> On 27 Jan 98, concerning _Speculations_, Jack Sargeant said to
 > Charles Daniels in UFO:
 >  JS> Even if communication was established tomorrow via radio telescope,
 >  JS> our reply would take years to arrive on their home world. two-way
 >  JS> communications would be impossible. A chess game would take longer
 >  JS> to play than our solar system will last.
 > That's the ironic thing about establishing the existance of ET
 > intelligence by finding a radio signal:  It won't prove that we
 > aren't alone in the universe, because odds are that the
 > civilization that sent the signal is long, long gone.
Have you thought this one out?  Just what to you recon the lifetime of
a civilization is? How far back does recorded history go? (not counting
early development stages before we could walk erect.) Without looking
in an encyclopedia, we can start with the early Sumarian or Egyptian
eras and say about 10,000 years to date as written records go.
Can we safely add anoter 10,000 years? ...And how far can a radio
signal travel before the ethers absorb the last weak remainder of
a broadcast? Our Explorer missions are just now at the outer reaches
of our own solar system. Could another civilization tens of thousands
of light years away still detect our radio emissions?
A distant Pulsar can radiate a signal billions of times stronger than
the strongest radio signal man has ever broadcast (approx. 200,000
watts for the strongest radio stations). I don't know what the limits
are of radio telescopes, but I would guess at about 100,000 watts.
...And I doubt if a radio telescope has actually been built that
can transmit at more than a thousand watts. TV stations that transmit
to satellites for re-broadcast back to earth certainly don't require
more than a few thousand watts of focused power. ...Maybe even less
than a thousand watts. (A 4 watt CB radio signal can travel about
30 miles under perfect conditions, and a few thousand miles under
"skip" conditions, where the signal can bounce off one of the
atmospheric layers. A ham radio operator may use approx. 10 - 1,000
watts, and transmit anywhere from 2 meters down to 80 meters on the
radio frequencies alloted to amateur radio.)
Just a simple, "Hello, out there!" might take a thousand years to get
any kind of reply. ...And that is about all we dare to hope for.
How far into space can a radio telescope transmit to a similar setup
on a distant alien world? Could a radio signal even travel 1 light year?
...Yet alone a thousand, or 10,000, or one million light years that
may be needed.
I'll tell you a secret feeling of mine, Troy... Sometimes I lose my
optimism altogether! The grand design of the universe seems to keep
us separated from our sentient neighbors at just the distance required
to prevent communications.
So, now we have our UFOs... They must be from another world, because
we don't have anything like them, right?
Small wonder that skeptics dare ask, "OK, then how did they get here?"
"Um, er, well, you see, it's like this..."
The imagination of mankind needs no skimpy boundries like light speed
or worm-holes, or warp-9, or FTL to get from one place to another.
...But even our own Captain Kirk had enough sense to confine his travels
to just our own Milky Way galaxy.
EARTH TO JACK! ...Ok, already! I'm baaack!
Regards,
Jack
--- FMail 1.22
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