Imagine some point in the future where Earth (and maybe a terraformed Mars) has as many humans as it can support. We discover an earth-like planet in a nearby star system, so at great expense we send a probe there carrying the minimal kit to create a human colony. I imagine the kit might include frozen embryos and robots.

So now there are two human civilizations. Interstellar travel is still extremely expensive but these two civilizations would like to pool their brain power by sharing information. That information might include scientific papers, poetry, music, etc.

How could these two civilizations communicate with a high enough data rate to share their ideas? Also how could they prevent other potentially hostile alien civilizations from discovering them?

directed lasers if your talking officially accepted science, fastest thing we know (unless you count neutrino's =p)

scalar waves if your not.

thanks for killing the thread with your logic and intellect phage lol

nah your a champion

Imho the idea of interstellar communication is pretty stupid.
The nearest star is 4 light years away, that means that any form of communication will take AT LEAST 4 years to reach the star system.

Unless we figure out a way that's at least 100 times quicker but I'm pretty sure that's impossible.

Sorry to ruin your interstellar conversation fantasy.

I would suggest quantum entanglement.
Instant communication, you cant beat that.

Telepathy

mind talk is instantaneous.... the big problem would be vetting the Telepaths' on each distant world
to eliminate Telepaths that have an agenda and are saboteurs or anarchists and would feed false
information to the politicians or diplomats they answer to

Originally posted by ssupp
Imho the idea of interstellar communication is pretty stupid.
The nearest star is 4 light years away, that means that any form of communication will take AT LEAST 4 years to reach the star system.

Unless we figure out a way that's at least 100 times quicker but I'm pretty sure that's impossible.

Sorry to ruin your interstellar conversation fantasy.

A 10 year old poem or scientific paper is still very valuable isn't it? Even 10 year old news about politics on the sister world would still be interesting.

The biggest obstacle to interstellar communication is not technological, but, well, neurological. It would be necessary to understand each others' thought processes in order to create a shared language. First contact would be made using simple mathematical progressions. 1,2,3,5,7,11... is essentially the interstellar hailing signal, but where do you go from there? You would need to establish how you are going to transmit and receive your data, then figure out a mutual system for expressing abstract concepts, and a grammar that links them in a way that both species find logical. That will be the hard part.

Originally posted by DJW001
The biggest obstacle to interstellar communication is not technological, but, well, neurological. It would be necessary to understand each others' thought processes in order to create a shared language. First contact would be made using simple mathematical progressions. 1,2,3,5,7,11... is essentially the interstellar hailing signal, but where do you go from there? You would need to establish how you are going to transmit and receive your data, then figure out a mutual system for expressing abstract concepts, and a grammar that links them in a way that both species find logical. That will be the hard part.

But let's say this is Earth talking to an Earth colony about 10 light years away. We need a way to share our ideas so that we are one human civilization.

Blink once for 'yes', twice for 'no'?

Sorry, I'm in a silly mood.

I'm on board with the high powered optical lasers. These would be orbital lasers so there's no atmospheric pesky worries.

If microscopic sized wormholes could be created reliably and kept 'alive' long enough with predictable end points, squirting data though would be quite top.
That's all spooky science fiction at this point though.

Maybe you could use morse code by flashing it like a flashlight.

Originally posted by Pokoia
I would suggest quantum entanglement.
Instant communication, you cant beat that.

Yea, I would have to agree here.

Also, In the real of pseudoscience, torsion waves have been proposed to enable FTL communication of vast distance.

The Ansible?

And - Geek Off.

Finding how quanta entwine. Locate or create and use.

Instantaneous interstellar communication. Though it needn't be interstellar. You could prove this out on planet.

Originally posted by nineix


Blink once for 'yes', twice for 'no'?

Sorry, I'm in a silly mood.

I'm on board with the high powered optical lasers. These would be orbital lasers so there's no atmospheric pesky worries.

If microscopic sized wormholes could be created reliably and kept 'alive' long enough with predictable end points, squirting data though would be quite top.
That's all spooky science fiction at this point though.

If the wormholes would work with minimal latency and high bandwidth then they could put everyone on the internet - IP over wormhole.

About a year ago a fellow claiming to be a computer engineer/programer working for NASA/JPL, etc. started a thread here on ATS claiming that he and a co-worker had discovered that our Mars Rover was sending back data via a means of instantaneous radio=quantum physics. He went on to start a web page that lasted for about two weeks. As far as I know, we've not heard from him since. Supposedly, he was in fear of his job if not life. I don't recall seeing it labled as a hoax nor does the thread label below state such.

It made for a good story on ATS.


Why I Left NASA: A Curiosity of Spirit, page 21