Posted on 10/24/2016 7:23:59 PM PDT by JimSEA
OK. Let's say we want to send a signal. Can we produce this same signal ?
Yep, definitely aliens.
Oddly, what you are ‘seeing’ in that picture does not exist in reality.
What we are ‘seeing’ in these periodic spectral modulations may just be dust in the wind.
Meh, if this were ETs sending out the Batsignal, it doesn’t matter. They’re all dead for some 10 thousand years or so now.
Simply things like black holes and pulsars within efficient Dyson spheres leaking out a little.
Freegards
I just have trouble with believing that we can determine the position of a molecule on a star 20 million light years away, and yet we aren’t exactly sure what is right under our feet.
Just a single ping Vasili
Yaggggh, wouldn’t that suck, big ole smiley faced aliens just grinning away while the ovipositors are laying and the fluid siphons are probing around for veins... Oh, and you know the skin would shrug off small arms fire like sleet...
Hey, careful, that could be the signal that denotes surplus population available for food!
It’s the Xul...
Sure!
We can send back the same signal.
“Like your planet, ours too is dying due to global warming!”
We can't determine the position of a single molecule on a distant star; what's being discussed in this article is the means by which changes in the amount of energy stored in the various vibrational and rotational modes of countless trillions of identical molecules surrounding the star can be determined.
Depending on their structure, individual molecules can absorb and emit light energy (photons) in the various bonds between the atoms that comprise the molecule.
Think of it like the strings of a guitar, which can be excited to vibrate by sound emitted from a second guitar, assuming both guitars are tuned accurately.
Energy can be stored in "vibrational" modes, in which the various atoms of the molecule move back and forth with respect to one another. Different bonds will in general resonate at different frequencies, although its possible for more than one bond in the same molecule to vibrate at the same frequency, depending on the molecule's degree of symmetry.
It's also possible for the molecule to absorb energy in rotation; that is, the entire molecule rotates end over end. Due to quantum mechanics, a molecule rotating in this way isn't free to rotate at any old speed; it has to rotate at a speed that causes the wave functions of its component atoms to interfere constructively.
Many (if not most) vibrational transitions correspond to frequency in the optical part of the spectrum. This is a big reason why we see so many colors, each of which corresponds to a particular molecular transition, either absorbtive (as is the case with the molecules that give plants their colors, and cause the sky to appear blue) or emissive, as is the case with things that glow by discharge, like mercury vapor lamps, LEDs, etc.
Rotational modes are much less energetic, meaning that they absorb and emit light at much lower frequencies, or longer wavelengths. Most rotational modes are in the microwave spectrum radio spectrum, although some are so far up in the microwave region that they actually qualify as long-wavelength infrared light, and can be focused by large telescope mirrors.
Say Hey Steely Tom
My MITS Altiar had 128 bytes after we soldered it together in that exotic southwest Asian locale. After we doubled the ram to 256 bytes we could send encrypted code to Langley.
2 bad the dumbasses in the Carter administration believed the Ayatollah Khomeini was a benign old holy man.
Berne in Hell Zibigneiv Brezinski
Caddis the most elder
Feet are the windows to the sole.
It was my understanding that Carter didn't give a damn what Khomeini was about. All they cared about was shit-canning the Shah because he refused to do a crooked business deal with some of Carter's good-ol-boy friends from Georgia.
They threw the entire Middle East into turmoil, and generated decades of terror and death for the region and the world, because the Shah wouldn't play ball with Carter's pals.
The knee is the Achilles' Heel of the leg.
Looks like Tim Kaine doing his best clownish expression with the help of a little gravitational lensing.
Probably not now, maybe in the future.
Do we want to send a signal?
The history of man is that every time a higher-tech society meets a lower-tech society, the lower-tech society gets raped. Maybe we should stay inconspicuous until we know how strong we are compared to them.
Right now we are like cave-men compared to any civilization who could travel here.
Those darned XeeLee are at it again. Type III civilization performance art.
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