<[email protected]> wrote:
> There is another possibility, i.e. that the reason for the short window is > not > self destruction, but rather that they discover FTL communication > techniques, > and stop broadcasting using EMF. > Here are my hypotheses: 1. Data broadcast by people in RF and light fiber is getting faster all the time, and denser. By that I mean the bits are closer together and images are compressed. Over time, the data looks more and more like noise. We have only been doing this for ~100 years but the bit rate has increased by orders of magnitude. Furthermore the power has gone down in comparison to the bit rate. Thousands of years from now, the transmissions may be so rapid and so compressed they will look like noise. 2. RF doesn't work for interstellar communication. I read somewhere that radio signals degrade so badly, a few light years from earth they are probably indistinguishable from noise. So much for the movie "Contact." - Jed
