formation (propicious to gamma ray bursts) are the worse place for life. At the extreme only giant galaxies like Virgo (with only old stars) could shelter many civilizations, and we would be lucky or among the firsts in our galaxy, even if life started on many planets.

In a general way gamma ray bursts were more common in the past, and it may happen that only now life is beginning to flourish.

That giant flares are relatively harmless in on the other hand rather a good new, as many stars propitious to life are flare-prone. But is this study speaking of the effect of the flare on neighbouring systems, or on a planet of the star which is emitting a flare? If a flare is as luminous as the star itself, and lasts several days, it will heat a planet twice as usual!

[chris]

Unfortunately if only one gamma ray burst is able to sterilize a whole galaxy, that makes this probability very weak.

Richard,

Current theories suggest that GRB's can't sterilize an entire galaxy, as the radiation is emitted in two very narrow jets (See
Cosmological Gamma-Ray Bursts and Hypernovae Conclusively Linked). If you happen to be to get in the way of a beam, its bad news, but you have to be quite unlucky.

On a related note, I vaguely remember that the original extraordinary estimates for the energy output of quasars can be made much more reasonable by assuming that we are seeing down a beam (although longer lived and from an active galactic nucleus rather than a transitory event like GRB).

Chris