Is the present form of the search for extraterrestrial signals likely to succeed?
I attach, below a letter sent to the SETI Institute.
Dear
Sir,
I see
that you are attempting to find carriers in your search for extraterrestrial
signals. I have a little knowledge
of radio and TV transmission theory. Our most modern radio and television signals do not emit a
carrier. The SSB signals (Single
Side Band) have no detectable carrier and will not be detected by your search.
The Mpeg signals sent by digital television also have no carrier.
FM when used properly also does not have a carrier and is equivalent to
SSB.
These
signals do have something in common, they contain repeated sequences of data. If
you want to detect this sort of signal below noise level (as it will be) then a
broad band (20KHz for sound and 4MHz for pictures) detector is needed.
The noise is then recorded and compared with itself in sections of
various periods with previously collected noise within the same band.
The waveform of the noise over periods of 1 sec, 1 minute, 1 hour, is
compared with similar periods over the total length of time of the recoded data.
If you
compare each section (effectively by sliding the signal recording along a copy
of itself and looking for autocorrelation (=Integral(S(t)XS(t-p)Xdt)) (over t
now to t start) where p is the time shift. Alter p and plot the autocorrelation against p. For a
significant signal there will be peaks in the graph, these may be at regular
intervals.
This
interval could mean something and will be the first clue of an organised signal.
Over a long integrating time, signals below noise level would be detectable.
I
hope this reaches the right people and is acted on. I see no hope for the project if you only look for carriers.
You do have plenty of past data to analyse, so I suggest that this is the
place to start.
By the way if you find it, it is not there.