There was an item in yesterday’s Observer about this delightful
guy in America who spent thirty years sending messages, mostly great sixties jazz,
out into space in the hope of communicating with sentient beings on other planets. (There’s apparently a film about him
coming out somewhere.)
But – what about the speed of
light?
There are about fifty identified Earth-like planets within
fifteen light years of our sun. Even if
they all contained intelligent life capable of detecting and analysing the vast
amount of data we spray out every second, understanding and picking out the
specific attempts to communicate with them, and responding to those – even given
that hugely improbable set of circumstances, it would still have taken at least
eight years for the first reply to reach us.
And then we’d have to go through the exact same process: detecting,
analysing and understanding. And of
course any reply from more than 15 light years away won’t have been received yet.
I have no doubt that there are billions of planets inhabited
by intelligent life in our galaxy, never mind the billions of other galaxies –
just stop fantasising that we’re ever going to make contact with them, or they
with us. The laws of physics are against
you.
Yes I read that too. The documentary is on Netflix so is also heading out into the infinite blue. Might be a bit garbled by the time it reaches Planet Oops.
ReplyDeleteAnd another thing...whilst we're on the subject of almost effectively infinity, what about these folk who reckon there are infinite parallel universes where everything is the same apart from one conversation or the location of a chair? What's that about? It's about every leaf falling in a different location and every pebble, every grain of sand, every molecule, every electronic byte being slightly differently arranged, each time in each universe. Not really a lot of point. Just call it infinity and leave it there.
But on the other hand, if time really is a balloon.....😆........🍷........🦄........😱