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Other civilisations in the Galaxy - are they really that likely?

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Author Topic:   Other civilisations in the Galaxy - are they really that likely?
Dr Jack
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From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
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Message 37 of 77 (234371)
08-18-2005 5:09 AM 		Reply to: Message 14 by Monk
08-16-2005 11:55 PM

I agree and would think there should be more radio signals if the galaxy was filled with intelligent civilizations, (i.e. at or above our level of technology).
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No, that's not so. It's not possible to distinguish a fully compressed signal from random noise as we are already widely using compression we may reasonably assume all earthly signals will be compressed in the near future. Since compression has immediate technological benefits over uncompressed signals we can assume any advanced civilisation will use compression.
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So the only radio signal we could possibly detect is one that is deliberately sent out for us to receive. How likely is that?
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Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 9.2

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Message 54 of 77 (234721)
08-19-2005 4:40 AM 		Reply to: Message 40 by Monk
08-18-2005 1:49 PM

Yes, they are. But there's two problems:
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1. We couldn't detect the signals we produced unless they came from a very near star (one source quoted it at 100 lyrs, but I don't have a source for that).
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2. 50, or even 100, years is a tiny, tiny window of opportunity.
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