Space life search turns to TV, radio signals

What might aliens be broadcasting for their TV-viewing pleasure? Astronomers want to know.
Photos: Searching for galactic civilizations

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[jabbotts]

isn't this the same as SETI?

Well, SETI is just radio signals rather then television but still. Are they duplicating the efforts of the SETI project or joining in?

[DeusExMachina]

No, different

SETI is specifically designed to search for tight beam broadcasts
intended by the senders to convey an announcement signal.
Basically it searches for intentional beacons. This project aims to
find non-intentional signals that are intended for other purposes,
but bleed out in to space from the broadcast center.

[Marcus Westrup]

To be technical

SETI listens to narrow bands at high frequency (gigahertz), where there is less interference from stars and such. The theory is, any intelligent race out there also knows about these bands, and would use one of them to send a greeting we could see thousands of light-years away.
What the new telescope does is search the lower bands (megahertz) that an alien race might be using for ordinary planet bound communication. The trouble is, we already produce so much traffic in these bands it will take heavy computer processing to detect a signal from more than a hundred light-years away.
Over all, I think it?s a neat idea.

[nrauch1942]

I have a "dumb" question:

Why is it we use the frequenciencies we use for TV/Radio(FM-AM)? Was the choice made because of a law of physics, the FCC, or was it driven by earth's topography, atmosphere content etc? Would our chosen frequencies "automatically" be chosen in a different world? Or would it be different? If the latter is correct, would this "new" approach be broad enough to "catch" these "commercial broadcasts"?Or would we miss those?