From: Thomas Buckner (tcbevolver@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Sep 29 2004 - 12:01:08 MDT
--- Randall Randall <randall@randallsquared.com>
wrote:
> But UFAIs created light years away are not huge
> threats, since
> they need to know you're there, and that
> information would seem
> scarce.
>
This may be the real answer to the famous
question "Where are they?" ETs, I mean. Why does
SETI have so much trouble finding any radio
signals from other civs?
Possibility: we're really the first.
Possibility: civs self-destruct always, soon
after transmissions start.
OR: possibility: advertising your position is
seen as bad policy in case there are any UFAIs
(or UFETs) within radio-detectable distances, so
narrow-beam communications such as laser become
preferred after a few decades.
In the second or third possibilities, the
expanding radio-freq bubble is paper-thin, so
that there might be a civilization within
(say)100 light years which stopped transmitting
radio long ago, and would not be detected that
way except by someone in the zone where the
bubble is passing. If the hypothetical 100 ly
distant civ used radio/tv/radar from 300 to 200
years ago, then stopped, a detector would need to
be 100 to 200 ly in the OPPOSITE direction to
pick up those signals. Here on Earth we would
blindly assume there was nobody there (at least
until some new telescope spotted the Great Wall
of Xubxib).
Tom Buckner
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