AFAIK there’s currently no major projects attempting to send contact signals around the galaxy (let alone the universe). Our signals may be reaching Vega or some of the nearest star systems, but definitely not much farther. It’s not prohibitively difficult to broadcast out to say, a 1000 lightyear radius ball around earth, but you’re still talking about an antenna that’s far larger than anything currently existing.
Right now the SETI program is essentially focused on detection, not broadcasting. Broadcasting is a much more expensive problem. Detection is favorable for us because if there are other broadcasting civilizations, they will tend to be more advanced, and broadcasting will be comparatively easier/cheaper for them.
Edit: If you’re doing directional broadcasting, it’s true that you can go much further. Of course, you are simply trading broadcasting distance for the amount of space covered by the signal. Wikipedia says that Arecibo broadcasted towards M13, around 25,000 light years away. That’s about the same distance as us from the center of the Milky Way.
AFAIK there’s currently no major projects attempting to send contact signals around the galaxy (let alone the universe). Our signals may be reaching Vega or some of the nearest star systems, but definitely not much farther. It’s not prohibitively difficult to broadcast out to say, a 1000 lightyear radius ball around earth, but you’re still talking about an antenna that’s far larger than anything currently existing.
Right now the SETI program is essentially focused on detection, not broadcasting. Broadcasting is a much more expensive problem. Detection is favorable for us because if there are other broadcasting civilizations, they will tend to be more advanced, and broadcasting will be comparatively easier/cheaper for them.
Edit: If you’re doing directional broadcasting, it’s true that you can go much further. Of course, you are simply trading broadcasting distance for the amount of space covered by the signal. Wikipedia says that Arecibo broadcasted towards M13, around 25,000 light years away. That’s about the same distance as us from the center of the Milky Way.
Signals get sent out fairly often, though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_SETI#Current_transmissions_on_route