Interplanetary internet

[Mombat]

Just found this rather interesting article that talks about a new "internet" that can be used for networking in space by allowing individual landers, probes and other space missions to network with each other to transfer information more effectively, and help to combat problems related to delays caused by the distance the information has to travel.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archi...9/1680557.aspx

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by Mombat

Just found this rather interesting article that talks about a new "internet" that can be used for networking in space by allowing individual landers, probes and other space missions to network with each other to transfer information more effectively, and help to combat problems related to delays caused by the distance the information has to travel.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archi...9/1680557.aspx

So will there be an internet cafe on the Moon.

Thanks for posting very interesting I found.

alex

[iceman (Mike)]

It's a cool story. I blogged about it the other day.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Just so long "Uncle Bill" has nothing to do with it, it'll be fine. If he gets his grubby hands on it, the first message ET will see coming from us will be a good ol' BSOD

[darkskybondi]

This reminds me of Ferris' hypothesis that there may be an "interstellar internet" which I stumbled across while reading a bunch of sites on SETI:

Science writer Timothy Ferris has suggested that since galactic societies are probably transitory, then if there is in fact an interstellar communications network, it consists mostly of automated systems that store the cumulative knowledge of vanished civilizations and communicate that knowledge through the Galaxy. Ferris calls this the "Interstellar Internet", with the various automated systems acting as network "servers".
Ferris suspects that if such an Interstellar Internet exists, communications between servers are mostly through narrow-band, highly directional radio or laser links. Intercepting such signals is, as discussed earlier, very difficult. However, the network probably still maintains some broadcast nodes in hopes of making contact with new civilizations. The Interstellar Internet may be out there, waiting for us to figure out how to link up with it.

Source for this quote: http://www.darkmattermag.com/july03/dark_science.html


An amazing notion, don't you reckon?



- DSB

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by darkskybondi

This reminds me of Ferris' hypothesis that there may be an "interstellar internet" which I stumbled across while reading a bunch of sites on SETI:

Science writer Timothy Ferris has suggested that since galactic societies are probably transitory, then if there is in fact an interstellar communications network, it consists mostly of automated systems that store the cumulative knowledge of vanished civilizations and communicate that knowledge through the Galaxy. Ferris calls this the "Interstellar Internet", with the various automated systems acting as network "servers".
Ferris suspects that if such an Interstellar Internet exists, communications between servers are mostly through narrow-band, highly directional radio or laser links. Intercepting such signals is, as discussed earlier, very difficult. However, the network probably still maintains some broadcast nodes in hopes of making contact with new civilizations. The Interstellar Internet may be out there, waiting for us to figure out how to link up with it.

Source for this quote: http://www.darkmattermag.com/july03/dark_science.html


An amazing notion, don't you reckon?



- DSB

And the reason why we haven't detected it yet is because they wouldn't be stupid enough to use as primitive a technology as radio...or even laser links. Or, it doesn't exist (whether they use radio/lasers or not).

[darkskybondi]

Originally Posted by renormalised

And the reason why we haven't detected it yet is because they wouldn't be stupid enough to use as primitive a technology as radio...or even laser links. Or, it doesn't exist (whether they use radio/lasers or not).

If there is ET life, why wouldn't they use radio?

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by darkskybondi

If there is ET life, why wouldn't they use radio?

Why wouldn't they use radio??!!

Look at it this way, we've had radio for about 100 years and quite frankly, for long range communications the technology has reached its end. You can't do too much more with it in so far as speed and bandwidth goes. You could do some more with the bandwidth, but then how far do you split the spectrum up and at what cost?? The speed...that's a given.

Now, it's true that it's nominally cheap and efficient for short range communications, but who wants to wait years, decades, centuries or even millenia for replies during conversations. It not only makes conversation or data transfer tedious and inefficient, but also expensive in the medium to long term. What we need is a high speed, large bandwidth, data dense communications system that will allow us to communicate with anyone within the galaxy, or even beyond, in as short a time as possible. Say 2 way communications across the galaxy within a few hours (for direct to destination communications). You might say that's impossible, Einstein says so. But you have to consider that in reality, we actually know "jack" about very little. Einstein is not the be all and end all of physics, despite what you hear and what you're taught. I would doubt very much that a civilisation even as little as 100-200 years ahead of where we are now would be using radio and/or lasers for interstellar communication. A civilisation 500, 1000 or even 1,000,000 years ahead would consider radio and lasers as something akin to flint knives and stone axes. They'd be museum pieces.

