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Subscribe to RSSEven if you could build a starship, how would you stay in communication with the home base? Maybe our own sun can be used as an amplifier. That's the topic that leads off this week's Space Hangout on Google+, which brings together space writers from Universe Today, Discovery News, the Planetary Society, Astronomy Cast and other online outlets. Check out this week's hourlong webcast, hosted by Universe Today's Fraser Cain, or feel free to jump to the particular topics at these points in time:
- Discovery News' Ian O'Neill on starship communication (0:00)
- Universe Today's Nancy Atkinson on black hole snacks (7:03)
- Yours truly on plans for a record stratospheric jump (12:36)
- Astronomy Cast's Pamela Gay on Lake Vostok drilling (17:00)
- Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla on Martian water (24:00)
- Q&A, including discussion of NASA's budget (33:00 to 63:00)
- More weekend links: Carnival of Space 236 at AstroSwanny's
Previously on the Weekly Space Hangout:
- Feb. 2: Super-Earths, SpaceX's engine test and more
- Jan. 26: Moon-base politics and more
- Jan. 19: Is some poor planet getting blasted?
- Jan. 12: Planets, dark matter, "Trek" tricorders and more
- Jan. 5: NASA's moon probes, the hype over 2012 and more
- Dec. 20: All about Kepler's alien worlds
The Weekly Space Hangout takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. PT) via Google+ and is simulcast at http://cosmoquest.org/hangouts
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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Hi Alan
I want to thank you for these weekly videos, they are very nice an I am learning a lot from them.
I have one question for you and your group about using the sun as a amplifier to boost radio signals. I was wondering, would a alien civilization (if they exist) use this same method or configuration to boost their radio signals to communicate with themselves? could we detect them and understand what they were saying? and/or are we already looking for radio signals like this?
Have a good day, Tom And Lyn.
I have one more comment, it saddens me to no end that NASA is thinking of canceling all these missions to Mars and other destinations due to the lack of money :-( if it were not for NASA and the technologies we have gained over the years, we would not be where we are today. It is like we are shooting ourselves in the foot and hurting our own future because of money. I hate it, there must be another way to do this and get it done without all these budget problems standing in our way.
That might boost the signal's power, but it wouldn't make it faster than the speed of light. The time between asking a question and getting an answer, from here to the nearest star and back, would still be eight years.
Well, are you willing to have your taxes increased to pay for it? More importantly, how many people do you think you could convince to have their taxes increased to pay for it, too? I'm guessing "not very many".
It's difficult enough to persuade people to support additional taxes for to pay for things that directly benefit them, it's much harder to persuade people to pay additional taxes that does little more than satisfy curiosity and keep aerospace engineers employed.
The Goverment has learned all that "they" wanted to learn. So they cut funding to NASA. It is a shame that we need the russians to get us into space. This is a HUGE step backwards. I've learned so many things from NASA. "They" don't want us to be educated about this stuff. "They" want Sheep & Workers, not American PhD's... "They" would rather import PhD Scientists on Science Visa's to America. Then they go back home & create new cylicon valleys & new "NASA" like programs in other countries...
I wouldn't think the ability to communicate with the home port would be much more important than it was for ancient sailing vessels. Let's try it, and see.
An interstellar civilization would not use EM radiation (in a conventional sense) to communicate; light is too slow for interstellar travel, so it is too slow for interstellar communication. One would imagine if a civilization has sufficiently conquered the speed of light to become truly "interstellar," they would not use a method of communication that is slower than if they just delivered messages in person.
As far as interplanetary exploits go, we already know how to communicate. We do this all the time with our space probes. For ships crewed by humans, it would help to set the mission up so the ship & crew don't have to be constantly babysat by ground control. This way, the light-speed lag time becomes a less crucial element on more distant excursions.
Even the sun as an amplifier would be too slow for communication.
Far fetched idea but possibly with advanced communication beacons placed in the star systems you want to communicate in. The starship send a message to one beacon and that beacon creates a warp or some sort of short cut to the next beacon which could deliver the message back to home base. (Keep in mind I have no science to back this up; it's all speculation.)