NASA Kepler-Mission Findings Inspire Search for ET Technologies
“Kepler has now discovered over 2,000 new worlds around other stars, most of them smaller than twice the size of Earth, and many probably having water,” said Geoff Marcy, professor of astronomy, University of California, Berkeley. “This flood of nearly Earth-size planets offers the first opportunity for us humans to hunt for other intelligent species that may have evolved on them.”
“Technological civilizations may communicate with their space probes located throughout the galaxy by using laser beams, either in visible light or infrared light,” he said. ”Laser light is detectable from other civilizations because the power is concentrated into a narrow beam and the light is all at one specific color or frequency. The lasers outshine the host star at the color of the laser.”
Marcy, who kicked off the search for extrasolar planets 20 years ago, plans to sift through data from the Kepler space telescope in search of evidence for civilizations advanced enough to have built massive orbiting “solar” power stations. Marcy is a member of the Kepler space telescope team that is observing the light from 160,000 stars in our galaxy in search of ones that dim periodically because of a planet passing or transiting in front of them. Theoretical physicist Raphael Bousso will look for ways of detecting universes other than our own, and try to understand what these alternate universes, or multiverses, will look like.
There has already been some effort in this vein, with people searching the "Kepler field" for radio signals: http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.0845
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... then Civilizations out there, older and more advanced than us,
have certainly detected Earth, as a nice planet with liquid water and Life.
Maybe they haven't detected humans yet (an ever expanding wavefront of radio waves and perhaps nuclear explosion signals), or maybe haven't detected a changing atmosphere's compositions that betray industrialization - if they are far enough away (200 light years or more).
I wonder if they've sent any starships in the past, distant or otherwise.
If we send a starship to another planet-with-life (probably possible in the next few centuries), what kind of mission would it be ?
Strictly robotic ?
Observe, sample, send back data, photos, video ?
Were we in some ancient Civilization's database as an interesting planet with dinosaurs ?
"Mostly harmless."
Humanity is pretty weak right now - when Columbus and his ships traveled to the New World,
the people that were visited - not the visitors - were the ones that got screwed.
Good - if no Civilization is within 100 light years of us, we can remain hidden in the bushes and keep getting stronger. Even 87 years from now, we'll be much more advanced (barring a disaster - look at us today vs. 1926).
Humanity's space program in 1926:
Robert H. Goddard, with the first successful liquid-fuel chemical rocket, launched 16 March 1926.
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Meanwhile, it's pretty hard just to detect LIFE on another planet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_Planet_Finder
In May 2002, NASA chose two TPF mission architecture concepts for further study and technology development. Each would use a different means to achieve the same goal—to block the light from a parent star in order to see its much smaller, dimmer planets. That technology challenge has been likened to finding a firefly near the beam of a distant searchlight. Additional goals of the mission would include characterizing the surfaces and atmospheres of newfound planets, and looking for the chemical signatures of life.
The two planned architectures were:Infrared astronomical interferometer (TPF-I): Multiple small telescopes on a fixed structure or on separated spacecraft floating in precision formation would simulate a much larger, very powerful telescope. The interferometer would use a technique called nulling to reduce the starlight by a factor of one million, thus enabling the detection of the very dim infrared emission from the planets.
Visible Light Coronagraph (TPF-C): A large optical telescope, with a mirror three to four times bigger and at least 100 times more precise than the Hubble Space Telescope, would collect starlight and the very dim reflected light from the planets. The telescope would have special optics to reduce the starlight by a factor of one billion, thus enabling astronomers to detect faint planets.
NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) were to issue calls for proposals seeking input on the development and demonstration of technologies to implement the two architectures, and on scientific research relevant to planet finding. Launch of TPF-C had been anticipated to occur around 2014, and TPF-I possibly by 2020.
But hey, Congress and the Administration had better things to do with taxpayer $trillions, like invading the Evildoers of Afghanistan and Iraq, so they cancelled this mission in 2006 - as the occupation of Iraq was getting bogged down in a quagmire...
I was just pointing out that even if an expanding galactic Civilization doesn't know Humanity is here,
they might still know about our nice, cozy, life-filled planet from a long distance away. 3000 light years ? Depends on what kind of TPF they built.
As you've pointed out, Kepler is crippled, and they're not going to put up another 10 clones.
Sooner rather than later, we'll have a good idea of how many "habitable" planets are really out there (at least in our neighborhood of the Galaxy), and soon after that, how many have atmospheres and chemical composition signatures suggesting Life.
(there might be plenty of "Earth-size" planets around red dwarf stars, but they might be nothing "Earth-like":
http://www.universetoday.com/103518/water-trapped-worlds-possible-around-red-dwarf-stars/ )
I'll suspend judgement on "the plenty in the Galaxy" till then, but I grant you there's a good chance there's plenty of "good planets". But even for star-travelling Civilizations, I bet 10 light years is much easier to handle than 20,000 light years.
Is the Earth close enough to some Civilization to be interesting ? Could be. Of course, someone might have come 53.2 million years ago, and we'd never know. Or someone might come 11.7 million years from now - again, we'll probably never know. Space is huge. Time is vast.
Humans might be ready for "travel between the stars" in 1000 years - will we really be interested in "taking over" planets in 3013 ? I bet we would be... but most likely "life" there would be bacterial level. Why would they be just a few hundred or thousand years "behind" us ? Pretty coincidental. But if they were, I wouldn't give them good odds.
The Native Americans never imagined someone like Columbus coming and destroying their way of life.
