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Astronomers Find Diamond Star 4,000 km Wide
tclas writes "The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallized carbon, 4,000 km across, some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus. It's the compressed heart of an old star that was once bright like our Sun but has since faded and shrunk. Astronomers have decided to call the star 'Lucy,' after the Beatles song 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.'"
Derp - you're an idiot.
Planet 1 starts broadcasting shit.
Planet 2 hears it a long time later.
Planet 2 may not be able to communicate with planet 1 now, but they now know of Planet 1's intelligent civilization, and will continue to listen and observe.
Planet 2 will then figure out when Planet 1 will start hearing things from them based on the distance between the two planets, and will maintain all majorly-different communication methods capable of reaching Planet 1 for at least the amount of time of a round trip.
Planet 1 will do the same upon discovering Planet 2's transmissions, and they will be able to communicate (with a serious delay).
You're suggesting that the entire civilization / solar system may be wiped out before a round trip after the first signal is received. This is possible, but before then, listening in without being able to talk back is still extremely valuable.
A simple bit of logic on the part of both planets will lead to the obvious conclusion: If you want to talk to someone, you'll need to listen for their response.
Last I checked, we still know how to send and receive basic radio transmissions and there's no sign that the laws of physics will make this impossible.
Your pathetic whining is the equivalent of saying that you'll throw away your mail box if it takes more than 3 days to get a response from your prison lover, who had a daily stream of letters going to you with 10 days of lead time (because the prison screens the mail, causing the average trip time to be 10 days).