X-Message-Number: 13998
From: 
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 07:23:12 EDT
Subject: Re:faster than light

> >I don't run SETI at Home screen saver because if there was some
> >ET civilization, it could not ignore that possibility. Tantalum 180
> >can generate some wave packets able to encompass all the
> >universe we see and beyond. If there is interstellar communications,
> >they must use these gamma rays, not the incredibly slow radio.
> 
> 
> There would be a lot of factors that would play into this.  One of the main
> things is the society.  Would they *purposely* transmit into space with the
> hope of making ET contact?  Let alone use this method. The majority of
> society (on Earth) could care less about xmitting and searching.   Also, the
> technological level of sophistication would be a factor on the method that
> an ET would use for any type of transmission on their world >>

Well I assume we are speaking about communications.
If we think only about detection, then indeed, simple radio
waves are a option. We could for example search for radar
pulses produced millions of years ago. That would say:
there at such time was a technological civilization.

About the technological level: Assume an ET technology
send to us a radio message when it can do it. We can do that
for half a century. In half a century we will able to use gamma
rays from space on interstellar trips. If our potential ET are
1000 Lyrs away, we receive their first radio message one
century before their gamma message. If we respond with
radio waves, they will get our answer 2000 years after their
first message. If we respond with handling their gammas,
they get our answer when their gammas hit the Earth, that is
1000 years after they have produced them and 1100 years after
their first radio message.

From John de Rivaz:

>Isn't there a flaw in the FTL conversation in that the wave has to get there
>first?
>
>Assuming that this is a flaw in my understanding, how does one build this
>equipment? is there a url? Radio when it was discovered soon became
>ubiquitous because virtually anyone could make a radio receiver.
>
>There was a series of arguments years ago in The Immortalist which suggested
>that the first thing ET would do is to give us the secret of immortality - 

About immortality: I think there is no secret of immortality, aging has
many causes, many of them linked to the Earth ecosystem.
Some causes may be common on different world, some may be specific.
So, nobody can give us the recipe of *our* immortality, we have to
fint the solution ouselve.

For FTL, yes, the front of the wave packet has has to get here first
at velocity c. There is an analogy: 
Assume we want to communicate with an interphone between two
houses. One person has to walk from house 1 to house 2 and drawn
behind him an electric link ( the wave packet). This first walk is the 
velocity c. When the link is established, message may flown nearly
instantly ( at the true speed c) and there is no more need to walk
from one house to the other to give a letter.

Last: how to build a communication system of this kind?

The radio systems used first electrical discharge as
amplifier, then came the triode valve in 1907 and the
solid state transistor in 1948. Making a radio receptor
was simple in 1920 - 30 not before.

Here, the steps would be: build a large chemical laser,
use it to pump a narrow band dye laser, use it to pump
a nuclear structure in a high energy state, let it decay
to a long lived metastable state such cadmimiun 133*, 
build a nonlinear medium (for gamma rays!) with a fractal
structure so you can entangle your cadmium state with
a comming wave packet. Using the fractal system, mix
the quantum state of your cadmium with the one of a 3rd
photon ( this is the so called quantum teleportation process)
It is best to choose a 3rd photon with a lower energy, so that
any further handling would be simpler. This is the equivalent
of superheterodyne stage in a radio receptor.

You can then look at the information, don't forget to do the
same things in reverse order for sending the answer or simply
cancel any probability in the first wave packet, so that the
channel remains open. Most of these steps are found too
in the quantum nondemolition interferometer of a brain reader.
The success of SETI at home could be a good prospect for
a project "selling" the brain reader technology in ET disguise.

Superconducing antennaes could produce radio wave packets
in the billion de km range, this may be the way to do instant
communications all over the solar system in the radio domain.
The problem here is the detection of single photon in the
hertzan spectrum. May be atoms in the Rydberg state ( with
one electron nearly unbounded) could do the job...

Yvan Bozzonetti.

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