Time to scrap SETI?

"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" wrote:

"Rossco in Oshawa" wrote in message
...
once again, it's not the complexity of the signal we are looking for it's
the fact there is an UN-natural signal there...
as simple as dot-dot-dot-dash-dash-dash-dot-dot-dot...

Right, but part of their point is that most likely any signal we DO receive
would be indistinguishable from background noise and as a result we'd never
notice. If there's information clearly present in the signal, it means they
didn't do a decent job of compression.


AIUI analyses like those performed by the SETI@home client aren't
just looking for patterns in a signal candidate's modulation or
'content': some of the processing is intended to detect anomalous
apparent Doppler shifts, phase effects, &c. indicating 'unnatural'
behaviour in the source, which might even be just a carrier.

See http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/newsletters/newsletter16.html.

OTOH that seems less applicable to 'eavesdropping' than to detection
of intentional signals. And I agree that highly efficient compression
would tend to defeat the statistical methods used to distinguish
potential signals from RFI and the natural background.

--
Odysseus