Recently, astronomers have discovered a Jupiter-type planet orbiting a star 90 light years away. What is especially exciting about this discovery, is that this planet “circles a sunlike star known as HD70642 in an orbit that corresponds to one halfway between Mars and Jupiter in our own system”…AND, there are no other large planets between it & it’s star, which leaves open the possiblitiy that there could be Earth-sized planets in this area.
This got me wondering: What if our technology became advanced enough that we were able to find an Earth-like planet orbiting a star at around 90 light years. And what if we were able to discover that this planet had an atmosphere much like ours. And, after careful analysis, we had evidence that led us to believe that this planet had a technologically advanced civilization. What, then, could we do about it? Yes, it would radically change our notion of us being “special”, and we’d reassess our notion of our “place” in the universe. But, what could we do concerning this planet? Since it is so far away, would it really be feasible to attempt communication? Is there any way we could establish contact with such a distant planet? Is there anything at all we could do with this new knowledge?
I believe we may make such a discovery in the next hundred years or so; HD70642 is a very good candidate, but it seems likely to me that any civilisation we detect would be thousands of light years away.
At this distance we could probably only detect a highly advanced civilisation, perhaps by picking up their infra red waste radiation, anti- asteroid radar, or interstellar spacecraft exhaust;
it seems unlikely that we would be able to pick up their television transmissions (if any) at that distance, for example, and I am sure that a high-tech civilisation will use narrow beamed transmissions which are more difficult to intercept.
We would be difficult to detect at that distance… the signatures of life, oxygen and chlorophyll, now those might be apparent given enough resolving power.
What would be the philosophical repercussions? I am interested to find out too.
I hope it would encourage the world to try to send spacecraft, probably robotic probes, over the intervening distance; the craft would probably not arrive for thousands of years, but making contact would almost certainly be of benefit to both parties.
Military strategists might want to hide and hope that we are not noticed, especially if the other civilisation is more advanced than we (which by the laws of chance and dectection it should be)
but I think it should spur humanity on to attempt to reach such heights ourselves.
I don’t think there is much we could do with current technology. The easiest thing to do would be communicate. Obviously signals sent by us would take 90 years to get there, so a conversation would be out of the question. Probably the best thing would be to send a steady stream of information at them, of increasing complexity. If you are deliberately trying to make yourself understood we think it would be quite easy to build up some sort of shared (mathematically based) language. Even if we did this though, it would be 180 years before we even know what their reply is.
Building a spacecraft to get there is not really within current technology. Although we could send a spacecraft to them we don’t know if it would arrive, and even if it did it would take millions of years to get there. It would be better to wait for improvements in technology so that we can build faster spaceships.
Slight Highjack:
The SETI Inststitute (an associated project being the most likely discoverer) has protocols for dealing with the discovery, agreed to by SETI researchers around the world
QUOTE----------------------------------------
What will happen if an extraterrestrial signal is detected?
A procedure has been agreed upon by SETI researchers around the world. First, other SETI researchers will independently verify the signal. If the signal is real and can’t be explained by man-made sources (satellites, reflections, etc.) then press agencies and governments will be notified in a systematic way.
quote---------------------------------------
from here http://www.setifaq.org/faq.html#1.4
I have heard SETI Researchers (THE BIGGIES Shostak, Tarter, Sagan) suggest that th next step after confirmation is for the UN to then decide How/If to respond on behalf of earth.
But truthfully anyone with a transmitter strong enough would just need to “point and click”
The wisest thing might be to ignore them until we’re sure they know about us.
If they have the same kind of bad habits that Western Europe shared with the inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere during the last 400-500 years, we really don’t want a relationship, especially in case those guys develop faster-than-light travel.
If we develope faster-than-light travel before we do communication, we could just write a note and put it in the spaceship…
Is there a generic, one-word term for faster-than-light?
Peace,
mangeorge
We already have “supersonic” for faster-than-sound, so I’d like to take this oppurtunity to coin the term “superoptic” (if someone cleverer tham me hasn’t already) for faster-than-light.
I’m sure the U.S. government would want to go over there and teach them about a free society. And at the same time, make their drugs illegal and charge them a galactic tax.
Just send radio messages with basic repeating signals on all frequencies. Then, sit back for 90 years and hope that someone over there knows how to travel 90 lightyears real quick.
The obvious thing we would do, no one has mentioned.
We would build really big freakin’ telescopes to study them. And really big freakin’ radio telescopes to listen to them.
In theory, we could build a telescope big enough to look at their buildings. A huge interferometry array the size of Earth’s orbit, for example, would be able to resolve details on other planets limited only by the distortion of the other planet’s atmosphere.
The Terrestrial Planet Finder, due to launch in 2012, is the first such long baseline interferometry telescope, albeit on a much, much smaller scale. It will be able to directly image planets of earth-size out to about 50 light-years. It will also be able to determine the composition of the atmosphere, which may reveal the existence of advanced technologies and life in general.
Huge radio interferometry networks could listen for radio emissions with a source power of only a few watts, allowing us to listen in on the equivalent of radio stations, CB radios, or even wireless networks.
Since every other technique of learning about the other planet would require at least 180 years to get results, I would expect an extreme focus on ‘passive’ viewing, extracting more information from the data we’re already getting.
Good point, Sam. Although the info obtained in this manner will be 90 years old, it’s more than we will get otherwise.
I don’t like to say “never”, but in this case we aren’t very likely to ever move mass at anything approaching light speed. And to travel to other stars we need to travel at multiples of c. I know about the theoretical short-cuts.
Heck, travel to the far planets in our own system is still a far off dream.
Frustrating, huh?
[sup]Just a little something to counter balance the previous post.[/sup][/ul]