How to Detect Signatures of Relativistic Spacecraft

This technology review article discusses the signatures of spacecraft travelling at high relativistic speed. Some of it would apply to craft entering some modes of FTL travel as well though that is not addressed in the article. basically it says some of our present ground and space based telescopes could see this signature. It also says that depending on the continuum of speeds between low relativistic and higher relativistic speed we might need sensors for terahertz radiation and we do not have that technology looking at space right now. we have only just begun to develop terahertz stuff for more mundane terrestrial pursuits such as medical imaging, industrial imaging and security applications.


www.technologyreview.com... rner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arxivblog%2FGmoU+%28The+Physics+arXiv+Blog%29

They go on to calculate the properties of this signature. They say the scattering should generate radiation in the terahertz to infrared regions of the spectrum and that this signal should move relative to the background. “The salient features of the signal are a rapid drop in temperature accompanied by a rapid rise in intensity, along with the motion of the source with respect to a reference frame fixed to distant quasars, which should be observable,” say Yurtsever and Wilkinson.

In other words, if relativistic spacecraft are zipping across interstellar space, this kind of signature should be visible using the current generation of astrophysical observatories.

a reply to: stormbringer1701

That covers frequency but what about amplitude?

It's the same technical problem of doing spectral analysis on exo-planets.

All of the bright eyed children of the 60's, 70, and 80's that grew up watching Star Trek are now scientist. So "Mister Sulu scan for warp signatures!"

originally posted by: InverseLookingGlass
a reply to: stormbringer1701

That covers frequency but what about amplitude?

It's the same technical problem of doing spectral analysis on exo-planets.

i don't see it.the problem with exoplanet detection is the star's signature floods out the planets signature and the planets signature is tiny.

for a space ship its spitting out signatures against a background of the CBR which is itself tiny. the spaceship is a moving source. depending on speed it may be spitting out it may be a traveling high energy gamma photon burst.

originally posted by: stormbringer1701
This technology review article discusses the signatures of spacecraft travelling at high relativistic speed. Some of it would apply to craft entering some modes of FTL travel as well though that is not addressed in the article. basically it says some of our present ground and space based telescopes could see this signature. It also says that depending on the continuum of speeds between low relativistic and higher relativistic speed we might need sensors for terahertz radiation and we do not have that technology looking at space right now. we have only just begun to develop terahertz stuff for more mundane terrestrial pursuits such as medical imaging, industrial imaging and security applications.


www.technologyreview.com... rner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arxivblog%2FGmoU+%28The+Physics+arXiv+Blog%29

They go on to calculate the properties of this signature. They say the scattering should generate radiation in the terahertz to infrared regions of the spectrum and that this signal should move relative to the background. “The salient features of the signal are a rapid drop in temperature accompanied by a rapid rise in intensity, along with the motion of the source with respect to a reference frame fixed to distant quasars, which should be observable,” say Yurtsever and Wilkinson.

In other words, if relativistic spacecraft are zipping across interstellar space, this kind of signature should be visible using the current generation of astrophysical observatories.

Excellent post. S+F

Now if you want to go to the next level, while we may not yet have terahertz space telescopes there is another far future, sci-fi type way of going from one place in space to another in an even faster way than ships travelling a percentage of the speed of light which we can detect with current and future optical/near infrared telescopes doing gravitational microlensing surveys: Wormholes.






While we do not know whether wormholes exist we do know, based on physics, what the detectable optical effects of a wormhole would be.

In regular gravitational lensing, when a massive object moves between us and a much more distant object, a greatly magnified and distorted image of the distant object can be seen.

Gravitational lensing like this has become a useful tool for astrophysicists and has also been a means of exoplanet detection.


But when a wormhole moves in front of another star, it should de-focus the light and dim it. And as the wormhole continues to move in relation to the background star, it should create a sudden spike of light.



The signature, then, is two spikes with a steep lowering of light between them like this....



Or kinda like this:


Don't freak out...The first image is a simulation and the 2nd image is an eclipsing binary in Kepler data….

So.... We might find the first solid evidence for the existence of a wormhole in our data by looking for such an event and because there literally are heaps of collected data which has never been analyzed, the evidence for such a wormhole might already exist, waiting to be discovered by someone clever who wrote the right search algorithms.

This is something which fascinates me to no end.

