While I for one would be very excited if we are able to ID planets with intelligent life on them, how reasonable is her explanation? The idea that what we are going to detect is going to be those types of signals instead of deliberately aimed messages is a lot more realistic than an alien civilization using the interstellar Ma Bell to place a collect call, to Earth, Sol interchange, are our instruments, in atmosphere even remotely sensitive enough to detect signals like that?
I can’t remember where I heard this, but I distinctly remember it being stated that all of our radio/TV/satellite signals degrade to the point of gibberish (i.e. background noise) only a few light years out. Could we detect our own signals?
About 15 years from now, they expect to observe exoplanet surfaces with this:
http://www.space.com/13977-photos-world-largest-telescope-eelt.html
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/apr/20/spot-alien-life-european-extremely-large-telescope-chilean
Did you see this one?
http://www.science20.com/quantum_gravity/blog/a_better_than_5050_chance_kepler186f_has_technological_life-134555
While I for one would be very excited if we are able to ID planets with intelligent life on them, how reasonable is her explanation? The idea that what we are going to detect is going to be those types of signals instead of deliberately aimed messages is a lot more realistic than an alien civilization using the interstellar Ma Bell to place a collect call, to Earth, Sol interchange, are our instruments, in atmosphere even remotely sensitive enough to detect signals like that?
I can’t remember where I heard this, but I distinctly remember it being stated that all of our radio/TV/satellite signals degrade to the point of gibberish (i.e. background noise) only a few light years out. Could we detect our own signals?