Craig Mayhew’s Blog

TV and Radio signals from Earth have now traveled about 60 Light years. Luckily, even if the TV/Radio signals were intercepted by aliens, the signals would be very weak and jumbled together. It does give away our position to any aliens that are within the 60 light year range. There are over 2000 stars within a 60 light year radius and by 2050 our TV/Radio signals will have traveled 100 light years and reached approximately 170000 stars.

The most famous directional attempt to contact alien species is the Arecibo message. However, this won’t arrive for over 20,000 years.

This handy table can be found on the wiki page for active SETI and shows when we might expect aliens to notice us. Ofcourse they would still have to get here…

Name	Designation	Constellation	Date sent	Arrival date	Message
Gliese 581	HIP 74995	Libra	2008-10-09October 9, 2008	20292029	A Message From Earth
Polaris	HIP 11767	Ursa Minor	2008-10-09February 4, 2008	20292439	Across the Universe
Gliese 581	HIP 74995	Libra	2008-10-09August 28, 2009	20302030	Hello From Earth
	HIP 4872	Cassiopeia	2003-07-06July 6, 2003	2036-04April 2036	Cosmic Call 2
	HD 245409	Orion	2003-07-06July 6, 2003	2040-08August 2040	Cosmic Call 2
55 Cnc	HD 75732	Cancer	2003-07-06July 6, 2003	2044-05May 2044	Cosmic Call 2
	HD 10307	Andromeda	2003-07-06July 6, 2003	2044-09September 2044	Cosmic Call 2
47 UMa	HD 95128	Ursa Major	2001-09-03September 3, 2001	2047-07July 2047	Teen Age Message
47 UMa	HD 95128	Ursa Major	2003-07-06July 6, 2003	2049-05May 2049	Cosmic Call 2
Gl 777	HD 190360	Cygnus	1999-07-01July 1, 1999	2051-04April 2051	Cosmic Call 1
15 Sge	HD 190406	Sagitta	1999-06-30June 30, 1999	2057-02February 2057	Cosmic Call 1
	HD 76151	Hydra	2001-09-04September 4, 2001	2057-05May 2057	Teen Age Message
37 Gem	HD 50692	Gemini	2001-09-03September 3, 2001	2057-12December 2057	Teen Age Message
	HD 193664	Draco	2001-09-04September 4, 2001	2059-01January 2059	Teen Age Message
	HD 126053	Virgo	2001-09-03September 3, 2001	2059-12January 2059	Teen Age Message
	HD 178428	Sagitta	1999-06-30June 30, 1999	2067-10October 2067	Cosmic Call 1
16 Cyg A	HD 186408	Cygnus	1999-05-24May 24, 1999	2069-11November 2069	Cosmic Call 1
	HD 197076	Delphinus	2000-08-29August 29, 2001	2070-02February 2070	Teen Age Message
Messier 13	NGC 6205	Hercules	1974-11-16November 16, 1974	approx. 25974	Arecibo Message

I personally take the stance that active SETI is completely reckless and anyone doing this is a danger to the entire human race. If anything, we should be trying to mask our presence in the universe. Whatever alien intelligence we come across may well be hostile (e.g. a berserker probe). The technology that they posses is also likely to be far more advanced than that of our own. Our solar system has been about for billions of years and our galaxy for much longer. There has been plenty of time for alien intelligence to grow exponenitially beyond anything we can imagine – especially if Kurzweil’s predictions are anything to go by.

Finally, if I simply can’t win the arguement that Active SETI is a tremendous gamble then active SETI should be done from a neutral location, not our home planet…

I love thinking up hypothetical sceneios loosely or seriously based on reality, this particular one is about the steady automation of the jobs market and how this will effect those that drive for a living.

Automation

Taxi drivers could be facing automation in the not too distant future. With the latest driving automation technology your job may be gone sooner than you think. The holy grail of people facing a daily commute by road is a fully autonamous car to drive them there. This would suddenly free up your commute time in the same way train travellers can read or sleep while commuting. Once this hits the mass market, owners of taxi companies will likely trial automated taxis and after finding that they reduce their costs and therefore can offer cheaper fares, they will switch their entire taxi force. And ofcourse automated taxis can run 24 hours a day too. I’m sure that each car manufacturer will provide a permenant internet connection for the car so that it can communicate with other cars and avoid traffic problems that have been detected ahead.

Lorry drivers would face the same problem, lorrys that can go 24 hours a day and not be forced to stick to working hour limits by the EU would be very tempting.

