[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NEOPO', 'S')o sad.
So many people unable to think outside the box.
Thank you for keeping an open mind - you know who you are

"The halls of science and all the lunatics committed there"

[Battle_Scarred_Galactico]

Recieving a signal is possible, I believe it would have had to have been sent many millions of years ago, but it could happen.

[AWPrime]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', 'A')liens send signal+we receive signal=existence of Aliens is proven and some information about them is retreived.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Battle_Scarred_Galactico', 'R')ecieving a signal is possible, I believe it would have had to have been sent many millions of years ago, but it could happen.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AWPrime', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', 'A')liens send signal+we receive signal=existence of Aliens is proven and some information about them is retreived.

[AWPrime]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AWPrime', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', 'A')liens send signal+we receive signal=existence of Aliens is proven and some information about them is retreived.

[ashurbanipal]

We assume too easily that alien civilizations would be like ours to the degree necessary that we would recognize it as such. There's no reason to assume that we're not receiving hundreds of signals daily, but because our minds are so different, we are incapable of recognizing it.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AWPrime', '
')Primitive? I am saying that we need something better, and any civilisation that uses such means would be worth communicating with.

[AWPrime]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AWPrime', '
')Primitive? I am saying that we need something better, and any civilisation that uses such means would be worth communicating with.

[TITAN]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Battle_Scarred_Galactico', 'D')on't get your hopes up, the distances involved would take even light hundreds of thousands, even millions of years to travel.

[AWPrime]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TITAN', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Battle_Scarred_Galactico', 'D')on't get your hopes up, the distances involved would take even light hundreds of thousands, even millions of years to travel.

[Anthrobus]

as a direct answer to the topic,

there is a protocol for astronomers on how to proceed in the case of a possible extraterrestical signal.

Another question:
If god would reveal himself to us ....

or does he already, many times a day, to every individual?

[Ingenuity_Gap]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TITAN', 'S')ince there now seems to be a serious attempt at building a working fusion reactor, the path has opened for plausible travel within the closest stars. It is only a matter of time before this technology is applied to space travel, I would say within the next 100 years or so.

[Niagara]

My turn:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ingenuity_Gap', '
')Although "fusion" sounds like a big word it's actually worthless when talking about interstellar space travel.

[MD]

I know it doesn't take much wattage to cover long distances, look at the voyager probes for example.

But we are talking interstellar distances here and there is a cube-square law at work. Just how many watts power are required to be detectable over interstellar distances? There are whole ranges of frequencies that will be washed out by background noise also.

The SETI people are listening, so I suppose the basic math has been done and there are frequency ranges worth watching. I am about interested enough to get my lazy ass up and dig out an old electronics text that i am sure is around the place somewhere...

[TheDude]

Reach the stars? Let's try and get an LNG tanker from the Middle East to Mexico first.
I love the idea of perhaps someday having pics of another star system, and perhaps we could pull it off - read about Robert Forward's tiny Starwisp probe for instance. But also read about the Rare Earth hypothesis, which Omnitir alluded to. Even a sprinkling of the caveats here make complex life in the galaxy unlikely. If it's any consolation there's a good chance the universe has a wide variety of low-level life, like the extremophiles that live around vents on the ocean floor. But for a stable comfy existence like we have here it seems you need a big laundry list of just-so conditions, making more complex life in the galaxy seem unlikely - perhaps in the whole visible universe.
The data we have of extrasolar planets isn't encouraging either - lots of planets many times the size of Jupiter orbiting nearer their star than Mercury does to the Sun, or planets in wildly elliptical orbits.

[NEOPO]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NEOPO', 'S')o sad.
So many people unable to think outside the box.
Thank you for keeping an open mind - you know who you are

"The halls of science and all the lunatics committed there"

[Ingenuity_Gap]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Niagara', 'F')ar from worthless, fusion would be a great energy source for something like the Bussard Ramjet

[Niagara]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ingenuity_Gap', '
')You're joking, right? Relativity is about the differences in perception between different observers. Length contraction refers to the ship, not the distance to the destination. The distance to the destination stays the same, unless you modify the curvature of space with some type of wormwhole or warp drive.