Signaling the universe

Well, fair enough:

Who wouldn't want the most expensive cosmic fireworks show possible:

shooting up giant flares into space!

I say we do it on the 4th of July!

I mean sure: a good ol' fashioned giant chemical flare would be a fun mission. Who wouldn't want to see that.

The US military did something vaguely like that we they detonated a nuclear bomb in space, over the Pacific and let's just say it put on one heck of a light show for Hawaii!


Anyways, I didn't read the article regarding the flare brightness and intensity levels we're talking about here with your flare idea, and whether or not the Earthlings on the night side would need eye protection during this event!

But in reality flares would still require omni-directionality both in time and space, on the part of the aliens:

They'd have to be zoomed, focused and imaging onto planet Earth and sol, with some razor sharp precision most likely, and they'd have to be looking at PRECISELY the right moment of time.

I guess if they had a series of all-sky constant surveys going on, then they might catch your flare.

But flares are a dime a dozen in space. I mean our sun, which is a gentle calm beast, will frequently casually fling out several planet Earths worth of plasma and hot gas with all kinds of chemical signatures, just in one big flare.

Other stars way more...

So their all sky surveys would be picking up flares flickering left and right all over the place, all across the galaxy.

Not to mention large meteor impacts into atmosphere's of planets sending out flare like signatures... and all kinds of other dramatic events in space that would be blipping constantly on their all-sky survey.


BUT with lasers...

frickin lasers beams (who wouldn't like laser beams either!?)...

Now lasers in the night sky of a galaxy are quite rare. Extremely rare.

Nevertheless, believe it or not lasers do happen naturally sometimes in space, when for example photons in a gas cloud will go into a bouncing resonance phase, then break through the cloud on one side, with amplified energy, effectively emerging as a giant laser!

Or sometimes electron cyclotron masers (which are lasers in the microwave wavelength: so essentially microwave lasers!) will be generated by intense magnetic fields.

But nevertheless, naturally occurring lasers in space, in the optical range, are extremely rare as compared to flares.


And most of all: a pulsing optical laser... I mean that's just IMMEDIATELY obvious as an artificial signal.

And lasers certainly get people's attention!

Just to give you an example of how visible and attention getting lasers can be:

For example, the Breakthrough Starshot program says that even a relatively "low powered" tiny LED laser on a micro-tiny-probe at the distance of Alpha Centauri would be "visible" from Earth!

Provided of course you're looking with a VERY good and large telescope, but still visible/detectable in the optical range. And that's just a tiny little LED laser on a circuit board.

Plus laser beams disperse over distance, giving you some wider coverage, as you pulse the sky.


So ya... all in all, I think lasers, actually would involve less omni-directionality in time and space, in the sense that you can have several of them around the Earth.

Each laser cannon for example, would scan the night sky, aiming at a star, pulsing, then re-aiming at another star, pulsing.

And again you'd have multiple laser banks and laser cannons doing that, firing frickin lasers beams all over the place and galaxy!

So ya, because you would have multiple lasers doing it each night, constantly night after night, year after year, decade after decade, the chances of someone else seeing a laser pulse would jump many fold, as opposed to chemical flares.


Anyways... in the end...

I guess both giant-flare-fireworks in space, and lasers beams in space, are BOTH pretty awesome!

I wouldn't say no to watching either show!

/r/space Thread Parent