Energy News  
ET, Don't Phone Home; Drop A Line Instead

File image of Man's first intentional message to space and aliens.

Piscataway NJ (SPX) Sep 01, 2004
Were ET really interested in getting in touch with home, he might be better off writing than phoning, according to Christopher Rose, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Rose contends that inscribing information and physically sending it to some location in deep space is more energy-efficient than pulsing it out on radio waves, which disperse as they travel.

"Think of a flashlight beam," Rose says. "Its intensity decreases as it gets farther from its source. The same is true of the beam of a laser pointer, though the distance is much longer. The unavoidable fact is that waves, both light and radio, disperse over distance, and over great distance, they disperse a lot."

Rose and Gregory Wright, a physicist, are co-authors of a paper titled, "Inscribed matter as an energy-efficient means of communication with an extraterrestrial civilization," which appears on the cover of the September 2nd issue of "Nature."

The paper grew out of Rose's work at the Wireless Information Network Laboratory (WINLAB) at Rutgers' School of Engineering.

"Our original question was, 'How do you get the most bits per second over a wireless channel?'" Rose says.

This led him to consider distance, and the "energy budget" required for sending a signal. The budget increases with distance, Rose contends, and the detectability of the signal diminishes. The less detectable a message is, the lower its speed.

In addition, Rose says, when waves pass a particular point, they've passed it for good. Potential recipients at that point might be unable to snag a passing message for any one of many reasons.

They might not be listening. They might be extinct. So someone sending such a message would have to send it over and over to increase the chance of its being received. The energy budget goes up accordingly. A physical message, however, stays where it lands.

Rose is in favor of listening for that close encounter, but he thinks researchers should have their eyes open, too. Rose speculates that "messages" might be anything from actual text in a real language to (more likely) organic material embedded in an asteroid - or in the crater made by such an asteroid upon striking Earth.

Messages - and Rose suggests there might be many of them, perhaps millions - might literally be at our feet. They might be awaiting our discovery on the moon, or on one of Jupiter's moons.

They might be dramatic or mundane. A bottle floating in the ocean is just a bottle floating in the ocean - unless, upon closer inspection, it turns out to have a message in it.

Rose concedes that this idea may be hard to accept, but this difficulty arises from our concern about time. If the sender isn't concerned about reaching the recipient and getting an answer in his own lifetime, inscribing and sending is the way to go.

"If haste is unimportant, sending messages inscribed on some material can be strikingly more efficient than communicating by electromagnetic waves," Rose says.

Of course, ET's choice of medium might be affected by how much he had to say.

"Since messages require protection from cosmic radiation, and small messages might be difficult to find amid the clutter near a recipient, 'inscribed matter' is most effective for long, archival messages, as opposed to potentially short 'we exist' announcements," Rose says. Community
Email This Article
Comment On This Article

Related Links
SpaceDaily
Search SpaceDaily
Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express
Powering The World in the 21st Century at Energy-Daily.com



Memory Foam Mattress Review
Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily
XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News


Strong Magnetism Creates 2D Superconductivity
Tuscon AZ (SPX) Jan 5, 2006
A University of Arizona physicist recently showed that it should be possible to restrict electrons to two dimensions in space by placing conducting materials within strong magnetic fields.







  • ET, Don't Phone Home; Drop A Line Instead
  • NIST Unveils Chip-Scale Atomic Clock
  • Analysis: Nuclear Power Gaining Popularity
  • Vast New Energy Source Almost Here

  • Yucca Mountain Site Must Make Use Of Geological Safety Net
  • New Jersey Physicist Uncovers New Information About Plutonium
  • Complex Plant Design Goes Virtual To Save Time And Money
  • Volcanic Hazard At Yucca Mountain Greater Than Previously Thought





  • NASA Uses Remotely Piloted Airplane To Monitor Grapes



  • NASA To Award Contract For Aerospace Testing
  • Sonic Boom Modification May Lead To New Era
  • Hewitt Pledges Support For Aerospace Industry
  • National Consortium Picks Aviation Technology Test Site

  • NASA plans to send new robot to Jupiter
  • Los Alamos Hopes To Lead New Era Of Nuclear Space Tranportion With Jovian Mission
  • Boeing Selects Leader for Nuclear Space Systems Program
  • Boeing-Led Team to Study Nuclear-Powered Space Systems

  • The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2006 - SpaceDaily.AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA PortalReports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additionalcopyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by SpaceDaily on any Web page published or hosted by SpaceDaily. Privacy Statement