(October 4, 2013 at 6:33 am)SavedByGraceThruFaith Wrote: You do know that scientists are searching space for such signals. If they could not be detected why are they searching?
Because what you were asking for was a radio message from some alien ambassadors saying "Peoples of the Universe, please attand carefully. The message that follows is vital to the future of you all. The choice for you all is simple; a continued existence under my guidance or total annihilation." (Bonus points if anyone gets the reference; deducted if you used Google to cheat. I'm a prophet; I'll know.)
Anyway, what scientists working for the Seti project are listening for is a signal, rather than a message, something that deliberately declares its artificial origin above the natural background radio noise of space. And it may be that such a signal has already been received. Apart from the aforementioned "Wow!" signal, radio telescope data is coming in all the time, literally 24/7. The problem isn't with listening; it's analysing the results. It's one thing looking at this stuff - it's quite another knowing what it is you're seeing.
Which is where the Seti@home project comes in. Basically you sign up - for free - and after downloading the analysis software (it used to be a dedicated Seti app but now it's more of an opensource project thing), they send you a package of raw data for your pc to process in its downtime. It's like a screensaver. Afterwards, your pc sends the crunched data back to Seti automatically and gets a new workload.
The big advantage of doing it this way is that instead of it taking many, many decades for one or even a few dedicated and expensive supercomputers, they are using the equivalent processing power of the whole planet, ideally speaking. Plus the discoverer, should there prove to be one, gets their name in the history books.
So it's a bit premature to close the door on this just at the moment.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
