What sign do you think SETI should be looking for?

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   bBereanposted 11 years ago

   I find the SETI program intriguing.  For over 50 years they have employed many approaches to Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.  What creative methods would you employ?  What would you consider conclusive proof or at very least, compelling evidence, of extraterrestrial intelligence?

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      Larry Fieldsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I'd take a close look at the incoming television signals. If we find reruns of Married... with Children, we can probably write off that planet as a source of intelligent alien life.

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   knolyourselfposted 11 years ago

   The other, in all likelihood would be using a transmissive property that would transcend the speed of light, and that we have not yet discovered
   because of the limits of our logic.

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   Dame Scribeposted 11 years ago

   Conclusive proof would be when they actually make 'contact' though I can't imagine them doing that when they'd be 'quarantined' and 'examined', considered 'radioactive' or some other such thing they'd have to make contact with a ordinary citizen I'd think. Just a guess.

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   EmpressFelicityposted 11 years ago

   I wouldn't look for extraterrestials at all. I'd rather they didn't find us.
   
   If they're more intelligent and more technologically advanced than us, they will regard us as a potential source of slave labour. Better to remain undiscovered.

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      scottcgruberposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      If they're more intelligent and more technologically advanced than us, surely they'd have robots who could do all their slave labor for them. If they were capable of interstellar travel, they're probably technologically advanced enough to have robots who could build the robots to do the slave labor. There's really no logical benefit to traveling all the way into Earth's gravity well in the inner solar system to kidnap members of a hostile, primitive species, and bringing them to a foreign planet to do manual labor.
      
      Besides, looking for signs of life isn't the same as announcing ourselves to them. That's Active SETI. The SETI Institute conducts passive SETI - listening for radio signals.

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         EmpressFelicityposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I see what you mean about active and passive SETI.
         
         I wasn't thinking that the aliens would kidnap us - you're right, it's not exactly efficient to kidnap an entire species and transport it to the other end of the galaxy lol. Rather, they might choose to enslave us in situ so to speak, and make us mine/farm the planet's resources so that they could take those back to the planet Zarg or wherever.

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            recommend1posted 11 years agoin reply to this

            I recall that someone was speculating on those lines - they turn up here in the year dot, make gold a precious metal in the minds of the evolving race of humans - then they push off and come back ten thousand years later and pick up the piles of gold the humans have made for them.  Bulldust, but creative

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   cryptidposted 11 years ago

   I think what they are already doing is probably the best we could expect.  Alien civilizations may be putting out signals we can't even imagine, and if we can't imagine it we can't detect it.  So the best SETI can do is look for signs that would be familiar to our civilization.  Our radio signals may be buzzing past countless alien planets with life on them, but the life is either too primitive or too advanced to notice (or care).  Same can be said for us.  Maybe we are too primitive to recognize the signs. 
   
   The SETI thing is incredibly frustrating to me.  I can only imagine what it's like to the scientists participating in the program. Somebody has to be out there somewhere.  Don't they?

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   knolyourselfposted 11 years ago

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfpSXI8_UpY

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   bBereanposted 11 years ago

   Okay, lets say the mode of transmission is familiar to us...what would the content need to be?  A tone? A melody? A decipherable word, phrase or paragraph?  Data that translates into a diagram, illustration or image?  Basically how high would the bar need to be set to silence critics saying it was naturally occurring or random as opposed to proof of intelligence?

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      recommend1posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Any signal only needs to be repeating in some configuration that does not exist naturally, any number calculations in simple beeps would do.
      
      but I would go with the thought that 'they' would not want anything to do with us until we grew up, and that will probably coincide with much higher level discoveries than the narrow band we have now that comes mostly from weapons technology, such as nuclear power, computing, miniaturisation that makes stuff like ipad possible, military communication that gave us most of hte fancy communication stuff that makes our phones and the internet work etc etc etc.

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   Joy56posted 11 years ago

   i agree, what exactly are we talking about here?????????????????

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   bBereanposted 11 years ago

   Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

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