[Regarding terrestrial radio transmissions:]

"R" == Rich  <someone@somewhere.com> writes:

R> In infinite wisdom David Woolley answered:

In article <40990158.7040305@somewhere.com>,

Planetary radar will tend to give false negatives at the
confirmation stage because it won't be repeatable.

R> While I agree with this, it's also not aimed at the stars. What are
R> the chances of it intercepting a star somewhere down the line? Who
R> knows. It does not seem highly likely.

The chances are quite high, actually.  The Arecibo beam is roughly a
few arcminutes in size.  Most of the targets (Venus, Mercury, Titan)
are no more than a few arcseconds in size.  Thus, most of the power
misses the target and keeps going.

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