My thought is that radio waves only travel as fast as light, which is extremely slow if we're talking about 'chatter' between certain parts of an interstellar alien civilization. What kinds of scientific concepts that we know of today could be used to bypass this light speed limit? Perhaps a 'quantum radio' of sorts or some kind of 'wormhole telephone'. If we do find a signal, especially if it's from this kind of civilization what would that mean? Could it serve as some kind of beacon to find intelligent life such as ourselves? Or perhaps some kind of stellar lighthouse, either trying to get us to say hi back, to get us to travel to it in order to establish contact, or some sort of cryptic signal warning us of a dangerous predatory civilization seeking to find and extinguish its future 'competition', or worse still, a message warning not to send radio signals into space due to some extraterrestrial danger. Though I like to think a little more optimistically about it. What are your thoughts on this?

Welcome to the forum, Jordan!

Unfortunately, a faster alternative to signaling by radio waves hasn't yet been discovered. Despite much talk of communications by quantum entanglement, this doesn't appear workable, based on what we know about quantum mechanics

Traversable wormholes are a possibility, some believe, but a signal sent through one one might not end up where, or when we wanted it to.

Some scientific work being done by Harold White, at NASA, suggests that it might be possible to warp space, essentially moving space past a vessel, instead of moving a vessel through space. This could make for effective, global velocities greater than light, without violating the relativity theory light speed limit, which applies to local velocities. As far as sending messages is concerned, an object in such a space warp could be an automated messenger, rather than a manned vessel.

This assumes that it would not be possible to simply beam a signal through such a space warp, with equipment that remained at the point from which the message was sent.

Almost every theoretical means of either communicating or travelling faster than the speed of light requires harnessing vast amounts of energy that may or may not ever be attainable by us humans. So, in the vastness of the universe, we may never be able to communicate with or travel to star systems more than a few dozen light years away. But there is a lot we can accomplish right here in our own backyard.

---

Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Dr. White's experiments use a very modest amount of electricity to charge a ring of capacitors. He believes this may be sufficient to produce a measurable space warp. Preliminary results have been promising enough to encourage experimental refinements to clarify what is happening. He maintains that a conventional electrical charge can act as a substitute for negative energy or exotic matter, which has heretofore been thought necessary to produce a space warp.

Dr. White's experiments use a very modest amount of electricity to charge a ring of capacitors. He believes this may be sufficient to produce a measurable space warp. Preliminary results have been promising enough to encourage experimental refinements to clarify what is happening. He maintains that a conventional electrical charge can act as a substitute for negative energy or exotic matter, which has heretofore been thought necessary to produce a space warp.

One thing that has puzzled me is that even if it somehow works, you would still be controlling the system with something that was sub light. I hope it is successful, but I have strong doubts.

Steve

---

Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

E.T. phone home.

Perhaps I was too young to understand at that time, or became hung up by the slightly childish part of the movie, but at least I have seen the movie.

The speed of light, c, is only one factor among many others when it comes to the subject of mathematics and physicists.

In the same way as we should not forget Einstein's words "God is not playing with dices", c itself, which is a constant, should be the best way of understanding the properties of light, which is elementary particles by means of photons traveling through space close to the speed of light, which is almost 300,000 km/s.

Again, the famous equation is E=mc2 .

I have never understood or comprehended the ^2 part of this equation.

300,000^2 or 300,000 * 300,000 for the matter makes for some 90,000,000,000 which is a very large number.

If such a number should make it reasonable to understand while small amounts of mass are equal to huge amounts of energy, here is the simple explanation for this being true.

Or perhaps it should be physics rather than physicists this time.

Better shut up here and rather keep to ny own thread.

13 years of running this project by means of the Seti@home client, not 12 as previously mentioned.

Again, my bad.

A photon is a disturbance in the electromagnetic field. What travels may well be just a wave in the electromagnetic field.

Just as a wave in a sports stadium--nothing travels --only the disturbance in the seating posture of the people in the stadium.

Humans are not intelligent. In the great expanse of time, humans have only discovered the principles which lead to science, and scientific discovery, a mere few hundred years ago. The probability that other beings near us, are in space, so soon after learning about the principles of science, is incredibly small. If we meet other beings in space, they will be millions of years ahead of us in knowledge and intelligence. They will have been in space their entire recorded history, and will have no collective memory of ever not being in space, and having space not be a part of their lives. They will see humans in the same way that we see primitive bugs flying around on a hot summer afternoon, and they will have no more interest in talking to us, than we would have talking to some monkeys we see working with primitive tools.

---

What is the difference between stone age man and the apes who chose to be climbing down from the trees?

We are the apes who chose to swing down from the trees and chose to walk upright and run swiftly through the savannas. !!

You and I are great apes.

I think they use gamma rays in the first place.

---

rOZZ
Music
Pictures

I think they use gamma rays in the first place.

What would the advantage be? Radio waves aren't damaging to living tissue but Gamma rays are.

---

Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

I think they use gamma rays in the first place.

What would the advantage be? Radio waves aren't damaging to living tissue but Gamma rays are.

Much faster way of sending and receiving messages I think. Our atmosphere is protecting us from the most harmful rays.

---

rOZZ
Music
Pictures

I think they use gamma rays in the first place.

What would the advantage be? Radio waves aren't damaging to living tissue but Gamma rays are.

Much faster way of sending and receiving messages I think. Our atmosphere is protecting us from the most harmful rays.

Gamma rays travel no faster than other forms of radiation, they are just more powerful than ordinary radio waves.

---

Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

I think they use gamma rays in the first place.

What would the advantage be? Radio waves aren't damaging to living tissue but Gamma rays are.

Much faster way of sending and receiving messages I think. Our atmosphere is protecting us from the most harmful rays.

Gamma rays travel no faster than other forms of radiation, they are just more powerful than ordinary radio waves.

They do travel at a higher frequency.

---

rOZZ
Music
Pictures

I think they use gamma rays in the first place.

What would the advantage be? Radio waves aren't damaging to living tissue but Gamma rays are.

Much faster way of sending and receiving messages I think. Our atmosphere is protecting us from the most harmful rays.

Gamma rays travel no faster than other forms of radiation, they are just more powerful than ordinary radio waves.

They do travel at a higher frequency.

But frequency has nothing to do with speed of transmission. Frequency is cycles per second. The speed remains the same as that of light.

---

Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

I think they use gamma rays in the first place.

What would the advantage be? Radio waves aren't damaging to living tissue but Gamma rays are.

Much faster way of sending and receiving messages I think. Our atmosphere is protecting us from the most harmful rays.

Gamma rays travel no faster than other forms of radiation, they are just more powerful than ordinary radio waves.

They do travel at a higher frequency.

But frequency has nothing to do with speed of transmission. Frequency is cycles per second. The speed remains the same as that of light.

Frequency is what I meant, apologies for the misunderstanding.

---

rOZZ
Music
Pictures

radio wave is small spectrum of c, And c is something between mass and energy. Since Mass, Energy, Time and gravitation are interconnected there could be other type 'something' such as between Energy and gravitation, or Time and gravitation that can be used to communicate somehow... :)

Actually, what I like about gamma rays is the information content in bits/second, which is astronomically higher for gamma rays than for radio.