Zero. Zilch. Nada. That's how many signs of intelligent life Astroboffins found in probe of TEN MILLION stars
- Reference: 1599638466
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/09/09/were_all_doomed/
- Source link:
“We observed the sky around the constellation of Vela for 17 hours, looking more than 100 times broader and deeper than ever before,” [1]said Chenoa Tremblay, a postdoctoral researcher at the CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science. “With this dataset, we found no technosignatures - no sign of intelligent life.”
Tremblay and Steven Tingay, an astronomy professor at Curtin University, focused the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope in the Southern sky in 2018. They hoped to detect the rumbles of anomalous low-frequency radio waves between 70 and 300 MHz being emitted from extraterrestrial forms of technology, so-called “technosignatures”, a sign of an advanced alien society.
But, alas, they found nothing out of the ordinary flickering in the heavens. Tingay was not disheartened, however, and said the lack of results didn’t necessarily indicate that intelligent species do not exist elsewhere. Instead, their search just wasn’t big enough. “As Douglas Adams noted in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: ‘Space is big, really big’.”
“And even though this was a really big study, the amount of space we looked at was the equivalent of trying to find something in the Earth’s oceans but only searching a volume of water equivalent to a large backyard swimming pool.”
With intelligent life in scant supply on Earth, boffins search for technosignatures of civilizations in the galaxy [2]READ MORE
He also suggested that scientists should hunt for technosignatures using methods other than just tuning in to cosmic radios. Similar efforts conducred by other academics have looked for odd infrared or gamma radiation. NASA recently awarded a [3]research contract to astrophysicists from Harvard University and the University of Rochester to detect technosignatures that might be harvesting or producing light from solar panels.
“Although there is a long way to go in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, telescopes such as the MWA will continue to push the limits—we have to keep looking,” Tingay said. He hopes that the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a proposed system made up to a million radio dishes collectively covering an area of at least one square kilometer in Australia and South Africa, will be built and used to look for technosignatures across a wider range of space and depth.
“With the SKA, we’ll be able to survey billions of star systems, seeking technosignatures in an astronomical ocean of other worlds.” The SKA is expected to be the world’s largest radio telescope. To process all the data, astronomers will need two giant supercomputers capable of transmitting data at a “rate 100,000 times faster than the projected global average broadband speed in 2022,” [4]according to the project's site.
The duo's results have been [5]published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia (psst...here's the [6]free arXiv pre-print .)®
Get our [7]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.icrar.org/looking-for-ET/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/22/if_you_want_to_find/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/22/if_you_want_to_find/
[4] https://www.skatelescope.org/the-ska-project/
[5] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/publications-of-the-astronomical-society-of-australia/article/seti-survey-of-the-vela-region-using-the-murchison-widefield-array-orders-of-magnitude-expansion-in-search-space/C175371A2383A6A03FC038D50C4D4B16
[6] https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.03267
[7] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
I'm still here .... at least until I can hitch hike a lift out of here!
P.S. Mostly harmless!
I'm beginning to think that intelligent life is a temporary phenomenon and self destructs beyond a certain level, either through destruction of the host planet's eco system or through ever advanced weaponry such as an accidentally released bio-weapon or world-wide nuclear war or other more exotic means of total annihilation yet to be discovered.
Most people fall of a bike when they first try riding one. That's the stage we're at.
There are too many vested interests in making money in the short term for businesses and politicians to do much to change things. With some issues like climate change, by the time politicians realise they've fallen off their bike it will be too late to get back on it again. There are many who still deny climate change is happening and some of them are in power (Trump).
Words and actions
Trump publicly denies climate change while spending his own money defending his golf courses from rising sea levels. More republicans think climate change is real than think it is a hoax but they will still vote for someone utterly delusional or a coal mine operator if he also promises to hurt brown people.
Welcome to the [1]stupid ages .
[1] http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/
@Andy Non
I'm beginning to think that intelligent life is a temporary phenomenon and self destructs beyond a certain level
This is actually one of the theories floated to explain lack of a signal. They only last a very short time.
