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Sending probes is dangerous. You never know who is going to capture it and figure out where it was sent from. Conclusion: make deniable self-destructing probes.

Sending probes is dangerous. You never know who is going to capture it and figure out where it was sent from. Conclusion: make deniable self-destructing probes. 1. Send probe to star system slow enough to be random interstellar rock on a collision course with planetary body, 2. it collects data as it approaches body, 3. then have it self-destruct in the atmo destroying all technology and information in the probe. Use the energy from the destruction to send a message back on a wide cone that can be intercepted.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
teraflop 5y ago
Sadly, the combination of "wide cone" and "detectable from light-years away" implies some fairly prohibitive energy requirements.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- MerelyMortal 5y ago
  That's according to our knowledge and understanding. It may not be the same for a civilization that is advanced enough to send such a probe.
  - ajuc 5y ago
    Conservation of energy is pretty fundamental. If we can't rely on that, then there's no point assuming anything at all, certainly not alien intentions.
    - chii 5y ago
      i would imagine intentions could be derived from resource scarcity or abundance. If aliens intend to invade over resources, the cost of such an invasion (from an energy consumption perspective) is so prohibitively high, that harvesting from a closer body seems way more feasible. If aliens intend to invade over not resources, but some other factor, then we cannot guess it. May be there's what amounts to religion and the invasion is a defacto purging or converting of alien species over to their "god". Or to exterminate any possible future competition (aka, darwinianism at the galactic scale).
      - ajuc 5y ago
        How can you assume resources scarcity if energy isn't conserved? At this point all bets are off. How do we know that traveling closer in the same time takes less energy than traveling further? We can't assume that anymore. And so on. This is my problem with most sci-fi. They take some crazy assumptions and ignore most of the consequences so the world is recognizable. This is like people in ancient Greece hearing that one city in 21st century has more population than the whole world in their time and wondering how we feed our horses :)
      - benibela 5y ago
        Or they needed a lot of paperclips
- sliken 5y ago
  Dunno, take say 1 gram of matter and convert it to energy. Then assume something 100x better than the JWST, add in a few more decades of signal processing, encoding, etc. Add in the possibility of receiving from more than a single solar system. After all some random ham in 2005 set a record of 13M miles per watt. That's in 2005, with an standard radio (elecraft k1) and not any exotic receivers like say something 100-1000x better than the JWST that's I'd expect earth to have over the next few decades, let alone some other civilization that's sending sensors to likely millions of solar systems if they found us. That's only 400kw for a light year, not that much assuming you are slinging sensors into other solar systems.
  - teraflop 5y ago
    Well, the energy requirements for wireless communication go up with the distance squared. So even if you can transmit 13 million miles per watt, that's equivalent to about 200GW for 1 light year.
    - sliken 5y ago
      Assuming omnidirectional transmissions, yes.
      - Armisael16 5y ago
        If you spread the energy out it will spread in a shape with area proportionate to the square of the distance. You can focus more of that power into a particular area, but the fundamentals here are not particularly negotiable.
Delk 5y ago
> Sending probes is dangerous. You never know who is going to capture it and figure out where it was sent from. I'm not sure capture would necessarily be all that likely. Assuming a flyby and not a crash, capturing a probe would require the captor to accelerate to the probe's relative velocity first. If you wanted to bring it back, too, you'd then have to decelerate back into a non-escape velocity with the captive in tow. Alternatively, you'd need some way of slowing the probe down without touching it, e.g. with light, but doing that would take a rather long time, especially if it wasn't designed as a light sail intended to be slowed down and you don't want to destroy the probe in the process. Both sound quite nontrivial especially if the probe is travelling at a speed that would be useful for interstellar travel, and if you don't detect the probe a lot in advance, which also sounds nontrivial. If the target world had reached such an advanced technology level that the probe could be detected and deemed interesting early on and captured, all bets would be off anyway. > Use the energy from the destruction to send a message back on a wide cone that can be intercepted. Energy from destruction tends not to be very organized. How would you use that energy for sending a coherent directed message that isn't even known in advance (assuming it would actually transmit some of the newly collected data and not just "bye bye")?
- EthanHeilman 5y ago
  > I'm not sure capture would necessarily be all that likely. Assuming a flyby and not a crash, capturing a probe would require the captor to accelerate to the probe's relative velocity first. If you wanted to bring it back, too, you'd then have to decelerate back into a non-escape velocity with the captive in tow. This is a really good point. If you can make your probe fast enough you reduce warning time and make it very expensive to catch. > Energy from destruction tends not to be very organized. How would you use that energy for sending a coherent directed message that isn't even known in advance (assuming it would actually transmit some of the newly collected data and not just "bye bye")? I was assuming a signal that could not be distinguished from an explosion much like how cryptography can encrypt a message that without the key can not be distinguished from random noise. If one wanted to get really deniable about this you could just design a rock such that its shape and composition would reveal facts about the planets atmosphere based purely on how it explodes, e.g. the wave lengths of the light of an explosion vary based on oxygen content. If the rock doesn't explode on schedule you could conclude with some probability intelligent life intercepted it for study.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

