Yes, I'm aware. How many of those do you think you could hide in a ten-light-year circle around Earth, and how long do you think it would be before we were able

Yes, I'm aware. How many of those do you think you could hide in a ten-light-year circle around Earth, and how long do you think it would be before we were able to find them? To a first approximation, the only things that we can see at stellar scales are stars, and all of the discussions on this topic seem to revolve around detecting radio transmissions. This page[0] gives pretty pessimistic numbers for the maximum SNR to Mars. There seems to be some massive disconnect between what people are looking for and what we are currently emitting, or what we might expect an advanced species to be emitting. And my assumption in these cases is that it's substantially more likely that I am a fool and missing something important rather than that everyone else is. [0] http://www.astrosurf.com/luxorion/qsl-mars-communication3.htm http://www.astrosurf.com/luxorion/qsl-mars-communication3.ht...