4 ms·

I often imagine there is something like "subspace" or faster-than-light communication, and species across our galaxy are a bunch of chatterboxes chatting away.

I often imagine there is something like "subspace" or faster-than-light communication, and species across our galaxy are a bunch of chatterboxes chatting away. The only problem is we don't know how to tune in to join the conversation. I still think we should keep trying to find them, though.

russdill 7y ago
Spoil sport reminder that any FTL communication also allows you to send messages to the past.
Razengan 7y ago
> I often imagine there is something like "subspace" or faster-than-light communication, and species across our galaxy are a bunch of chatterboxes chatting away. I like to imagine, for the science fiction that I might write, a hypothetical phenomenon that allows instantaneous communication between two points (objects/particles/portals) but only after they have been "synced" or "bound" with each other, which must be done during physical contact. So, you might construct two such "hyperspace modems", bind them with each other, then incur the initial cost of physically transporting one of them to another star system however many light years away, which may take years or decades but once it's there, communication between the two points would be instantaneous.
- lovemenot 7y ago
  That's interesting. You could call your story Spooky Action. The Spooky channel need not be used exclusively by so-called advanced civilisations. In fact there are species on Earth now that are known to interact in evolutionarily useful ways with quantum effects. Of course, if Spooky is just entanglement the modem would be destroyed upon a single use. However, there could be an effectively unlimited supply of them occurring naturally. This feels more feasible than SETI's hypothesis. Space was much smaller and was probably at just the right temperature to support life at a very early stage of the Universe.
lowdose 7y ago
When we find them there will be people that want to initiate contact. For centuries we were convinced the shark was the Apex predator of sea. I'm not really looking forward to the day we come across the orcas of the universe.
dhimes 7y ago
My suspicion is that they are communicating at frequencies we can't modulate/demodulate yet. Look how short of a time it took us to get from KHz to GHz. Since there's a trade-off in that the higher the frequency- the more data can be transmitted in a given time, it makes sense that intelligent species would try to increase their transmission frequencies as a matter of course- like we did. The downside trade-off is that transmissions become more and more strictly line-of-sight at higher frequencies.
- ddxxdd 7y ago
  We can detect microwaves, infrared rays, light rays, ultraviolet rays, X-rays, and gamma rays. We might not be able to transmit and receive FM radio in those frequencies, but we are able to detect the presence, polarization, and direction of such radiation.
  - dhimes 7y ago
    But if you can't modulate or demodulate gamma rays (which is anything above a certain frequency), you can't even see if they are transmitting information or not. Even radio waves modulated with spread spectrum techniques look like noise. Who knows what we'll be using in the future.

russdill 7y ago

Spoil sport reminder that any FTL communication also allows you to send messages to the past.

Razengan 7y ago

> I often imagine there is something like "subspace" or faster-than-light communication, and species across our galaxy are a bunch of chatterboxes chatting away. I like to imagine, for the science fiction that I might write, a hypothetical phenomenon that allows instantaneous communication between two points (objects/particles/portals) but only after they have been "synced" or "bound" with each other, which must be done during physical contact. So, you might construct two such "hyperspace modems", bind them with each other, then incur the initial cost of physically transporting one of them to another star system however many light years away, which may take years or decades but once it's there, communication between the two points would be instantaneous.

lovemenot 7y ago
That's interesting. You could call your story Spooky Action. The Spooky channel need not be used exclusively by so-called advanced civilisations. In fact there are species on Earth now that are known to interact in evolutionarily useful ways with quantum effects. Of course, if Spooky is just entanglement the modem would be destroyed upon a single use. However, there could be an effectively unlimited supply of them occurring naturally. This feels more feasible than SETI's hypothesis. Space was much smaller and was probably at just the right temperature to support life at a very early stage of the Universe.

lowdose 7y ago

When we find them there will be people that want to initiate contact. For centuries we were convinced the shark was the Apex predator of sea. I'm not really looking forward to the day we come across the orcas of the universe.

dhimes 7y ago

My suspicion is that they are communicating at frequencies we can't modulate/demodulate yet. Look how short of a time it took us to get from KHz to GHz. Since there's a trade-off in that the higher the frequency- the more data can be transmitted in a given time, it makes sense that intelligent species would try to increase their transmission frequencies as a matter of course- like we did. The downside trade-off is that transmissions become more and more strictly line-of-sight at higher frequencies.

ddxxdd 7y ago
We can detect microwaves, infrared rays, light rays, ultraviolet rays, X-rays, and gamma rays. We might not be able to transmit and receive FM radio in those frequencies, but we are able to detect the presence, polarization, and direction of such radiation.
- dhimes 7y ago
  But if you can't modulate or demodulate gamma rays (which is anything above a certain frequency), you can't even see if they are transmitting information or not. Even radio waves modulated with spread spectrum techniques look like noise. Who knows what we'll be using in the future.