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The Voyager project is an amazing feat for humanity. But I wonder, does NASA take into account the repercussions of sending a probe deep into space? I know spac

The Voyager project is an amazing feat for humanity. But I wonder, does NASA take into account the repercussions of sending a probe deep into space? I know space is big but I can only think of the dark forest hypothesis. What's the plan for further space exploration?

techbuttman 2y ago
Well they put a golden record on voyager (https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/ https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/) with a lot of our info. so I think they were betting on friendly aliens, if any.
T-A 2y ago
Voyager 1 is currently 2.4e10 km from Earth. Trisolaris - sorry, I mean Proxima Centauri - is 4e13 km away [2], so in the (almost) 47 years since its launch, Voyager 1 has covered a whopping 0.06% of the distance. And it's not even headed that way. Meanwhile, radio, TV and radar have been advertising the presence of a new technological civilization on Earth for more than a century. That means any entity worth worrying about within a 100+ light year radius - a distance 44+ times longer than to Proxima - already knows about us. And that sphere keeps growing in all directions at the speed of light, or roughly 18000 times faster than Voyager 1 is moving. If you really want to worry about the Dark Forest, it would be more justified to ask if your local radio station takes into account the repercussions of sending commercials and TOS reruns into deep space. [1] https://theskylive.com/voyager1-info https://theskylive.com/voyager1-info [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri
- wumeow 2y ago
  > repercussions of sending commercials and TOS reruns into deep space. There’s actually a documentary about this: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Quest https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Quest
- somenameforme 2y ago
  Inverse square law. With the power we're transmitting at, signals become just background noise relatively quickly. They're nowhere near strong enough to be detectable at e.g. Proxima Centauri. This is what makes the radio signals we do detect, like fast radio bursts, so interesting. So for instance, the furthest signal we've detected is called FRB (fast radio burst) 20220610A, and that millisecond length signal came from a source with output energy equivalent to decades of the Sun's entire output.
  - nuccy 2y ago
    This "law" is only for point (or spherical) sources, i.e. those emitting evenly in all direction - the area is increasing as a square of distance and thus signal power drops accordingly. With lasers, directional antennas, phased array antennas [1] the signal won't decay that fast. For instance with lasers it will be just a matter of alignment of internal elements to obtain a parallel light beam which doesn't lose power over distance (obviously there are other factors - atmosphere, particles in the vacuum, et al which will result in diveregence anyway). In fact some billionaires [2] invest into using telescopes with fast sampling cameras (in this case IACT [3] telescopes used normally to detect gamma-rays by their interaction with the atmosphere) to detect flashed of extraterrestrial lasers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array (see the animation of the radiation pattern) [2] https://www.space.com/are-aliens-flashing-laser-beams.html https://www.space.com/are-aliens-flashing-laser-beams.html [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IACT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IACT
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      >This "law" is only for point (or spherical) sources, i.e. those emitting evenly in all direction We're not talking about lasers and directional antenna here, we're talking about humans using radio communications to talk to each other on Earth over the last 100 years, and whether that's detectable from great distances.
      - T-A 2y ago
        There is a reason I included radar in my list. military radar transmissions set up during the Cold War to detect incoming ballistic missiles have the power and frequency characteristics to be detected over hundreds of light-years – and have already broadcast our existence to any aliens within around 60 light-years of the Earth [1] But never underestimate the power of television: The most detectable and useful escaping signals arise in a few ultra-powerful military radar systems and in normal television broad-casting. A model including over 2,000 television transmitters is used to demonstrate the wealth of astronomical and cultural information available from a distant observer’s careful monitoring of frequency and intensity variations in individual video carriers (program material is not taken to be detectable). [2][3] once the Square Kilometer Array is completed in Australia and Africa, it would be able to detect the current TV carrier wave radio leakage at a distance of about fifty lightyears for objects in the southern hemisphere sky [4] [1] https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/how-far-from-earth-could-aliens-detect-our-radio-signals https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/how-far-from-earth-could-... [2] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-9115-6_20 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-9115-6_... [3] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.199.4327.377 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.199.4327.377 [4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/01/27/how-far-into-space-can-radio-telescopes-hear/?sh=14d03de75de7 https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/01/27/how-far-into-s...
- butlike 2y ago
  To scale it up, if you're an intergalactic entity, all you'd have to do is make a note of objects pulsing/resonating where they were not before. "Oh, looks like Earth just got radio waves, which means there's probably life there." From there you just monitor the wave Hertz output by the planet, and when they start transmitting waves at higher Hz, you know it might be time to meet up. "Oh they're sending photonic gamma rays as messages now instead of radio waves, I'm gonna go say Hi."

techbuttman 2y ago

Well they put a golden record on voyager (https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/ https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/) with a lot of our info. so I think they were betting on friendly aliens, if any.

