SETI to look at Kepler-22b.. How long for a faint signal to be detected???
US military pays SETI to check Kepler-22b for aliens
The Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has announced that it is back in business checking out the new habitable exoplanets recently discovered by NASA's Kepler space telescope to see if they might be home to alien civilisations. The cash needed to restart SETI's efforts has come in part from the US Air Force Space …
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Wednesday 7th December 2011 11:40 GMT Arctic fox
@Michael H.F. Wilkinson. All they will have to do is.............
...............fake some "evidence" that the aliens have WMDs and they will be able to milk the US defence budget for years to come. Should be good for a few trillion dollars in support. Err, now I come to think of it, didn't somebody do something like that a few years back?
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Tuesday 6th December 2011 15:45 GMT Destroy All Monsters
The results are in...
No modulated radio emissions have been found. However, when you look at this far end of the power spectrum, there are tantalizing hints of very short but regular burst emissions that obey a similar probability distribution as does packet communication radio. More money may be needed to confirm or disconfirm this.
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Tuesday 6th December 2011 15:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
Wonderful if they found a signal
Even though we could only communicate a monologue at each other, it would still be the most important news ever - if not buried by the military.
Of course, in 600 years time when they turn up on our doorstep it may be distinctly less wonderful.
I'm off to watch Contact again. And then read the book as it's better.
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Tuesday 6th December 2011 16:08 GMT Mr Blobby247
slight miscalculation in timescale there
we first sent radio signals about 100 years ago yes? So there is still 500 years until those arrive at Kepler 22b, then a while until they (the highly aggresive, world-destroying aliens) decide to set out to take Earth, then 600+ years to arrive (assuming nothing can travel faster than light), so we have a good 1100+ years left to improve our technology
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Wednesday 7th December 2011 17:48 GMT Local Group
Aliens are coming to town.
Of course they know we're here.
You better watch out
You better not cry
Better not pout
I'm telling you why
Aliens are coming to town
They're making a list,
And checking it twice;
Gonna find out Who's naughty and nice.
Aliens are coming to town
They see you when you're sleeping
They know when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!
O! You better watch out!
You better not cry.
Better not pout, I'm telling you why.
Aliens are coming to town.
Aliens are coming to town.
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Wednesday 7th December 2011 13:56 GMT Penguin herder
slight miscalculation in timescale there
Not so fast. The SETI effort is simple and more than worth a try, but wobble and transits seem to be more likely to turn up exploitable worlds, and could potentially reveal our type of life LONG before we became able to create conspicuous spikes in the EM spectrum.
Anyone with technology far enough along to be a credible threat to us, probably knew about life on Earth a very long time ago.
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Tuesday 6th December 2011 16:06 GMT TonyHoyle
Damn that speed of light
We weren't emitting any radio signal 600 years ago.. what if the aliens are about the same level of technology as us? We wouldn't hear anything for maybe 450 years. My which time we might have worked out some kind of wormhole tech to get us there first..
Also, 'kepler' is a cool name. Can we swap? 'Earth' is so dull.
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Wednesday 7th December 2011 00:17 GMT bubbleboy
A new earth-like planet? It won't take the Pentagon long to ramp up the hardware so they can take on the bloodthirsty creatures inhabiting our new neighbor. Of course, we'll approach them with the idea of bringing them democracy and if they aren't interested, we'll have to make sure they understand the downside of refusing to be liberated from their primitive ways.
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Wednesday 7th December 2011 00:29 GMT Local Group
Help me, please.
Is our military is looking for aliens on Kepler-22b to invite them down here for a sleep-over?
Or do they want to know what trouble to expect when we plant our flag near the Plutonian Shore.
If the latter, will there be a back-up plan in the event that blood-thirsty aliens will have taken over Kepler-22 in a couple of hundred years, while were en route, but after SETI gave us the go-ahead?
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Friday 9th December 2011 10:45 GMT Local Group
Unintended Consequence
I'll grant you that in time we'd get used to seeing a woman walking on the street possessed of three breasts. The better couturiers would quickly show that third boob to it's best advantage.
But one or two is the rule of thumb for protuberances on homo sapiens and both male and female resemble each other in the number of their appendages.
Are you prepared to have a third breast so that pretty girls can have them? Or are you true to your name?
Because women's breasts are nippled, so are men's. Boffinry tells us men and women would have an equal number of breasts. Res ipsa loquitor.
" Just as the spandrels of St. Mark's domed cathedral in Venice are simply an architectural consequence of the meeting of a vaulted ceiling with its supporting pillars, the presence of nipples in male mammals is a genetic architectural by-product of nipples in females. So, why do men have nipples? Because females do." (Scientific American)
I can't honestly say I need more baggage now.
This is a Failed Fantasy.
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Wednesday 7th December 2011 11:46 GMT Caustic Soda
Do you copy, Rubber Duck?
It's only really since the 30s that we've been producing radio transmissions at VHF and above. Transmissions at lower frequencies would have been heavily attenuated or refracted back to Earth in the ionosphere except for whatever energy at the upper end of the HF spectrum went (more or less) straight up in the air. The "clock" for "first reception of Earthly transmissions" didn't start ticking in 1901 with Marconi, you're looking (as with Contact) at TV and radar in the 30s as a starting point. When the "radio timeline" gets to the 70s/80s, God knows what our new alien overlords will make of goings on around 27MHz.
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Wednesday 7th December 2011 14:38 GMT Thomas 18
Urgent need for missiles
We need to start researching a light speed missile that can survive the 600 year journey today. We can't wait till we see a threat developing on the planet, they will be 1200 years more advanced by the time it gets there! We need to launch it yesterday!
Or we could just make a planet busting neutrino laser.
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Wednesday 7th December 2011 14:38 GMT b0llchit
Long time to travel, no time to develop, much time to vanish
For the 600 light year distance, it would seem rather quirky if we'd detect anything at all.
Considering that 600 years ago, the human race was meddling with burning witches and radio signals were not something considered (let alone being technologically possible). Our own signals may be detected in a radius of (optimistically) 70 light years. By the time k22b will know we exists, we may have died out of (un-)natural causes...