[ExI] Scientists Find Solar System Like Ours

[spike]

> Jeff Davis
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Scientists Find Solar System Like Ours
> 
> Friends ...Because beyond 
> some limited range (a few hundred light years?) we're more or 
> less blind...

Sure but of course that depends on the receiver's technology as well as the
sender's, and the frequency band.  Sagan's outgoing message is the brightest
object in the galaxy at that narrow frequency, one for which we have
extremely sensitive recievers.

> Then this thread popped up, with it's microlensing 
> amplification theory-becomes-technique.  So I have to ask 
> myself -- and you guys -- "Can microlensing provide a means 
> of extending the communications reach, of hearing/reading 
> communication signals from further out among the stars?"
> 
> Best, Jeff Davis

Ja, the microlenses would make receiving signals much easier from those
solar systems that happen to lie on the other side of an appropriately sized
mass.  Signals could similarly be sent in that direction.  Jeff as I see it
the big limitation to interstellar communication is not signal strength but
rather the time involved.  Amara's recently discovered stellar twin is about
5000 years out there, so all communications are a monologue from the point
of view of unfortunate carbon units that live less than 100 years.  {8-[  

Here's a link to the message sent toward the M13 globular cluster on 16
November 1974 (game: where were you and what were you doing on that day?
{8-]  It was a Saturday.)

http://www.setileague.org/askdr/arecibo.htm

And here's a link to the actual message:

http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Nov99/Arecibo.message.ws.html#footnote

My notion is that extraterrestrial civilizations have looked at that and
uniformly realized there isn't much point in sending out infromation, but
will listen for incoming signals.  We may have a galaxy full of quiet
listeners but no singers.

spike