Is the Internet in outer space like tv is?

CplFerro · 5th August 2012, 05:59 PM

I gather that tv signals live on forever in outer space as they travel away from Earth. I wonder, is the Internet in outer space, too?

Cpl Ferro

psionl0 · 5th August 2012, 06:05 PM

The internet is generally point to point. Where information is routed via satellite, I suppose there might be some "leakage" that goes into outer space.

Of course, there is no reason why an internet service can't be provided via shortwave or microwave media. Such signals would go the way of TV signals.

RecoveringYuppy · 5th August 2012, 06:12 PM

Originally Posted by psionl0

Of course, there is no reason why an internet service can't be provided via shortwave or microwave media. Such signals would go the way of TV signals.

And someone has...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet

Brian-M · 5th August 2012, 06:17 PM

TV signals don't exactly go "forever". Because the inverse square law applies, the signal is only a quarter as strong at twice the distance. Eventually it reaches the point where the signal cannot be separated from background noise, effectively the signal disappears.

Some internet communication travels by satellite, so I suppose that fragments of internet information will be beamed out into space like TV signals and telephone calls.

Moon-Spinner · 5th August 2012, 06:54 PM

Great, now the aliens will REALLY know just how stupid the human race is once they start reading internet blogs!!!

Hopefully, they'll get bored really fast when they come to twitter accounts and just turn off their inter-galactic computers

steve s · 5th August 2012, 08:06 PM

Originally Posted by Moon-Spinner

Great, now the aliens will REALLY know just how stupid the human race is once they start reading internet blogs!!!

They'll love us for our porn.

Steve S

psionl0 · 5th August 2012, 09:29 PM

Originally Posted by Moon-Spinner

Great, now the aliens will REALLY know just how stupid the human race is once they start reading internet blogs!!!

Most aliens have yet to receive the first episode of Howdy Doody.

OnlyTellsTruths · 5th August 2012, 11:12 PM

Originally Posted by Brian-M

TV signals don't exactly go "forever". Because the inverse square law applies, the signal is only a quarter as strong at twice the distance. Eventually it reaches the point where the signal cannot be separated from background noise, effectively the signal disappears.

You know I have to ask...

How far away is that for an average power TV signal? (Before it went all digital

)

RecoveringYuppy · 5th August 2012, 11:32 PM

Originally Posted by OnlyTellsTruths

You know I have to ask...

How far away is that for an average power TV signal? (Before it went all digital

)

A couple light years. If a civilization were looking directly at us with an Arecibo type received they might notice us from about 25 LY away.

KA9Q · 6th August 2012, 12:30 AM

Originally Posted by OnlyTellsTruths

How far away is that for an average power TV signal? (Before it went all digital

)

Good question. It depends on the station and the frequency band. A paper on SETI written in the 1970s (it might have been a Scientific American article, I'm not sure) said the easiest artificial signals to detect from earth at interstellar distances were the carriers of UHF TV stations. The power levels were extremely high; some transmitters were as high as 5 megawatts effective radiated power. The background noise levels on UHF are also fairly low, though not quite as low as on the microwave bands between 1 and 10 GHz that are ideal for SETI.

This detectability applies only to the carriers that convey no information beyond the existence of the artificial transmitter generating it. A carrier occupies no bandwidth so, assuming you can correct any Doppler shift, they can be detected with a very narrow band receiver that excludes noise at other frequencies. (This is the principle behind SETI@Home, which is searching for narrowband carriers only.) The analog video information would be a totally different story; spread out over 4.5 MHz it would be so much harder to detect as to be almost impossible.

One of the main reasons that digital TV replaced analog is that it is much more power-efficient. So digital TV transmitters generally transmit much less power than the analog transmitters they replaced, but they're still much more powerful than just about anything else on the air except for space radars and communications links that unlike broadcasting stations tend to be highly directional. The US digital TV standard also contains a "pilot" signal much like an analog carrier, but weaker. But they are probably still among the more easily detectable artificial signals from earth at interstellar distances, if you have big enough receiving antennas.

