That’s exactly what they are looking for.
Umm… you clearly didn’t follow the line of reasoning implied by Musicat’s post. S/He was saying that since aliens can’t detect our RF emissions, there’s no reason to think they’d be sending anything our way intentionally.
Sure there is. Well, not at us, specifically, but in our general direction, sure. After all, we did just that in 1974.
Umm, yourself.
I didn’t mean to present the argument as my own, though I can see how it would be read that way. I was trying to clarify Musicat’s stance in light of your curious reply earlier.
May I use that to dis someone who dissses me, or do you have it copyrighted? 
All yours.
Yeah, I got your point. It was just a bad joke. Even if they could pick out our signals from the noise, what exactly would we want to say? I know they sent out that thing that tries to describe humankind on earth in pictures and icons. bit it could easily just seem like gibberish to them. Not that it isn’t worth a try. And really, how practical is it to communicate with beings of an unknown nature when it takes years to reach them? Theoretically it’s a fascinating idea. But Star Trek was just a TV show.
I like it.
It’s a nice reversal of the normal sci-fi theme of: Alien race that’s technologically more advanced than us, but culturally one-dimensional, become enamored with American TV and rock n roll. And what is this thing that you call “love”? :rolleyes:
Seriously though; good idea.
Just so everybody’s clear, there’s exactly one star within the two-light-year sphere.
Now excise that out!
Okay, some of his jokes still stand. But do you think the beings of Theta Centari-C are really going to find it funny that Jack Benny is stingy?
On the other hand, they might send us jokes about how glomulobilus retroflection makes for hilarious situation comedies. Once we decode it, do you think we’re going to be rolling in the aisles with laughter because one character decided to transform into a reptile, rather than the expected marsupial?
I’ll bet a thousand years from now (if our civilization survives and continues to advance) we’ll be able to do just that. And we’re a very young civilization. So maybe, just maybe, there’s somebody out there who’ll hear us someday.
On the other hand (referring to us listening for others) will more advanced civilizations be spewing EM waves in all directions? Maybe all their communications are on tight beams, or through cute li’l wormholes or something.
Did SETI look for strong signals particularly designed to announce the presence of another civilization rather than weak I Love Lucy shows?
I don’t doubt we’ll be able to do that even sooner. We wouldn’t need to build a single large antenna that size; we need only deploy several smaller antennae across that distance and use aperture synthesis interferometry. We use the same technique on a much smaller scale right now, for example, in the VLA in New Mexico.
Does that go through the deflector dish or the Bussard ramscoops?
All three, of course. That’s the whole point of aperture synthesis.
Aperture Synthesis gets you the angular resolution, which is determined by the physical seperation of two or more smaller dishes. And a bunch of computing power as well.
The amount of signal you collect is just a function of the total area the dishes.
So, you still need a bunch of surface area to collect a nice amount of signal.
Though, if we ever expand some into something other than low earth orbit, lots o big ass dishes should be able placed in nice zero g regions of the solar system.
Once we can start detecting earth-like extrasolar planets, then we should turn our ears toward those. That’s assuming we’re right about life needing a “goldielocks-zone”. But, hey, it’s a good place to start to narrow our focus, rather than the brute-force method we’re using now. Perhaps some ETs have detected our earth-like planet, and are beaming us a message.
I’m not holding my breath though.
ETA: Another thought… we’d have to be sure to stream a continuous message for a looong time, toward each target, lest they miss our call. It’s not like they (or we) have interstellar voice mail.
Thank you, Sir. I was also trying to point out, indirectly, that the glaring lack of detection of ANYTHING promising so far by SETI might be due to[ol][]our inability to detect “ordinary” communications like our TV/Radio signals, and/or[]The severe restriction in possible sources if we have to depend on only those who are beaming directly at us.[/ol]
Why do I have some cartoon version of an Alien, something like from Futurama or the Simpsons…floating through space with a cell phone…
“Can you hear me now?”