stekas@houxy.UUCP (10/26/83)
Having tackled the problems of nuclear waste, violations of the
second law, changing speeds of light, and creation, I think that
net.physics is ready for one of the great problems of physics,
the dreaded "I Love Lucy" problem. Briefly, here is the problem -
It is widely held that the only records of our culture
certain to survive forever are the T.V. and radio
broadcasts riding on EM waves which travel ever deeper
into space.
But is this really true? Will far off civilizations really
be watching the Lucy show long after the red giant phase of
the sun has consumed the Earth? What do you think?
Acclaim and undying gratitude will go to whoever provides the most
elegant quantitative treatment of the problem. (Posting containing
more than 1200 lines of equations will immediately fail the elegance
criterion.)
Enjoy,
Jimwolit@rabbit.UUCP (10/27/83)
Continuing the previous response... So, as the TV signal expands through space, it loses strength, and eventually becomes indistinguishable from the background noise. Actually, since energy is never destroyed, what really happens is that it adds (a very small amount) to the background noise -- warming it up from 2.3 degrees K (or whatever) to 2.30001 (or, in the case of "The A Team," to 2.4).... Hey, maybe Penzias and Wilson were wrong: Maybe it's not the remnants of the Big Bang we're seeing, but the afterglow of Alpha Centauri's Big Show, or Rigel XII's Star Trek re-runs! [My favorite treatment of the whole detection-of-extraterrestrial-intelligence field was in a 1959 Walt Kelly cartoon, in which a swamp friend of Pogo (I forget his name; it's been a long time) says to him, "I been readin' bout how maybe they is planets peopled by folks with AD-vanced brains." In the second frame, he continues, "On the other hand, maybe WE got the most brains... maybe OUR intellects is the universe's most AD-vanced." He concludes, "Either way, it's a mighty soberin' thought."] Jan Wolitzky, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
speaker@umcp-cs.UUCP (11/05/83)
I doubt "I Love Lucy" will make it very far out. There's all sorts of muck that the radio waves have to plow their way through to get to the stars... like energetic hydrogen clouds and just sh_t-loads of particles. Maybe at the 21 cm line... but naw.. not "I Love Lucy". -- - Speaker-To-Stuffed-Animals speaker@umcp-cs speaker.umcp-cs@CSnet-Relay