Oolite Bulletins

Not a bad article - and I ran SETI@HOME on a work Pentium 266MHz back in the late 1990s - however, the Reg spin (I hope) on the Wow! message about a signaller from 100,000 ly away, only waiting 3 days before moving away...

The data was three days old by the time Ehman spotted Wow!, meaning that if it were a message, the sender could have moved on for lack of a reply.

Whoever wrote that article has never heard of the speed of light?

Even if he had reacted immediately to that signal, it would take ages for the reply to reach the messenger...

Needless to say, I didn't read further....


(EDIT: FWIW, I too ran seti@home pretty much from the beginning, but my computer became too slow compared to others after a few years, so I stopped crunching eventually)

DaddyHoggy wrote:

however, the Reg spin (I hope) on the Wow! message about a signaller from 100,000 ly away, only waiting 3 days before moving away...

It’s a bad description of a real hypothesis: if it was a sweep signal along the same lines as our sweep scans (send a message to a given star for a few hours in the hopes that someone’s there, then try another one), or for that matter a signal to someone closer where we just happened to be in line, or anything else short-lived, the three day window was way too long to reacquire it. Almost any real signal other than a deliberate and specific attempt to contact Earth or a really loud omnidirectional broadcast falls into this category. That’s the main reason real-time processing is valuable: if you find something during a sweep, you can stay on it or look back quickly.

Ahruman wrote:

But, on the other hand…

A novel solution to the Fermi Paradox! ET is out there, but hasn't paid his bill.

Ahruman wrote:

But, on the other hand…

This is soo depressing...


But, on the other-other hand...

Rxke wrote:

This is soo depressing...

Alien : "Hey, let's check out this planet, looks promising!"

Click, dial. Beep beep beep...

You've reached the planet earth. All our operators are busy right now, but please stay on the line and we'll get to you as soon as we can...

The chances of anything coming from Mars, are a million to one he said...

All our operators are busy right now, but please stay on the line and we'll get to you as soon as we can. We really value your call...

The chances of anything coming from Mars, are a million to one he said...

Have you considered our range of insurance products? We can cover any risk from galactic invasion, supernova incineration and time paradoxes. Offshore, or off-world. Astronomical cover at astronomical prices. Ask an advisor today...

The chances of anything coming from Mars, are a million to one but still they come...

Bzzzt. Click. Whiiiiirrrrr

Alien : "No intelligent life there then."

Cheers,

Drew.

Hee Hee!

Couldn't just put a smiley - not enough characters apparently!

drew wrote:

Bzzzt. Click. Whiiiiirrrrr

Alien : "No intelligent life there then."

The real question (which was never researched by SETI anyway) has always been whether there's intelligent life on this planet.


"And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
because it's bugger all down here on Earth."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk

I had a book of quotes that had one I always remember - a plaque on a wall of an observatory: "Is there intelligent life on Earth?", scribbled underneath (but left alone): "Yes, but I'm only visiting."