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rfmcdonald80 Beats' Andrew Moseman linked to a recent suggestion by physicist and science fiction writer Gregory Benford
It would be reasonably simple to build such a beacon--for various only moderately eccentric definitions of "reasonably simple"--but then, where is everyone else. Fermi's paradox comes into play, as Charlie Stross noted in a blog posting of his own titled "Mediocrity": "There are plenty of stars old enough that, if intelligent space-going life has a non-zero probability of emerging, our galaxy should long since have been overrun. And if not, why do we detect no signs of extraterrestrial intelligence?" After discussing the possibility that interstellar expansion might be impossible because aspiring colonists simply have to take too much too far from home to build a functioning society, Stross brings up last night's simulation argument again.
heteromeles' suggestions is somewhat disturbing.
Meep?
Assuming that aliens would strive to optimize costs, limit waste and make their signaling technology more efficient, Benford and his twin, James — a fellow physicist who specializes in high-powered microwave technology — suggest the signals would not be steadily blasted out in all directions. Extraterrestrials would be more likely to send narrow "searchlight" beams delivered in pulses.
"This approach is more like Twitter and less like 'War and Peace,'" said James Benford, founder and president of Microwave Sciences Inc., in Lafayette, Calif. The Benford twins, along with James' son Dominic, a NASA scientist, detailed their findings in two studies appearing in the June issue of the journal Astrobiology.
The Benfords suggest a continuous signal blared at thousands of stars would simply cost too much energy. They say aliens might use short bursts — say, anywhere from a second to an hour long — and point these signals in narrow beams at one star and then another in a cycle involving up to thousands of stars that repeats over days or years.
For civilizations that constantly watch the skies, the bursts would convey enough data to be recognized as undeniably artificial. As observant civilizations concentrated on this simple beacon, other beacons could broadcast more complex data at lower power (assuming the aliens were still pursuing a frugal strategy).
It would be reasonably simple to build such a beacon--for various only moderately eccentric definitions of "reasonably simple"--but then, where is everyone else. Fermi's paradox comes into play, as Charlie Stross noted in a blog posting of his own titled "Mediocrity": "There are plenty of stars old enough that, if intelligent space-going life has a non-zero probability of emerging, our galaxy should long since have been overrun. And if not, why do we detect no signs of extraterrestrial intelligence?" After discussing the possibility that interstellar expansion might be impossible because aspiring colonists simply have to take too much too far from home to build a functioning society, Stross brings up last night's simulation argument again.
Loosely stated, the simulation argument runs thuswise (pace wikipedia): it is taken as axiomatic that consciousness is an emergent property of physics (i.e. there's no ghost in the machine), and that we can simulate physical systems. Thus, it is possible in principle to construct a software simulation of a world inhabited by intelligent beings who will perceive that world as real. It then follows that either no civilization will ever reach a technological level capable of constructing such simulations, or that every civilization capable of doing so will choose not to do so for some reason, or ... we're probably living in a simulation (because any civilization capable of running a civ-sim is liable to do so many, many times; so the number of sim-civilizations will vastly outnumber the number of authentic ones, and by the principle of mediocrity we are not exceptional).
heteromeles' suggestions is somewhat disturbing.
That's the problem with the simulation paradox: the system crashes when there are too many entities within it interacting. This would make a great disaster for a novel: the heroes are in a world which will crash, say in 2012, because the simulation will break down. At that point, most of the population will be destroyed by the system tools who are trying to do a new build to get reality up and running again. Our heavenly sysop may have to declare an apocalypse, and once things are working again, he may have to monitor it for quite a while to make sure it doesn't crash again.....
Meep?
