[ExI] von Neumann probes (was Re: fermi paradox)

[Mike Dougherty]

On Dec 8, 2007 10:30 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> Oh OK ja.  I am back to trying to imagine it.  I can see viral
> information,
> where a civilization tries to convince another civilization to remake
> itself
> in the image of the sender.
>

This conversation has me thinking of Rucky Rucker's "FreeWare" [1] and the
movie "Contact" [2]

If information begin propagation through space in a wave that does not cost
energy to maintain, if/when a civilization capable of detecting and decoding
that message acts upon it - there exists some  likelihood that there is some
compatibility to make interaction possible.

This likelihood is pretty small though.  Consider the EM radiation from
radio/TV/phones/satellite/wifi/etc - now imagine what creative leaps it
would take to make one of those devices meaningfully detect let alone decode
a signal intended for a different device.  (your best chance is to make a TV
play the audio from a radio signal, but your radio is nearly useless
understanding packet-encoded data in the wifi frequency)  Given the
increased challenge of spread-spectrum communications, you can imagine how
much "data" may be completely undetected in "white noise" (earthly or CMB)





[1] http://www.challengingdestiny.com/reviews/moldies&meatbops.htm
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(film)
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