Idea for a giant, dark, space beacon. //cosmic chain letter
#SETI #mega_structure #SETI_beacon #moral_obligation_of_SETI
#SETI is not a chat room #cosmic_chain_letter
Humans can't (won't) be the only intelligent species that will look at stars for transient planet 'shadows' that cross a star's surface. All most every species in the universe will. (all that are at least as curious and intelligent as humans)
They will ALL search for signs of exo-planets and each will have their own version of SETI; just as we do.
Many people want to built huge radio and or laser 'beacons' to transmit signals in every direction trying to contact an alien species that might be listening. This is a fine idea, but we already have a giant beacon we can use...
Our sun.
A VERY good way to get others attention would be not only to send a loud signal but to 'block out' the one we already have. This would entail building a giant disk . very giant , the size of Jupiter.
That's a giant disk Made of any cheap/dark material that's made and assembled in space, a flat disk the same circumference as Jupiter . It would be built in 10's of thousands of pieces that would then have to be assembled like lego's.
This might take 20 years or a hundred years, depending on our motivation. All this is would be done in the future; when we have people and robots working in space routinely ...2088 maybe
All most any material might work. (cheap and abundant) . Maybe iron or nickel from asteroids . The disk could be thin, very thin..The disk could be coated with ice on one side to protected it from Micro-meteors . This disk would be set in orbit around our sun, near the orbit of mercury or closer. It would cast a serious shadow for anyone who might be looking at our sun at any given moment. This would be enough to get an aliens Attention just as 'hot-Jupiters' get our attention whenever we find them, but there's more we can do
First we could set the disk at an"unnatural" orbit crossed the sun. Diagonal to the equator; or even have it run "pole-to-pole" around the sun. Any kind of orbit that would seem "created" instead of natural; to an alien species watching.If need be; we could use rockets to keep the disk in an UN-natural orbit, even having it "stop and reverse" its course so
Anyone watching would KNOW it wasn't anything remotely natural .
It could have solar collectors and even "fusion" power plants to help power it independently . It could have hydrogen "scoops" to collect fuel, all of these would be on the "sun side" for protection.
The disk would need little of even NO maintenance for a 100 years or so.
It should be built to last 1000 years or more. We believe this fake-jupiter is the best/fastest way to get aliens attention.
One more item would be the fact that this disk would cast a Jupiter size shadow but would cause "no gravitational wobble" in the sun. , something that's not possible with a real planet, of that size.
here is a real thechical, science lecture about "artifact seti searches"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEDR-G2EDRM
We could also put the standard "radio transmitter" in the center of the thing , use a super strong signal that was powered by solar and the fusion plants , on the protected sun-side. Aliens who notice the 'odd shadow' would certainly stop and "listen" for a signal
Sending a signal out to the universe is great but 'blocking our sun' is an even better way to attract attention from others.
A signal , all by itself , is like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it into the Pacific... and then hoping someone finds it some day.
The moral obligation of SETI
Some of us believe we have a real moral obligation to 'listen for' and send SETI signal . These messages would need not say anything but
"
Hello, we are here, you are not alone". You can accomplish this by simply sending Pi in your message and nothing more.
Humans are a very curious, intelligent and creative species. We are dying to KNOW if we are alone in the universe. We find that the idea of humans ''being alone'' as the only intelligent species is...disturbing, Unsettling .
As long as we have telescopes and radio-dishes
we will be searching for others like us...this is
part of being human. Assuming there are other species out there; many of them will have the same level of curiosity that we do, and will be equally ''disturbed" to think they are alone.
For this reason some humans believe
we are morally obligated to send a SETI' signals out to the universe, as best as we can. and we expect this from every species that is also capable of such technology. Everyone must participate so that a lucky few will know the truth.
Some species will die-off before contact, but if they have built a machine to send signals; it could conceivably last 10,000 years after they are gone. Everyone needs to build a machine like this. Everyone in the universe.
They are ...obliged, So are we. We believe the risk of being attacked and obliterated by aliens is all most zero. We believe traveling from star to star is...damn unlikely' for any species of any tech-level.
We do not believe in warp-space, either-space, star-gates, or wormholes or any of that.,
We are of the belief that star-travel is not a real option, so the risk is nil.