Kurzgesagt did a pretty good video about this on YouTube. The principle is called the Great Filter.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjtOGPJ0URM&ab_channel=Kurzgesagt%E2%80%93InaNutshell
The interesting question is that, if such a filter exists that prevents intelligent life progressing past a certain point, have we somehow already passed it? Or is it still there waiting for us to hit it?
Surprise, surprise...
Why assume that extraterrestrial life emits electromagnetic radiation? We've only done this to any extent since around 1900, which is a mere blink in human history. Next they'll be trying to decode tweets in any signals they find, because obviously all life everywhere evolved to replicate the rise of the urban USA.
Most life in most places probably just mosies around eating, sleeping, fighting and reproducing (and always did). The rest is pure froth, and may not even last much longer here on Earth.
Re: Surprise, surprise...
Because they are the ones that it's possible to detect.
Re: Surprise, surprise...
I think there is a school of thought that actually we are already becoming less detectable. Already our radio emissions (at least the non-deliberate ones) are likely reducing in power and/or becoming more directed and hence harder to pick up. (or just moving to optical fibres, etc. and short range radio of various kinds).
My recollection is that our big three "detectables" would be: nuclear EMPs (which peaked a few decades ago); Terrestrial TV broadcasts which are becoming more directed, lower power and more signal efficient (so no big old carrier to easily detect); and early radar systems which are now, again, more efficient, directed, etc.
Our window of easy observability over cosmic distances may have already closed and is a vanishingly short fraction of our existence so far. Taking as a guess that this is also true for other technical civilisations it does suggest that our chances of spotting anything is very small indeed (even if they do exist in vast numbers).
How would they know if they ever found intelligent life?
I mean, it's not like they've ever seen any to compare it with ...
Re: How would they know if they ever found intelligent life?
We assume we are intelligent but it may just be arrogance on our part.
Perhaps really intelligent beings avoid the type of industrialization that we have gone for and are peacefully meditating and being one with the universe.
I can't see hyper intelligent slime moulds doing a lot of metal working for example.
Re: How would they know if they ever found intelligent life?
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
Any intelligent life would avoid us like the plague, so they'll be hiding from us.
And I don't blame them either.
He he, yeah we're all hiding from you......
Apart from those pesky maidens who keeping coming for parties......
"technosignatures that might be harvesting or producing light from solar panels"
In the hope that somewhere out there is a Bender selling cheap solar panelling to unsuspecting alien civilisations.
The Galaxy Song song was never so true, "And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space, 'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!"
Looking for signs of McDonald's on other planets?
Why do they assume those "aliens" civilizations would necessarily be exactly like 20th century humans' one was?
The "solar panel" thing is utterly stupid, about the same level as looking for "blockchain" (because "intelligent life" is bound to use it!)...
A single century ago there were no solar panels on Earth, and by the end of the 21st century we might have switched to something we don't even imagine yet, much like people in the wood/coal ages didn't expect electricity. So, even if that alien civilization is totally human-like and goes through the exact same technological evolution ( very unlikely), why would they be in the "solar panel" phase just now? They could be still using steam engines, or have mastered fusion. Or their planet might have enough geothermic potential and/or a weather so unfriendly solar panels never were a serious option. Or, more likely, they have followed a technology path we don't understand at all.
In short, their message is rather "we didn't found any trace of Golden Arches in the star systems we scanned"... Which is fortunate and means nothing at the same time.
Re: Looking for signs of McDonald's on other planets?
I guess it is important that someone looks and checks the easy things and crosses them off the list - it would be embarrassing to discover in 100 years that aliens emit RF we could have found in 2020.
But it tells us virtually nothing about the likelihood of intelligent life.
Sounds like.....
Sounds like the usual thing "We haven't found anything, yet. But fling us an enormous amount of money, and we'll likely not find anything anyway. But think of the good times we could have, with all that money. We may never have to find a proper job"
I'm starting to doubt there's intelligent life in the solar system too...