Message boards :
Cafe SETI :
Why do we search ET by radio wave but not laser?
Message board moderation
Author | Message |
---|---|
TSUI.Kak-Hee Send message Joined: 11 Jul 05 Posts: 8 Credit: 517,542 RAC: 1 |
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. |
N/A Send message Joined: 18 May 01 Posts: 3718 Credit: 93,649 RAC: 0 |
[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] |
Heffed Send message Joined: 19 Mar 02 Posts: 1856 Credit: 40,736 RAC: 0 |
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) |
terrorhertz Send message Joined: 26 Mar 00 Posts: 401 Credit: 31,534 RAC: 0 |
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. |
Misfit Send message Joined: 21 Jun 01 Posts: 21804 Credit: 2,815,091 RAC: 0 |
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 |
Fuzzy Hollynoodles Send message Joined: 3 Apr 99 Posts: 9659 Credit: 251,998 RAC: 0 |
LOLLL!!! to you! :-D "I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me |
©2024 University of California
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.