Aliens on the Radio?

[bds]

anybody remember that movie Contact?

they found a signal in deep space which appeared to be an intelligent pattern. It was a long transmission which looped over and over again and nobody knows how long that's been going on.

As it turns out, this signal is instructions about how to build this machine which can teleport you to where the aliens are.


There are probably civilizations out there, and some of them are so advanced we can't comprehend what they're capable of. If they want to send a "WE ARE HERE" message out into the universe, they'd need to pick something incredibly visible and easy to find. I always used to wonder if those stars which are spinning so fast we can't even visualize it are really like morse code transmissions from deep space aliens. Making a star do crazy things would be a great way of getting somebody's attention over 1000 light years away.

I thought of that movie when I read this, too. Then I remembered how hard it blew, and how much I hate Robert Zemeckis. The beginning premise was interesting, although I think almost a little flawed... As much as I believe that there is alien life out there, I think the chances of it being near enough and at a similar enough level of technological development to communicate are really slim. And that's probably the main reason why these sorts of things fall over.

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anybody remember that movie Contact?

they found a signal in deep space which appeared to be an intelligent pattern. It was a long transmission which looped over and over again and nobody knows how long that's been going on.

As it turns out, this signal is instructions about how to build this machine which can teleport you to where the aliens are.


There are probably civilizations out there, and some of them are so advanced we can't comprehend what they're capable of. If they want to send a "WE ARE HERE" message out into the universe, they'd need to pick something incredibly visible and easy to find. I always used to wonder if those stars which are spinning so fast we can't even visualize it are really like morse code transmissions from deep space aliens. Making a star do crazy things would be a great way of getting somebody's attention over 1000 light years away.

I thought of that movie when I read this, too. Then I remembered how hard it blew, and how much I hate Robert Zemeckis. The beginning premise was interesting, although I think almost a little flawed... As much as I believe that there is alien life out there, I think the chances of it being near enough and at a similar enough level of technological development to communicate are really slim. And that's probably the main reason why these sorts of things fall over.

Read the novel, then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(novel)

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Further details on the object:
http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/nam2010/pr12.php


It's pretty recent news, btw.

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

I got my hopes but, but figured as much. I remember reading somehwere that, because of the properties of radio waves (at least the ones we use) they are relatively slow and have a finite distance. The farther they go the weaker the signal gets and the more interference there is, making radio pretty impractical for communication over any huge distance. I don't know if this was an expert or some idiot on a forum, but I remember them saying that light would be the most efficient means of communicating.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

anybody remember that movie Contact?

they found a signal in deep space which appeared to be an intelligent pattern. It was a long transmission which looped over and over again and nobody knows how long that's been going on.

As it turns out, this signal is instructions about how to build this machine which can teleport you to where the aliens are.


There are probably civilizations out there, and some of them are so advanced we can't comprehend what they're capable of. If they want to send a "WE ARE HERE" message out into the universe, they'd need to pick something incredibly visible and easy to find. I always used to wonder if those stars which are spinning so fast we can't even visualize it are really like morse code transmissions from deep space aliens. Making a star do crazy things would be a great way of getting somebody's attention over 1000 light years away.

Hell yeah, it's all about teleportation, baby.

[Rumckle]

I got my hopes but, but figured as much. I remember reading somehwere that, because of the properties of radio waves (at least the ones we use) they are relatively slow and have a finite distance. The farther they go the weaker the signal gets and the more interference there is, making radio pretty impractical for communication over any huge distance. I don't know if this was an expert or some idiot on a forum, but I remember them saying that light would be the most efficient means of communicating.

I spent a good bit of time reading up on the Fermi problem yesterday, and it is noted that this is a problem.

The signal strength of most known communication techniques (radio, laser, etc) fades over a distance. In addition, most governments on Earth today enforce restrictions limiting how powerful broadcast frequencies can be. At the power levels currently used on Earth, any signal would become extremely weak by the time it reached even the nearest star. It may well be that other civilizations exist and are broadcasting signals of the same strength as Earth currently broadcasts, yet even if they did, current human technology would not be able to detect those signals more than a couple light years away.

[Golden Applesauce]

I got my hopes but, but figured as much. I remember reading somehwere that, because of the properties of radio waves (at least the ones we use) they are relatively slow and have a finite distance. The farther they go the weaker the signal gets and the more interference there is, making radio pretty impractical for communication over any huge distance. I don't know if this was an expert or some idiot on a forum, but I remember them saying that light would be the most efficient means of communicating.

That would be an idiot on the forum, then.  The only difference between radio waves and what most people refer to as "light" is wavelength - it's all electromagnetic radiation, it all travels at the same speed in a vacuum, etc, etc.

[Template]

I got my hopes but, but figured as much. I remember reading somehwere that, because of the properties of radio waves (at least the ones we use) they are relatively slow and have a finite distance. The farther they go the weaker the signal gets and the more interference there is, making radio pretty impractical for communication over any huge distance. I don't know if this was an expert or some idiot on a forum, but I remember them saying that light would be the most efficient means of communicating.

That would be an idiot on the forum, then.  The only difference between radio waves and what most people refer to as "light" is wavelength - it's all electromagnetic radiation, it all travels at the same speed in a vacuum, etc, etc.

Not so fast.  If you go throwing signals in different bands of the electromagnetic spectrum across light-years of space, you'll notice real differences on the far side of those light-years.

For one, the galaxy is not a vacuum.  There's all sorts of stuff out there, just at a low density--dust and gas to absorb and diffuse some waves, stars and nebulae that emit their own light and such...

Also, diffraction.  You can try to send out a nice, clean, straight beam, but it won't work.  Particles move in beams.  Waves just move outwards.  Radio waves spread out much faster, though, as I recall.