If this is real, we are about to enter a new chapter in civilization.

[cantab]

On 26/10/2016 at 7:46 PM, p1t1o said:

I am learning that identifying information-containing signals amongst the noise is more complicated than I thought, but here is a thing - if it is so common for data to be indistinguishable from noise, encrypted or otherwise, then how are we so confident that all the noise we hear *is* noise, and not dense datastreams?

I would say because we know how much background noise known sources make. If we don't observe measurably more then we can be pretty confident there's no signal. If we do observe excess noise, it warrants investigating - that's how we discovered the Cosmic Microwave Background. (Which is a previously-unknown source of noise.)

Practical communication signals are likely to have a finite bandwidth, because transmitters and receivers are built to work effectively across a certain frequency range and because the available frequency range is likely to need dividing up between various users. Even if the signal itself is indistinguishable from noise, the presence of *excess* noise across a limited frequency range tells us there's something interesting.