I often peek in and there never seems to be anyone there. I always blame it on the time difference. When I am sitting here looking for a chat, all those on the other side of the world are sleeping!
Clearly people are actually going in. I occasionally go into chatrooms just to clear out the people who didn’t log out of the chats properly, and thus stayed signed in when they were gone.
In SETI, the “Watering Hole” refers to the radio frequency of about 1420 MHz, which is the natural resonant frequency of Hydrogen (the first element in the Periodic Table) and is in a region in the radio spectrum where the background radio noise is at its lowest. Thus, scientists predict this is an obvious frequency that aliens would be broadcasting their SETI signals and would be listening for ours. It’s been called informally the “Watering Hole” as a play on Hydrogen and the place where we’re likely to meet our neighbors.
There is going to be a party in the Watering Hole chat room today at 4:00 pm EST, or 1:00 Pacific time, or 9:00 GMT, so in about thirty minutes. Get the word out, PM everyone you know. We are going to try and break the Fluther record for most people in the chat room at the same time…