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[bunnyboy]

I think we can safely assume that interstellar signal detection is a non-issue in this story (as in, it doesn't exist) or else humans would have known about the rest of the factions long ago.

Actually they got somekind of signal in 1977, but it lasted only a couple of minutes, before earth rotation got it away and it was never get back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal

And seti can only search of couple of frequences, because most of them are ful off noice from television, mobile phones, radars, home appliances like remote controlled carage door openers etc.

unless voyager was significantly outside pluto orbit when they did that test, the number you are looking for is probably over 5.7 MILLION times longer...you might have dropped a zero and some change somewhere along the line.

the solar system is only 7 light hours diameter....to pluto. 217 light YEARS is quite a bit longer

Distance to Pluto is 1/3 of distance to Voyager and distance to Voyager is 0.0018 light year (16.12 light hour), in current speed it was 0.00146 on 6 years ago. I did made some roundings, but it don't change the result very much.
So real distance 157.000 times longer.

So umiak can find us easily, if they have shipsize disk pointed on right direction and they are using different frequences than us in their communications & radars and listening right frequences.

[Trantor]

bunny: unless voyager was significantly outside pluto orbit when they did that test, the number you are looking for is probably over 5.7 MILLION times longer...you might have dropped a zero and some change somewhere along the line.

the solar system is only 7 light hours diameter....to pluto. 217 light YEARS is quite a bit longer

217 x 365 x (24 / 7) = 271560 times. That would be with Voyager @ 55AU.
Today Voyager is @ 116AU. That would be ~130000 times.

Edit: Too late.

[discord]

must have been smoking or something to mess up the math that bad....still a huge amount longer, and inverse square law should apply...somehow.

bah, i blame lack of sleep.

[NOMAD]

Arioch

I put in Talon's bio that she has been transferred to shuttle duty, which is correct; the fact that I put her in a fighter during the Naam battle just means that this transfer happened after the battle. [Obi-Wan Kenobi voice] So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view. [/Obi-Wan Kenobi voice]

Hum, funny, this sequence of events, is Well I guess she deserved the transfer ( despite any ill-feelings on talons behalf of being considered not yet expendable yet until she trains the next cadre of rookie pilots)

@ mljonir

true, really big dish are required, but couldn't an advance planetary com system do the trick ? or would they have upgrade to a different methods ( IE how FM is used mostly now for music station instead of AM)

@ Trantor: don't get much German TV here in the Great White North, so no idea and thanks for the correction, couldn't find the right date.

[Trantor]

@ Trantor: don't get much German TV here...

That´s not a loss. German TV programme is like a huge pile of sh*t with only a few scattered gems.

[javcs]

@ Trantor: don't get much German TV here...

That´s not a loss. German TV programme is like a huge pile of sh*t with only a few scattered gems.

That description applies to most TV programming.

[TheUnforsaken]

@ Trantor: don't get much German TV here...

That´s not a loss. German TV programme is like a huge pile of sh*t with only a few scattered gems.

Not much different from everywhere else then

Edit: Ninja'd...

[Trantor]

That´s not a loss. German TV programme is like a huge pile of sh*t with only a few scattered gems.

That description applies to most TV programming.

Edit: Ninja'd...

Yes, but you have no idea.
They´re copying EVERYTHING from UK or the States. Not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but they (try to) copy EVERYTHING the really really cheap way, even stage-scenes or - far worse - puns.
That doesn´t work. It´s painfully embarassing. Niveaulimbo. On German.

[javcs]

They're swiping puns? That ... how does that even ... WTF?
I mean, I can understand swiping concepts and ideas for shows - ie, CSI-type ... though ... damn, I just realized something - in terms of broadcast TV (where I live), almost all the prime-time shows are either "reality shows" or police procedurals/dramas, and there are going to be a few more brand new series of the type starting in the "fall viewing season".
No science fiction anymore. Bring sci-fi!! And, almost as importantly, first air it when people are available to watch it - not in some stupid time-slot that no-one watches - and don't shift the first-air times around during a given season, in between seasons is one thing, but in the middle of the season? c'mon, are you trying to kill the ratings? And using a series that is at least decent wouldn't hurt either.

