Why do we search ET by radio wave but not laser?
Et's tech may be more mordern than ours. Using laser to send out messages should be more powerful.

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[font='courier,courier new']We might blind E.T. if we do.

First contact would be a subpoena, and I think we have enough vulture-lawyers as is.

A more intelligent reason why not is because it might be interpreted as a weapon being used by a militant planet.[/font]

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Too much energy to sustain a beam that won't diverge too rapidly to be useful. And unless they know where to look, way too localized a transmission. (I'm still of the opinion that even if we do make contact, we won't be able to communicate)

There is a project to look for laser transmissions from space. I found it about a year ago:
Optical SETI
It was also to allow people with telescopes to add a little(expensive) box to their computer tracking scopes and join in the search. It also consisted of a crunching department where packets are distributed and crunched by people with computers wether they had a scope or not. The last that I checked last year this project wasn't open to the public yet but will be.

What is optical SETI?
Radio SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is the effort to detect narrow-band radio signals. Nothing known other than technology (i.e., a radio station) can make narrow-band signals—that is, signals that you can tune into and out of with just a turn or two of the radio dial. Optical SETI uses the same reasoning, but here again apparently only technology can produce light pulses that last a billionth (nano) of a second (although stars can collapse to make a millisecond pulsar that can pulse a thousand times per second). Since PlanetQuest will be using only the red part of the star’s light to detect the transits of planets across their stars, we plan to "beam-split" (divide off) the blue light and send it to our nano-second diode detectors to see at the same time if any of those stars are sending billionth-of-a-second pulses toward us, as well. Thus you, the PlanetQuester, will be looking for planets and extraterrestrial technology at the same time!

www.planetquest.org
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/PlanetQuest

LOLLL!!! to you! :-D

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"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me