William Atkins
Tuesday, 30 September 2008 00:07
Science -
Space
Page 1 of 3
Hawaii-California astronomers propose that an advanced civilization could have used Cepheid variable stars as a way to communicate to (what they call “tickling”) other neighbors in the galaxy.
The American astronomers state that because Cepheid variable stars pulse at such a regular rate, an advanced extraterrestrial civilization could have possibly given one of them a gigantic pulse of energy to create a way to communicate with other forms of intelligent life, such as ours on Earth.
The proposal was written in the article “
The Cepheid Galactic Internet” in the astrophysics section of Arxiv.org.
The authors state in the abstract to their paper,
“We propose that a sufficiently advanced civilization may employ Cepheid variable stars as beacons to transmit all-call information throughout the galaxy and beyond.”
They add,
“One can construct many scenarios wherein it would be desirable for such a civilization of star ticklers to transmit data to anyone else within viewing range. The beauty of employing Cepheids is that these stars can be seen from afar (we monitor them out through the Virgo cluster), and any developing technological society would seem to be likely to closely observe them as distance markers.”
The authors of the proposal are John G. Learned (Department of Physics and Astronomy), R-P. Kudritzki (Institute for Astronomy), Sandip Pakvasa (Department of Physics and Astronomy), all from the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, United States, and A. Zee (Kavh Institute for Theoretical Physics), from the University of California, Santa Barbara, California. U.S.A.
They state that Cepheid variable could be modified with respect to their signals so as to send signals across the galaxy and beyond.
Why do Cepheid variables make for a good way to communicate vast distances in the galaxy? Please read on.
