Trade mission.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on SpringerLink
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Follow Futures on Facebook at: http://go.nature.com/mtoodm
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Liu, K., Li, S. To the stars. Nature 470, 134 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/470134a
Published:
Issue date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/470134a
John McCarthy
Because radio is transmitted normally at thousands or millions of bits/second and the turn/around
time for messages is in the tens of years, messages are likely to be billions or trillions of words total
length. They will be comprehensible in short segments containing what we may call Freudenthal
sequences designed to establish a language and described in
Freudenthal, Hans (1960). Lincos: Design of a Language for cosmic Intercourse. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
They may as well include complete libraries of our civilization.
John McCarthy
Stanford University
katherine hans von rotes schil
Interesting. However the authors should also conceive of an efficient mode of space travel as was done in Contact by Dr Carl Sagan.
Edwin Horlings
The most obvious thing to send them is a technical diagram (using symbolic language) for building a radio and sending a message in our direction. If we ever receive anything — and that will take at least 40 years — we know that there is intelligent life. Good thing about a diagram is that it should weigh next to nothing!
You can also send a device that films the planet from out of space and on the ground and transmits the video back in the direction of earth, along with telemetry data on the atmosphere. Probably a bit more bulky, but when you present scientists with a challenge (build a thing that can do this and doesn't weight more than 20 pounds) they should be able to come up with something.