Rich wrote:
Brian Tung wrote:
Rich wrote:
Anyone who has looked at the math for this knows it is a foolish waste
of time, given current technology. Maybe in 500 years we'll be in a
position to scan process at a high enough speed to "find" something.
Not now.

The mathematics says no such thing. The mathematics is a fairly
straightforward application of Little's Result, but with most of the
variables having very loose bounds. Therefore, it cannot be used to
conclude anything with much certainty, positive or negative.

So assuming there is a continious signal coming from "A" source, how
long at the current rate until someone finds it, given the current
technology?

A continuous signal would not stand out so much from the natural
background unless it was very narrow band, but something that was
modulated with a TV frame rate would probably be caught by existing
pulsar surveys (assuming it was at a detectable level).

ATNF survey at Parkes currently leads the field in this with one new
pulsar discovered on average for each hour of dedicated observing time
on the scope.

http://www.csiro.au/news/mediarel/mr1998/mr98259.html

And there is no harm in letting the SETI people plough through the same
raw datasets using different wider search parameters in the hope of
finding any artificial signals that the more tightly constrained pulsar
search would miss. Whole sky pulsar surveys with the big dish
instruments and phased arrays have been going on since 1967. Over 1000
pulsars have been found to date and they are getting increasingly
fainter detection limits.

The SETI search problem happens to be amenable to a distributed
computing approach where participants process a smallish package of
data and pool their results. Their algorithms are pretty much optimal
now so only using bigger aerials can help in future.

Regards,
Martin Brown