The Physics Police

The Physics Police

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Square Kilometer Array

Jill Tarter was on the May 10th episode Science Friday to discuss SETI. Sadly, but not surprisingly, she took an ignorance-first approach to describing the challenge of SETI. No sooner had I finished writing a post about it, then I heard her say something blatantly false. She claimed this about our ability to detect another civilization using radio astronomy:
"If they're younger and less capable than we are, then we can't detect them over interstellar distances."
But on the Square Kilometer Array website I read:
The SKA will be so sensitive that it will be able to detect an airport radar on a planet 50 light years away.
Which isn't built yet, but Jill does need to get with the times.

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