[extropy-chat] fermi's paradox: m/d approach

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Thu, 1 Jan 2004, Harvey Newstrom wrote:

> In terms of radio-waves, we are the spammers of the galaxy.  We are sending
> our stuff everywhere to everyone constantly, whether they want it or not.

I'm not sure Harvey.  Radio in general is such a low-bandwidth carrier.
I can't see the advanced civilizations using it for anything.  Anyway
there are natural sources of radiowaves that are spamming the galaxy.
Can't easily do much about them.

Direct point-to-point communications using wavelength division multiplexing
(WDM) is probably the way to go.  You could get thousands of frequencies.
You would like to push it up into the UV frequencies or higher but UV
photons at the mid-UV and higher would tend to damage the atomic bonds
of the receivers.  Now that may be quite ok if the additional information
received can be justified by using some energy and a bunch of nanorobots
to recycle and rebuild the receivers on an ongoing basis.

If the above speculations are true, then we might have receivers that
could detect signals but they are probably so tightly focused that our
chances of running into one are probably slim to nill.

Robert