ET Will Phone Home Using Neutrinos, Not Photons 299
KentuckyFC writes "Neutrinos are better than photons for communicating across the galaxy. That's the conclusion of a group of US astronomers who say that the galaxy is filled with photons that make communications channels noisy whereas neutrino comms would be relatively noise free. Photons are also easily scattered and the centre of the galaxy blocks them entirely. That means any civilisation advanced enough to have started to colonise the galaxy would have to rely on neutrino communications. And the astronomers reckon that the next generation of neutrino detectors should be sensitive enough to pick up ET's chatter."
Still bound by the speed of light (Score:5, Insightful)
Neutrinos might be good for short distances (100ly), but then, you're less likely to encounter interference sources. Since photons are easier to emit and detect, they are the more likely choice.
In summary: photons for short distances, since interference isn't a factor and nothing for long distances since lag time makes meaningful communication impossible.
What about those from the sun? (Score:5, Insightful)
-molo
Re:Still bound by the speed of light (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Still bound by the speed of light (Score:5, Insightful)
The time from big bang to big crunch might be a "day" for them. Our entire civilization would be like a lightning flash. They'd consider carbon based civilizations as random events that cover entire galaxies in an instant and then fade to void by the next.
If that's the case, I don't think we'd be much interested in their messages, though.
Faster than light? No? Useless? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is also why I think projects like SETI@Home are ridiculously stupid. Even if other intelligent life did evolve elsewhere in the galaxy or universe, unless they evolved sooner than us (by at least the amount of time it would take for signals to travel from their world(s) ) their signals likely wouldn't have reached us yet. It's also possible that they evolved, developed RF technology, then either died out (and so stopped sending coherent signals), or moved on to FTL comms that we currently have no idea how to receive, or even the basic principles that they are based on (since we currently have no notion of any possible way for information to travel faster than the speed of light).
Since we've only been receiving RF signals for about 100 years, the window of opportunity for other civilizations' RF signals to reach us during the period in which we were 'listening' is ridiculously small.
Neutrino comms might be good for communicating inside of our Solar system, but unless they travel FTL, it would take a message a little over 4 years just to reach the next closest star to our Solar system. That seems pretty useless to me.
Nuttier than fruitcakes (Score:2, Insightful)
That means that 99.9999% of all neutrinos ever created are still zoooming around the universe.
And there are a billion billion stars all making 10^37 neutrinos every second.
That's what's called "background noise".
Now there are several noise-reduction strategies, like narrow filters (which don't work well when the endpoints are moving). But still, it's hard to make a signal make a dent with all that background noise.
Re:Still bound by the speed of light (Score:5, Insightful)
Such a species cannot survive. Even a lack of natural predators wouldn't help: geologically active planets would take care of them.
"Nature always finds a way."
Re:Still bound by the speed of light (Score:5, Insightful)
Such a species might live and sense the universe in several more dimensions than us. A single galaxy in a single three dimensional volume might be the smallest of it's body "cells".
Planetary geological activity would bother them about as much as quark behavior bothers us. i.e.: They'd need much advancement to even be able to detect it.
Speed of Light != Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
If your two options are: A) communicate at the speed of light, or B) don't communicate...
I think it's reasonable to assume you'd find some communication, no matter how slow, useful.
We've gotten so accustomed to (what is to our senses) instantaneous communication it's easy to forget that empires existed across much of our globe when the fastest method of communication was a sailing ship.
We've seen our 'world' shrink a great deal in the past few hundred years. Is it so hard to imagine it growing again?
Neutrinos are HARD to detect (Score:3, Insightful)
Alien tech indeed...
Re:Nuttier than fruitcakes (Score:3, Insightful)
Now there are several noise-reduction strategies, like narrow filters (which don't work well when the endpoints are moving). But still, it's hard to make a signal make a dent with all that background noise.
Now apply the same reasoning to photons... Have you any idea just how many of them come at us from every direction, constantly, even during the night in a "dark" room? Fortunately, we can select them based on direction, frequency, amplitude, phase, polarization, and probably a few more properties that I can't think of at the moment. Why would we expect neutrinos to have any fewer selectable properties on which to filter? In fact, they would likely have more aspects to select for, as they periodically convert between several different flavors.
Re:Still bound by the speed of light (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What about those from the sun? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why communicate at all? (Score:3, Insightful)
If we can learn the nanotech and computing required, we should be able to upload ourselves in durable substrate (diamondoid CPUs). Once we have control what was once only biological control, we could change the way we perceive time to say a second per year (or more or less for the required job).
It could also be said that if we lived between compute platforms in each solar system, our global consciousness could be diffuse and communicate with the idea that light speed is the barrier which we will never cross.
Re:What about those from the sun? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nuttier than fruitcakes (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps not. Or, perhaps I did my dissertation on flavour changing transformations while studying under Glashow at BU while you still wore diapers[*]. Amazing thing about the internet, you never to whom you might find yourself talking - only what they have to say.
They don't respond to electromagnetism, gravity, or the strong force. That means it's really hard to get a hold of them, like impossible.
* I didn't. Just sayin'.
Re:Still bound by the speed of light (Score:1, Insightful)
Apparently, it does.
Re:Still bound by the speed of light (Score:1, Insightful)
It is not accurate to say that each particle has read the same (cough hidden) variable in some higher dimension. Bell ruled that out with a crafty little thought experiment which was ultimated proved legit by Aspect et. al.
His whole arugment is putting in whatever hidden variable might be there and then showing that any hidden variable, whatever its presentation, simply by its presence, alters the result of ANY experiment in a way that QM immediately refutes.
QM is complete in that respect, which was all the more disconcerting.
Shit is non-local. You don't break the 'link' between two entangled particles because even thinking of them as two seperable things is wrong,