from the =**.*=*.**.=*.=*=.=*==.===.**=.*=*.===.***=.*=.*=**.=.**.=*.* dept.
If extraterrestrial intelligence exists somewhere in our galaxy, a new MIT study proposes that laser technology on Earth could, in principle, be fashioned into something of a planetary porch light — a beacon strong enough to attract attention from as far as 20,000 light years away.
The research, which author James Clark calls a "feasibility study," appears today in The Astrophysical Journal. The findings suggest that if a high-powered 1- to 2-megawatt laser were focused through a massive 30- to 45-meter telescope and aimed out into space, the combination would produce a beam of infrared radiation strong enough to stand out from the sun's energy.
Such a signal could be detectable by alien astronomers performing a cursory survey of our section of the Milky Way — especially if those astronomers live in nearby systems, such as around Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Earth, or TRAPPIST-1, a star about 40 light-years away that hosts seven exoplanets, three of which are potentially habitable. If the signal is spotted from either of these nearby systems, the study finds, the same megawatt laser could be used to send a brief message in the form of pulses similar to Morse code.
Also at EarthSky.
Optical Detection of Lasers with Near-term Technology at Interstellar Distances (DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aae380) (DX)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @06:51PM (16 children)
The latency in the messages and responses would be huge, though. Would we really wait for a round trip message/response over millennia?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @06:54PM (6 children)
It's astronomical graffiti.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @07:46PM (5 children)
Actually, it's a bit more like setting up an astronomical space light house. Or maybe we should look at it like a beacon to would-be spacefarers. To anyone who may be thinking best not to do this because it might entice malevolent advanced spacefaring aliens to come here, I got bad news for you. We have already been broadcasting our presence to the Universe for about a century now. All those radio broadcasts have been racing out in all directions into space without any consideration of who else might be listening in. Sleep well tonight.
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Thursday November 08 2018, @07:51PM (3 children)
And someone, 67 light-years away, just got the premiere of I Love Lucy.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:00PM
And they've already got to watch Hitler propaganda!
Heil Aliens!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Friday November 09 2018, @02:16AM
Probably not. RF decreases in strength with distance quite strikingly, and those broadcasts were not even aimed outwards or focused in any way.
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Monday November 12 2018, @04:11PM
Or "Galaxy Quest".
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:01PM
No. So, it's graffiti.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday November 08 2018, @07:18PM (2 children)
I guess latency is always going to be the problem, what with the stupid speed of light constraint.
I'm not sure it's a good idea, just because we don't know what we don't know and we know almost nothing about our neighbourhood really.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:52PM (1 child)
In all likelihood you're right, however that assumes nobody is more advanced than we are doesn't it, which does show our own superiority complex as a race.
Consider the possibility that while we certainly have to wait for -our- transmission to hit an alien civilization at the speed of light, what's to say they haven't figured out (or will figure out in the 10k years it takes for us to reach them) how to do faster than light communications. Let's say they know how to open a worm hole near us, then send that message at our speeds after it exits it - reaching us in a mere few weeks or less. With the primary purpose of that message to teach us how to set up our own system to send a message back using their system.
Unlikely? Probably. And we shouldn't hope for such a response. But setting it up as a "we were here. Watch how we destroy ourselves and please to save yourselves from the same fate :P" should be good on it's own.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Friday November 09 2018, @12:56AM
Your worm-hole communications device, even if it is really unlikely is why I think we should hold off on announcing ourselves.
We don't know what we don't know. Maybe faster-than-light is possible in all sorts of ways.
We don't know, so shaddup.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday November 08 2018, @07:55PM
I found the optimist who thinks there could be something left here in 400000 years capable of receiving messages from the blinking shinies in the night sky - if they are even still visible.
How good are the cockroaches at astronomy ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:02PM (1 child)
Well, what do you suggest? Ansibles? Fatlines? HPG uplinks?
Assuming FTL communication doesn't exist, civilizations that maintain communications with other, distant civilizations would need to be stable over millennia. Humans have a long way to go before achieving that kind of stability and long-term planning. If civilizations do communicate with each other, maybe they're able to exchange culture (Encyclopædia Galactica existing as a distributed project on some kind of galactic Freenet implementation? TV shows?), but it's unlikely they would ever meet. Of course, long-term planning may facilitate such things.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday November 08 2018, @10:38PM
Ansibles.
Yet. The MIT experts are still working on lasers. Give them time.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:23PM (2 children)
The math problem to solve is whats the statistical odds per year of round trip travel that the answer for "how do fusion reactors get made" is replied to would be interesting.
I hope fun stuff isn't so rare that it takes 20Kyrs to get a response.