One especially interesting signal from a SETI standpoint is the Air Force Space Surveillance System, formerly known as NAVSPASUR, a VHF CW radar "fence" used to detect and keep track of most objects in low earth orbit. It consists of three extremely high power CW transmitters across the southern US that transmit "fan" beams straight up. When a satellite crosses the fan, it briefly reflects the signal back to a set of receiving antennas on the ground. The CW (continuous wave) signals emitted by these radars are essentially identical to the carriers of analog TV broadcast stations, and that's all they transmit; there's no video information. They operate just above TV channel 13, 24 hours/day, and are probably also among the most easily detected artificial signals from earth at interstellar distances. Because they generate a "fan" beam that's wide in longitude but narrow in latitude, it could be detected only if the beam happens to sweep past the receiver. This it would do once per day, which would give another civilization a pretty good idea of the length of our day.

Orphia Nay · 6th August 2012, 12:54 AM

Cool thread!

No other comment - I'm here for the E in JREF.

sophia8 · 6th August 2012, 04:02 AM

Originally Posted by Orphia Nay

Cool thread!

No other comment - I'm here for the E in JREF.

+1!

DC · 6th August 2012, 10:15 AM

yeah great, we should send scientific stuff into space to make a better impression, now they see our "Country's next top model" and "Country got talent" stuff and Youtube's fail compilations and make up tips of the week. how embarrassing.

CplFerro · 6th August 2012, 02:22 PM

Originally Posted by DC

yeah great, we should send scientific stuff into space to make a better impression, now they see our "Country's next top model" and "Country got talent" stuff and Youtube's fail compilations and make up tips of the week. how embarrassing.

Dear DC,

What do you recommend--broadcast readings of Proust?

Cpl Ferro

OnlyTellsTruths · 6th August 2012, 03:20 PM

Originally Posted by RecoveringYuppy

A couple light years. If a civilization were looking directly at us with an Arecibo type received they might notice us from about 25 LY away.

If as you first say 2 LY, that means zero stars are within that range of us right?

You're second answer of 25 LY, that is still very few stars in that range right?

So the old meme of aliens receiving our TV and Radio is basically impossible? Unless they drive their ship into it....

Ladewig · 6th August 2012, 04:53 PM

Originally Posted by DC

yeah great, we should send scientific stuff into space to make a better impression, now they see our "Country's next top model" and "Country got talent" stuff and Youtube's fail compilations and make up tips of the week. how embarrassing.

OMG. I just thought of Sigma Iotia II. That's the "Gangster Planet" in the second season of ST: TOS. The Sigma Iotians obtain a copy of a book describing mobsters in 1920s Chicago and build an entire society based on the book.

I shudder tho think what an entire society based on "[insert country] got talent" would be like.

RelativeSpace · 6th August 2012, 05:31 PM

Like others said, TV is barely broadcast into space- and every year our communications become more efficient (thus lower power level, and shorter effective broadcast distance vs. the background noise).

I don't really understand SETI- it kind of made sense when they started, but today I don't know why they expect to detect alien civilizations when, for the entire history of our planet, we have only actually been detectable for a few short years when we first learned to broadcast information- and only to very nearby stars. By comparison, our planet has gone pretty quiet today, and will only likely become less detectable in the future.

If we start using wireless power transfer (as it looks like is the direction), the leakage will be greater, but it won't carry any real information and it'll just increase the noise further, I think (please correct me if I'm wrong). And that's to say nothing of our digital sampling rates which themselves look like noise (and will more so as time goes on).

rjh01 · 6th August 2012, 08:49 PM

Originally Posted by OnlyTellsTruths

If as you first say 2 LY, that means zero stars are within that range of us right?

You're second answer of 25 LY, that is still very few stars in that range right?

