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[Scoops Novel]

https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.11483

https://www.baen.com/galactic_internet

"Maccone has also calculated the gravity lensing regions of other nearby stars and examined the requirements for forming similar radio bridges between them: Sun-Barnard Star, Sun-Sirius, and, fantastically enough, Sun-Andromeda Galaxy! In all cases, the power requirements are significantly less than one would expect from traditional radio strength-over-large-distance losses and would not have the stringent pointing requirements..."

"A spacecraft stationed approximately 51 billion miles on the far side of Alpha Centauri in direct line with both stars and a radio at our Gravity Lens region should be able to communicate with each other using a few tens of watts. (Compare this to the billions or trillions of watts that some estimate will be required for conventional interstellar radio communications.)"

"the gravitational lens of the Sun is a well-known astrophysical phenomenon predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity. It implies that, if we can send a probe along any radial direction away from the Sun up to the minimal distance of 550 AU and beyond, the Sun's mass will act as a huge magnifying lens"

"create the future interstellar radio links between the solar system and any future interstellar probe by utilizing the gravitational lens of the Sun as a huge antenna."

550 AU. 4 times the distance the Voyager probe is from us now.

However;

Breakthrough Starshot, a project based on shooting tiny probes equipped with laser sails (with a massive laser), is feasibly thought to make it all the way to Alpha Centauri within 22 years. 6 years per light year. By contrast, we only have to do 0.008 light years.

I dnn't have to rattle on about all the technological threats we face in the next 100 years.

If it's true, then we could crib the perfect technological development path from a unknown number of worlds and tailor it to our species. Better yet, we could exchange all our current technological problems, for a new set of probably more fun, technological problems.

FTL isn't real? Well that wouldn't be a problem anymore. We could download the galaxy and recreate it right here. Maybe in a Dyson Sphere, after we find the instructions.

One catch, and a question;

Subterfuge and malware isn't entirely out of the question. It's in everyones best interests to share thier technology, to avoid the risks of developing it blind. The most trustworthy information sharers and critics would naturally be the most developed, and take the position of moderator. But... we are just talking radio signals here. There's no guarantee we don't just connect to a local "intranet" yet to find the main hub, or get the edited version from a scheming species. And space trolls. Can't forget about space trolls. Besides, when is moderation ever perfect?

On the plus side, if you're going to fuck around, it will probably be people at our technological level, or what's the point.

The question is, what about AI though. Here's my suspicion (the mother of reaches).

• Patterns repeat.
• This is basically the mind of the galaxy. The galaxy is often compared to a brain.
• Textbook fear of an AI; uses all resources in the galaxy to figure out a problem. Takes over your brain. Like a idea.
• Observation: the galaxy is not full of AI.
• Thoughts and ideas are managed by brains. Notably, ideas do not render thoughts (that would be us) irrelevant.
• Maybe this all shakes out somehow.

The fact remains, if you believe the primary threat long-term to humanity is AI, a Galactic Internet is the best resource to find someone who did it right (or rendered it irrelevant). After all, what manages thoughts and ideas? The mind.

[None]

There is no galactic internet, it's not something we're just going to tap into and download the galaxy from. That's not how any of this works.

Also, you can't download the galaxy. It's not rendered in bits and we don't have a galaxy's worth of storage space to keep it on.

Also, it wouldn't generate AI, that's not how that works either.

[Egan_BW]

No, I think that what novel is pointing to here is calling the 'galactic community' in order to ask them for a solution to the AI 'problem'.

[None]

There's too many hypothetical leaps of logic and technological requirements for that to be remotely feasible, like similar satellites beaming data around the rest of the galaxy in a format that's legible to us or modern computation, and even that's absolutely meaningless because radio waves still travel at the speed of light and it's still going to take the what, 3.4 years to get a signal from Alpha Centauri back to us?

We're looking at an eleven year time window for a basic syn/ack/synack TCP handshake, and seven just to tell a hypothetical satellite to send whatever data back to us.