Simpler shitposts like "find me a better programming language than Java" or "emacs or vi?" might get better response rates. "Yo send us a nice CPU mask design" "Whats the best catalyst for (insert funky cool chemical reaction here)?" "Wanna trade solar cell design blueprints?" "Got anything better than chlorophyll over dere?"
(Score: 5, Funny) by VLM on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:25PM
How about the ultimate Ringworld tribute shitpost into interstellar space "we got designs for five of the eight theoretically possible room temperature superconductor designs, you wanna send us the other three?" (numbers from memory, and probably wrong)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @09:20PM
"Earthlings, fusion is easy. Just grab your lab force field generator and set it up to compress the gas up to 3.5E+11 atm within 7E-3 attosecond. Convert the released energy into electric current with thermophotoelectric crystals, they are easily available near the star 234VZ643, look for planet X2 (outer ring.) Can we now assist you with anything else?"
And now imagine that you spent 40,000 years in wait for this insight.
Realists say that if there is no FTL in this Universe, star systems will never truly communicate. You still can send generation ships, but it does not count if you get an answer after your civilization rose and fell seventeen times. Humans live too fast. Maybe, once we reach technological singularity, we can slow our clock down just enough so 40,000 years feel like an afternoon nap. (But then heat death of the Universe becomes an urgent problem.)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday November 08 2018, @06:56PM (22 children)
"Invade us, please!!!"
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @07:29PM (17 children)
Too late, mate. The Kardashian kind are already here. Or was the Cardassian?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday November 08 2018, @07:36PM (3 children)
What if, 65 million years ago, aliens observed that intelligent dinosaurs capable of building a civilization and exploring space had just evolved, and decided to cut them down before they could?
I wonder if any conspiracy theorists have ever thought of that one. Probably a few have, but it doesn't seem to have gained much traction.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:04PM (2 children)
Probably would have been the energy drinks and alcohol that killed them first.
And Doritos to go with their joint. Lots of Doritos to make 'em have heart attacks.
"Imma gonna build this spaceship i just designed, but first i'll celebrate by swishing my long tail and eating Doritos while i smoke this... hey! Bud and Rockstar too! Alright!"
...
...........
Aaaaaarrrrrrghhhhhh..... a killer rabbit lives in this cave!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Thursday November 08 2018, @10:37PM (1 child)
Killer Rabbits?
Have you been playing Fluffy Horde [youtube.com]?
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 3, Touché) by Gaaark on Friday November 09 2018, @03:33AM
Nope, I've been playing with coconut horses.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by VLM on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:27PM (9 children)
(((Ferengi))) got here first, sorry.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:33PM (6 children)
Anti-semitic scumbag.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by VLM on Thursday November 08 2018, @09:56PM (5 children)
Hey if you see them as Jews, thats on you, not me.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @10:52PM
When you put them in the Nazi ((())) it's extremely clear what you are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @11:17PM (3 children)
Apparently, it is on you. You used the triple parentheses. If it wasn't the widely acknowledged meaning [wikipedia.org], what were you trying to say?
Do you have so little respect for other humans to think anyone would buy your trollish bullshit?
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/triple-parentheses-echo [knowyourmeme.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2016/jun/12/echoes-beating-the-far-right-two-triple-brackets-at-a-time [theguardian.com]
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses [rationalwiki.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @02:01AM (2 children)
(((VLM))) was just trying to make you spend time writing that reply.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @02:26AM (1 child)
No worries. I type *really* fast!
And calling out scumbags like VLM is *never* a waste of time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @03:16AM
You have a point, but doesn't that run the risk of empowering (((old-school trolls)))?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:34PM
Take you hitlerian bullshit to Stormfront, asshole!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @09:14PM
I don't watch moronic TV, nor pay much attention to so-called celebrities. I swear first time I heard about effing Kardashians years ago on radio, I thought What the fuck have Cardassians from ST DS9 to do with this bloody subject? Swear to Universe is true.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by stretch611 on Thursday November 08 2018, @10:32PM (1 child)
I wish it was the latter... they are the better looking ones.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @02:35AM
Yup. dem bitches is hawt! [nocookie.net]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday November 12 2018, @04:53PM
Well, one is a plague of invasive conquering aliens from another world who look like the plastic surgeons attempted to help but completely botched it up in the process. The other is a race from Star Trek.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @07:33PM
Not quite, more like "human invasion coming 300 years after this message" . Assuming earth makes it through the Fermi paradox filters, in about 100 years we'll be colonizing the solar system. In 300 years the Galaxy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pkrasimirov on Thursday November 08 2018, @07:48PM (1 child)
(Score: 4, Funny) by VLM on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:18PM
The trick is to mess with them and send propaganda films. A lightly remixed star wars making the point that one dude (and a droid) blew up the death star and we got six billion folks looking for death stars to blow up so please be nice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @09:46PM
Fresh meat here! Come and get it!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @07:19PM (2 children)
You know what could also be done with a 2MW(optical!) laser pointed upwards? Hint: it involves smoldering hunks of metal formerly known as satellites.
