SETI public: Using Science Fiction To Explore New Search Techniques In Our Quest To Find Extraterrestrial Civilizations

From: Alex Michael Bonnici (albonnici_at_vol.net.mt)
Date: Fri Aug 19 2005 - 22:22:15 UTC

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    Using Science Fiction To Explore New Search Techniques In Our Quest To
    Find Extraterrestrial Civilizations

    Hello Gang,
                   The following posting by Dominique Kruel "The Shared
    Futuristic World of Orion's Arm
    on transhumantech_at_yahoogroups.com mailing list brought to mind one of
    my early postings from December 2002. Dominique wrote " I had to forward
    this post. Orion's Arm is one of my
    favorite places on the web for years. A must read for every
    transhumanist, futurist, science fiction fan or tech enthusiast.
    www.orionsarm.com". Take her word for it is a fantastic web site and I
    first encountered 3 years ago. The technologies depicted here have often
    made me wonder if we should go beyond radio in our quest to discover
    Extraterrestrial Civilizations.

    My earlier posting ran soming like this:

    The Search for Extraterrestrial Nanotechnology and Beyond!

    Much of the current discussion surrounding the the Search for
    Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) involves scanning the
    electromagnetic spectrum in the radio and optical ranges for signals
    from ETIs. Some discussion has also been devoted to searching for
    evidence of ETIs by looking for evidence of such megascale engineering
    projects as Dyson Spheres and the search for von Neumann/Bracewell
    probes. All these searches involve the search for megascale
    technologies.

    But, how much serious discussion has been devoted to the Search for
    Extraterrestrial microscale technologies such as probes that are built
    on the scale of nanometers, picometers or even femtometers? Aside from a
    reference made to this in Ray Kurtweil's "The Age of Spiritual Machines"

    and to scenarios developed in two science fiction novels namely, the
    "Assemblers of Infinity' by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason , and
    "Moonseed" by Stephen A. Baxter, I have not seen any serious scientific
    discussion devoted to this topic. I would be very grateful for any
    reference material that people on this list can direct me to. Also does
    any one have any ideas on how we can
    detect technologies built on the picometer and femtometer scale?

    The Orion's Arm web site provides much food for thought when considering
    the future of SETI and developing new search techniques.

    Alex


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