Too much sugar, imo.

Forget about detecting any of our background EM activity from other stars, even our strongest radiotelescopes would be unable to detect any of that from outside our solarsystem. Narrow bandwidth high powered signals sent by radio telescopes could be detected light years away, but with our current technology our strongest receivers could probably not detect our strongest transmitters more than 1000ly away.

Wow, the perspective is only becoming more clear.

BTW, do you have any sources to back up your statement, or credentials. I'd like to solidify this belief that we cannot detect any transmissions which are not directed specifically at us from much farther away than Neptune.

The article below tries to answer this question and has its own sources cited.

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/astronomy/f...ection-12.html

I've gotta run, but quickly--

The direct signals from planets (i.e. not the wobbling or occulting of the star, but seeing their light directly) look pretty much exactly like the light from the star--since it's reflected and all. So to 'see' the planet you would have to separate the planet from the star visually. Well, at least in the easiest way of directly detecting the planet. Otherwise, if you couldn't, all you would notice is a slight shift upward in the light you were receiving, and it would affect all parts of the spectrum equally.

For a transmission, the energy is concentrated in one particular frequency band. It looks a lot different than the reflected light from a planet. So if you're looking at a star + this signal, most of the spectrum wouldn't be affected by the signal, but a small part would. It is a lot easier to see that difference since you can see what the level 'should' be by looking at a nearby frequency and compare that to the frequencies containing the signal.

And yeah, I'm ignoring absorption and emission lines, etc...

Thanks, I'm satisfied. We are very, very... very isolated from most everyone else in the universe.

Actually I might be wrong about no signals being detectable from outside the solarsystem, there seems to be some exceptions. But for the vast majority of our EM activity it is true and the point being that we are not easy to detect from other solarsystems or vice versa.

Deoxyribose joke, nice.

Are the exceptions you speak of the ones listed in the article you posted, like radar for example? Or do you mean something else?

Yeah the stuff mentioned in the article is what I had in mind.

We really are a pale blue dot in a vastness of empty space and will likely not discover any intelligent life in a long long time unless a much more advanced civilization wants to make their precense known. To me thats kind of scary and comforting at the same time.

zomg guys there are rules to this thread, one of which is every post must be accompanied by a picture!



The second and last rule is that each picture be accompanied by a description: this is a paleontological picture regarding the evolution of **** sapiens sapiens.

Duc wut i did there? i wanted to post words (namely, those used to yell at u guys >.<) and grabbed a picture so that i could do that while conforming to the rules. next offender gets a ryanb9 infraction. 10 ryanb9 infractions make a ryanb9 face which, trust me, you do not want.

edit: Thumper said it best: "If you dont have any picture to post, dont post anything at all."

Ryan B




evolution of woman



evolution of drink



evolution of all women after finishing a bottle of The Kraken

The hand of Mrs. Roentgen: the first X-ray image, 1895

I know next to nothing about rum (other than that pirates drink it), so you having posted this picture turned out to be a game-changer when I was sent to the store to pick up eggnog and rum last night.

Yo ho ho, Cheers!

Golden Record

Scenes From Earth

The following is a listing of pictures electronically placed on the phonograph records which are carried on board the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft.

In gif form

My previous pictures: Max Planck and Robot Asimo.





Trinity, first atomic bomb.




Underwater test, Bikini Atoll, 1946.

Results of a double-slit-experiment performed by Dr. Tonomura showing the build-up of an interference pattern of single electrons. Numbers of electrons are 11 (a), 200 (b), 6000 (c), 40000 (d), 140000 (e).


A publicity photo of a participant sitting in the Colorado Springs experimental station with his "Magnifying Transmitter". The arcs are about 22 feet (7 m) long. (Tesla's notes identify this as a double exposure.)


A. Piccard, E. Henriot, P. Ehrenfest, E. Herzen, Th. de Donder, E. Schrödinger, J.E. Verschaffelt, W. Pauli, W. Heisenberg, R.H. Fowler, L. Brillouin;

P. Debye, M. Knudsen, W.L. Bragg, H.A. Kramers, P.A.M. Dirac, A.H. Compton, L. de Broglie, M. Born, N. Bohr;

I. Langmuir, M. Planck, M. Skłodowska-Curie, H.A. Lorentz, W. Matthau, P. Langevin, Ch.-E. Guye, C.T.R. Wilson, O.W. Richardson

Fifth conference participants, 1927. Institut International de Physique Solvay in Leopold Park.


The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers.


W. Matthau and J. Robert Oppenheimer probably analyzing the virtues of an aggressive base running strategy.


Paul Dirac and Richard Feynman probably arguing who would win between the Houston Oilers and Green Bay Packers.


lol at the last line- what a maroon what an ignoranimus he probably thought the universe was static؟

[x] Nice pictures

FYP