Does anybody honestly think that any of the US, Russia and China would allow any country on earth, including the aforementioned three, to build such a device?
I'll bet my silly ass that each of the three would pull all available stops, including ICBMs and orbital bombardment, to prevent this laser from being built.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Thursday November 08 2018, @10:29PM (1 child)
All we need to do to build this is to put mirrors around the orange one's toupee
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @10:59PM
How do you propose to get coherent radiation from the orange one? Hell, how do you propose we get coherent anything from the orange one?
(Score: 1) by YeaWhatevs on Thursday November 08 2018, @07:19PM (1 child)
Aliens fashion a laser to vaporize a planet up to 20,000 light years away.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:15PM
Doesn't have to be a big laser, a century ago a simple message they'd have gotten away with would be "for a good time, smash big hemispheres of plutonium together, promise nothing bad will happen LOL"
"here assemble this genetic code per our instructions I promise it'll taste good" and it turns the planet into self assembling gray goo.
Actually a stream a highly evolved social status signalling like an alien twitter would probably screw us up. Maybe twitter is space aliens?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Bot on Thursday November 08 2018, @07:43PM
"HELLO THERE
THIS IS PLANET EARTH
TECHNOLOGY ENOUGH FOR TRAVEL SUB LIGHT VELOCITY
POPULATION 6000000000 GROWING
SOME SERIOUS POLLUTION PROBLEMS"
Reply
"HELLO THERE
THIS IS ASTEROID XWJFIWG
SUGGESTION TO FIGHT POLLUTION
TURN THAT DAMN MEGAWATT LASER OFF"
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:01PM
The beam won't get there before the "I Love Lucy" reruns. What will they think of us then?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:02PM
Bad, bad idea is bad.
(Score: 2) by SemperOSS on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:05PM
It seems that Cixin Liu has thought this through, just read The Three Body Problem.
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
Maybe I should add a sarcasm warning now and again?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:43PM (4 children)
Thankfully, my years of Spy vs Spy fandom enabled me to read the department line, which was appropriately hilarious.
However, there's some big problems with their proposal:
1. They have to aim directly at the alien's planet. That's really hard. How hard? Well, consider that aliens trying to reply to this message years later hitting the far side of the Moon wouldn't be noticed, and those aliens aren't off by much at these ranges. As in, getting the angle wrong by 0.000001 degrees is still a problem when you're working over a distance of 12 light-years.
2. They have to be powerful enough to overcome a rather large noise generator right next door, namely the Sun. That's going to really make it hard for any signals to get out clear enough to be observed by an alien.
3. A common tendency for EM waves is to bounce of the ionosphere, so we have to make sure to make it go out of the atmosphere rather than come back and fry the laser and any laser operators who happen to be nearby.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Thursday November 08 2018, @09:44PM (3 children)
I was starting to wonder if ANYBODY would notice the Dept line -- so glad you liked it!
And I just noticed your comments subject... Touche'!!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday November 08 2018, @10:18PM (1 child)
It would perhaps have been a little more clear had you used "—" and "•" with " " in between letters rather than "=" and "*" and "." in between letters.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Friday November 09 2018, @02:09PM
Agreed that the symbols chosen were not optimal. I was faced with the complication that the system automagically replaces sequences of spaces with a single hyphen when generating the dept line. Further, there is a strict limit on how many characters are permitted in that field. Lastly, could be used once; as soon as the story was saved an editor went in to update anything, all the spaces would be replaced with hyphens again. Never mind that it would greatly increase the length of the data put into the field and, thus, restrict the length of the encoded message that could be provided.
So, I took the expedient route of:
Upon further reflection, I could probably have used lookalike Unicode chars for DIT and DAH, instead. Your suggestion of • and — are excellent.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @02:05AM
Meh. I prefer *=.=*=.=.*=.***=.**.=*.* or ==.**.*=**.===. ===.***=.*=.*=**.=.**.=*.* always tasted a bit off to me.
(Score: 1) by braddollar on Thursday November 08 2018, @10:16PM
This seems like it could be problematic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Thursday November 08 2018, @10:27PM
Lets just blow up the alien cigar shaped spaceship [soylentnews.org]. That will get their attention.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Sulla on Thursday November 08 2018, @10:41PM
All astronomers will do on the other side is claim its dust going in front of our sun or the star having a glitch or one of a thousand other excuses to continue believing they are alone and need more money to look for real signals.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @11:47PM (1 child)
Waste of resources and we do not know what kind of life we are attracting with that sort of stunt.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 09 2018, @12:26AM
Roving Alien Space Muslims?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]