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While the debate over sending messages to nearby stars continues, it’s interesting to probe the issue quantitatively, as Jim Benford did on Friday, asking whether recent attempts at METI could be heard at destination. The subject prompts Keith Cooper, now editor at...

Yesterday's post dwelt on an article by Steven Johnson in the New York Times Magazine that looked at the issue of broadcasting directed messages to the stars. The article attempted a balanced look, contrasting the goals of METI-oriented researchers like Douglas Vakoch...

If we were to send a message to an extraterrestrial civilization and make contact, should we assume it would be significantly more advanced than us? The odds say yes, and the thinking goes like this: We are young enough that we have only been using radio for a century...

David Brin is a familiar name to science fiction readers worldwide, the award-winning author of the highly regarded 'uplift' novels that include Startide Rising (1983), The Uplift War (1987) and Brightness Reef (1995). Among his numerous other titles are The Postman...

Pardon this extended introduction to Jim Benford's response to Nick Nielsen's Friday essay, but it comes at a serendipitous time. Jim's recent online work has reminded me that we in the interstellar community need to work to see that as many resources as possible are...

To broadcast or not to broadcast? The debate over sending intentional signals to other stars continues to simmer even as various messages are sent, with no international policy in place to govern them. Writer Nick Nielsen looks at METI afresh today, placing it in the...

Tau Zero journalist Larry Klaes has been fascinated by SETI -- and its offshoot METI (Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence) -- for a long time now. Here he steps back to look at METI in context, offering up an examination of the advantages of sending signals to...

by James Benford I first talked to Jim Benford back in 2003, discussing his work (wih brother Gregory) on microwave beam propulsion. He had already run experiments at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory demonstrating acceleration on a lightsail using these techniques, and...

?by Larry Klaes About a decade ago while attending a SETI conference, I was listening to a researcher give a talk about detecting messages from other galaxies such as the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87 and the immense Virgo galactic cluster it resides in. Since...

If we want to consider how to pick up transmissions from a distant civilization, it pays to consider the most effective strategies for building interstellar beacons here on Earth. This is the method James, Gregory and Dominic Benford have used in twin papers on...