Co-bloggers sought

I have plans to revive this blog, but I am asking for help. If you like writing about science, space, the human future, SETI, astrobiology, or related topics, then I'd be interested in either a merger or just taking you on here as a co-blogger. If, after reading a bit through this blog, you are interested in this, post a link to a couple of things you've written, and tell me a little about yourself. Gender, nationality, and age are not important.  You need access to a computer and a facility with written English, and that is all.

Whither this Blog?

I clearly have not found enough time for this blog. Between work, family, hobbies, moving house, and three podcasts, it has been allowed to lapse. Part of it is that I have been saying much of what I want to say on the Wow! Signal, or as part of Unidentified Science. However, I can see just a little blue sky ahead, and hope to slowly ramp up the post rate over the next year or two. Part of it will be finding a synergy with the Wow! Signal, and part of it is getting the workflow streamlined on the Unseen Podcast, so that it doesn't need so much care and feeding.

It's not that there's nothing more to write about. New ideas and results are emerging all the time, and I'll be happy to move this blog forward.

Want to help? Engage with me. There is a comments section below every post. You can also follow me on Twitter  (@PaulDCarr) and on Google Plus, and I would encourage you to join the Unseen Podcast panel pool.  Right now, people who want to appear are able to get on the show about half the time.

The Long Delay Echoes

The subject here is a scientific mystery that was well documented by European scientists in the 1920s and 1930s, well before any man made objects were launched into outer space, and then was largely forgotten. The phenomenon has since apparently disappeared, although anecdotal reports still pop up from time to time, and a low level of interest persists. We are discussing it here, because although no one knows for sure what caused the Long Delay Echoes, one plausible explanation is Bracewell Probes. The Long Delay Echoes (LDEs) just possibly might be a clue to how to find such a probe.

Some Basic Background You may Wish to Skip

 I'm sure you know that radio waves generally travel at the speed of light, and can be bounced off of various surfaces and also off the Earth's ionosphere if the radio wavelength is long enough. The speed of radio waves can be a bit slower if they are traveling through a medium such as a plasma or water, but generally the speed is not much less than the 300,000 kilometers per second we are used to. That means, if we send a radio signal out, and see it come back to us, then to calculate the distance to the reflector, we divide the time delay in seconds by 2 (since it went out and back), and then multiply by 300,000 kilometers per second to get the distance. Then, if we send out a radio signal and it comes back 2 seconds later, it must have traveled 300,000 km each way, or most of the way to the Moon. Amateur radio operators often enjoy bouncing their signals off the moon, which generally exhibits a very weak echo delayed about 2 and one half seconds. Strong echoes, or echoes delayed longer than 2.5 seconds, are not moon echoes.

Since the 1960s, there are many radio repeaters in Geosynchronous orbit, but the round trip delay is much shorter than the moon -  less than half a second, and you generally won't see a satellite echo at all unless your signal parameters are just right - and probably illegal.

I should post more often, I know..

The trick is how to divide time between podcasting and blogging - time that is left over after work, Krav Maga, domestic chores and family time. Not to mention, the European club football season has started up again and some other projects are in the works...

Anyway, there should be a burst of blog activity soon as the podcasting season winds down at the end of November. We have a four person team working on the Wow! Signal now, and the intent is that this bears fruit in terms of more and better episodes, some of which will have little, if any, involvement by me. I want to write about the Long Delay Echoes soon, and I will also have an interview with Duncan Lunan on the podcast on that very topic.

As for API Case Files, the plan is to get that completely independent of me in the long run, except for my few minutes of Unidentified Science in each episode. I really enjoy doing Unidentified Science, and it is helping me to connect with like minded people all over the place. I hope you will listen.

The Fermi Paradox, Part 2

In my first post on the Fermi Paradox, I went over the basics, which I expect most readers are familiar with anyway. It can be summed up simply (perhaps over-simply) as:

• Our galaxy is plenty old enough for at least one advanced civilization to have completely colonized it by now, even at speeds much slower than the speed of light.
• "Completely colonized" should include our solar system.
• No one can make a persuasive case that this has happened.

 So, the simple version is: they should be be here, but they aren't. This presents us with a paradox.

I'd bet that some readers already have a few objections to the above, and over the next few posts we will take this apart and see where reasonable doubt lies.  This is the real value of the paradox: it serves as a sharp mental lens that forces us to question our assumptions. It should make us more humble about our understanding of how the universe works, and spur us into deeper research. The great unknown is great indeed, so let's go explore. The forward path for the human adventure could not be clearer, and one of the best signposts is the Fermi Paradox.

Sadly, this is not the only effect it has. Too many seize on the Fermi Paradox to jump to Grand Conclusions not in evidence. I promise not to do that. Instead, we will look for better questions than "where is everybody?" I haven't found one yet, but I see hope.