R
rogers_buck
Guest
Curiously, I was pondering the idea of radio telescopes and the possibility of detecting messages from our future selves and journeyed downstairs to find the Science channel running a program on just such a topic. This coincidence was so moving I felt behooved to post.<br /><br />One big question that hangs over humanity is whether we are to have a Star Trek style future or decay into some banal non-progressive society with a rattus norvegicus death by consumption ending. It occured to me there is a superb way of answering this fundamental question.<br /><br />1) Pick a nearby known rotating black hole.<br />2) Pick a date in the near future when Aracebo will point at the black hole and make observations at a specific wavelength.<br />3) Publish the time of observation and the coordinates.<br />4) As an added measure of security, embelish the above on a gold plaque giving the time and coordinates in pulsar notation. Note that the observation period would have to be large enough to accomodate the accuracy obtainable by backward extrapolation over many centuries.<br />5) When the published date arrives, point the telescope at the indicated black hole and start collecting data.<br /><br />The assumption here is that at some distant future mankind or our engineered replacements will oblidge us by using the rotating black hole to send an earthbound message. A simple ping.<br /><br />If no message is received, we can assume that we will have destroyed ourselves or will have stagnated in the future.<br /><br />There should be no gray areas with this simple experiment. Our future selves will know if the signal was received if they are in our universe. If they are in another universe, they should also know that we received the message by entangling the signal. Either way, they will know and know how important it is for us to receive that signal.<br /><br />Call it SFTI (Search for Future Terrestrial Intelligence).<br />