[Mjolnir]

true, really big dish are required, but couldn't an advance planetary com system do the trick ? or would they have upgrade to a different methods ( IE how FM is used mostly now for music station instead of AM)

You said communication systems on ships. It's not completely far fetched that a scout/survey vessel might carry a big deployable radio telescope (you might take a survey ship around blasting a high precision time signal at nearby stars, returning to those stars a few years later to listen for your signal and get high precision distance/location measurements), but it's something with very specialized uses.

There's no reason a planetary or even system-wide communications network would be able to pick up signals across hundreds of light years. That's kind of like standing in LA and thinking you might overhear a conversation between two people in a crowded, noisy room in Paris. Modulation and encoding are issues, but the big one is just simple distance. (Plus, the interstellar medium absorbs some decent sized chunks of the radio spectrum. There's not much there, but when you add it up over a couple hundred light years...)

[TheUnforsaken]

You could also make a huge phased-array system with hundreds or thousand of probes...lots and lots of little things making up one really big thing.

Aren't most of the modern radio telescopes on earth phased-array now?

[DevilDalek]

What about Warships trying to scan a nebula for enemy ships?

what kind of sensors would they have?

[Mjolnir]

You could also make a huge phased-array system with hundreds or thousand of probes...lots and lots of little things making up one really big thing.

Aren't most of the modern radio telescopes on earth phased-array now?

Phased array radio telescopes increase directionality, allow progressive expansion of a telescope network, and in some cases can use electronic tracking to cover an area of the sky instead of mechanically moving elements to point at a specific location, but they do not increase sensitivity. You are still limited to what each individual element of the array can detect, since you need a clean signal from each element to work with.

For interstellar communications, you need a big monolithic dish. Or rather smaller telescopes and lasers, which can be much smaller due to operating at shorter wavelengths, less subject to attenuation by the interstellar medium, and easier to detect and higher bandwidth.

What about Warships trying to scan a nebula for enemy ships?

what kind of sensors would they have?

Stuff that's more portable and less likely to get shot to bits.
Probably look for drive plume spectra and point defense lasers blasting bits of nebula out of the way, x-rays from drive plumes hitting bits of debris, odd changes in magnetic fields from plasma in the disk being pushed around by drive plumes, etc. Ultra-high-sensitivity radio receivers would not be of much use. Even if they had equipment capable of detecting Earth's transmissions from there, the first step would probably be to move to a less-noisy system.

[NOMAD]

true, really big dish are required, but couldn't an advance planetary com system do the trick ? or would they have upgrade to a different methods ( IE how FM is used mostly now for music station instead of AM)

You said communication systems on ships. It's not completely far fetched that a scout/survey vessel might carry a big deployable radio telescope (you might take a survey ship around blasting a high precision time signal at nearby stars, returning to those stars a few years later to listen for your signal and get high precision distance/location measurements), but it's something with very specialized uses.

There's no reason a planetary or even system-wide communications network would be able to pick up signals across hundreds of light years. That's kind of like standing in LA and thinking you might overhear a conversation between two people in a crowded, noisy room in Paris. Modulation and encoding are issues, but the big one is just simple distance. (Plus, the interstellar medium absorbs some decent sized chunks of the radio spectrum. There's not much there, but when you add it up over a couple hundred light years...)

Given the info above, might their still be a possibility of a 20Th century or later message getting through. I know that Seti and a few other have purposely sent out messages of contact to anyone lessening. Now I know their alot of "interference" that can get in the way but could we get lucky ?

[Ktrain]

If one were to be communicating over interstellar distances, wouldn't it be prudent to send out your message in a highly compact beam of photons like a laser since light diffuses over an areas a message gets farther from the transmitter?

Another question, given Loroi cultural values would they even build massive arrays to detect possible alien signals? They have historically relied on their physiology to detect the presence of alien species so would they even see a need to gather ancient messages from alien civilizations?

Furthermore, would the Umiak build such devices? Canonically, they like to build big things... But what cultural values would lead a society to devote a substantial amount of resources towards the detection of old alien signals?

[TheUnforsaken]

Another question, given Loroi cultural values would they even build massive arrays to detect possible alien signals? They have historically relied on their physiology to detect the presence of alien species so would they even see a need to gather ancient messages from alien civilizations?

Furthermore, would the Umiak build such devices? Canonically, they like to build big things... But what cultural values would lead a society to devote a substantial amount of resources towards the detection of old alien signals?

