[ExI] Wrong frequency? Astronomers rethink where to hunt for alien signals

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> 
Subject: Re: [ExI] Wrong frequency? Astronomers rethink where to hunt for alien signals

 

That is a ridiculously low data rate. I can more easily imagine modulated X-rays.


Keith

 

 

 

 

Keith, it isn’t that the MBrain CANNOT communicate faster.  It can.  It is that it doesn’t need to.

 

Think of it as analogous to a private pilot communicating with the airport control tower.  He tells it only what it needs to know: Tower Cessna 123 request 27.

 

That tells the ATC he is in a Cessna with last three digits of his ID 123, speaking to the control tower, asking clearance to land on a runway 270 degrees from north.

 

How many bits is that signal?  How long has that aircraft been up there?  How many average bits per minute?

 

Now look at it another way.  We speak of information entropy, because the equations do look a lot like thermal entropy.  If we want to treat the concepts as analogous, a cooling body has lower entropy, down to what we define as zero entropy at absolute zero.  In a (kinda) analogous way, an advancing intelligent society is experiencing a reduction of information entropy.  So… we can think of a very advanced civilization as near zero information entropy.  

 

If we think of it that way, the super advanced civilization is not energy hungry really.  This contradicts Kardashev’s notion of course, but it makes sense to me.  That super advanced society isn’t desperate for more energy.  We are, but we are not super advanced.  That advanced civilization isn’t desperate for more raw materials either.  We are, but we are not super advanced.  That advanced civilization does not run on chemical reactions, but rather on nuclear fusion, off at a safe distance, energy which is clean, safe and inexhaustible.  That civilization isn’t desperate to tell everything it knows as quickly as possible.  We are, but we are not an advanced civilization.

 

Given all that, we can imagine an MBrain operating at a small fraction the speed our brains work, but with much greater efficiency, operating across orders of magnitude longer time spans.  It doesn’t tell us everything it knows, for we would not understand.  It tells us only what we need to know, which might be only that it exists and the signal is intentional.  The first seven prime numbers, signaled in base 1, would do for that purpose.  That would signal to more primitive civilizations (us) that getting thru the Great Filter is possible, and that it has been done.

 

spike 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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