Broadcasting?

[mmcirvin]

From a Washington Post article about astrobiology:

In addition, the private group SETI, or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has been broadcasting radio messages to hoped-for intelligent aliens for years and listening for a response -- sometimes with NASA support -- but has been met so far with silence.

If I were a member of the SETI Institute, I suspect I'd be annoyed by this: "Do they think we don't know about the speed of light?" In fact, all actual efforts to send messages to extraterrestrials thus far have been symbolic tokens, sent with no hope of a response; the SETI Institute's projects just watch and listen.

Comments

[dr-strych9.livejournal.com]

SETI people have learned to hold very low expectations for the coherence and clarity of reporting on their efforts by political organs like The Washington Post.

[prog.livejournal.com]

I once read that they circled a mainstream news article that reported about them accurately and wrote WOW! above it, but on re-examination it was just one of their own press releases.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Don't be so sure about those, either--I've seen a lot of press releases that were horribly garbled.

[thesaucernews.livejournal.com]

(hypothetical SETI researcher:) "Do they think we don't know about the speed of light?"

Funny story... the tv station I work at does regular satellite interviews with soldiers from Iraq. One night, we set up an interview with the ISS, because there was an Aggie on board, and of course the lag, which is present in the Iraq interviews, was noticeably worse to and from the ISS.

That this should logically be so didn't stop some from complaining, perplexed, at how long it was taking.

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

What efforts have those been? The Arecibo message, the Pioneer 10 disc; have there been any other attempts?

It may be wrong headed to be listening if we don't send. What if everyone out there who we'd like to hear from is also in LISTEN-ONLY mode?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Both Pioneers had plaques and both Voyagers had discs. Besides Arecibo, there was also some eccentric private effort a few years ago that solicited messages from the public for a fee, if I recall correctly.

What if everyone out there who we'd like to hear from is also in LISTEN-ONLY mode?

I once asked SETI researcher Paul Horowitz about that, and he said an assumption of most SETI efforts was that Earth's technological civilization is very young, and that we're listening for older ones; someone who's had radio technology for a hundred thousand years might have the resources to make it reasonable to do a lot of transmitting specifically to be heard.

Do they think

[notr.livejournal.com]

we never saw or read Contact? Or its predecessor, James Gunn's The Listeners?