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NASA To Text Message Interplanetary Cousins
An anonymous reader writes "Inhabitants of the planet Gliese 581d will need a radio receiver and the ability to interpret binary code if they are to understand a series of text messages to be sent from Australia. Hello from Earth will collect the messages over the next 12 days and transmit them to the closest Earth-like planet that has the potential to harbor life. All the messages will be collected and exported as a text file and sent to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where it will be encoded into binary code, packaged and tested before transmission."
Or do they get charged 20 cents every lightyear?
"You have been offered a 30 Earth Solar Day trial of credit advantage. Text 'Stop' within next 30 Earth Solar Days to cancel. If you continue you're planet will be charged $9.99/mo." With interest and late penalties we should be able to file a judgement and forclose on their planet by the time they receive the message.
"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most." ~Ozzy Osborne
All your base are belong to us!
A tiny evolution of the Rule 110 cellular automaton or universal computer.
111110101100011010001000
100011111100111110011001
100110000101100010111011
I do recall reading that even earths most high powered transmitter beaming a message across interstellar space, would not be picked up by the equivalent of mankind most sensitive radio telescope across a distance of I don't recall what, a few light years? It is a obvious question never asked in this kind of journalism, would we be heard? It turns out we neither have the transmitting power nor the necessary reception were the equivalent strength message to be sent back. We're talking about signals crossing light years, even reasonably directional signals fade out at a distance measured in AU not LY because the signal falls below the galactic noise floor. Communicating with our most distant probes goes right to the limits of our best technology.
If they were looking in the right direction, at the right time, at the right frequency with technology beyond our own, yeah you could communicate across light years sure but still unlikely.
In a way, it's kind of fortunate there is almost no likelihood of the aliens receiving LOL HEY U CM 2 C US K? WUD B MLOLZ! K C U SOON XX! or whatever passes for communication between sentient apes these days.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Not to mention the interference that it would likely encounter at our own Heliopause out of the solar system, and the interference it would encounter at the Heliopause into the that solar system, with any thing in between us as well.