For more on this check out the paper: Natural Wormholes as Gravitational Lenses

originally posted by: Nickn3
All of the bright eyed children of the 60's, 70, and 80's that grew up watching Star Trek are now scientist. So "Mister Sulu scan for warp signatures!"

Totally possible to do with microlensing data. When we see gravitational lenses we're effectively seeing a space warp. If we saw a compact one involving negative mass moving over time, that would be very interesting.

originally posted by: stormbringer1701

originally posted by: InverseLookingGlass
a reply to: stormbringer1701

That covers frequency but what about amplitude?

It's the same technical problem of doing spectral analysis on exo-planets.

i don't see it.the problem with exoplanet detection is the star's signature floods out the planets signature and the planets signature is tiny.

for a space ship its spitting out signatures against a background of the CBR which is itself tiny. the spaceship is a moving source. depending on speed it may be spitting out it may be a traveling high energy gamma photon burst.

It seems to me it should not be a major undertaking to repurpose an array of the terahertz detectors used in "naked body" security scanners to be flown on a high altitude balloon or small satellite as a sort of wide field, low spacial resolution "proof-of-concept" that could perhaps put some kind of constraints on detectability of such ships at least in the immediate stellar neighborhood.

there is an astronomical team that proposes to look for wormhole signatures and another that suggests the galactic black holes may in fact be wormholes.

On top of that i am currently reading Dr Woodward's ( UC Fullerton) book on Mach effect thrusters and traversible wormholes.

he is looking for ways to get the negative energy conditions necessary to open a wormhole. there are several candidates including a couple i hadn't heard of before. He did list and shoot down a few i had heard of and held out hope for.

1. casimir effects using a vast array of casimir cavities. does not work because the photons/wavelengths that are most common are all low energy which means it is hard to develop a significant mass that way.

2. destroying an electron but leaving the flux lines in a Einstein Rosen bridge model of an electron which is a wormhole. This has not happened in countless trillions of colliding stuff with electrons and the energy of such collisions already exceed that needed if this model had any basis in reality.

Then he named a couple more i hadn't heard of.

but he did not mention squeezed light. He did not mention dark or mirror sector solutions.

one thing he mentioned in passing was that when you have to gravitationally bound objects in a system it take positive energy to keep them apart and the energy of interaction between the objects is negative mathematically. he did not offer this specifically as a solution. i want to look at that.

his preferred pathway is the second term in the fields section of a wheeler feynman sciama formulation of Mach's principle combined with the ADM model of the electron in which the electron's mass before renormalization is negative. he is hoping that there is a way to delay renormalization of the terms in the equation. and thereby use any regular matter as the requisite negative mass/energy. Basically it's Quantum Electrodynamics Dynamics.

Fascinating book. And he seems to have verified the validity of the first terms in the equation having proven a thrust signal exists in a device set up to the stipulations of the equation and he has authoritatively debunked the typical sources of spurious signals.

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: stormbringer1701

originally posted by: InverseLookingGlass
a reply to: stormbringer1701

That covers frequency but what about amplitude?

It's the same technical problem of doing spectral analysis on exo-planets.

i don't see it.the problem with exoplanet detection is the star's signature floods out the planets signature and the planets signature is tiny.

for a space ship its spitting out signatures against a background of the CBR which is itself tiny. the spaceship is a moving source. depending on speed it may be spitting out it may be a traveling high energy gamma photon burst.

It seems to me it should not be a major undertaking to repurpose an array of the terahertz detectors used in "naked body" security scanners to be flown on a high altitude balloon or small satellite as a sort of wide field, low spacial resolution "proof-of-concept" that could perhaps put some kind of constraints on detectability of such ships at least in the immediate stellar neighborhood.

There is a problem though the terahertz and infrared signatures the article describes would probably be for ships in the low end of the relativistic speed regime. thus the civilization would probably be somewhere between 10 to 50 years or so ahead of our technology. And this would likely mean they are using radio for communications and Radar as a sensor and we would have detected them if they really were near neighbors.


if they are going faster the signature would be blue shifted more and more the faster it could go. eventually you would probably want to look for x rays and gamma ray sources that travel and n the event of warps there might be a burst of gamma rays or x rays as the ship enters and exits warp even if the craft's conventional speed was very low on the relativistic scale prior to entering warp. Oddly we should be able to more easily detect more advanced civilizations than near peers because we can already look at space in the relevant frequencies.

originally posted by: stormbringer1701

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: stormbringer1701

originally posted by: InverseLookingGlass
a reply to: stormbringer1701

That covers frequency but what about amplitude?

