re: #112 Anymouse

I run the SETI Boinc program on my computer. SETI already weighed in on this; they sent out a message to us (possibly from Proxima Centauri) to note this is not the big deal the press is making of it:

Multiple detections are a minimum criterion.

That’s just exactly what you’re never going to get, though. What they’re saying is that they’re absolutely committed to never saying a signal is artificial.

Look at it from the other end. If the radio beam from Earth to one of our Outer Planet spacecraft swept across someone’s location and they detected it, it would be centuries, if not millennia, before another signal from us hit them, even with a lot heavier traffic than we have now.

An obviously artificial signal lasting a few seconds or minutes, like the Wow! Signal, is the best you can hope for. If you’ve said up front that you won’t accept it, you might as well give up.