DailyDirt: ET Could Phone Home... But Would We Know It?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The search for intelligent life somewhere else in the universe hasn't turned up any positive results so far. But the universe is a big place -- and we haven't really been looking for that long. Here are some quick links on some projects that could help identify ETs. By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.
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Filed Under: aliens, et, habitable planet, mars, telescopes
Companies: seti


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  • identicon
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 17 May 2011 @ 6:43pm

    Lawrence’s Law Of Alien Comunication

    Any sufficiently advanced communication technology will be indistinguishable from noise. Why? Because in information-theoretic terms, that means the encoding is maximally efficient.

    Look at our own move from analog to digital signal transmissions, and you can see this effect in action.

    The corollary to this is that any alien transmissions we notice will be ones that were deliberately left “out in the open” for us to notice.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Michael Ho (profile), 18 May 2011 @ 1:06pm

      Re: Lawrence’s Law Of Alien Comunication

      There's also the hypothesis that advanced civilizations want nothing to do with the likes of us Earthlings... and that their advanced communications are highly-directed and not radiating out to the entire universe.

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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