It's the same technical problem of doing spectral analysis on exo-planets.

i don't see it.the problem with exoplanet detection is the star's signature floods out the planets signature and the planets signature is tiny.

for a space ship its spitting out signatures against a background of the CBR which is itself tiny. the spaceship is a moving source. depending on speed it may be spitting out it may be a traveling high energy gamma photon burst.

It seems to me it should not be a major undertaking to repurpose an array of the terahertz detectors used in "naked body" security scanners to be flown on a high altitude balloon or small satellite as a sort of wide field, low spacial resolution "proof-of-concept" that could perhaps put some kind of constraints on detectability of such ships at least in the immediate stellar neighborhood.

There is a problem though the terahertz and infrared signatures the article describes would probably be for ships in the low end of the relativistic speed regime. thus the civilization would probably be somewhere between 10 to 50 years or so ahead of our technology. And this would likely mean they are using radio for communications and Radar as a sensor and we would have detected them if they really were near neighbors.

Ah, not so fast.

They could be using LIDAR and laser communications in which case they would not have been detected just yet. In any event it makes sense to at least search to rule them out right? I highly doubt that we'd find anybody but it's a non-zero chance that we might so why not look anyway, if nothing else than to constrain the problem so as to design a better detector for ones further out?

if they are going faster the signature would be blue shifted more and more the faster it could go. eventually you would probably want to look for x rays and gamma ray sources that travel and n the event of warps there might be a burst of gamma rays or x rays as the ship enters and exits warp even if the craft's conventional speed was very low on the relativistic scale prior to entering warp.

Easier said than done as the spacial resolution for x-ray and gamma ray detectors flown in orbit so far probably fall short of being able to detect such point sources. I may be wrong here though because I am not at all well versed in x-ray or gamma ray astronomy (just a bit of UV/optical/IR and some radio).

Oddly we should be able to more easily detect more advanced civilizations than near peers because we can already look at space in the relevant frequencies.

True. By the way you might be interested to know that this object looked a lot like an interstellar spacecraft at first glance:

Symmetric light curve indicating a 100 day on/off cycle
In empty space
Strange spectral signature
Powerful X-Ray bursts
Completely unique as far as astronomical phenomena

I suspect if we ever do detect an interstellar spacecraft travelling at relativistic speeds it might appear a lot like that.

wormhole links

www.universetoday.com...

arxiv.org...

arxiv.org...

www.universetoday.com...

arxiv.org...

thespacereporter.com...

news.discovery.com...

www.extremetech.com...

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: stormbringer1701

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: stormbringer1701

originally posted by: InverseLookingGlass
a reply to: stormbringer1701

That covers frequency but what about amplitude?

It's the same technical problem of doing spectral analysis on exo-planets.

i don't see it.the problem with exoplanet detection is the star's signature floods out the planets signature and the planets signature is tiny.

for a space ship its spitting out signatures against a background of the CBR which is itself tiny. the spaceship is a moving source. depending on speed it may be spitting out it may be a traveling high energy gamma photon burst.

It seems to me it should not be a major undertaking to repurpose an array of the terahertz detectors used in "naked body" security scanners to be flown on a high altitude balloon or small satellite as a sort of wide field, low spacial resolution "proof-of-concept" that could perhaps put some kind of constraints on detectability of such ships at least in the immediate stellar neighborhood.

There is a problem though the terahertz and infrared signatures the article describes would probably be for ships in the low end of the relativistic speed regime. thus the civilization would probably be somewhere between 10 to 50 years or so ahead of our technology. And this would likely mean they are using radio for communications and Radar as a sensor and we would have detected them if they really were near neighbors.

Ah, not so fast.

They could be using LIDAR and laser communications in which case they would not have been detected just yet. In any event it makes sense to at least search to rule them out right? I highly doubt that we'd find anybody but it's a non-zero chance that we might so why not look anyway, if nothing else than to constrain the problem so as to design a better detector for ones further out?

if they are going faster the signature would be blue shifted more and more the faster it could go. eventually you would probably want to look for x rays and gamma ray sources that travel and n the event of warps there might be a burst of gamma rays or x rays as the ship enters and exits warp even if the craft's conventional speed was very low on the relativistic scale prior to entering warp.

