Question about monitoring radio waves/frequencies in space.

[nukeman]

Ok this does come from the movie "Contact" with jodie foster. Where she mintors space for aliens transmitting radio signals. I am sure lots of you have seen it :)

Now my question is, can you buy a certain type of radio(amateur), and scan millions of frequencies to search for alien radio waves?

I was asked this question, and was not able to give a educated answer.

Thanks!

 

[NobodySpecial]

Now my question is, can you buy a certain type of radio(amateur), and scan millions of frequencies to search for alien radio waves?

Any radio will do - if your (analogue) TV isn't tuned to a channel the white noise is partly signals from space, some of it is even the microwave background from the big bang.

The tricky bit is separating out the frequencies, the efficient way to do this is to record all of them and separate them out in software with a Fourier transform. I don't know of a easily available digital correlator radio - but you can always join seti@home and deconvolve somebody elses signals.