So the old meme of aliens receiving our TV and Radio is basically impossible? Unless they drive their ship into it....

This is even worse than at first it appears. Suppose there is one advanced civilisation every 100 cubic light years. That means that there would be one within 100 light years (maybe, unless that is us). There would be another 8 between 100 - 200 light years, another 18 between 200-300 light years. If civilisations could only be detected within 200 light years this would mean that most of them would be at the edge of the detection zone.

shemp · 6th August 2012, 09:56 PM

Originally Posted by CplFerro

Dear DC,

What do you recommend--broadcast readings of Proust?

Cpl Ferro

They'd die from boredom long before they could get here.

Cuddles · 7th August 2012, 06:23 AM

Originally Posted by CplFerro

I wonder, is the Internet in outer space, too?

I'm going to have to say no. The thing with TV and radio is that they're one-way broadcasts. A transmitter sends out a signal and anyone capable of receiving it will see exactly the same thing. But that's not how the internet works. The internet is a big network of connections between lots of different nodes constantly interacting with each other. Bits of the information contained within could be broadcast, but you could never broadcast "the internet" because it's the connections that are important, not the information being exchanged by them at any given moment.

Edit: As an example, just look at this forum. If you wanted, you could download all the posts made so far and broadcast them into space using a big antenna. Would that mean you've actually broadcast the forum? No. Because the forum is much more than just the posts made so far, the important part is the ability to interact with it and add more. You can't broadcast that into space.

Horatius · 8th August 2012, 05:23 AM

Originally Posted by Cuddles

Because the forum is much more than just the posts made so far, the important part is the ability to interact with it and add more. You can't broadcast that into space.

Sure you could broadcast it. You'd just have to accept a certain amount of lag.....

Dave Rogers · 8th August 2012, 05:43 AM

Originally Posted by shemp

They'd die from boredom long before they could get here.

Not if we could summarise it in 30 seconds.

Dave

aggle-rithm · 8th August 2012, 05:57 AM

Without access to the TCP/IP standard, aliens would have no way to decipher our internet signals. They would be broken into scrambled packets, and often encrypted.

Some speculate that this is why we have never been able to detect any alien transmissions...they may be using some form of packet-switching.

Cuddles · 8th August 2012, 06:06 AM

Originally Posted by Horatius

Sure you could broadcast it. You'd just have to accept a certain amount of lag.....

I did think about that, but I'm not sure if timeouts can be defined arbitrarily. If my computer has trouble connecting to something for more than a few seconds, it just gives up and decides that something just isn't there. Is it possible to set it up so it will wait for a response indefinitely, or are there forced limits somewhere so that something with a latency measured in years just won't ever be able to connect?

P.J. Denyer · 8th August 2012, 06:44 AM

Originally Posted by Ladewig

OMG. I just thought of Sigma Iotia II. That's the "Gangster Planet" in the second season of ST: TOS. The Sigma Iotians obtain a copy of a book describing mobsters in 1920s Chicago and build an entire society based on the book.

I shudder tho think what an entire society based on "[insert country] got talent" would be like.

I'd be more concerned about what it sounded like

Horatius · 8th August 2012, 07:59 AM

Originally Posted by Cuddles

I did think about that, but I'm not sure if timeouts can be defined arbitrarily. If my computer has trouble connecting to something for more than a few seconds, it just gives up and decides that something just isn't there. Is it possible to set it up so it will wait for a response indefinitely, or are there forced limits somewhere so that something with a latency measured in years just won't ever be able to connect?

I don't see why it wouldn't be possible. Such things are simply a matter of programming, surely? If you expected a minimum of 8 years lag time, you could just set that up as the standard.

WildCat · 8th August 2012, 09:40 AM

I'm certain some posters on this very forum are posting from outer space.