Easier said than done as the spacial resolution for x-ray and gamma ray detectors flown in orbit so far probably fall short of being able to detect such point sources. I may be wrong here though because I am not at all well versed in x-ray or gamma ray astronomy (just a bit of UV/optical/IR and some radio).

Oddly we should be able to more easily detect more advanced civilizations than near peers because we can already look at space in the relevant frequencies.

True. By the way you might be interested to know that this object looked a lot like an interstellar spacecraft at first glance:

Symmetric light curve indicating a 100 day on/off cycle
In empty space
Strange spectral signature
Powerful X-Ray bursts
Completely unique as far as astronomical phenomena

I suspect if we ever do detect an interstellar spacecraft travelling at relativistic speeds it might appear a lot like that.

Thank you for the article/link

I am not saying we should not look. only that near peers are probably a bit harder to detect. and they are also probably more dangerous to us if they exist because the only model we have is us. and we are quite hazardous, paranoid and xenophobic. As a whole we humans are prone to blow stuff and people up and ask questions later. and tech that is a decade or more ahead of ours would make that an easy task as we would be unable to respond effectively; similar to the way iraq and afghanistan stood no chance against our tech. at the very least they would have RKVs and we wouldn't. that would be demonstrable because if you can make a space ship go relativistic you can make missiles relativistic. and they might have nanotech weapons and nanotech vehicle and equipment repair technology. they might be able to saturate the planets surface with neutron radiation from ray guns on low flying drones.

I am not saying that has to happen but it certainly could. hopefully first contact will be peaceful though.

I see. I just don't really think that there would be much to worry about regardless of what they had. It comes down to motive. I see very little motive for anyone to do us harm. It hasn't happened any other time in recorded or even geologic history so why would it happen now?

BTW: Here's both the lightcurve and spectra of that object I linked. From this page: supernova.lbl.gov...


I like the part the best: "Multiple spectra show five broad absorption bands between 4100 AA and 6500 AA and a mostly featureless continuum longward of 6500 AA. The shape of the lightcurve is inconsistent with microlensing. The transient's spectrum, in addition to being inconsistent with all known supernova types, is not matched to any spectrum in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) database."

Hmm I see absorption at 4400 angstrom (440 nm) (Purple), 5000 angstrom (500 nm) (Blue) 5500 angstrom (550 nm) (Green) and 6000 angstrom (600 nm) (Yellow).



Basically that could indicate windows on a enormous silver spacecraft/colony ala....






Of course it's most likely a natural object but it is fun to speculate.

As to your link: YES that is what i think it will look like it almost has to for relativistic drives or warp drives.

Maybe not wormholes. and probably we are not even aware that there are other modes of doing it. who knows what the signature of completely unknown and unsuspected drive schemes would be.

EDIT: I just remembered something in Dr Woodward's book about negative energy. Meta material photonic diffraction can result in negative energy conditions! so yeah... if that is true we are already there in terms of a means.

WRT the unusual supernova signature: It would be like that but probably with far far far less power.

a reply to: stormbringer1701

I think these guys are using our current understanding of physics to calculate this and thats why they miss the flying saucers that have already been visiting earth. Common sense would dictate that an interstellar race of beings would be familiar with hostility and thus either shield the craft like a stealth fighter and/or be beyond the need to. Cool article btw. I like that science can accept FTL travel (or somewhat near it)

originally posted by: NiZZiM
a reply to: stormbringer1701

I think these guys are using our current understanding of physics to calculate this and thats why they miss the flying saucers that have already been visiting earth. Common sense would dictate that an interstellar race of beings would be familiar with hostility and thus either shield the craft like a stealth fighter and/or be beyond the need to. Cool article btw. I like that science can accept FTL travel (or somewhat near it)

Woodward goes into the politics of advanced propulsion research at NASA. lets just say that other than a short period NASA was always biased to chemical propulsion to the exclusion of all other research and in some cases the administrator had to go in and kick some asses to even get some of the semi independent entities in NASA to grudgingly devote resources to it. He names some names too. one center put up a website ridiculing advanced propulsion and that was the extent of thier cooperation for six months. Golden went back and asked them what they had done (which was nothing) and he had to deliver a full throated ass chewing and threaten to fire people to get them to do anything.

