bump

---

BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

I agree, that H20 may seem important to us but is it important to aliens involved in interstellar travel? Constants like PI would make more sense than some boring water. Life and intelligence are two different things. Should we assume some floppy water based intelligence or should we assume properties of space propulsion as being more important?

Water based life isn't a lily to be guilded :) Its more of a nuisance in space and could cause corrosion. We base our technolgy on Silicon and Gallium Arsenide; these ipods, navmans, notebooks, xboxes etc have nothing to do with hydrogen and therefore why should we look backwards to such simple chemicals?

I think we should expand our search and not be so water myopic.

Not just radio waves, what if we are looking on the wrong freq? A lot of notable scientists got together and agreed that 21cm wavelength is the most logical place to search. What if that thinking was flawed? Instead of hydrogen what if the freq were something based on 3.14, after all circles spheres are the most natural occurring shape in the universe. Maybe it’s Oxygen, a key ingredient for water. Maybe we need to rethink what frequency to search on.

---

Not just radio waves, what if we are looking on the wrong freq? A lot of notable scientists got together and agreed that 21cm wavelength is the most logical place to search. What if that thinking was flawed? Instead of hydrogen what if the freq were something based on 3.14, after all circles spheres are the most natural occurring shape in the universe. Maybe it’s Oxygen, a key ingredient for water. Maybe we need to rethink what frequency to search on.

---

"How can you say were are alone in the universe if you don't even look?" -Me

... Here's a link:

http://www.planetary.org/news/2004/0323_Can_a_Stars_Glow_Reveal_an_Advanced.html

Sorry, I don't know how to make a working link here...

There's a Use BBCode tags ... link right next to the message-entry field on the posting form, to a page covering the syntax.

If you click the "Reply to this post" link specific to this message (you can back out or go elsewhere if you don't want to send it) you'll be able to see the code with which I made the above URL into this link. Note that due to its length it wouldn't work as is, so I replaced it with a short one from tinyurl.com. The BBCode link in my first line is more straightforward.

---

Thanks for the thoughts everyone, I was just wondering of other peoples ideas on this train of thought. I can only hope that at some point radio waves were used by intelligent life elsewhere, and that at some point, we can discover such signals.

Besides searches for artificial radio signals and (more recently) lasers, there have been searches for more 'generic' signs of technology such as excess infrared radiation from stars, which might indicate large-scale energy use by an advanced civilization. Here's a link:

http://www.planetary.org/news/2004/0323_Can_a_Stars_Glow_Reveal_an_Advanced.html

Sorry, I don't know how to make a working link here...

---

Thanks for the thoughts everyone, I was just wondering of other peoples ideas on this train of thought. I can only hope that at some point radio waves were used by intelligent life elsewhere, and that at some point, we can discover such signals.

---

...you have to consider that Radio Waves are a completely natural component in the Universe, just think of Pulsars, or Radio Galaxies.

They should have used Radio Waves in the beginning of their technological development (just like us), maybe we can "catch" some civilization using this "primitive" wave.

Communications must been kept as simple as posible, so this is a perfect way.

Hey now, this is interesting. Some actual science involved! I didn't know what a radio galaxy was after reading your message, so I looked it up at Wikipedia: click here to see.

It's too bad that we can't just look for "everything" at the same time. People get bored with SETI@Home and don't stick with it very long, but just think how much easier this would be if we actually had 8 million active users using the optimized S@H apps... or 80 million. We could look for a lot more stuff, and do it faster.

---

Well, maybe you are right. But you have to consider that Radio Waves are a completely natural component in the Universe, just think of Pulsars, or Radio Galaxies.

They should have used Radio Waves in the beginning of their technological development (just like us), maybe we can "catch" some civilization using this "primitive" wave.

Communications must been kept as simple as posible, so this is a perfect way.

Bye!
Tiare.

Yes, this is factored into the famous Drake equation.

This equation computes N: the potential number of communicative intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. It is computed using the following equation:


N = R* x fs x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L

where:

R* is the rate of formation of stars in the galaxy
fs is the fraction of stars that are suitable suns for planetary systems
fp is the fraction of those stars with planets (thought to be around 1/2)
ne is the number of "earths" per planetary system -- planets suitable for liquid water
fl is the fraction of those planets where life develops
fi is the fraction of planets with life where intelligence develops
fc is the fraction of those planets that achieve technology which releases detectable signals into space
L is the lifetime of such communicative civilizations


Other SETI projects look for alternative signs to radio waves e.g. Optical SETI.

Use this calculator to plug in your own values (note R* and fs are combined into one factor at this site)

Drake Equation Calculator

---

Today I was thinking, about the SETI project, and it came to me about a certain variable that plays a big part in the work to find intelligence in space. This is all just the surface, but from what I am understanding, SETI@home scans radio frequencies to find disturbances that would point towards some sort of intelligent life somewhere in space. This is what got me thinking. We are assuming, speculating, whatever you may call it, that any intelligent beings wherever they may be, followed the same "path"(if you will) and developed a way of harnessing radio frequencies. I know this is a what if scenario (either way you turn) but the point that we assume this may show a great flaw. Intelligence elsewhere in this galaxy, in the universe, may have never used radio frequencies of any sort, instead harnessing some other sort of wave for communications, or some completely different system all together. Not trying to throw this project off the tracks or anything, im still processing at 100% and have faith there are answers somewhere out there, but I was just thinking, haha. Anyone else ever think about this factor?

Steven

---