using the sun and shade(s) - - to send morse code messages across the galaxy

Just an idea I had - - - using the sun and shade(s) - - to send morse
code messages across the galaxy. Any thoughts anyone?

Perhaps use clouds of dust. Maybe there is an electro-chemical way to
turn opaque a cloud of dust, and repeatedly do so.

The closer the shade to the sun the more stars the message goes to - -
but the closer to the sun the more intense the sunlight that must be
blocked is.

Using the sun eliminates the need to use massive lasers, radios, etc.,
so maybe it's the only way to go.

I suppose astonomers have already looked for signaling like this, if
not, they should.

Due to low data bandwith it would take long time to communicate, which
might be best so as to slow rate of revolution in technologies to
avoid massive economic disruption - - sounds like a good sci-fi
theory or book.

(Alex William Russell) wrote in message . com...
Just an idea I had - - - using the sun and shade(s) - - to send morse
code messages across the galaxy. Any thoughts anyone?

Perhaps use clouds of dust. Maybe there is an electro-chemical way to
turn opaque a cloud of dust, and repeatedly do so.

The closer the shade to the sun the more stars the message goes to - -
but the closer to the sun the more intense the sunlight that must be
blocked is.

Using the sun eliminates the need to use massive lasers, radios, etc.,
so maybe it's the only way to go.

I think this would be good only for a few thousand lightyears at best
particularly in the plane of the Milky Way. The Sun is not
particularly bright (Sirius would be a brighter transmitter FWIW and
it's "only" 40 lightyears away).

A better possibility is that you may be able to focus a quantity of
sunlight via mirrors on a distant point or direction outside of the
plane of the Milky Way. Ie, with a sufficiently large array of mirrors
you could transmit signals that were observable outside the Milky War
(ie, to anyone who could observe the Milky War with short observation
times) because the light could be focused enough to appear brighter
than the entire galaxy.


Karl Hallowell

In article ,
Alex William Russell wrote:
Using the sun eliminates the need to use massive lasers, radios, etc.,
so maybe it's the only way to go.

You don't actually need that huge a laser for interstellar communications,
as it turns out. The low beam divergence greatly increases the effective
power, and the extremely narrow band makes detection a lot easier.
--
MOST launched 1015 EDT 30 June, separated 1046, | Henry Spencer
first ground-station pass 1651, all nominal! |

Alex William Russell wrote:

Just an idea I had - - - using the sun and shade(s) - - to send morse
code messages across the galaxy. Any thoughts anyone?

Dyson said that civilizations might send just one code: an on-to-off
transition, and that it would have just one message: there's a technological
civilization using most (or all) of the energy of a sun here.

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
We should ask, critically and with appeal to the numbers, whether the
best site for a growing advancing industrial society is Earth, the
Moon, Mars, some other planet, or somewhere else entirely.
Surprisingly, the answer will be inescapable - the best site is
"somewhere else entirely."

Gerard O'Neill - "The High Frontier"

Mike Combs wrote:
Alex William Russell wrote:

Just an idea I had - - - using the sun and shade(s) - - to send morse
code messages across the galaxy. Any thoughts anyone?


Dyson said that civilizations might send just one code: an on-to-off
transition, and that it would have just one message: there's a technological
civilization using most (or all) of the energy of a sun here.


Wouldn't that be a shift of energy emmision into the IR? After all,
heat can't be 100% converted into usefull work. Also, I'd expect it to
be a slow transistion over years(centuries?)

Still, something for astronomers to watch for.

Across galactic distance, you'd have to be able to put some kind of shutter
across the beam of a pulsar to modulate it, for it to have a chance of
detection.

"Mike Combs" wrote:
Alex William Russell wrote:

Just an idea I had - - - using the sun and shade(s) - - to send morse
code messages across the galaxy. Any thoughts anyone?

Dyson said that civilizations might send just one code: an on-to-off
transition, and that it would have just one message: there's a technological
civilization using most (or all) of the energy of a sun here.

Doesn't even have to be fully on/off, nor intentional. One of
the interesting things about the increasingly capable low-mass
planet detection systems we will be building and fielding in
the next few decades is that they will also be able to detect
constructed objects of various (extremely large) sizes. For
example, increasingly sophisticated high-accuracy photometric
surveys designed to study asteroseismology or detect planetary
transits and the waxing and waning of large planets will also
be able to detect similarly sized structures such as huge
orbital habitats. As those and other systems grow in
capability (and more of them come on line) they will be able to
survey more systems for planets, they will also increase their
capability and their probability of detecting constructed
objects. The minimum size of detectable objects will drop, and
the rate of systems surveyed will increase. Eventually,
depending on the nature and abundance of technological
civilizations in our galaxy, there will be a cross over point
where the number of systems surveyed down to a certain
"resolution" will be comparable to the abundance of detectable
alien artifacts around stellar system such that the
probability of detecting one such becomes very high. Of course,
if alien technological civilizations are rare or if large
structures are rare then the waiting time could be very long.

It would certainly be interesting to be surveying a planetary
system with a known Earth-like planet in it, perhaps, using a
large planetary imager type system and being able to just
barely see the construction of a generational star ship or
some such. Very interesting indeed.

using the sun and shade(s) - - to send morse
code messages across the galaxy. Any thoughts anyone?

Using the sun gives one something to work with, rather than having to
generate energy for a laser or radio.

For maximum return on one's investment, could one dump some material
to serve as a catalyst in a limited system, and either - - - 1)
temporarily flare the sun on command by satisfying the need for a
scarce element in the "fusion process" - - or 2) dump metals upon
which sunspots might form and dim the sun - - - or 3) simply nuke the
surface of the sun to stir things up to maybe elevate temporarily
light output ???

Our knowledge of astro-physics is limited and not perfect of course
but is somewhat sound we think, so once we have interstellar flight
should we head to the most extreme apparently natural phenomena that
stretches the limits of theory, since such objects have a higher
probabability of being "man-made" than objects that are well explained
by our theories. So such extreme objects (be they actually energy
projects, or religious or artistic acts, or weapons or war, or mineral
production/gathering steps) could therefore be used like beacons of
civilizations???