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I heard about this interstellar communication silver-bullet before. You're just taking communications on earth for granted - need more bandwidth between points

I heard about this interstellar communication silver-bullet before. You're just taking communications on earth for granted - need more bandwidth between points A and B? Just throw in another independent physical communication channel between them! Well, that's fine here but it doesn't work the same way at creating data links between Earth and another celestial body inside our solar system and definitely not between the solar system and another star system. Think how much info can we theoretically send at a time to another star and how much time will it take to send a brain of knowledge! I think it will be more feasible to send those brains of knowledge in some physical form (and guess what the most intuitive way for doing that would be).

cousin_it 13y ago
Hmm. Theoretically it seems like lasers should support speeds of terabytes per second, so you should be able to transmit a human mind in minutes to hours (maybe faster with compression), and that should take less energy than sending an actual brain at reasonable speed (rocket equation). If you want more bandwidth, use multiple lasers located close to the solar system, but still far enough that they can be distinguished from another star. At longer distances, use multiple intermediate stars in parallel, like the internet. Or is there some theoretical limit that I'm missing?
- userulluipeste 13y ago
  "is there some theoretical limit that I'm missing?" Well, considering that the closest star (Alpha Centauri) is 4.367 light-years away, that only means that if something's wrong with the transmission itself, we can figure it out only after almost nine years. Other than that, I don't really imagine any feasible solution for communication on interstellar scale other than laser-based one, so my initial point was put forward exactly in that use-case. If there ever will (and I hope it will) be a galactic-scale communication system, humanity will have to: - Improve the current laser technology to the point of sending laser beams without much dispersion over light-years distances. - Improve the optical sensor technology in order to receive (and distinguish) from (multiple) artificial sources of light orbiting close to a noisy star. - Set up the laser system(s) taking in account: the time-frame of the moving celestial bodies - both stars and the orbiting emitter(s)/receiver(s), the gravitational time dilation factor, other currently known factors that I don't know of (I'm not a professional physicist), and whatever any other new additional subtle effect that may be still discovered in such setting! I think this fine calibration will be the cake's top-cherry, BTW. So yes, theoretically all is just an engineering problem. The development speed cycles of such systems though, are already dictated by the laws of physics - years (and in human time - generations). The mere reliable communication on such scale will be a great success, but I don't dare to hope of sending brains of knowledge['] in mere hours. ['] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memory-capacity/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memory...

cousin_it 13y ago

Hmm. Theoretically it seems like lasers should support speeds of terabytes per second, so you should be able to transmit a human mind in minutes to hours (maybe faster with compression), and that should take less energy than sending an actual brain at reasonable speed (rocket equation). If you want more bandwidth, use multiple lasers located close to the solar system, but still far enough that they can be distinguished from another star. At longer distances, use multiple intermediate stars in parallel, like the internet. Or is there some theoretical limit that I'm missing?

userulluipeste 13y ago
"is there some theoretical limit that I'm missing?" Well, considering that the closest star (Alpha Centauri) is 4.367 light-years away, that only means that if something's wrong with the transmission itself, we can figure it out only after almost nine years. Other than that, I don't really imagine any feasible solution for communication on interstellar scale other than laser-based one, so my initial point was put forward exactly in that use-case. If there ever will (and I hope it will) be a galactic-scale communication system, humanity will have to: - Improve the current laser technology to the point of sending laser beams without much dispersion over light-years distances. - Improve the optical sensor technology in order to receive (and distinguish) from (multiple) artificial sources of light orbiting close to a noisy star. - Set up the laser system(s) taking in account: the time-frame of the moving celestial bodies - both stars and the orbiting emitter(s)/receiver(s), the gravitational time dilation factor, other currently known factors that I don't know of (I'm not a professional physicist), and whatever any other new additional subtle effect that may be still discovered in such setting! I think this fine calibration will be the cake's top-cherry, BTW. So yes, theoretically all is just an engineering problem. The development speed cycles of such systems though, are already dictated by the laws of physics - years (and in human time - generations). The mere reliable communication on such scale will be a great success, but I don't dare to hope of sending brains of knowledge['] in mere hours. ['] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memory-capacity/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memory...