Has science gone too far? Now boffins dream of shining gigantic laser pointer into space to get aliens' attention

"It seems we don't have any advanced tech that aliens want."

If we have tech that is more advanced than that of any hypothetical intelligent technological aliens, even if any of them lived within range of this laser they wouldn't be able to detect it. If they CAN detect it and are so (realtively) close, they probably already know about us.

Given galactic timescales it's incredibly improbable that any aliens within range are at the exact point in their development that they can detect (and possibly reply to) this signal, but not yet be able to travel intergalactically.

Re: Giant laser attached to a telescope blasting into space...

No, there was this other guy, in Canada I think, who watched it as well.

Re: This won't end well...

This does have all the sense of randomly knocking on people's doors in the middle of the night. Some might be friendly but most will irritated and some percentage will be armed.

Re: This won't end well...

They've observed our world, they just classified it under "no intelligent life."

Re: How would they know?

The thing is with Pulsars, I mean really the main thing is that they pulse.

Re: how to distinguish this laser from pulsars

Laser light is at a single frequency, pulsars are rather more broadband?

Re: How would they know?

@katrinab: "How would an alien distinguish this laser from one of them?"

Pulse the Fibonacci sequence, Pulsars don't do maths. : -)

Re: How would they know?

11000111110000000111111111110000000000000111111111111111110000000000000000000<repeat>

Any alien looking at that would go "That's a weird star, I should watch it." After a few hours recording the signal they should realise it's unmistakably intelligent in origin.

Yeah I read that article too but for scientists they aren't too smart. Why would you use an asteroid as a probe unless you wanted to hide the fact that it was a probe? And if you're doing that, why would you use an asteroid that's got a really weird shape instead of using a normal looking asteroid that blends in with the rest, and why not approach on an orbit that makes it look like it is just an asteroid on a really eccentric orbit, rather than something that's obviously from outside the solar system?

Its like a girl trying to sneak into a sorority and not attract attention by dressing like the typical college male.

Re: Is it me ...

I do. I think that the chemist's down the road is far away.

Re: Is it me ...

That's what happens when you mention "20000 light years" and "would get there in the few years" in the same paragraph (well okay two paragraphs away). Tsk, tsk...

Re: This seems quite irresponsible

There really does come a point when one has to question just what some of these highly intelligent scientific types connection with reality it. It all sounds great fun and MIGHT get a response. The fact that the response could be of negative benefit to the earth just does not appear to cross these peoples minds.

Not that many weeks ago there was a programme on the BBC following a group of researchers that had found traces of material that could contain DNA in dinosaur fossils. The plan was to then extract it and then try to create a dinosaur (I think it was something nice friendly like a T-Rex). Jurassic Park may have been fiction but the consequences of something like this are beyond comprehension. Science can provide a lot of benefits but there appears to be no ethical or moral view on some of the work.

If the earth is a fragile ecosystem that we are already wrecking through a combination of science, greed and selfishness. Splitting the atom was a great breakthrough but the consequences are now with use pretty much for ever.

Many of these scientist/researchers are just so focussed on what they are doing and being able to publish a great discovery that the implications just get lost. Against every discovery that has benefitted mankind, there is probably an equal, if not greater number that have not. The trouble is that impact of the negative ones if far worse than the beneficial.

Re: "The first contact ... could be confirmed over several years"

Even for those of us who are curious about the world, any 'experiment' that will definitely take longer than our lifetime is a lot less interesting to us than something with a more immediate return. Instead of shooting lasers in random directions all over the galaxy, spend that money on a really top notch telescope array sited at multiple points along the Earth's orbit, so you can do parallax at 2AU. We'd be able to SEE if Trappist is inhabited.

60W light bulb

Here we go the journalists are at it again. What! No Olympic sized swimming pools?

This is a site for technologist. Why do they need to have a megawatt explained?

Anyway my A size lamps are 7W LED not 60W incandescent. So there!