Assuming signals could be interpreted on the other side your looking at a 2.5 million year ping to send something to Andromeda.
Fuckkkking lagggg
“Oh you don’t like that latency? Is the speed of light too slow for you, motherfucker? You try building a universe without time!”
— God, probably
Still has better ping than my CS2 teammates
Yes. This has been theorized, but with the obvious limitation of building anything big enough to attenuate the sun’s output to a visible degree.
Right now we look for periodic dimming of distant stars, in order to ID exoplanets as they orbit and block light. We also look for any wobble from the gravitational pull of a large orbiting body, like Jupiter-sized things.
As for artificial dimming, that more or less falls under the concept of a “Dyson Swarm/Sphere”, and is something we’re keeping an eye out for too. Your signal concept would be carefully orchestrated windows in that swarm, as it orbits. But the energy and sheer mass requirements (measured in substantial fractions of whole planets) are at a level of civilization well beyond anything we can do at present. So there may be something out there, but we’re in no position to do the same.
Yeah sure, you could do that.
Speed of light does not change. So you’re still looking at a stupid long latency.
How do you block and unblock the light quickly? The faster this goes the more data per second you’ll get.
Keep in mind, our sun is just one of hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy. So, this would be like writing a message on a grain of sand, adding it to 20 or so dump truck loads of sand, spreading it out, and trying to pick out your message from the surface of Mars.
Look up The Fermi Paradox.
In this case basically, even if you could do this, which practically we couldn’t, there won’t be anyone to hear it and if there is we won’t be here to get the response.
Within the Fermi Paradox is the Dark Forest Hypothesis, essentially: we can’t see other civilizations doing this, and the theory is that if they did they are wiped out immediately by other civilizations.
The Three Body Problem is a good novel exploring this.
It is akin to being invisible in a dangerous place and then turning on a flashlight and giving your position away to predators.
I probably should just read the novel but was was the predatory motivation? Resources?
It’s complex. Essentially our two systems were close enough to traverse with their technology and it was worth their while due to their systems instability.
The title “Three Body Problem” is referencing their systems three suns and their world’s unstable orbit.
It’s worth the read.
Man, I was hoping this book series would get a mention here. Blocking out the sun as a means of transmitting a message is something that happens in the series. Or, it’s talked about, at least. It’s been a while since I’ve read it.
Tap for spoiler
It was using a high power radio transmission through the corona of the sun to act as a lens to magnify the signal, essentially turning our sun into a lighthouse. The shit that happens in the third book is mind melting in comparison. Dimensional attacks (shifting your dimension downwards) from 3D to 2D, by a potentially multidimensional entity, ironically unrelated to the original antagonists, and thus confirming the Dark Forest Hypothesis.
Even if there is life, the speed of light is so slow and signal degradation over distance so high it is unlikely we could detect each other even if everyone was trying.
Yes. Intriguingly, no such signal has ever been received, are we perhaps alone in the universe?
No such signal has ever been pointed at us AND reached us since we’ve been looking (i.e. a length of time that is utterly meaningless in this context).
Fixed that for you.
Not entirely, no.
Pardon?
