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Powerful Radio Signal from Deep Space

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Re: Powerful Radio Signal from Deep Space

#3

Just imagine one day a true alien signal comes ringing, and what the public reaction would be? "Yeah, right. Again."

I guess it would depend how compelling the signal was. If it's just rogue radio waves with seemingly intelligent structure that the average person cannot understand, then the reaction would likely be "Yeah, right. Again".

If it's some kind of encoded message containing information that can be decoded and verified by scientific communicators, perhaps not.

Re: Powerful Radio Signal from Deep Space

#4
One thing that I wonder is whether we could ever identify an alien communication signal as an alien signal is likely to be much more advanced. In that scenario, the alien civilization is likely to be able to send their signal at the Shannon limit. Additionally an advanced civilization is likely to be sending signals optically instead of over radio waves. But even if we assume radio waves, Shannon says that the you can send the most information when using a random code. As you approach the Shannon limit the signal becomes more noise-like as the encoding tends towards random. So it’s entirely possible an alien signal is likely to look like pure noise to us and hence we may miss a true alien signal.

Re: Powerful Radio Signal from Deep Space

#5

One thing that I wonder is whether we could ever identify an alien communication signal as an alien signal is likely to be much more advanced. In that scenario, the alien civilization is likely to be able to send their signal at the Shannon limit. Additionally an advanced civilization is likely to be sending signals optically instead of over radio waves. But even if we assume radio waves, Shannon says that the you ca…

It's too short for communication. I think it's burst of particles that are released when spaceship goes out of warp.

https://www.universetoday.com/93882/warp-drives-may-come-wit...

16 day regular cycle is because it's regular transfer between two planets. Other FRBs are random because they are just random ships on random research routes.

Re: Powerful Radio Signal from Deep Space

#6

One thing that I wonder is whether we could ever identify an alien communication signal as an alien signal is likely to be much more advanced. In that scenario, the alien civilization is likely to be able to send their signal at the Shannon limit. Additionally an advanced civilization is likely to be sending signals optically instead of over radio waves. But even if we assume radio waves, Shannon says that the you ca…

Except beacons of some sort. I could imagine practical benefits to not put a lot of information in there.

Re: Powerful Radio Signal from Deep Space

#9
post #7

Just imagine one day a true alien signal comes ringing, and what the public reaction would be? "Yeah, right. Again."

A hostile invasion that follows will be the ultimate proof.

Don't worry, it will most probably be limited to the USA. Aliens always land there.

Re: Powerful Radio Signal from Deep Space

#10

One thing that I wonder is whether we could ever identify an alien communication signal as an alien signal is likely to be much more advanced. In that scenario, the alien civilization is likely to be able to send their signal at the Shannon limit. Additionally an advanced civilization is likely to be sending signals optically instead of over radio waves. But even if we assume radio waves, Shannon says that the you ca…

I really like this view on the incompressibility of a uniform distribution.

However, the channel is probably not the same. Just as we moved from AM to FM, I'd expect then that a more advanced civilisation can make further improvements by changing the channel rather than the encoding, and maybe information encoded in the spin of particles or some other funky physics effect.

Ultimately, whilst the encoding will approach a uniform distribution, it seems like bad design for them to have an entire signal indistinguishable from background radiation, which is something they have to overcome as well.

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