Dream of alien-TV

Alien-hunters hoping to eavesdrop on extraterrestrial TV might be in for disappointment.

Marko Horvat, a computer scientist at the University of Zagreb, Croatia, has calculated the odds of detecting alien civilisations of different lifespans from their radio signals.

It has been suggested that the next generation of radio telescopes, such as LOFAR, now being built in the Netherlands, could be used to detect radio noise from alien radio and TV.

Horvat calculated that if, for example, 10 civilisations, each with a lifespan of 250,000 years, live within radio reach of Earth, the probability that one of them would be detected is a mere nine per cent.

According to him, this can be assumed good, only if we have near- perfect telescopes scanning the entire sky constantly — an ideal far from being realised.

"We need much better telescopes," Horvat said, adding that if there are 10 alien civilisations with a much longer lifespan, the chances of detection would drop to almost zero.

That’s because they will probably have developed better means of communication, Horvat said.

"We need the civilisations to die out quickly and rapidly be replaced by new short-lived ones for the maximum chance of detection. It’s a very pessimistic conclusion," New Scientist quoted him as saying. — ANI