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What have we been able to accomplish so far and what are the prime obstacles that block our sight? My understanding is that Radio Telescopes are the prime tool for the search. I wonder what kind of challenges the astronomers who work on it are facing.

Ilya Gazman
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    We have to find terrestrial intelligence first. – JeffUK Dec 01 '20 at 15:04
  • @JeffUK that will definitely help, but I don't think it's a mandatory step for SETI. Our ability to travel in the universe is far more limited compare to our communicational ability. We can send and receive radio signals, years of light away. – Ilya Gazman Dec 01 '20 at 15:21
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    More context please. This is quite "broad". What is provoking this question. Have you done any "prior research". There are both known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Of course we don't know what the unknown unknowns are... – James K Dec 01 '20 at 19:39
  • @JamesK I am just asking about the basics, what are the known unknowns? – Ilya Gazman Dec 01 '20 at 19:56
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    For a start we don't know if extraterrestrial intellignence exists... – James K Dec 01 '20 at 20:11
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    Challenges include answers to the following questions: The sky is big, so "Where to point?" Electromagnetic spectrum is big, so "Where to tune?" Information may come in bursts, so "When to listen?" is a problem because at any moment we can only point in one direction. Also "Where to tune?" spans from radio waves through light waves all the way to X-rays and gamma rays. These are just my thoughts, not structured enough for an answer post. – uhoh Dec 01 '20 at 23:04
  • @IlyaGazman there are four votes to close and one more will (temporarily) close your question. It's a good question, but for a Stack Exchange question post as written it's a little unclear or vague. If you can move some of your responses in comments back into the question post itself by clicking "edit" that will help a lot. Comments are considered temporary and can theoretically be deleted in the future, so it's always best to incorporate all clarifications back into the actual question post itself. Thanks! – uhoh Dec 02 '20 at 00:20
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    @IlyaGazman btw I still link to your Why does the humidifier make a stove's flame orange? from time to time :-) – uhoh Dec 02 '20 at 00:22
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    @uhoh Tnx, I moved my comment to the question. Lol for the humidifier. – Ilya Gazman Dec 02 '20 at 00:47
  • Shall we continue to agree that good SETI and extraterrestrial questions are on-topic? What about METI? – uhoh Dec 16 '20 at 06:25

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We have no idea how much we’ve been able to accomplish so far in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

If there isn’t extraterrestrial intelligence then our progress is zero. If there is extraterrestrial intelligence and we already found some, then we’ve made 100% progress! I think the major obstacles for SETI are threefold: funding, stigma, and physics.

Funding: This article is a couple years old, but it does a nice job of summing up historical low funding for SETI. Most of the funding is private and on the order of millions to tens of millions of dollars a year. That might sound like a lot, but ALMA cost $1.3b. A few million a year isn’t enough to sustain a very robust program or buy, maintain, and staff an observatory.

Stigma: At least when I was working for the NRAO, SETI work wasn’t considered serious astronomy. There was some smirking in the lunchroom from some of the astronomers towards the folks “looking for little green men.” I think it’s more useful to try to improve telescopes and data processing techniques, but I don’t think anyone should be stigmatized for pursuing their intellectual curiosity. Stigma usually means less funding, less access to highly sought after observation hours on the best telescopes, and less people choosing to join the field.

Physics: Radio signals decay in power as the distance squared and even the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light years or about 271,937 AU away from our solar system. That means they would need an enormously powerful emitter and we would need a very sensitive detector to detect their signal. See: how far away could we detect that Earth has life?.

Connor Garcia
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  • Physics: It is caimed that SKA would be able to detect Earth-like electromagnetic "chatter" well beyond the nearest star systems (although advanced civilisations might be less incontinent with their emissions). If someone was blasting radar around like that from Arecibo (used to do), we could detect that right across the galaxy if we happened to be in the beam. – ProfRob Dec 21 '20 at 18:58
  • @RobJeffries I added a link to your relevant answer from 2015. I would be interested in seeing the calculations for an Arecibo strength radar detection at kly scales. – Connor Garcia Dec 21 '20 at 20:38