posted on Nov, 11 2009 @ 10:54 PM
Hi all,
I've been tossing this idea around in my head for a while (perhaps for too long !) as it's starting to make some kind of sense to me ... and may
even be possible sometime in the (near/far) future.
Basically I was pondering of ways that intelligent species could communicate with each other irrespective of the distance between their locations.
I'm not talking about what is normally referred to as faster than light communication and definitely not referring to physical faster than light
travel.
To be more accurate, I'm actually referring to INSTANT (no time elapsed) communication between any points ANYWHERE in the universe.
There is one proviso however (isn't there always ?) ... and thats that the civilizations involved are sufficiently technologically advanced that they
can manipulate the fundamental constants of the universe. These constants include pi, e, phi, etc, etc
Ok, the constant I'm going to pick on is everyone's favourite ... pi ... which if you're not already aware, is a value that is obtained by using
the circumference and diameter of ANY circle and working out the ratio between these two values.
In fact, there are a multitude of different methods that can be used to determine the value of pi but the circumference/diameter ratio is one of the
oldest and simplest methods devised thousands of years ago.
It also makes no difference as to how big or small is the circle that you decide to use. You can measure the circumference and diameter of a circular
coin or you can measure the circumference and diameter of the sun ... both methods will result in EXACTLY the same value of pi.
A rough approximation for pi is 3.1415926
But pi happens to be one of those special values that in fact just goes on forever without ending ... here's a slightly more accurate representation
of pi
3.14159265358979323846264338327950288 ....
the dots at the end (elipses) are used mathematically as shorthand to indicate that the value of pi simply goes on indefinitely and never (as far as
we know) ends or terminates.
Pi also has the special property that the sequence of numbers after the decimal point never repeat and are unique. The value of Pi has been calculated
to many, many millions of decimal places and this property apparently holds true.
Ok, enough preamble ... I'm sure you all get the idea of pi and what it represents from a mathematical point of view ... so let's move on to instant
communication across the known universe !
Now because pi is a direct result of two physical measurements of a circle, that means that if we assume that the laws of physics and fundamental
constants are valid across the universe - and there's no reason at the moment to suspect they're not - this means that when we calculate pi here on
Earth and some alien specie calculates pi on the other side of the universe, then both of us will arrive at IDENTICAL values for pi no matter how many
decimal places we choose to examine.
Another point to bear in mind is that it's not strictly necessary to use ALL the digits after the decimal point and they could be considered
essentially superfluous to virtually any mathematical calculation that requires pi to be used as part of the calculation.
What I'm trying to say here is that if you did a mathematical calculation that used a value of pi with say, 1 million digits after the decimal point;
and then did the same calculation but used a shorter value of pi with say,only 500 thousand digits after the decimal point, you'd find that the
results of both calculations were for all intents and purposes, identical.
So, we finally get to my point (about time, I hear you all say !) ....
We're assuming that we have 2 civilizations on opposite sides of the universe who wish to communicate with each other and have reached the stage of
technological development that they can actually alter or manipulate fundamental constants.
(Note ... I'm open to any kind of current proof that says such an ability will ALWAYS be an impossibility !)
So to communicate INSTANTLY across the universe, specie1 would use the pi constant and decide to pick a starting point say, EXACTLY 10 billion digits
AFTER the decimal point. The reason they'd pick so far from the decimal point is to (hopefully) not generate any noticeable and unwanted side effects
throughout the universe in anything that makes use of pi such as calculations, circles, etc.
Now, from this starting point, they would place subsequent digits into groups of two ... not clear ? ok, let me try it this way ...
Lets say that the digits of pi from position 2 billion onwards look something like this:
..... 3729873562290112826378 ...
Now group them in pairs giving the following
37 29 87 35 62 29 01 12 82 63 78
Lets decide to use the following message: HELLO and encode it into pi. (both species speak/read English !)
The letter H is the 8th letter of the alphabet so we replace our 1st pair (37) with 09
The letter E is the 5th letter of the alphabet so we replace our 2nd pair (29) with 05
The letter L is the 12th letter`of the alphabet so we replace our 3rd pair (87) with 12
The letter L is the 12th letter`of the alphabet so we replace our 4th pair (35) with 12
The letter O is the 15th letter of the alphabet so we replace our 5th pair (62) with 15
We now have modified the original values of
37 29 87 35 62 29 01 12 82 63 78
with these replacement values, giving
09 05 12 12 15 29 01 12 82 63 78
Having finished encoding our message, the technological button is pressed that takes this new modified value of pi and replaces the original value of
pi throughout the universe and the change takes place INSTANTLY.
Now because the value of pi is UNIVERSAL, this should mean that no matter where you are in the universe and you re-measure the value of pi, you will
now see the modified version.
If you're aware that the modifications start from a certain pre-defined starting location, you'll be able to read of those new pair values and
convert them back into their language characters and see the word "HELLO"
So effectively, a message has been transmitted across the universe and received with absolutely NO TIME involved !
It just occured to me that this method wouldn't be restricted to sending simple text messages only, because by replacing the original digit pairs
values with values derived from digital information, you could also send graphics, video and sound ..
[edit on 12/11/09 by tauristercus]