5th August 2012, 05:59 PM	#1
CplFerro Graduate Poster Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 1,383	Is the Internet in outer space like tv is? I gather that tv signals live on forever in outer space as they travel away from Earth. I wonder, is the Internet in outer space, too? Cpl Ferro

5th August 2012, 06:12 PM	#3
RecoveringYuppy Illuminator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Tucson, AZ Posts: 3,851	Originally Posted by psionl0 Of course, there is no reason why an internet service can't be provided via shortwave or microwave media. Such signals would go the way of TV signals. And someone has... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet
	__________________ REJ (Robert E Jones) posting anonymously under my real name for 30 years. Make a fire for a man and you keep him warm for a day. Set him on fire and you keep him warm for the rest of his life.

5th August 2012, 06:17 PM	#4
Brian-M Daydreamer Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Downunder Posts: 4,276	TV signals don't exactly go "forever". Because the inverse square law applies, the signal is only a quarter as strong at twice the distance. Eventually it reaches the point where the signal cannot be separated from background noise, effectively the signal disappears. Some internet communication travels by satellite, so I suppose that fragments of internet information will be beamed out into space like TV signals and telephone calls.
	__________________ "That is just what you feel, that isn't reality." - hamelekim

5th August 2012, 08:06 PM	#6
steve s Illuminator Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 3,662	Originally Posted by Moon-Spinner Great, now the aliens will REALLY know just how stupid the human race is once they start reading internet blogs!!! They'll love us for our porn. Steve S
steve s Illuminator Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 3,662	__________________ "Nature abhors a moron." -- H. L. Mencken

5th August 2012, 11:12 PM	#8
OnlyTellsTruths Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 5,797	Originally Posted by Brian-M TV signals don't exactly go "forever". Because the inverse square law applies, the signal is only a quarter as strong at twice the distance. Eventually it reaches the point where the signal cannot be separated from background noise, effectively the signal disappears. You know I have to ask... How far away is that for an average power TV signal? (Before it went all digital )
OnlyTellsTruths Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 5,797	__________________ ________________________

5th August 2012, 06:05 PM	#2
psionl0 Illuminator Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: 31°58'S 115°57'E Posts: 4,787	The internet is generally point to point. Where information is routed via satellite, I suppose there might be some "leakage" that goes into outer space. Of course, there is no reason why an internet service can't be provided via shortwave or microwave media. Such signals would go the way of TV signals.

5th August 2012, 06:54 PM	#5
Moon-Spinner Graduate Poster Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Within a star too far to dream of Posts: 1,485	Great, now the aliens will REALLY know just how stupid the human race is once they start reading internet blogs!!! Hopefully, they'll get bored really fast when they come to twitter accounts and just turn off their inter-galactic computers

5th August 2012, 09:29 PM	#7
psionl0 Illuminator Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: 31°58'S 115°57'E Posts: 4,787	Originally Posted by Moon-Spinner Great, now the aliens will REALLY know just how stupid the human race is once they start reading internet blogs!!! Most aliens have yet to receive the first episode of Howdy Doody.

5th August 2012, 11:32 PM	#9
RecoveringYuppy Illuminator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Tucson, AZ Posts: 3,851	Originally Posted by OnlyTellsTruths You know I have to ask... How far away is that for an average power TV signal? (Before it went all digital ) A couple light years. If a civilization were looking directly at us with an Arecibo type received they might notice us from about 25 LY away.
	__________________ REJ (Robert E Jones) posting anonymously under my real name for 30 years. Make a fire for a man and you keep him warm for a day. Set him on fire and you keep him warm for the rest of his life. Last edited by RecoveringYuppy; 5th August 2012 at 11:34 PM.