It is important to remember a
SETI signal is NOT A CHAT ROOM. We would not be talking back and forth. Such a thing is silly . Any signal we find is likely to be a thousand years away , or more . You can not talk back and forth if the time-lag is 2000 years. Even 200 years is kind of silly. Once we find a signal we could choose to send the simple "you are not alone" message or we could choose to send terabytes of info on our culture and science and lang. and whatever else. We would do this all in one big burst, but "responding" to them isn't a real option if both sides have to wait hundreds or thousands of years.
One important thing to send might be a list of all "other signals" we have found in order to create a "roster" of intelligent species throughout the milky-way and maybe even a map of their location \
(since there is no real risk).
A signal we 'find' might include such a roster and maybe 14 million years old , or 1.4 billion.
It might be like a
cosmic-chain-letter that's been passed around since before our star formed ... and might have a list of thousands of species . most of which have died off since ...but a precious few that are still around.
cosmic chain letter
Again let us say
we dont believe in space travel , we don't believe in any K2 or K3 civilizations. We (and the aliens) will never travel star to star , even unmanned
ships will never travel faster then MAYBE %10 the speed of light ,
we believe FTL travel is nonsense. We can't be sure about this of course, but we feel confident in our position . Given this; we believe
a cosmic-chan-letter is the next best thing to face to face meetings or instant FTL communication.
a cosmic chain letter is the holy grail of seti-messages
The scenario goes like this. We finally find a message we know is from another civilization.
It starts with 256 or so digits of PI and then a list of prime numbers and square numbers and such. They will send us their system of arithmetic, a number system. so they can speak to us in 'math' . They would also set up a system for 'time' . They might use a 'galactic rotation' as a basic unit of time or find something much more clever.
Then the message switches to pictures . Some of the first pictures are atoms, meaning the periodic table of elements. maybe some molecules like water or sugar/proteins, maybe their version of DNA .
these pictures would be made of ones and zeros , sent in huge blocks of data, that we could easily arrange and focus and decipher . All of these things are basic.
Basically 'a given' for any 'intelligent species' in the universe . They will be just as smart as us, or much smarter.
The next picture might actually be of the milky-way its self, yes.... the milky way galaxy .
(the chances of getting a message from outside our galaxy are ...zero, to our way of thinking)
They would mark a spot on the galaxy map where they come from . They would also mark each
spot from where they have picked up other signals from other intelligent species. They would send this map into the universe in every direction so that it would be picked up again by others...meaning US
We would see this map , mark our own spot on the milky way galaxy and send to back to them. We would also send the whole message out into space in every direction to attract others . Other intelligent species would find it , add their own mark and send it to us, we would take to update and send it to every other specie we know of . Each of these updates might take 100s, or thousands or even a hundred-thousand years to travel.
Many species would die off or self destruct before they were able to pass on such updates . but the updates would be picked up by someone else and passed on anyway.
We are all separated by vast amounts of space AND TIME. Each update would have a time stamp.
each species would give the time they first received the message and would give the time of their
latest/current 'send' . Over time a 'thread' would develop
the thread would have an 'original poster' followed by replies, and replies to those replies ect, ect .
Just as our own billboard-sites do today
The number of posters and the time from the first post is anyone guess. The original poster could have started the message 1 million years ago and it could have been passed-on by 144,000 different species , most of whom are long gone.
It might also be true that "intelligent species'' are so rare that they only develop once every 200,000 years per galaxy (or less). Meaning any message we send out today, will be long gone before any other species has a chance to develop radio-receivers. So that a cosmic chain letter will never work.
The only way to beat this problem would be to build machines/robots or AI that can survive and function for a quarter million years or longer (this is not out of the question) if this is the case; you would find that after a FULL 1 million years; only 4 species have posted in your thread, again... this not out of the question.
Given that species can/will build such machines-- the message could easily be
1.23907 Billion years old an have 4,900 different posters/species, an average of 4 per million years.
Each of these could also be sending their culture, art, music, poetry, langage and whatever else.
This is the holy grail
Again we (humans) are obliged to join in this chain letter, or to START one ...if need be.