teraflop 5y ago

Sadly, the combination of "wide cone" and "detectable from light-years away" implies some fairly prohibitive energy requirements.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
MerelyMortal 5y ago
That's according to our knowledge and understanding. It may not be the same for a civilization that is advanced enough to send such a probe.
- ajuc 5y ago
  Conservation of energy is pretty fundamental. If we can't rely on that, then there's no point assuming anything at all, certainly not alien intentions.
  - chii 5y ago
    i would imagine intentions could be derived from resource scarcity or abundance. If aliens intend to invade over resources, the cost of such an invasion (from an energy consumption perspective) is so prohibitively high, that harvesting from a closer body seems way more feasible. If aliens intend to invade over not resources, but some other factor, then we cannot guess it. May be there's what amounts to religion and the invasion is a defacto purging or converting of alien species over to their "god". Or to exterminate any possible future competition (aka, darwinianism at the galactic scale).
    - ajuc 5y ago
      How can you assume resources scarcity if energy isn't conserved? At this point all bets are off. How do we know that traveling closer in the same time takes less energy than traveling further? We can't assume that anymore. And so on. This is my problem with most sci-fi. They take some crazy assumptions and ignore most of the consequences so the world is recognizable. This is like people in ancient Greece hearing that one city in 21st century has more population than the whole world in their time and wondering how we feed our horses :)
    - benibela 5y ago
      Or they needed a lot of paperclips
sliken 5y ago
Dunno, take say 1 gram of matter and convert it to energy. Then assume something 100x better than the JWST, add in a few more decades of signal processing, encoding, etc. Add in the possibility of receiving from more than a single solar system. After all some random ham in 2005 set a record of 13M miles per watt. That's in 2005, with an standard radio (elecraft k1) and not any exotic receivers like say something 100-1000x better than the JWST that's I'd expect earth to have over the next few decades, let alone some other civilization that's sending sensors to likely millions of solar systems if they found us. That's only 400kw for a light year, not that much assuming you are slinging sensors into other solar systems.
- teraflop 5y ago
  Well, the energy requirements for wireless communication go up with the distance squared. So even if you can transmit 13 million miles per watt, that's equivalent to about 200GW for 1 light year.
  - sliken 5y ago
    Assuming omnidirectional transmissions, yes.
    - Armisael16 5y ago
      If you spread the energy out it will spread in a shape with area proportionate to the square of the distance. You can focus more of that power into a particular area, but the fundamentals here are not particularly negotiable.

Delk 5y ago

> Sending probes is dangerous. You never know who is going to capture it and figure out where it was sent from. I'm not sure capture would necessarily be all that likely. Assuming a flyby and not a crash, capturing a probe would require the captor to accelerate to the probe's relative velocity first. If you wanted to bring it back, too, you'd then have to decelerate back into a non-escape velocity with the captive in tow. Alternatively, you'd need some way of slowing the probe down without touching it, e.g. with light, but doing that would take a rather long time, especially if it wasn't designed as a light sail intended to be slowed down and you don't want to destroy the probe in the process. Both sound quite nontrivial especially if the probe is travelling at a speed that would be useful for interstellar travel, and if you don't detect the probe a lot in advance, which also sounds nontrivial. If the target world had reached such an advanced technology level that the probe could be detected and deemed interesting early on and captured, all bets would be off anyway. > Use the energy from the destruction to send a message back on a wide cone that can be intercepted. Energy from destruction tends not to be very organized. How would you use that energy for sending a coherent directed message that isn't even known in advance (assuming it would actually transmit some of the newly collected data and not just "bye bye")?

EthanHeilman 5y ago
> I'm not sure capture would necessarily be all that likely. Assuming a flyby and not a crash, capturing a probe would require the captor to accelerate to the probe's relative velocity first. If you wanted to bring it back, too, you'd then have to decelerate back into a non-escape velocity with the captive in tow. This is a really good point. If you can make your probe fast enough you reduce warning time and make it very expensive to catch. > Energy from destruction tends not to be very organized. How would you use that energy for sending a coherent directed message that isn't even known in advance (assuming it would actually transmit some of the newly collected data and not just "bye bye")? I was assuming a signal that could not be distinguished from an explosion much like how cryptography can encrypt a message that without the key can not be distinguished from random noise. If one wanted to get really deniable about this you could just design a rock such that its shape and composition would reveal facts about the planets atmosphere based purely on how it explodes, e.g. the wave lengths of the light of an explosion vary based on oxygen content. If the rock doesn't explode on schedule you could conclude with some probability intelligent life intercepted it for study.