Study: ET Would Write, Not Call
Sept. 2, 2004 -- When it comes to relaying information from a star system many light years away, ET might have better luck using snail mail than beaming a signal.
Physicists have calculated that inscribing information on an asteroid or comet or other kind of matter and shooting it into deep space — or even directly to Earth — would be much more efficient than delivering information through radio waves.
But, like snail mail, it would also take a lot longer to get there.
"Basically, if you can wait, you can pack information tightly and send it cheaply," said Christopher Rose, a physicist at the Wireless Information Network Laboratory of Rutgers University in New Jersey. "And in interstellar distances, maybe waiting is not too terrible a thing if it's just a matter of promulgating your knowledge, not waiting for a reply."
Rose's conclusions appeared in the journal Nature on the heels of a NASA announcement that astronomers have found a new class of planets with some Earthlike qualities. The recent discovery only underscores the notion that there are plenty of stars out there with plenty of planets around them. So, Rose asks, why shouldn't life be out there?
Barking Up the Wrong Tree?
This was what physicist Frank Drake concluded in the 1960s. The so-called Drake Equation showed that, given the probable number of stars and planets in faraway solar systems, the chances are good that intelligent life exists somewhere out there.
Drake was the first to tune a radio telescope to the stars and listen for a message from afar. Today, astronomers with the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute listen to space using a much more powerful tool — the world's largest radio telescope, Arecibo, whose dishes extend for as long as 26 football fields.
But Rose's calculations suggest we may have been tuning in the wrong way. If intelligent aliens are concerned with efficiency, he found, they would certainly write, not call.
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