Train drivers, have already been reminded by Borris Johnson that their jobs are being automated and possibly more so now in response to the recent London Tube strikes.

Pilots may actually be safe for the time being as the pilot is not a very expensive part of the whole process. Fuel costs and landing fees are a much bigger concern. Also the number of automated planes would be much much lower than the number of automated cars, which might slow the pace to mass production.

New job creation

New jobs might be created – but these will be skilled jobs – which you can’t easily jump into without knowledge and experience. Fixing and repairing an automated taxi is likely going to be something that can be done after training – but not something a taxi driver could just walk into. So although new jobs will be created – unless you have looked ahead and trained in repairing and maintaining automated taxis while in full time employment as a taxi driver your going to be stuck with menial and low pay work.

The people push back

In the same way that groups attacked and destroyed many of Britain’s speed cameras, so might it happen again to autmoated technologies. When change is sudden and unexpected people get scared. As a knee jerk reaction we might get anti automation groups forming – and people boycotting companies that use automation. We will eventually have some kind of equilbrium and some of the manual jobs are maintained by those that refuse to use the new automated work force.

Credits:
I robot car by Eirik Newth, original available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29904699@N00/6995583

Yeaa! NASA has put together a mission to fly a space probe into the atmosphere of the sun in 2022. Well, it will actually be orbiting the sun and so won’t just go hurtling into it. It will orbit at over 200km/s at a distance of 7 million km from the sun. It’s protection will be in the form of a heat shield that will prevent the 2000 degree heat from damaging the prob.

Time dilation over a 100 year period at 200km/s, you gain:

702 seconds.

You may also have noticed this is twice as close as I thought possible in my previous post on time dilation.

Sources:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/02sep_spp/
http://solarprobe.jhuapl.edu/funFacts.php

Recently the meme of the coming intelligence singularity is becoming more and more prevalent. Futurists are making accurate predictions based on patterns/rules in increased computing power and increased computing capacity. They are finding that the speed of improvement is increasing which may ultimately lead to a technological singularity where knowledge is being acquired and discovered at an ever increasing pace.

This has pushed my mind into a philosophical thought pattern. Is the advancement of technology predictably the same for all intelligent civilisations? If we had two tribes on either side of the planet 100 thousand years ago, would they have both have developed clubs, sharp flint, fire, language etc in roughly the same order? Would the discovery of fire predictably lead to cooked food in both tribes? On a larger scale, if we had a second Earth like planet somewhere in the universe would they be making (or have made) the same general discoveries? Once you get stuck into a loop of ever increasing technological discovery can you ever escape and does it always lead to a predictable end?

Perhaps the predictable end is the answer to the question “Where are they?” with one of several answers.

1) They are gone/dead.
2) They are not interested in such an infant civilisation.
3) They don’t know we are here.

I’m mostly worried about option 1.

This follows on from my first article about harnessing time dilation. If you haven’t read my first article then I highly recommend you do before reading this one. I’ve included a spreadsheet so you can do these calculations yourself (available here). I’ve also improved the calculations accuracy and taken into account that there are not exactly 365 days in a year but instead 365.24219 days in a year. So this means the difference in seconds is slightly higher (more time!).

Time Dilation at the Earth’s equator:
Living on the equator means that due to the Earths spin you get an additional 465.1 m/s of velocity vs sitting on the pole (This does not take into account any wobble on the Earth’s axis). Compared to anyone sitting at the poles you would be 0.000038 seconds younger for each year that passes.

Over a 100 year life time: 3.8 milliseconds

Passenger Aircraft:
Flying in a plane can get you speeds of up to 917 m/s when in one of the latest Boeing 747s. Unfortunately that speed is not constant as it takes time to take off and get to the cruising speed. At 917 m/s if you cruise for 10 hours, you would be 0.168 microseconds younger than if you stayed on the ground. If you somehow managed to get a plane to fly non stop (refuel in the air?) then over a 1 year period you would be 0.0001476 seconds younger compared to if you were left on the ground.

Over a 100 year life time: 14.76 milliseconds

If we also take into account that you are flying east around the equator then we get 917 m/s from the plane and 465.1 m/s of velocity from the rotating Earth. At 1382.1 m/s you would gain 0.000335133072 seconds vs you sitting at one of the poles.

Over a 100 year life time: 33.54 milliseconds

Live on The International Space Station:
The ISS orbits the earth at 7706.6 m/s relative to the Earth’s center. If you had the money (or some serious negotiating skills) and managed to live on board the ISS each year you would be 0.0104198349888 seconds younger than if you had stayed on the north pole.

