Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from noise. I remembered hearing this in school so I searched and found this paper. [eva.mpg.de]
As I understand SETI has always been searching for narrowband signals in the past. But our technology is moving toward spread spectrum signals for more efficient use of bandwidth, making our transmissions appear more like noise to anyone who doesn't know the encoding scheme. Aliens could be doing/have done the same. So good luck, scientists!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from noise. I remembered hearing this in school...
Well, to be more precise, it follows as an implication of:
1) Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (Clarke's 3rd Law.) 2) Maximally compressed data is indistinguishable from noise. (Theorem in information theory.)
A sufficiently advanced civilization will ("magically") hit the theoretical compression maximum, and that will look like random noise. (Anyone's head hurting yet?)
According to Claude Shannon... (Score:5, Interesting)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from noise. I remembered hearing this in school so I searched and found this paper. [eva.mpg.de]
As I understand SETI has always been searching for narrowband signals in the past. But our technology is moving toward spread spectrum signals for more efficient use of bandwidth, making our transmissions appear more like noise to anyone who doesn't know the encoding scheme. Aliens could be doing/have done the same. So good luck, scientists!
Re:According to Claude Shannon... (Score:5, Informative)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from noise. I remembered hearing this in school ...
Well, to be more precise, it follows as an implication of:
1) Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (Clarke's 3rd Law.)
2) Maximally compressed data is indistinguishable from noise. (Theorem in information theory.)
A sufficiently advanced civilization will ("magically") hit the theoretical compression maximum, and that will look like random noise. (Anyone's head hurting yet?)
My head is hurting... (Score:3, Funny)
But only because you've blown my mind!