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Profile Jon Golding
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Message 941056 - Posted: 18 Oct 2009, 9:40:02 UTC - in response to Message 941049.  

Hi Tiaan
Humans can already achieve Terawatt power transmissions. Several research lasers since the 1970s can produce pulses in the TW power range; the most powerful being at the National Ignition Facility (about 700TW). The point is, would we want to use all that resource to beam a signal out into space at a planet where we don't even know if there's anyone advanced enough to receive it?
My only point here is, why bother transmitting signals at any power more than you really need to? If ET thinks the same way, then we're only going to pick up a signal deliberately sent at us (of which there may be many) and we're currently going to miss all of those 'business as usual' civilisations that are only using sufficient power to send signals around their home world.
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Message 941149 - Posted: 18 Oct 2009, 17:59:03 UTC - in response to Message 941056.  

@Jon: I should have been more clear; what I meant was that humans might one day also be able to readily convert (almost any?) matter into pure energy, in which case terawatts would be really cheap and available 24/7 -- and with all that energy at your disposal, a civilization might come up with some really interesting applications. But yes, if other ETs also don't have this technology yet, even for more advanced (inter-planetary/solar) civilizations than ours, one would have to listen very carefully to hear anything. At this point we don't know how advanced human technology really is in comparison with any other ET civilization -- so I agree: keep listening, and do so carefully...
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Message 941236 - Posted: 19 Oct 2009, 3:11:47 UTC

What all of you guys are talking about is like the space shuttle flying over me instead of the typical 747 ( you know above my head) and maybe ill really never know any of this, but from what I'm understanding is that we don't have the radios or whatever to detect these radio signals that may be transmitted towards us whether its a general beam or specifically towards us in a narrow beam, but like my dad told me a few years ago, he said to me just because we didn't even know about radio signals back in the year 1400, doesn't mean that the signals were not there already, so in other words, keep trying because one day someone will make the gogo gadget radio we need to listen to E.T.

Just my 2 cents worth
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Message 941472 - Posted: 20 Oct 2009, 0:51:35 UTC

Somewhere in SETI Science are the calculations for various transmissions and their detectable distance. Arecibo has a range of 50 light years detection at max power if being received by another Arecibo-like radio telescope at the same technological level.
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Message 943168 - Posted: 27 Oct 2009, 14:42:10 UTC - in response to Message 941472.  

Arecibo has a range of 50 light years detection at max power if being received by another Arecibo-like radio telescope


Drake reportedly suggests "Centre of Milky Way" for Aricebo to Aricebo comunication, Such suggests this is over optemistic and a conservative estimate is 10,000Ly, Ref: http://www.setileague.org/articles/oseti.htm
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