Our experience seems to marginalize the relevance of "noise" quip - at
least in the case of SETI. It all goes back to the starting assumptions.
Of course SETI operates under the assumption that ET wants to contact
us, as opposed to us wanting to eavesdrop on them. We can reasonably
assume that some or most advanced civilizations would be in that
category of directing a high power signal from time to time with the
intention of eliciting a response.
SETI chose the most obvious radio frequency (hydrogen) to look for a
directed signal and tuned in at 1420 MHz. In 1977 a 72 second nonrandom
signal was heard - the only signal in all of these years that had a
chance to be from another system - the so-called "wow" signal. Wiki has
a nice entry. They are still trying for a sequel at OSU/SETI.
Of course, LENR when put into practice as a working technology would
make it much easier to make contact via a directed high power signal. We
could put a robotic beacon in orbit and let it transmit to thousands of
selected candidates, sequentially for eons ... so we can probably assume
that going to fiber optics or spread spectra etc is not really
particularly relevant to explain the lack of contact... if ET wanted to
make contact, they will initiate it.
Who knows - maybe the WOW beacon was on a 40 year cycle, scanning across
the Universe and this year it will come back to focus on the 3rd rock?
... even if the builders of WOW and their enemies, somewhere out there
in Sagittarius, have completely annihilated each other in the mean time
with UDD bombs... since the beacon they put in orbit keeps a-tickin'
thanks to LENR.
Jed Rothwell wrote:
Bob Higgins <rj.bob.higg...@gmail.com
<mailto:rj.bob.higg...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Even more probable is the evolution to spread spectrum
techniques. Look at what has happened to a lot of our emissions -
they have moved to spread spectrum. This would no longer be
detectable as an emission type that is detectable by SETI technology.
That is a variation on what I had in mind with increased data
compression. To paraphrase Clarke's third law:
Any sufficiently advanced communication is indistinguishable from noise.
(I actually said that to Clarke. I don't recall his response.)
- Jed
