“Stellar activity and plasma turbulence near a transmitting planet can broaden an otherwise ultra-narrow signal, spreading its power across more frequencies and making it more difficult to detect in traditional narrowband searches.”
Science paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae3d33
Review article: https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/10/seti_admits_its_search_for/
Broadening of specral lines info: http://www.hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Atomic/broaden.html
FFS…
SETI PRESUMES that the way we’re going to detect extraterrestrial civilizations, is their beaming TONS of photons at us, in crisp signal.
WHY TF would they do that??
Why wouldn’t they ditch the energy-wasteful TV-style broadcast, for energy-efficient fiber-optics?
There’s, in my view, only a SINGLE century of civilization-evolution in-which tons of broadcast energy is poured helter-skelter all throughout the sky.
Before that it isn’t done because the tech doesn’t exist, & after that, it isn’t done because it’s idiotic to be doing it.
So, instead of presuming “all civilizations are broadcasting, why aren’t we seeing them??”, we OUGHT be presuming “we’re trying to see a single-century of civilized-evolution, & maybe this is the wrong method for finding other-world’s life”.
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Very good point. Having advanced life so close to us to clearly detect is wild enough, but to also snipe the direction and time window is absolutely crazy.
^ This!
We’re already on the edge of point to point communication without radio waves so within another 50-100 years nobody will detect us either.
https://www.aliroquantum.com/blog/quantum-entanglement-communication
We’re simply asking the wrong questions. Years ago I remember someone postulating the idea that if another civilization wanted to be found by another civilization, what they would do is find some interesting stellar object, and embed a signal in whatever radiation it was emitting.
So, another civilization would have to be a) capable of recognizing that object as interesting, b) have the capability and will to study it, and c) detect and separate a signal from the background.
The “You must be this tall to ride this ride” theory of interstellar communication.
They do factor all that in to their thinking and also look for things like pulsed lasers. They’re not idiots like.
Maybe there’s some alien civilization who’s actively pointing a radio signal in our direction so they can communicate with us. I don’t know… maybe the aliens are observing how friendly we are to each other and really want to connect?