21Sep 2022 by Nigel Fleming No Comments
linkedin post 2021-01-18 04:15:31

linkedin post 2021-01-18 04:15:31

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OUTER SPACE is typically thought of as a cold dark empty vacuum with large planets quietly circling around, and this is how many films portray it. But we now know it is a hugely dynamic place, with enormous rivers of charged particles forming complex structures and extreme weather conditions, full of magnetic and gravitational forces that are orders of magnitude greater than we experience, and where quantum particles emerge and vanish in a bubbling cauldron. This magnificent review illustrates it superbly. https://link.springer.com/article/10.12942/lrsp-2007-1 View in LinkedIn
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21Sep 2022 by Nigel Fleming No Comments

linkedin post 2021-01-17 06:59:29

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NOISE. “There is also the issue of recognizing a needle when one finds it, and not mistaking it for a particularly odd piece of straw. Communication SETI typically seeks signals so obviously artificial that there will be no doubt that the search has succeeded.” https://lnkd.in/dKzsrBv View in LinkedIn
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21Sep 2022 by Nigel Fleming No Comments

linkedin post 2021-01-17 06:56:56

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BUCKET PROBABILITIES. “Much of the SETI literature is dedicated to guessing or reasoning which haystacks might contain many needles. For instance, if we posit that extraterrestrial species are trying to get our attention and so have created obvious "beacons", then we can focus our efforts on those haystacks or parts of haystacks where needles would most obviously be left for us to find, i.e., we can identify which haystacks represent Schelling points in a game of mutual search—for instance, by guessing at "magic frequencies".” https://lnkd.in/dKzsrBv View in LinkedIn
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21Sep 2022 by Nigel Fleming No Comments

linkedin post 2021-01-17 07:24:39

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FRACTAL WORLD. “Most cells, tissues, organs – in either the animal or vegetal worlds – are systems in which the component parts and unit fragments assemble with different levels of complexity and recursive organization at several orders of magnitude. This means that a single fragment or element may, on various scales, reproduce the whole object from which it is derived; in other words, it is self-similar, albeit in a statistical sense.” https://www.oatext.com/The-living-realm-depicted-by-the-fractal-geometry.php#gsc.tab=0 View in LinkedIn
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21Sep 2022 by Nigel Fleming No Comments

linkedin post 2021-01-17 06:55:42

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VARIOUS CRITERIA. “SETI optimists hope that there are many alien needles to be found, presumably reducing the time to find the first one. Note that in this metaphor the needles are the detectable signatures of alien technology, meaning that a single alien species might be represented by many needles.” https://lnkd.in/dKzsrBv View in LinkedIn
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21Sep 2022 by Nigel Fleming No Comments

linkedin post 2021-01-17 07:20:51

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SO ENDS this second and last weekend on a rational approach to searching for extraterrestrial life signals. It is notable that we have been willfully uncurious. We will see if the recently released UFO report in the US is valuable, or, more likely, milk-toast redacted material suitable for children. View in LinkedIn
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21Sep 2022 by Nigel Fleming No Comments

linkedin post 2021-01-17 07:16:54

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SUBSET TARGETS. “Also, our haystack definition included vast swaths of interstellar space where we have no particular reason to expect to find transmitters; humanity's completeness to subsets of this haystack—for instance, for continuous, permanent transmissions from nearby stars—is many orders of magnitude higher.” https://lnkd.in/dKzsrBv View in LinkedIn
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21Sep 2022 by Nigel Fleming No Comments

linkedin post 2021-01-17 07:14:31

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THE CHALLENGE. “We should be careful, however, not to let this result swing the pendulum of public perceptions of SETI too far the other way by suggesting that the SETI haystack is so large that we can never hope to find a needle. The whole haystack need only be searched if one needs to prove that there are zero needles—because technological life might spread through the Galaxy and/or technological species might arise independently in many places, we might expect there to be a great number of needles to be found.” https://lnkd.in/dKzsrBv View in LinkedIn
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21Sep 2022 by Nigel Fleming No Comments

linkedin post 2021-01-17 07:12:45

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BACK OF ENVELOPE. “However, perhaps more importantly for now, even order-of-magnitude estimates of the SETI space searched to date are valuable because they rebut the pervasive misconception that SETI work to date has significantly "sharpened" the Fermi Paradox or proven so dispositive that SETI can be said to have "failed" to find what it seeks.” https://lnkd.in/dKzsrBv View in LinkedIn
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