4 ms·
> 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 t
by 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.