171–179 of 179 posts
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter > The name refers to the fact that it does not emit or interact with electromagnetic radiation, such as light, and is thus invisible to the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
Couldn't it bend the light enough that it looks to be dimming to us?
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> If one is in essence immortal the only purpose that can endure forever is the pursuit of new knowledge. That's making a lot of assumptions about alien psychology, believing they're going to have the same goals as us. Why not 1. Propagation of your species, forever 2. Expansion of your territory until the entire Universe is yours 3. Endless pursuit of pleasure 4. Propagating religious beliefs, or something we'd reco…
My unprovable assumption is that only beings who value knowledge and cooperation highly enough will get to the point of crossing the difficult technological threshold of achieving singularity or space travel. I think the more likely Achilles heel for my scenario is sexual selection - the trap that perpetuates selfish behavior in both sexes even when there is no resource scarcity. Even in this, humans at least are som…
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Safe to say that a civilization that can build a Dyson structure isn't using any 20th-century coherent modulation types that SETI could detect. SETI is only useful for catching civilizations in the ~100 Earth year-equivalent span between their development of wireless tech and information theory. There's nothing to listen to but white noise after that.
This is speculation. There are all kinds of examples we have of "ancient" technology that are still in everyday use today - knives, for example. There's no reason to think that something else would abandon using EM as a transfer of communication.
Most long-distance communication travels over wires too--everyone uses fiber backhaul. Phones and computers use EM (cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth) but the range is very short, so the signal power is far too low to report us to the universe.
On top of that, most entertainment and communications signals today are digital, and many are encrypted. It's going to sound like noise to a receiver that doesn't know the encoding and/or have the encryption key.
The most powerful space-facing EM emissions we make today, as a species, is probably RADAR, not a form of communications.
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This is speculation. There are all kinds of examples we have of "ancient" technology that are still in everyday use today - knives, for example. There's no reason to think that something else would abandon using EM as a transfer of communication.
Think about how many people get their TV via a wire today, instead of via antenna. A lot of people get satellite TV, which is a strong signal but pointed toward the ground. And even the terrestrial radio and TV stations still broadcasting are strictly power-limited to reduce geographic overlap. Most long-distance communication travels over wires too--everyone uses fiber backhaul. Phones and computers use EM (cellular…
Since I don't think its coming from manned satellites where the content is generated, I'm pretty sure there is a space-facing signal involved in satellite TV as well as a ground-facing signal.
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IMHO the aliens will not be specifically seeking life that is intelligent. Singularities and interstellar traveling alien civilizations share a problem. If one is in essence immortal the only purpose that can endure forever is the pursuit of new knowledge. Even if alien entities are able to learn all there is to know about all the other sciences, biology will be inexhaustible as the novel patterns that can be produce…
>> biology will be inexhaustible as the novel patterns that can be produced by evolution are effectively infinite But why do you assume they would be interested in observing the patterns that actually have been produced, instead of running high-precision evolutionary emulators that can generate patterns that could be produced at a much higher rate, and maybe even some automated filters to condense it down to "interes…
Then, once you have the attributes of that emulator, you'd have to calculate how long it would take that emulator to deliver the same information that can be harvested today on Earth with simple observations. And even if it completed, how would you confirm it is indeed the same information without traveling here to check?
The energy budget would be immense of course, but heat management might be the limiting issue on how fast it can run. It's hard to dump heat into space.
I'm not intending to argue one or another about hypothetical god-like alien civilizations. It's just a pet peeve when programmers make open-ended claims about simulations or emulations without considering physical constraints. We tend to think of electronic computers as powerful, but their information handling capabilities are quite slow and diffuse compared to what biology has produced on Earth so far.
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Think about how many people get their TV via a wire today, instead of via antenna. A lot of people get satellite TV, which is a strong signal but pointed toward the ground. And even the terrestrial radio and TV stations still broadcasting are strictly power-limited to reduce geographic overlap. Most long-distance communication travels over wires too--everyone uses fiber backhaul. Phones and computers use EM (cellular…
> Think about how many people get their TV via a wire today, instead of via antenna. A lot of people get satellite TV, which is a strong signal but pointed toward the ground. Since I don't think its coming from manned satellites where the content is generated, I'm pretty sure there is a space-facing signal involved in satellite TV as well as a ground-facing signal.
Sure some of the uplink will make it past the satellite, but that's a fairly low-power beam that would need to intersect an alien antenna to be heard.
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Question for you Timex Eclair, can I use a star as the engine for my megaship? Pointing all the photons in direction?
Like this? http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a10885/the-... Of course if this was happening we'd see some unusual proper motion from KIC 8462852. Which we're not. (Did someone check?)
In her TED talk [1] Tabby explains how comets could be an explanation for this phenomenon, she even says that it is consistent with their observations, but then she goes on to say "but it 'feels' a little contrived". Sorry what did I miss here? I thought we were discussing science and coming up with theories that support our evidence using data, how does feeling fit into this picture? Why would it be so unlikely that…
It also doesn't explain the long-term dimming of the star. The alien megastructure kinda does. It's not a perfect explanation either, but from what I understand, slightly more convincing than the giant comet swarm.