I didn’t want to derail this thread on an “Alien view of Earth”, so here we are.
If mankind decided to announce our presence in the “loudest” way possible, what current or conceivable future technology could we employ that would send out a bright, omni-directional* signal to announce our presence.
Sort of like the book/movie Contact, in reverse.
Also, any ideas on what “message” to encode in the signal to ensure anything out there that might be picking up our broadcast would almost immediately be certain it’s artificial?
*Or unidirectional, if we find an exoplanet that appears to have life.
Our radio signals are already doing that. I’m not sure what good it would do to amp up the wattage. (Or watt up the ampage.) The signal is still going to be really weak by the time it gets to receptive ears.
Right. Another thing, they’re out there by happenstance. I’m thinking of a dedicated technology designed for the sole purpose to shine a floodlight across the local galaxy to anyone who might be taking a gander at our pinprick of a star.
We’re already doing it. I’ve read several short stories based on aliens arriving because they tracked back TV signals and all they knew about us was from I Love Lucy re-runs, or something similar.
One problem is we don’t know what part of the sky to concentrate on, and sending out signals in all directions would take a prohibitive amount of power.
And to be more sure that the signals are doing useful work, we’d have to keep broadcasting for a long time, increasing the cost even more.
Another thought, from Larry Niven, with respect to frequency:
I never really understood how that would work, myself - how does cold hydrogen ‘sweep clean’ signals from stars at a particular frequency - but not interfere with artificial signals on the same wavelength.
If it was up to me, I’d do whatever we could to avoid setting up any sort of beacon, and to mask the signals that are already leaking out. Anything that can travel interstellar space to get here is going to have a large technological advantage over us, and may be hostile. Better to hide quietly and not attract unwanted attention until we are better prepared to defend ourselves.
I do too. Sagan was right that math is the “language” of the universe. Of course, if we sent out just the base line to Michael Jackson’s Beat It… we might attract aliens who love to dance (and possibly contacting his home planet).
As far as power is concerned, if a beefy enough transmitter was sent into space, perhaps at a Lagrange point, the sun could provide quite a bit of power, indefinitely, to transmit a pretty powerful signal in all directions.
My first though about requirements, is it should broadcast in all sorts of flavors of EM frequencies. As many as possible.
Sort of a tangent, but I’m skeptical to thing that aliens would be likely a threat. First of all, if they have interstellar traveling capability, a beacon or not would not prevent them from discovering us. Secondly, I believe interstellar travel is ridiculously prohibitive, just by the laws of nature alone. Communication is more than adequate for first-contact scenarios. That is, unless there is a way to get around the speed limit of c.
The risk of first contact communication with another intelligent species being malicious I think is pretty low, considering the treasure of sharing of information with another technologically driven life form somewhere.
Due to some extremely poor planning, and getting caught up in a bit of a fad, we have all these surplus nulcear devices just sitting around, eating up storage resources.
So, here’s what were gonna do, see…
We launch those suckers into trans-solar space, beyond the Oort cloud, at least, an set them off in sequences representing well known mathimatic paterns and other constants.
This satisfies several suggestions previous posters have made
Lots of wattage - check
Very Wide band - check
Mathematical Patterns - check
additionally:
Demonstrates technological accumen - check
Shows that we can be mean little monkeys - check
Hmmm, did those mean little monkeys leave any unexploded nukes hanging about just in case un friendly visitors show up? Check-a-roonie
Gets rid of all those nasty nukes - check
Revitalises industry, commerce, and economy on Earth (the project would not be cheap)Check
Builds space/launch technology here on Earth-Check
Looks real cool as seen from Earth… Bitchin!
I just can’t buy that they’d come all this way for any of our natural resources, since it’s so abundant in the universe. Surely, they don’t need land, water or fossil fuels.