Quote:
Originally Posted by PsYcNeT
It was more in response to his comment about seeing 'ruins' and by extension, buildings and grids associated with civilized life, which could potentially be observed with a powerful enough optical telescope.
On the note have reaching planets in our solar system, we have actually only physically landed on a few, most have just been fly-bys.
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Fair enough, but building telescope large enough to actually see anything on a planet a few light years away would be enormously huge.
Hubble for example only has a resolution of ~110m for the moon, and that thing is about 2.5 meters across.
And the moon is what ~1 light second away?
So for a planet 1 light year away (which is implasubily close), even with a mirror 100km in diameter we could only resolve something that is ~ 85km in size. Not nearly big enough to make any sort of practicaly conclusions on any civilizations.
As for the flybys, that's not the point either.
Getting to the planets is the tough part, wether it's a flyby or a landing is irrelevant, we can get to them.
Anyway the point is moot.
I think we both agree that the original post saying that the article must be bunk becasue we'd have seen proof by now, is pretty out to lunch.