T-A 2y ago

Voyager 1 is currently 2.4e10 km from Earth. Trisolaris - sorry, I mean Proxima Centauri - is 4e13 km away [2], so in the (almost) 47 years since its launch, Voyager 1 has covered a whopping 0.06% of the distance. And it's not even headed that way. Meanwhile, radio, TV and radar have been advertising the presence of a new technological civilization on Earth for more than a century. That means any entity worth worrying about within a 100+ light year radius - a distance 44+ times longer than to Proxima - already knows about us. And that sphere keeps growing in all directions at the speed of light, or roughly 18000 times faster than Voyager 1 is moving. If you really want to worry about the Dark Forest, it would be more justified to ask if your local radio station takes into account the repercussions of sending commercials and TOS reruns into deep space. [1] https://theskylive.com/voyager1-info https://theskylive.com/voyager1-info [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri

wumeow 2y ago
> repercussions of sending commercials and TOS reruns into deep space. There’s actually a documentary about this: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Quest https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Quest
somenameforme 2y ago
Inverse square law. With the power we're transmitting at, signals become just background noise relatively quickly. They're nowhere near strong enough to be detectable at e.g. Proxima Centauri. This is what makes the radio signals we do detect, like fast radio bursts, so interesting. So for instance, the furthest signal we've detected is called FRB (fast radio burst) 20220610A, and that millisecond length signal came from a source with output energy equivalent to decades of the Sun's entire output.
- nuccy 2y ago
  This "law" is only for point (or spherical) sources, i.e. those emitting evenly in all direction - the area is increasing as a square of distance and thus signal power drops accordingly. With lasers, directional antennas, phased array antennas [1] the signal won't decay that fast. For instance with lasers it will be just a matter of alignment of internal elements to obtain a parallel light beam which doesn't lose power over distance (obviously there are other factors - atmosphere, particles in the vacuum, et al which will result in diveregence anyway). In fact some billionaires [2] invest into using telescopes with fast sampling cameras (in this case IACT [3] telescopes used normally to detect gamma-rays by their interaction with the atmosphere) to detect flashed of extraterrestrial lasers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array (see the animation of the radiation pattern) [2] https://www.space.com/are-aliens-flashing-laser-beams.html https://www.space.com/are-aliens-flashing-laser-beams.html [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IACT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IACT
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    >This "law" is only for point (or spherical) sources, i.e. those emitting evenly in all direction We're not talking about lasers and directional antenna here, we're talking about humans using radio communications to talk to each other on Earth over the last 100 years, and whether that's detectable from great distances.
    - T-A 2y ago
      There is a reason I included radar in my list. military radar transmissions set up during the Cold War to detect incoming ballistic missiles have the power and frequency characteristics to be detected over hundreds of light-years – and have already broadcast our existence to any aliens within around 60 light-years of the Earth [1] But never underestimate the power of television: The most detectable and useful escaping signals arise in a few ultra-powerful military radar systems and in normal television broad-casting. A model including over 2,000 television transmitters is used to demonstrate the wealth of astronomical and cultural information available from a distant observer’s careful monitoring of frequency and intensity variations in individual video carriers (program material is not taken to be detectable). [2][3] once the Square Kilometer Array is completed in Australia and Africa, it would be able to detect the current TV carrier wave radio leakage at a distance of about fifty lightyears for objects in the southern hemisphere sky [4] [1] https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/how-far-from-earth-could-aliens-detect-our-radio-signals https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/how-far-from-earth-could-... [2] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-9115-6_20 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-9115-6_... [3] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.199.4327.377 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.199.4327.377 [4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/01/27/how-far-into-space-can-radio-telescopes-hear/?sh=14d03de75de7 https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/01/27/how-far-into-s...
butlike 2y ago
To scale it up, if you're an intergalactic entity, all you'd have to do is make a note of objects pulsing/resonating where they were not before. "Oh, looks like Earth just got radio waves, which means there's probably life there." From there you just monitor the wave Hertz output by the planet, and when they start transmitting waves at higher Hz, you know it might be time to meet up. "Oh they're sending photonic gamma rays as messages now instead of radio waves, I'm gonna go say Hi."