Fermi Paradox

[kilemall]

We assume aliens will use the electromagnetic spectrum because we do, but we only started using it about 150 years ago. What will we be using in another 100 or 200 years? There may be a vibrant community discussing numerous things that we simply don't hear.

It is also possible that intelligent life inevitably destroys itself.

A coworker believed that humans will create a race of intelligent machines, after which we will fade away. I can see a universe full of machine intelligences ignoring biologic life.

That was the primary idea behind Stanislaw Lem’s Cyberiad, and a few Ijon Tichy adventures.

 

[Condottiere]

The Cylons didn't.

 

[aramis]

What is everyone's view of the Fermi Paradox? In 1950, Enrico Fermi, who built the first nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago, posed the question: Where is everybody?

Unless they're approaching K1, we're unlikely to pick them up, period, by any method other than atmospheric compositions.
gross oversimplification of the math, but a good 1st order approximation...
Currently, our best scopes have trouble with 120 AU 0.25W - Inverse Square law. Our biggest commercial radio is 25 MW...100,000,000 times the power, so around 10,000× the range. so 1.2 1,200,000 AU, or 18.97 LY.

If we posit that V1 and V2 are only at 0.15 W, and the 150 AU value of cutoff from their estimates, it's still under 30 LY, around the average separation of stars in the F, G, and K types

If we accept only FGK as likely star types, they're simply a tiny increase in radio static.

Further, the biggest wattage broadcasters are not unique on channel... so interference is going to render the data unrecoverable. Noise. Louder than normal static.

It's not that they're not out there, it's that none of them are close enough to pick up with reasonable radio assumptions, and even if we do, most of the detections will be simply louder noise than usual.

It's entirely possible that a significant fraction of the background radio might actually life all over the place watching broadcast TV.

As for watching I Love Lucy? Proxima is probably too far out to get a good signal.

 

[Vargr Breath]

"As for watching I Love Lucy? Proxima is probably too far out to get a good signal."
They just need to adjust the rabbit ears a little bit.

 

[aramis]

"As for watching I Love Lucy? Proxima is probably too far out to get a good signal."
They just need to adjust the rabbit ears a little bit.

I am NOT amused. I've always hated posts like that. Serious D-move there. Disrespects me and the OP. And anyone else wanting this to be a serious discussion.

On a more realistic note, NOTHING ON TV is going to be decipherable, since the 50-some channels are all 3-5 signals per hemisphere, or more.
A quick look on wikipedia lists 45 or so stations on US channel 2 alone...
If they aren't in perfect phase (and they will NOT be in phase), it's going to be snow. No inteligible data .

Plus, being 1/1000 to 1/400 the maximum signal, that's 1/31.6 × the range to 1/20 the range. Either way, Alpha C C (Proxima's other name) ain't getting TV from earth in any meaningful way, tho if there are radio equipped folk, they are close enough that they might pick us up as a directional anomaly of stronger than normal background noise across our licensed radio spectra...

The Arecibo Message will only get received if someone has FTL... because it's target is 25 kLY away, and it was aimed for its "current location" – and nothing is expected to cross the beam... and 25 kLY is about 100× further than it's likely to be detectible. It was, simply put, a publicity stunt. And a waste of electrical power.