Radio transmissions degrade after a distance, we would have to intercept a laser beam to get a transmission or any sort of intelligible message, or signal. And a highly focused laser beam.
Of course, radio signals can be highly focused, but over 11 light years the signal will be so distorted that it won’t even really exist.
11 light years = 64522656000000 miles = 2688444000 earth diameters.
There are signals that have been out of the ordinary, from space. The most remarkable being the WOW signal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal
http://www.damninteresting.com/the-wow-signal/
I can’t think of the name of the scientist who came up with the equation for intelligent life in a galaxy, using what humans believe to be true about what it would take for intelligent life to exist. It’s not a generous estimate.....I think it’s Clark or something. But IIRC it’s 10, 10 intelligent species in our galaxy.
Finding a radio signal like the WOW signal would be pretty damn rare. If it’s an intelligent signal.
As long as the guess estimation is even nearly close to being correct. Which it’s probably not....interesting though.
...the Drake equation.
“Radio transmissions degrade after a distance,”
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Yes, and I have no expectation of our ever detecting radio waves from distant civilizations.
As a ham radio operator that concentrated on DX communications, I was excited just to talk to the other side of earth.
I am also familiar with the “wow” signal.
Looking at it on computer printout, I suspect it is nothing more then a anomaly.
I do, however, support the activities of SETI, but have no real expectations.
It's the Drake Equation. The trick is the value returned by the equation varies dramatically with the supplied parms and we can only guess at most of the values. So you can basically get any answer from zero to tens of thousands of intelligent alien species in the galaxy.