Even within the Solar System, radio and lasers have their limitations. It's pretty much hopeless when you get two way communications times exceeding an hour or more. What happens if you're out near Pluto and something goes wrong at your base or ship. It takes 5.5 hours for the radio signal or laser beam to travel to Earth and then 5.5 hours back. Not too great when time is of the essence in an emergency and it requires help from home to resolve the problems at hand. Even if you have a base in Neptune orbit, the signals are going to take anywhere from 1.5 to 9 hours for the signals to reach there (between Neptune and Pluto), depending on where they are in their orbits. I'd hate to be hanging out for a reply when my life depended upon what was going to be said. Even if you were 90-100% reliant on your own efforts, sometimes that's not enough.

We're barely out of the stone age....expecting another civilisation to use the same methods to commumicate as we do, given that they're most probably many years ahead of us, is bordering on the absurd. Most of the scientists talking about this should know better.

[darkskybondi]

Originally Posted by renormalised

We're barely out of the stone age....expecting another civilisation to use the same methods to commumicate as we do, given that they're most probably many years ahead of us, is bordering on the absurd. Most of the scientists talking about this should know better.

Interesting. May I say, though, that if we were trying to communicate with prehistoric man, we'd probably try using a stone and chisel rather than any form of EMR!

DSB

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by darkskybondi

Interesting. May I say, though, that if we were trying to communicate with prehistoric man, we'd probably try using a stone and chisel rather than any form of EMR!

DSB

Problem is, would you be able to make any sense with the implements you were using, given that you'd have no common set of experiences with which to make sense of any communications. You could eventually communicate with one another but it'd take a bit of time and a lot of stuff ups. For very old societies, trying to communicate with us would be very difficult, especially if they were so far beyond us that radio became completely unfamiliar to them. We're so young that we cannot conceive being isolated from a younger culture so totally that we couldn't communicate, but imagine a civilisation that's been around for a couple of billion years (or even only several million years). They'd could be so remote from our level of experience in all respects that they may find it difficult just trying to start a conversation. Funnily enough, the best way they could communicate with us is through symbols. Things such as archetypes, mathematical constructs and the like. Communicated primarily telepathically or by creating the symbols in some fashion so that everyone could see them (crop circles???!!!!). Hoping that we were sufficiently intelligent enough to be able to make some sense of the pictograms and symbols they were creating, they may try to impress us with their messages in that way. All we have to do is to be open minded enough to realise what was occuring and try to decypher what was being said.

I don't like their chances of success!!.

[darkskybondi]

Originally Posted by renormalised

Problem is, would you be able to make any sense with the implements you were using, given that you'd have no common set of experiences with which to make sense of any communications. You could eventually communicate with one another but it'd take a bit of time and a lot of stuff ups. For very old societies, trying to communicate with us would be very difficult, especially if they were so far beyond us that radio became completely unfamiliar to them. We're so young that we cannot conceive being isolated from a younger culture so totally that we couldn't communicate, but imagine a civilisation that's been around for a couple of billion years (or even only several million years). They'd could be so remote from our level of experience in all respects that they may find it difficult just trying to start a conversation. Funnily enough, the best way they could communicate with us is through symbols. Things such as archetypes, mathematical constructs and the like. Communicated primarily telepathically or by creating the symbols in some fashion so that everyone could see them (crop circles???!!!!). Hoping that we were sufficiently intelligent enough to be able to make some sense of the pictograms and symbols they were creating, they may try to impress us with their messages in that way. All we have to do is to be open minded enough to realise what was occuring and try to decypher what was being said.

I don't like their chances of success!!.

It's an deeply intriguing thought, particularly on a cloudy night like tonight. What would we try to communicate? I suspect you're right about archetypes and symbols and mathematical constructs would be most logical.

Assuming they are using basic EMR of some type (presumably the simplest form of communication, as you said), we'd have to assume they were just trying to broadcast their existence and perhaps give us some sort of universal message, maybe about the value of peace, perhaps about the importance of conserving each planet's rare natural resources, and perhaps they'd try to broadcast advanced scientific principles that they think we might find useful.

As for the language they would use, it's a tantalising thought. Even our digital binary systems use agreed-upon codes (eg ASCII). Presumably you'd have to start at first principles - using geometry and geometric patterns - and try to construct some semblance of meaning from that.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to think about this - amazing stuff!

- DSB

[darkskybondi]

Originally Posted by renormalised

I don't like their chances of success!!.

I found this article: http://www.forbes.com/2005/10/21/spa...1024ewalt.html

Worth checking out!

[darkskybondi]

Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_Extraterrestrial _Intelligence

= Wiki's article on CETI.