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I think the story is kind of worthless and stupid too, but you can try to hand wave your way to getting something out of it. E.g. there are so many planets, th
by lnanek2 12y ago
I think the story is kind of worthless and stupid too, but you can try to hand wave your way to getting something out of it.
E.g. there are so many planets, there must be life and other intelligent species on some of them, but we can't detect them. What are the possibilities for this that require the fewest unfounded assumptions? Well, one of them is that they simply don't communicate in ways we are looking for, so they aren't generating the radio signals we look for. FTL is stupid, but the idea that they aren't using radio is almost common sense.
Similarly, dragons are stupid, but the idea that evolution might tend to come up with solutions that prevent intelligence is reasonable. Running a big brain takes a lot of resources, it may be rare for situations where having a brain instead of twice as much muscle is selected for by the environment, for example. So that would also substantially decrease the amount of intelligent species.
- woah 12y agoMan, you guys are grumpy. I read it as an entertaining piece of sci-fi.
- MrQuincle 12y agoHi there. I admit that's not anything scientific. :-) I just entertained to give some interesting variants of these ideas. And I am not an expert in the question of superluminal communication, be it on Birgit Dopfer's experiment or using ordinary subluminal speeds through wormholes. But to consider that the absence of alien artifacts or communication might require us to look for gaps in our knowledge w.r.t. physics is a fun one, you've to admit. :-)
- lifeisstillgood 12y agoIf you are Anne, hi. Please don't take it too personally. What were you speculating on? It seems too trivial to say maybe aliens have some other means of communication. Are there parameters we can use to close down the problem? Grumpy, yes. Too quick to judge, yes, but still interested (although in UK timezone so tired)
- MrQuincle 12y agoHi, lifeiststillgood. Yes I am Anne and I don't mind grumpy people so much. We all have our days! :-) If quantum entanglement is used - in the way we understand now - a subluminal/luminal carrier is required. Sending these signals is power intensive, so it is likely to be the case that modulating an existing source might be cheaper. Not so much a parameter that helps us much further though. Of course, it is important to take sparsity into account. It is very unlikely that a fixed signal originating from one point in the sky is the most efficient manner of communication. Sparsity is becoming quite an important concept in machine learning and I think SETI research might benefit from it. But, I've to say, I don't have experience with advances made in SETI research, so maybe they have advanced beyond the standard machine learning methods. :-) I'm just an ordinary roboticist.
- MrQuincle 12y agoI found some articles in this direction: - http://arxiv.org/pdf/0810.3966 http://arxiv.org/pdf/0810.3966, Searching for Cost-Optimized Interstellar Beacons and Messaging with Cost-Optimized Interstellar Beacons, by James Benford (short pulses rather than a continuous signal). - http://escholarship.org/uc/item/4w59f2wk.pdf http://escholarship.org/uc/item/4w59f2wk.pdf, Design of interstellar digital communication links: Some insights from communication engineering, by David Messerschmitt (optimization as a coordination tool with aliens).