If we really want to find something out there, why do we use so much of our resources to only listen.

It seems somewhat hypocritical of us humans to want to 'listen' for a signal but only transmit a handful of decent powerful signals.

What is holding us back, if we REALLY want to find something should be sending a signal 'we are here'

Our results so far is that our part of the universe is dead, or at least to any life intelligent enough to have a radio transmitter.

However we could set something up that works far far into the future, that signals out there getting the attention of potential probes from other planets.

The odds of finding life out there could be dramatically improved.

Maybe that's because it would likely be much better to know your neighbour first? ;)

Cheers.

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Funny thing is they maybe thinking the same thing. Each of with a cup up to the wall saying shhhh. Hopefully someone will make a noise soon.

Everyone is listening but nobody is talking.

Maybe everyone knows the chatty ones go away first...

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I think it all comes down to cost on our end of things. It may be the same for life out there. Listening is not as resource consuming as transmitting would be. For any signal to retain its integrity, it must be transmitted with a fair amount of power. Also, the wider a field you want to cover, the more energy you have to use. You could send out a signal in a very narrow beam and make it fairly powerful, kinda like the ones Arecibo has sent out, but it will only cover a very narrow area of space. Degradation of the signal takes over and soon all you have is garble after only a few light years.
Anyway, thats my theory. Everyone sends out little snippets, since transmitting uses so much power.
Some worlds may not have as much energy readily available as ours, and the ones that do may think similar to the way they do and decided is better to listen.

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I also find it odd that people attribute a fear response to transmitting a signal.

As if it is agreed that making a noise my attract attention.

Isn't that what we want? At least we would know we are not alone!

The odds of finding something are greatly increased by signalling.

I think we should go even further and send signal transmission drones out of our solar system... in all directions.

The signal drones leave a trail of breadcrumbs back to our planet.

You could have a solar powered array....

It requires a substantial amount of power to get signals to go light-years. Plus, it'll take a long time to get there.

I also find it odd that people attribute a fear response to transmitting a signal.

As if it is agreed that making a noise my attract attention.

Isn't that what we want? At least we would know we are not alone!

The odds of finding something are greatly increased by signalling.

I think we should go even further and send signal transmission drones out of our solar system... in all directions.

The signal drones leave a trail of breadcrumbs back to our planet.

Those that are opposed to us broadcasting our pressence are working on the assumption that it is just as likely a hostile alien civilization will find us rather than a friendly one. In that case we would be better off to either remain off the radar (pun intended) or detect them before they detect us. Hopefully by monitoring alien communications we can establish their intent and motives before making our pressence known.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Any aliens wishing to overrun this planet had best have found a cure for the
common cold. It's a killer to those alien to it, hence aliens visiting Earth
will have to be well suited-up to protect themselves. Think nothing of the
diseases that they would pass on to us leading to total annihilation of Earth's
population. All that would be left is a planet that the aliens would not be able
to populate themselves. I think were quite safe from an alien invasion..."come
any closer and I'll give you a cold".

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The Kite Fliers

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Kite fliers: An imaginary club of solo members, those who don't yet
belong to a formal team so "fly their own kites" - as the saying goes.

Any aliens wishing to overrun this planet had best have found a cure for the
common cold. It's a killer to those alien to it, hence aliens visiting Earth
will have to be well suited-up to protect themselves. Think nothing of the
diseases that they would pass on to us leading to total annihilation of Earth's
population. All that would be left is a planet that the aliens would not be able
to populate themselves. I think were quite safe from an alien invasion..."come
any closer and I'll give you a cold".

They may already be immune to human diseases, especially if their DNA is substantially different. But anyone coming here to invade earth will have taken the necessary biological precautions.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Our civilisation discovered radio signals, and has deducted that if there are ETC's our there then they most probably have radio signals too.

We are also expecting that these Aliens are very much like us, if not identical.

However in order to find our identical twin, we are looking for a 'transmission'.

This is where our plan falls apart, because we are sending no transmissions just listening for them.

Because we are using this twin model, to find life in the universe we may be missing some vital points.

If a civilisation really where far beyond our capacity, then they would not be identical to us and therefore generally not use or have radio signals.

Philosophically speaking, expecting life to be identical to us would be somewhat impossible.

why not broadcast a signal? assuming you have 6 billion stars you are wanting to make contact with. now assume you are dialing a phone here on earth and want to call a specific person but you don't know their phone number. You also don't know when they aren't home to answer the phone. You also don't know if they want to actually talk to you. Oh and any reply that this other person might want to make to you would take at least 12 years for a response. Now start dialing

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

We will all be dead by the time we get a response, if we even use radio waves by the time their message reaches us.

We will all be dead by the time we get a response, if we even use radio waves by the time their message reaches us.

and all ETs are saying that too ^^

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This is the thing that most of us just can't seem to wrap our heads around. The distances between stars in our part of the galaxy and the "relative" slowness of the speed of light. It just doesn't seem to be fair. We finally figure out what the night sky is all about and then we figure out that we most likely won't be getting out of our solar system for a very, very, very long time. What a cruel joke to play on us.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

yup /agree

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We send out radio signals all the time electic power station make lots of singnals,radio,tv,ham radio gps and lot more,to try to contact other life would be hard as by the time we get the reply it would by many generations later.

If we make lots of radiatored signals now, a life form that has advanced early than us could be detected by the unnatural signals picked out of all the natural one, to hear what the signal sound like turn tv on tune it off the channel thats the white noise that what it sound like but regular patent in the signal could mean it's man made.

It's unlikly we will every be able to reply to a signal detected but we will no if and when we get it.

Even if there's other intelligent life a thousand light-years from here (rather small distance) it would take two thousand years to get a response. In that time we would probably get there in person with how quickly our technology is now advancing. Computers are advancing very fast. Our knowledge of the universe and particle physics doesn't advance nearly as fast, but is still relatively fast compared to human history because of what computers have done for us.

Just in 2007 I bought a computer with a processor capable of 5 GFLOPS. In December 2011 I made a computer with a processor capable of 120 GFLOPS. I'd say that's incredible.