The Messenger Theory

[Pierce]

So a little while ago I decided to re-read The Andromeda Strain. I flew to Boston last week so I was easily able to finish the second half while on the plane. While reading it I came across something I thought was interesting, and I hope it sparks the imagination a little bit for you guys too.

I am not sure if it is a legitimate theory, as I wasn't able to find any more information through a quick google, but here is the basis. When we have reached the point in our civilization where we want to scan and contact other intelligent life, what is the best way to go about it?

Here is an excerpt from the book "The Andromeda Strain" by Michael Crichton.

"The Messenger Theory had come from John R. Samuels, a communications engineer. Speaking before the Fifth Annual Conference on Astronautics and Communication, he had reviewed some theories about the way in which an alien culture might choose to contact with other cultures. He argued that the most advanced concepts in communications in earth technology were inadequate, and that advanced cultures would find better methods.

"Let us say that a culture wishes to scan the universe," he said. "Let us say they wish to have a sort of 'coming-out party' on a galactic scale--To formally announce their existence. They wish to spew out information, clues to their existence, in every direction. What is the best way to do this? Radio? Hardly-- Radio is too slow, too expensive, and it decays too rapidly. Strong signals weaken within a few billion miles. TV is even worse. Light rays are fantastically expensive to generate. Even if one learned a way to detonate whole stars, to explode a sun as a kind of signal, it would be costly."

"Besides expense, all these methods suffer the traditional drawback to any radiation, namely decreasing strength with distance. A light bulb may be unbearably bright at ten feet; it may be powerful at a thousand feet; it may be visible at ten miles. But at a million miles, it is completely obscure, because radiant energy decreases according to the fourth power of the radius. A simple, unbeatable law of physics."

"So you do not use physics to carry your signal. You use biology. You create a communications system that does not diminish with distance, but rather remains as powerful a million miles away as it was at the source."

"In short, you devise an organism to carry your message. The organism would be self-replicating, cheap, and could be produced in fantastic numbers. For a few dollars, you could produce trillions of them, and send them off in all directions into space. They would be tough, hardy bugs, able to withstand the rigors of space, and they would grow and duplicate and divide. Within a few years, there would be countless numbers of these in the galaxy, speeding in all directions, waiting to contact life."

"And when they did? Each single organism would carry the potential to develop into a full organ, or a full organism. They would, upon contacting life, begin to grow into a complete communicating mechanism. It is like spewing out a billion brain cells, each capable of regrowing a complete brain under the proper circumstances. The newly grown brain would then speak to the new culture--informing it of the presence of the other, and announcing ways in which contact might be made."

"Wall of Text crits you for: 9000 damage."

Anyways, it's pretty far-fetched but I thought it was a pretty cool idea.

Kudos to those who read it all the way through!

[Zinmasterb]

I was under the impression that most electromagnetic radiation travels indefinitely unless introduced to a phenomena.

[Showtime]

Interesting... I feel like he kind of jumped off the deep-end when he proposed something like this... As if one day we will be able to create cells that if you water correctly will develop into a brain that carries all this previously encrypted knowledge in it... Sounds kinda of like DNA to me

Anyways interesting

[Zinmasterb]

Or of course you could fill a capsule with biometric encodings.
Aka, don't take this guy as anything more than a writer.

[Draven]

Yes but that would be unrealistic. You'd be talking about billions upon billions upon billions of capsules, which have to be able to survive the hardships of space, and be sent out in every direction.