Over a 100 year life time: 1.043 seconds

Live on Mercury:
The planet Mercury orbits the sun at a fast paced 47.87 km/s. Although it would not be possible to live anywhere except on the poles due to high temperatures. Taking into account that the Earth is orbiting the Sun at 29.78km/s. At this speed (18.09 km/s) you would be 0.057 seconds younger per year than if you stayed back on Earth.

Over a 100 year life time: 5.75 seconds

If you were then able to get a satellite such as the ISS to be built around Mercury (obviously with some very effective heat/radiation shielding) You could gain an additional 6km/s in orbital speed giving you a difference of 24.09km/s compare to Earth.

Over a 100 year life time: 10.19 seconds

Hypothetical Limit to Orbital Velocity:
To hypothetically test the limitations of time dilation for an object in orbit around the sun we could create an artificial satellite with advanced heat shielding to allow us to get closer than mercury. We are limited by the fact that anything closer than 9 million km to the sun would not be in a stable orbit and would fall into the sun. We are also limited by the temperature being in excess of 1000 kelvin at 14 million km from the sun. So let’s go for 15 million km (0.1 AU) and hope our heat shielding holds out! At this distance we will get an orbital velocity of 91.96 km/s. With a difference of 62.18 km/s from Earth.

Over a 100 year life time: 67.88 seconds

Workings, Assumptions, Limitations:
Seconds in a year: 31556926 (taking into account leap years, seconds)
Speed of Light: 299792458 m/s
Velocity may be more complicated for objects orbiting planets. (Any input from someone in the field would be much appreciated)

This one is a bit of a heavy thought experiment I’ve been thinking about for some time now. I’ve used the Lorentz factor to work out the time dilation difference in seconds for certain speeds. I first started out asking what effect time dilation has when we travel by airplane or if we live on the equator, but it quickly grew from there …

Time Dilation at the Earth’s equator:
Living on the equator means that due to the Earths spin you get an additional 465.1 m/s of velocity vs sitting on the pole (This does not take into account any wobble on the Earth’s axis). Compared to anyone sitting at the poles you would be 0.00004 seconds younger for each year that passes.

Over a 100 year life time: 4 milliseconds

Passenger Aircraft:
Flying in a plane can get you speeds of up to 917 m/s when in one of the latest Boeing 747s. Unfortunately that speed is not constant as it takes time to take off and get to the cruising speed. At 917 m/s if you cruise for 10 hours, you would be 0.168 microseconds younger than if you stayed on the ground. If you somehow managed to get a plane to fly non stop (refuel in the air?) then over a 1 year period you would be 0.0001475 seconds younger compared to if you were left on the ground.

Over a 100 year life time: 14.75 milliseconds

If we also take into account that you are flying east around the equator then we get 917 m/s from the plane and 465.1 m/s of velocity from the rotating Earth. At 1382.1 m/s you would gain 0.000335133072 seconds vs you sitting at one of the poles.

Over a 100 year life time: 33.51 milliseconds

Live on The International Space Station:
The ISS orbits the earth at 7706.6 m/s relative to the Earth’s center. If you had the money (or some serious negotiating skills) and managed to live on board the ISS each year you would be 0.0104198349888 seconds younger than if you had stayed on the north pole.

Over a 100 year life time: 1.04 seconds

Live on Mercury:
The planet Mercury orbits the sun at a fast paced 47.87 km/s. After subtracting Earth’s velocity of 29.78km per second we have a speed difference of 18.09km per second. Although it would not be possible to live anywhere except on the poles due to high temperatures. At this speed you would be 0.057 seconds younger per year than if you stayed back on Earth.

Over a 100 year life time: 5.74 seconds

If you were then able to get a satellite such as the ISS to be built around Mercury (obviously with some very effective heat/radiation shielding) You could gain an additional 6km/s in orbital speed giving you a total of 53.87km/s and a difference of 24.09km per second compared to Earth.

Over a 100 year life time: 10.18 seconds

Please see Harnessing Time Dilation part 2 for improvements to this article and taking my thought experiment even further.

Workings, Assumptions, Limitations:
Seconds in a year: 60*60*24*365 = 31536000
Seconds in 100 years: 60*60*24*365*100 = 3153600000
Velocity may be more complicated for objects orbiting planets. (Any input from someone in the field would be much appreciated)