Are we listening for the wrong thing?

[Tank]

I have often wondered if listening for radio signals would ever reveal an alien civilisation. The reason being is it may not be the only means of communication. It's the only one available to us because of our level of understanding of nature. Quantum entanglement has obvious possibilities in communication systems that are totally secure and un-hackable while at the same time being instantaneous. In theory the perfect communication system. Recent work has moved the idea of Quangle communication a little bit closer. We could be using the equivalent of cans and string by comparison to our alien neighbours.

Teleportation Systems Toward a Quantum Internet

[Dark Lightning]

I worked in the communications business for many years. There are many different type of signal modulation that have evolved, from the early spark-gap transmissions all the way to digital spread spectrum (DSS) means. DSS is essentially undetectable without the correct type of receiver. We've gone through many different type of modulation in only a little over 100 years. Who's to say what any putative aliens would be using? Even 50 years ahead of us in technology could render their communications undetectable to us. Quantum entanglement probably isn't the end of new means of communication.

[Tank]

I agree totally. About the only radio signals we are likely to get a wiff of are early generation AM/FM broadcasts. And even then they wouldn't be constant as the transmitting planet would be rotating so we'd only see a blink of a transmission every 'day'.

[Dark Lightning]

Right, whatever length their "day" is. Then when one considers that the signal strength decays by the inverse of the square of the distance, any blip of a signal sent out would be pretty weak by the time it reached us. Unless they had an antenna with some sort of extreme directive gain. But that would only serve to narrow the time window of when the signal from a rotating body could be detected, so it's lose-lose.

[Tank]

And as time passes systems use less power because power costs resources. And power is directed as in satellite systems that don't waste energy out into space.

[xSilverPhinx]

I think it's very likely that were aren't tuned into whatever the aliens are using.

A long time ago I was walking my dog and pondering life (teenage angst, heh) and out of nowhere something clicked in my mind. I looked around and noticed street signs, white lanes painted on the road, posters glued onto walls...how would all that look to a dog? To me they had meaning because I could decode their meaning, but to a dog, they were just part of the environment...they were just there. Maybe the dog thought they had always been there. This is all very obvious but I started wondering if there were things in the world we just took to be part of the environment and we weren't blind to these, we just didn't know how to decode them.

We could be right in the middle of a galactic conversation and not know it. I think that's all very exciting!   

[Randy]

This leads back to the intergalactic pest exterminator. Somewhere, visible to everyone but undecoded to us there is an advertisement to eradicate the human pests on Earth.

[Tank]

I think it's very likely that were aren't tuned into whatever the aliens are using.

A long time ago I was walking my dog and pondering life (teenage angst, heh) and out of nowhere something clicked in my mind. I looked around and noticed street signs, white lanes painted on the road, posters glued onto walls...how would all that look to a dog? To me they had meaning because I could decode their meaning, but to a dog, they were just part of the environment...they were just there. Maybe the dog thought they had always been there. This is all very obvious but I started wondering if there were things in the world we just took to be part of the environment and we weren't blind to these, we just didn't know how to decode them.

We could be right in the middle of a galactic conversation and not know it. I think that's all very exciting!   

A very fascinating observation.

[xSilverPhinx]

This leads back to the intergalactic pest exterminator. Somewhere, visible to everyone but undecoded to us there is an advertisement to eradicate the human pests on Earth.

Perhaps ignorance is bliss in this case!