originally posted by: stormbringer1701

originally posted by: NiZZiM
a reply to: stormbringer1701

I think these guys are using our current understanding of physics to calculate this and thats why they miss the flying saucers that have already been visiting earth. Common sense would dictate that an interstellar race of beings would be familiar with hostility and thus either shield the craft like a stealth fighter and/or be beyond the need to. Cool article btw. I like that science can accept FTL travel (or somewhat near it)

Woodward goes into the politics of advanced propulsion research at NASA. lets just say that other than a short period NASA was always biased to chemical propulsion to the exclusion of all other research and in some cases the administrator had to go in and kick some asses to even get some of the semi independent entities in NASA to grudgingly devote resources to it. He names some names too. one center put up a website ridiculing advanced propulsion and that was the extent of thier cooperation for six months. Golden went back and asked them what they had done (which was nothing) and he had to deliver a full throated ass chewing and threaten to fire people to get them to do anything.

Daniel Goldin may go down in history (along with the current NASA administrator Charles Bolden) one of the most forward thinking NASA administrators in the history of the agency with regards to the astrophysics division.

It's a shame the stuff begun under his Origins program mostly got cancelled in 2006 (Terrestrial Planet Finder, Space Interferometry Mission, etc).

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: stormbringer1701

originally posted by: NiZZiM
a reply to: stormbringer1701

I think these guys are using our current understanding of physics to calculate this and thats why they miss the flying saucers that have already been visiting earth. Common sense would dictate that an interstellar race of beings would be familiar with hostility and thus either shield the craft like a stealth fighter and/or be beyond the need to. Cool article btw. I like that science can accept FTL travel (or somewhat near it)

Woodward goes into the politics of advanced propulsion research at NASA. lets just say that other than a short period NASA was always biased to chemical propulsion to the exclusion of all other research and in some cases the administrator had to go in and kick some asses to even get some of the semi independent entities in NASA to grudgingly devote resources to it. He names some names too. one center put up a website ridiculing advanced propulsion and that was the extent of thier cooperation for six months. Golden went back and asked them what they had done (which was nothing) and he had to deliver a full throated ass chewing and threaten to fire people to get them to do anything.

Daniel Goldin may go down in history (along with the current NASA administrator Charles Bolden) one of the most forward thinking NASA administrators in the history of the agency with regards to the astrophysics division.

It's a shame the stuff begun under his Origins program mostly got cancelled in 2006 (Terrestrial Planet Finder, Space Interferometry Mission, etc).

Not only that but he seems to have been genuinely interested in putting at least some funding into high risk high payoff propulsion research. He managed to at least salvage some funding for it for a while.

originally posted by: stormbringer1701

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: stormbringer1701

originally posted by: NiZZiM
a reply to: stormbringer1701

I think these guys are using our current understanding of physics to calculate this and thats why they miss the flying saucers that have already been visiting earth. Common sense would dictate that an interstellar race of beings would be familiar with hostility and thus either shield the craft like a stealth fighter and/or be beyond the need to. Cool article btw. I like that science can accept FTL travel (or somewhat near it)

Woodward goes into the politics of advanced propulsion research at NASA. lets just say that other than a short period NASA was always biased to chemical propulsion to the exclusion of all other research and in some cases the administrator had to go in and kick some asses to even get some of the semi independent entities in NASA to grudgingly devote resources to it. He names some names too. one center put up a website ridiculing advanced propulsion and that was the extent of thier cooperation for six months. Golden went back and asked them what they had done (which was nothing) and he had to deliver a full throated ass chewing and threaten to fire people to get them to do anything.

Daniel Goldin may go down in history (along with the current NASA administrator Charles Bolden) one of the most forward thinking NASA administrators in the history of the agency with regards to the astrophysics division.

It's a shame the stuff begun under his Origins program mostly got cancelled in 2006 (Terrestrial Planet Finder, Space Interferometry Mission, etc).

Not only that but he seems to have been genuinely interested in putting at least some funding into high risk high payoff propulsion research. He managed to at least salvage some funding for it for a while.

It still amazes me that NASA flew Eugene Podkletnov over to examine his antigravity/gravity shielding research.

PS: Thanks for the wormhole links.