6th August 2012, 12:30 AM	#10
KA9Q New Blood Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 23	Originally Posted by OnlyTellsTruths How far away is that for an average power TV signal? (Before it went all digital ) Good question. It depends on the station and the frequency band. A paper on SETI written in the 1970s (it might have been a Scientific American article, I'm not sure) said the easiest artificial signals to detect from earth at interstellar distances were the carriers of UHF TV stations. The power levels were extremely high; some transmitters were as high as 5 megawatts effective radiated power. The background noise levels on UHF are also fairly low, though not quite as low as on the microwave bands between 1 and 10 GHz that are ideal for SETI. This detectability applies only to the carriers that convey no information beyond the existence of the artificial transmitter generating it. A carrier occupies no bandwidth so, assuming you can correct any Doppler shift, they can be detected with a very narrow band receiver that excludes noise at other frequencies. (This is the principle behind SETI@Home, which is searching for narrowband carriers only.) The analog video information would be a totally different story; spread out over 4.5 MHz it would be so much harder to detect as to be almost impossible. One of the main reasons that digital TV replaced analog is that it is much more power-efficient. So digital TV transmitters generally transmit much less power than the analog transmitters they replaced, but they're still much more powerful than just about anything else on the air except for space radars and communications links that unlike broadcasting stations tend to be highly directional. The US digital TV standard also contains a "pilot" signal much like an analog carrier, but weaker. But they are probably still among the more easily detectable artificial signals from earth at interstellar distances, if you have big enough receiving antennas. One especially interesting signal from a SETI standpoint is the Air Force Space Surveillance System, formerly known as NAVSPASUR, a VHF CW radar "fence" used to detect and keep track of most objects in low earth orbit. It consists of three extremely high power CW transmitters across the southern US that transmit "fan" beams straight up. When a satellite crosses the fan, it briefly reflects the signal back to a set of receiving antennas on the ground. The CW (continuous wave) signals emitted by these radars are essentially identical to the carriers of analog TV broadcast stations, and that's all they transmit; there's no video information. They operate just above TV channel 13, 24 hours/day, and are probably also among the most easily detected artificial signals from earth at interstellar distances. Because they generate a "fan" beam that's wide in longitude but narrow in latitude, it could be detected only if the beam happens to sweep past the receiver. This it would do once per day, which would give another civilization a pretty good idea of the length of our day.
KA9Q New Blood Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 23

6th August 2012, 12:54 AM	#11
Orphia Nay Penguilicious Spodmaster. Tagger Join Date: May 2005 Location: Ponylandistan Presidential Palace (above the Spods' stables). Posts: 28,405	Cool thread! No other comment - I'm here for the E in JREF.
	__________________ Are you an ex-Truther? Please share your story. ~ The Australasian Skeptics Forum.

6th August 2012, 04:02 AM	#12
sophia8 Master Poster Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: In the dark, dark forest.... Posts: 2,263	Originally Posted by Orphia Nay Cool thread! No other comment - I'm here for the E in JREF. +1!
	__________________ "Nature is floods and famines and earthquakes and viruses and little blue-footed booby babies getting their brains pecked out by their stronger siblings! ....Nature doesn't care about me, or about anybody in particular - nature can be terrifying! Why do they even put words like 'natural' on products like shampoo, like it's automatically a good thing? I mean, sulfuric acid is natural!" -Julia Sweeney

6th August 2012, 10:15 AM	#13
DC dedicated aphilatelist Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Switzerland Posts: 21,674	yeah great, we should send scientific stuff into space to make a better impression, now they see our "Country's next top model" and "Country got talent" stuff and Youtube's fail compilations and make up tips of the week. how embarrassing.
	__________________ AGW is a fact, including the A, face it

6th August 2012, 02:22 PM	#14
CplFerro Graduate Poster Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 1,383	Originally Posted by DC yeah great, we should send scientific stuff into space to make a better impression, now they see our "Country's next top model" and "Country got talent" stuff and Youtube's fail compilations and make up tips of the week. how embarrassing. Dear DC, What do you recommend--broadcast readings of Proust? Cpl Ferro

