The Great Silence -Are We the Miss Lonely Hearts of the Milky Way?
Dennis Overbye, author of Lonely Hearts of he Cosmos wrote a brilliant essay about the probability of discovering intelligent, advanced technological civilization in our Galaxy. Overbye quoted Francis Drake, father of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial life, who says that to hear from ET we would "need to look at 10 million stars (there are 200 billion in our galaxy) and there is not enough time left."
Drake goes on to point out that contrary to popular wisdom which believes that we could discover the existence of extraterrestrials from powerful beacons beamed our way from their vastly advanced civilizations, that if we use the Earth is an case study, that the more advanced the civilization, the less likely they are to emit powerful radio waves. With our evolution to cable and satellite transmissions, we are now leaking very little out to space. The earth is gradually becoming "radio quiet" in a cosmic blink of the eye.
"That's the big change nobody anticipated," Overbye continues quoting Drake. "Once the powerful transmitters go off the air 'we will still exist but we will be hard to detect.' "
Posted by Casey Kazan.
Dennis Overbye: Please Call Earth. We Still Haven't Found You.
Related Galaxy posts:
MIT Asks: How Would Extraterrestrial Astronomers Study Earth?
"The Great Silence" -A Galaxy Insight
Harvard-Smithsonian Scientists Zero In On Key Sign of Habitable Worlds
Cruising the Goldilocks Zone -The Search for Super Earths
Dead Zones in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
GAIA -Mapping the Family Tree of the Milky Way
The "Hubble Effect" -A Galaxy Insight
James Cameron & Arthur C Clarke on 2001 A Space Odyssey
Eyes on the Cosmos -European Space Agency's Hawk 1 & Hubble's Successor
New Phoenix Mission Technology to Search for Life
Non-Carbon Lifeforms -Why We May Overlook
The Milky Way Enigma -How Galactic Forces May Control Life on Earth
Astro-Engineering Artifacts as Evidence of Extraterrestrial Life
The Biological Universe -A New Copernican Revolution
Jupiter's Europa & the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
Earth's Twin Habitable?
Since these articles of scientists pointing in a way and pointing in the other appear almost daily, I don't know if it's too costly or difficult to collect the answers of the readers and from those answers, again, collect the opinion or re opinion of experts about this topic.
Posted by: jer35mx | January 17, 2009 at 06:53 AM
Agreed 100% .
Not with radio waves...whatever the radio frequency will be.
Then the famous question : 'is there anybody out there' ...like in a famous UK song ?
YES , YEAH , SI , WE, IA...etc...in various languages.
Drake's equation is far from being stupid....on the contrary it is rather smart.....
Difficult to communicate ?? YES , SI , Yeah , WE , IA...etc...
Then what at Seti are doing ??
They listening at 'GOD' that presumably should be near-within the eclyctic ...or the like ....nearby solar system distance...
End of transmission...I Go on cable or on TV-SAT....
Regards.....101011010001
Posted by: claudio | January 17, 2009 at 12:33 PM