If extraterrestrial intelligent life exists somewhere in our Galaxy, then laser technologies already developed on Earth can be adapted to create a kind of beacon that will attract the attention of extraterrestrial astronomers located up to 20,000 light-years from us.
In this paper, which its author, James Clark (James Clark) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, calls the feasibility study, it is shown that if the laser is focused from 1 to 2 megawatts with a powerful telescope with a diameter of 30 to 45 meters and directed focused in this way into outer space, the result will be a stream of infrared radiation powerful enough to stand out against the background of infrared radiation from the sun.
Such a signal can be detected by astronomers of hypothetical extraterrestrial civilizations, conducting a cursory view of the sky in our part of the Milky Way – especially those astronomers who are in nearby star systems such as Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Earth, or the TRAPPIST-1 system, the star lying at a distance of 40 light years, around which seven exoplanets orbit, three of which are potentially inhabited. If this signal is seen from these nearby systems, then the same laser can be used to transmit a short message in the form of pulses similar to Morse code.
If we can successfully establish first contact and begin to communicate, we can send a message at a speed of several hundred bits per second, which will reach the addressee in just a few years.
-Clark, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Aeronautics and Astronautics Department
According to Clarke, the lasers required for this project are already available, and telescopes with the minimum diameter required for effective focusing of the laser are currently being built, for example, the giant Magellan telescope with a diameter of 24 meters and the European Extremely large telescope being built in Chile. diameter of 39 meters.
Lasers will help other civilizations know about our existence
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