6th August 2012, 03:20 PM	#15
OnlyTellsTruths Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 5,797	Originally Posted by RecoveringYuppy A couple light years. If a civilization were looking directly at us with an Arecibo type received they might notice us from about 25 LY away. If as you first say 2 LY, that means zero stars are within that range of us right? You're second answer of 25 LY, that is still very few stars in that range right? So the old meme of aliens receiving our TV and Radio is basically impossible? Unless they drive their ship into it....
OnlyTellsTruths Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 5,797	__________________ ________________________

6th August 2012, 04:53 PM	#16
Ladewig Hipster alien Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: not measurable Posts: 16,827	Originally Posted by DC yeah great, we should send scientific stuff into space to make a better impression, now they see our "Country's next top model" and "Country got talent" stuff and Youtube's fail compilations and make up tips of the week. how embarrassing. OMG. I just thought of Sigma Iotia II. That's the "Gangster Planet" in the second season of ST: TOS. The Sigma Iotians obtain a copy of a book describing mobsters in 1920s Chicago and build an entire society based on the book. I shudder tho think what an entire society based on "[insert country] got talent" would be like.
	__________________ Is the JREF message board training wheels for people who hope to one day troll other message boards? It is not that hard to get us to believe you. We are not the major leagues or even the minor leagues. We are Pee-Wee baseball. If you love striking out 10-year-olds, then you'll love trolling our board.

6th August 2012, 05:31 PM	#17
RelativeSpace Critical Thinker Join Date: Aug 2012 Posts: 277	Like others said, TV is barely broadcast into space- and every year our communications become more efficient (thus lower power level, and shorter effective broadcast distance vs. the background noise). I don't really understand SETI- it kind of made sense when they started, but today I don't know why they expect to detect alien civilizations when, for the entire history of our planet, we have only actually been detectable for a few short years when we first learned to broadcast information- and only to very nearby stars. By comparison, our planet has gone pretty quiet today, and will only likely become less detectable in the future. If we start using wireless power transfer (as it looks like is the direction), the leakage will be greater, but it won't carry any real information and it'll just increase the noise further, I think (please correct me if I'm wrong). And that's to say nothing of our digital sampling rates which themselves look like noise (and will more so as time goes on).

6th August 2012, 08:49 PM	#18
rjh01 Gentleman of leisure Tagger Join Date: May 2005 Location: Planet Earth Posts: 17,196	Originally Posted by OnlyTellsTruths If as you first say 2 LY, that means zero stars are within that range of us right? You're second answer of 25 LY, that is still very few stars in that range right? So the old meme of aliens receiving our TV and Radio is basically impossible? Unless they drive their ship into it.... This is even worse than at first it appears. Suppose there is one advanced civilisation every 100 cubic light years. That means that there would be one within 100 light years (maybe, unless that is us). There would be another 8 between 100 - 200 light years, another 18 between 200-300 light years. If civilisations could only be detected within 200 light years this would mean that most of them would be at the edge of the detection zone.
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6th August 2012, 09:56 PM	#19
shemp Timothy, Timothy, where on earth did you go? Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: trapped in a cave-in with Joe Posts: 12,892	Originally Posted by CplFerro Dear DC, What do you recommend--broadcast readings of Proust? Cpl Ferro They'd die from boredom long before they could get here.
	__________________ Church on Sunday, sleep and nod Tryin' to duck the wrath of God Preacher's fillin' us with fright Tryin' to tell us what he thinks is right He really got to be some kind of nut (I can't use it!) Tryin' to make it real - compared to what?

7th August 2012, 06:23 AM	#20
Cuddles Decoy Moderator Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: A magical land full of pink fluffy sheeps and bunnies Posts: 16,591	Originally Posted by CplFerro I wonder, is the Internet in outer space, too? I'm going to have to say no. The thing with TV and radio is that they're one-way broadcasts. A transmitter sends out a signal and anyone capable of receiving it will see exactly the same thing. But that's not how the internet works. The internet is a big network of connections between lots of different nodes constantly interacting with each other. Bits of the information contained within could be broadcast, but you could never broadcast "the internet" because it's the connections that are important, not the information being exchanged by them at any given moment. Edit: As an example, just look at this forum. If you wanted, you could download all the posts made so far and broadcast them into space using a big antenna. Would that mean you've actually broadcast the forum? No. Because the forum is much more than just the posts made so far, the important part is the ability to interact with it and add more. You can't broadcast that into space.
	__________________ I am not a little teapot. Last edited by Cuddles; 7th August 2012 at 06:25 AM.

