SETI - an alternate strategy: February 2008

SETI - An alternate strategy

To date most SETI research has focused on the assumption that an advanced extra- terrestrial society will want to "communicate" with similar beings throughout the universe. But it is my belief that given the vast distances and time that communication via a "communications channel" even if it is one way, such as optical or radio frequency transmissions will be impractical. Instead we must look for extra terrestrial intelligence in a similar way we searched for signs of intelligence on earth prior to the modern age. We can not hope to communicate to prehistoric man, but we know that intelligent beings existed on earth thousands of years of ago through archaeological evidence. However for extra terrestrial intelligence we will need to look for "archaeological" radio frequency and other techniques where past intelligent beings may have created electronic equivalent to "cave paintings", "tombstones", "pyramids" or other records of their activities not so much to communicate to us, but to communicate to future generations of their own society. We need to look for ways advanced societies could have created perpetual signal regeneration as their signals propagated through space, or used wide scale and unchangeable features of the universe such as CBR as a reference plane. Rather than use point to point communications ETs may use an inter-galactic equivalent of Facebook.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Special Constellations that Nature would never produce

[I think Jaron's idea is very similar to my own that we need to build "galactic" pyramids and other artificial structures in space. But rather than moving stars and planets I think this can be done more practically by creating spatial spectral patterns that clearly would be the mark of intelligence. Using gravitational lensing as Raman amplifiers and optical circulators could possibly keep a signal radiating forever-- BSA]

A proposal to create special constellations that nature
would never produce

by Jaron Lanier

This month I seriously propose that we begin the process
of repositioning the sun and other nearby stars in order to send signals to aliens, and that we begin the search for signs that aliens might have done the same for our benefit.

Full article here:

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/feb/rearranging-stars-to-communicate-with-aliens

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Orbital Angular Momentum for SETI signaling

I have always been fascinated by Orbital Angular Momentum for another applications including deep space communications. Here is a quick article on the subkect

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/080131-seti-galactic-wifi.html

Also excellent overview paper on OAM

http://www.physics.irfu.se/Publications/Presentations/ThideEtBergman%3ACSC_SETI%3A2008.pdf

SETI - an alternate strategy