The Loroi probably wouldn't think to use such a system given their abilities. Although they may now that they know there is at least one species they can't sense.

The Umiak on the other hand would be a good candidate for doing it. Their 'conquer them before they conquer us' philosophy would lead to a desire to detect technic races as early as possible...short of massive scouting operations, signals would be the most efficient method of finding them.

[Mjolnir]

Given the info above, might their still be a possibility of a 20Th century or later message getting through. I know that Seti and a few other have purposely sent out messages of contact to anyone lessening. Now I know their alot of "interference" that can get in the way but could we get lucky ?

Well, that is essentially why we sent them. However, consider the time we've actually spent beaming messages at the stars, and the likelihood of someone listening with a big enough ear from a location inside the beam at just the right time to hear the message...

If one were to be communicating over interstellar distances, wouldn't it be prudent to send out your message in a highly compact beam of photons like a laser since light diffuses over an areas a message gets farther from the transmitter?

All EM transmissions will do that. Coherent transmissions are just easier to focus. Radio transmissions are generally coherent, the advantage of lasers is short wavelength allowing narrower beams (so more of your transmitted energy goes to the target system instead of surrounding interstellar space) and less interaction with the interstellar medium.

Furthermore, would the Umiak build such devices? Canonically, they like to build big things... But what cultural values would lead a society to devote a substantial amount of resources towards the detection of old alien signals?

It seems like their apparent paranoia about other species would make such projects quite appealing to them. A civilization not under their control is an enemy to be subdued, and old transmissions can tell them about the enemy or alert them to the existence of previously unknown enemies...all without revealing anything about themselves.

[Ktrain]

Query: Are Umiak creative enough to devise the creation of such a device; if so would they find it practical? and Given the breadth of space they would be monitoring, what would be the likelihood that they would direct such a device in our direction at a peak time to receive our transmissions (they could spend a lot of time focusing on other specs of space)? and What is the relative cost devoting resources to such a large scale detection array in comparison to scouting after the advent of FTL drives/exploration? What is the value of receiving message from 1000 light years away when your immediate attention is in the local area (for all they know that civilization maybe extinct)?

[TheUnforsaken]

I get the impression the Umiak are more single-minded than uncreative, if they weren't at war and they considered undiscovered specied to be their greatest threat then I'd imagine they'd go to a lot of effort to find them.

[NOMAD]

Query: Are Umiak creative enough to devise the creation of such a device; if so would they find it practical? and Given the breadth of space they would be monitoring, what would be the likelihood that they would direct such a device in our direction at a peak time to receive our transmissions (they could spend a lot of time focusing on other specs of space)?

Well we do know the both the loroi and the Umiak have a develop some/steal type of tech advancement, and that the Umiak are Xenophobic to a point so I could see them expending resources on a passive com detection system for finding out potential enemies. sort like the ELINT ( electronic intel) role that most militarises have right now, the more famous one in memory was that US P-3 ELINT that got rammed by a Chinese fighter and forced to land on mainland China).

What is the relative cost devoting resources to such a large scale detection array in comparison to scouting after the advent of FTL drives/exploration? What is the value of receiving message from 1000 light years away when your immediate attention is in the local area (for all they know that civilization maybe extinct)?

Well, given the Umiak apparent efficiency in production, I could see them spending a huge amount of resource on this kind of system. now the scale would depend, I believe, on the paranoia of the umiak. I could see them deploying a few large receiving arrays ( like the one in South America or larger telescope farms) on a few plant at first but them spreading them all over their empire. The umiak could also spread out remote listening posts in asteroid fields or on the edge of planetary systems in order to increase the coverage area ( and possibilities of receiving a signal). Now how far the system is spread out over the Umiak empire would depend on both peace and wartime time budgets and how successful such a system would be in Umiak history. Now setting this all up and having the station maned wouldn't not, i think require alot of money or personnel 13 Million was the max under NASA ( linkyhttp://openseti.org/Budget.html)

as for FTL searching that does take time to find inhabited systems, however, if the passive system was operating a got a signal from an unknown race, you could send a scout (or scout fleet) toward the new discovery. now if you found the race had A-bombed themselves or suffered an massive asteroid impact, the fleet could turn back.