8th August 2012, 05:23 AM	#21
Horatius NWO Kitty Wrangler Join Date: May 2006 Location: Ottawa, ON, Canada Posts: 21,894	Originally Posted by Cuddles Because the forum is much more than just the posts made so far, the important part is the ability to interact with it and add more. You can't broadcast that into space. Sure you could broadcast it. You'd just have to accept a certain amount of lag.....
	__________________ Obviously, that means cats are indeed evil and that ownership or display of a feline is an overt declaration of one's affiliation with dark forces. - Cl1mh4224rd

8th August 2012, 05:43 AM	#22
Dave Rogers Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through a scribbled morning waving necessary ankles Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: In a world lit only by fire. Posts: 17,894	Originally Posted by shemp They'd die from boredom long before they could get here. Not if we could summarise it in 30 seconds. Dave
	__________________ "We will punish the murderer together. Our punishment will be more generosity, more tolerance and more democracy." - Fabian Stang, Mayor of Oslo SSKCAS, covert member

8th August 2012, 05:57 AM	#23
aggle-rithm Ardent Formulist Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 14,153	Without access to the TCP/IP standard, aliens would have no way to decipher our internet signals. They would be broken into scrambled packets, and often encrypted. Some speculate that this is why we have never been able to detect any alien transmissions...they may be using some form of packet-switching.
	__________________ To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion. Woo's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by aliens.

8th August 2012, 06:06 AM	#24
Cuddles Decoy Moderator Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: A magical land full of pink fluffy sheeps and bunnies Posts: 16,591	Originally Posted by Horatius Sure you could broadcast it. You'd just have to accept a certain amount of lag..... I did think about that, but I'm not sure if timeouts can be defined arbitrarily. If my computer has trouble connecting to something for more than a few seconds, it just gives up and decides that something just isn't there. Is it possible to set it up so it will wait for a response indefinitely, or are there forced limits somewhere so that something with a latency measured in years just won't ever be able to connect?
	__________________ I am not a little teapot.

8th August 2012, 06:44 AM	#25
P.J. Denyer Graduate Poster Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 1,141	Originally Posted by Ladewig OMG. I just thought of Sigma Iotia II. That's the "Gangster Planet" in the second season of ST: TOS. The Sigma Iotians obtain a copy of a book describing mobsters in 1920s Chicago and build an entire society based on the book. I shudder tho think what an entire society based on "[insert country] got talent" would be like. I'd be more concerned about what it sounded like

8th August 2012, 07:59 AM	#26
Horatius NWO Kitty Wrangler Join Date: May 2006 Location: Ottawa, ON, Canada Posts: 21,894	Originally Posted by Cuddles I did think about that, but I'm not sure if timeouts can be defined arbitrarily. If my computer has trouble connecting to something for more than a few seconds, it just gives up and decides that something just isn't there. Is it possible to set it up so it will wait for a response indefinitely, or are there forced limits somewhere so that something with a latency measured in years just won't ever be able to connect? I don't see why it wouldn't be possible. Such things are simply a matter of programming, surely? If you expected a minimum of 8 years lag time, you could just set that up as the standard.
	__________________ Obviously, that means cats are indeed evil and that ownership or display of a feline is an overt declaration of one's affiliation with dark forces. - Cl1mh4224rd

8th August 2012, 09:40 AM	#27
WildCat NWO Master Conspirator Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Albany Park, Chicago Posts: 49,098	I'm certain some posters on this very forum are posting from outer space.