Do you think aliens use radio waves to communicate with each other?

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Profile Jordan Hardee

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Message 1778910 - Posted: 14 Apr 2016, 4:13:17 UTC

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?
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Michael Watson

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Message 1779044 - Posted: 14 Apr 2016, 15:56:48 UTC

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.
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Profile Bob DeWoody
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Message 1779076 - Posted: 14 Apr 2016, 18:08:31 UTC

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.
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Michael Watson

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Message 1779089 - Posted: 14 Apr 2016, 19:01:44 UTC

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.
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Message 1779106 - Posted: 14 Apr 2016, 20:08:32 UTC - in response to Message 1779089.  

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
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bluestar

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Message 1779939 - Posted: 17 Apr 2016, 19:27:18 UTC
Last modified: 17 Apr 2016, 19:34:54 UTC

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.
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bluestar

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Message 1779971 - Posted: 17 Apr 2016, 22:15:32 UTC
Last modified: 17 Apr 2016, 22:37:12 UTC

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.
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Profile William Rothamel
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Message 1780493 - Posted: 20 Apr 2016, 0:27:11 UTC - in response to Message 1779939.  

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.
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Message 1789565 - Posted: 22 May 2016, 19:26:00 UTC - in response to Message 1780493.  

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.
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Message 1789613 - Posted: 22 May 2016, 22:51:39 UTC

What is the difference between stone age man and the apes who chose to be climbing down from the trees?
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Profile William Rothamel
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Message 1789648 - Posted: 23 May 2016, 1:52:52 UTC - in response to Message 1789613.  

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.
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Message 1789747 - Posted: 23 May 2016, 11:26:17 UTC

I think they use gamma rays in the first place.
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Message 1789759 - Posted: 23 May 2016, 13:16:11 UTC - in response to Message 1789747.  

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

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Message 1789774 - Posted: 23 May 2016, 14:30:34 UTC - in response to Message 1789759.  

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.
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Message 1789889 - Posted: 23 May 2016, 23:36:43 UTC - in response to Message 1789774.  

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

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Message 1789981 - Posted: 24 May 2016, 7:11:00 UTC - in response to Message 1789889.  

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.


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Message 1790017 - Posted: 24 May 2016, 11:20:01 UTC - in response to Message 1789981.  

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

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Message 1790019 - Posted: 24 May 2016, 11:20:54 UTC - in response to Message 1790017.  

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.
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Message 1795480 - Posted: 11 Jun 2016, 22:43:32 UTC

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... :)
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Message 1796649 - Posted: 16 Jun 2016, 17:02:24 UTC

Actually, what I like about gamma rays is the information content in bits/second, which is astronomically higher for gamma rays than for radio.
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Message boards : SETI@home Science : Do you think aliens use radio waves to communicate with each other?


 
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