[Telgin]

Just a random comment here, but even if there is a galactic community internet, we figure out how to connect to it and somehow understand its contents, we're going to be able to build Skynet long, long before any of that comes to pass.  Never mind doing it before we could make something like a Dyson sphere.  Even if we found instructions for something like that just lying around, we wouldn't have the industrial capability to build it for an unfathomable amount of time.

[Scoops Novel]

There's too many hypothetical leaps of logic and technological requirements for that to be remotely feasible, like similar satellites beaming data around the rest of the galaxy in a format that's legible to us or modern computation, and even that's absolutely meaningless because radio waves still travel at the speed of light and it's still going to take the what, 3.4 years to get a signal from Alpha Centauri back to us?

We're looking at an eleven year time window for a basic syn/ack/synack TCP handshake, and seven just to tell a hypothetical satellite to send whatever data back to us.

It's all about the initial download. If you can recieve from 550 AU's (not light years) out, people will be happy enough to wait before we get chatty back. They could very well send us the technology to spit out a alien or robot representative who gives us the standard back and forth.

Even if we found instructions for something like that just lying around, we wouldn't have the industrial capability to build it for an unfathomable amount of time.

If they send us the specs for a nanobot that can just roll up a few oort cloud rocks and spit it out, who knows? Isn't the logic behind the Fermi Paradox that self-replicating machines should be possible for an advanced civilization?

[EuchreJack]

Pretty sure any civilization that wants to help us out will expect us to give up that thing we don't know we have that we need to advance further along the tech tree.

"Oh, yes, we can get you all the schematics you need, just sign off your mineral rights to Titan.  Oh, you're not even on Titan yet, so no problem right?"
And then we buy whatever Titan had that we needed for the next 2000 years...

[None]

There is no initial download, because nothing knows to relay data to a teeny tiny satellite which will relay data in any meaningful way back home. Also, 550 AU is the hypothetical position of a laser relay satellite using lensing from our star. It'd take 4.3 years for an observer from Alpha Centauri to even SEE the satellite in position, and then another 4.3 years for any signal sent from it to reach the satellite, and then yes, the 550 AU/76 hours to reach earth. Electromagnetic signals don't just 'appear' at your hypothetical satellite.

 And that's just the nearest star and the assumption that something lives there, or anywhere nearby. Given we haven't caught intelligible radio signals from any nearby star, they don't. A laser satellite won't change that.

And then they need to send it in a way that that the probe can understand, and then we have to receive it in a format that makes sense, entirely free of noise and data corruption, at a usable rate (hello, latency).

[Scoops Novel]

"In all cases, the power requirements are significantly less than one would expect from traditional radio strength-over-large-distance losses and would not have the stringent pointing requirements..."

It seems like it's no biggie.

You're also assuming there isn't a constant transmission. GALAXY. All you need for more distant communication is some people motivated enough to use "omnidirectional broadcast antennae", which if you're a major league civ is well within reason.

They've had god knows how long to figure out whaatever the most rational trasmission method is. Probably just need to use the universal language; maths; and we could figure it out.

[None]

Great, now we'll just hear cosmic background radiation, but, like, lensed a million times. You don't pick a message out of a GALAXY of stars screaming garbage by way of fusion.

[Telgin]

In addition to that, if aliens are anything like us then if there was somehow a galactic internet that worked despite speed of light delays, 99% of the data being transmitted is pointless social media messages.  Not really useful.

Aliens aren't likely to be randomly beaming around blueprints for advanced technology, much less in a format we can understand, just for fun.

[EuchreJack]

Thought experiment: Could you connect to the internet in the woods without any electronic devices? 

It is clearly there, in many parts of the World.  But you still need to know how, and have the equipment, to connect. Er, I guess not - EDIT EJ

[None]

No, because the internet isn't the waves passing through the air, it's the aggregation of a million devices supported by a supercomputer spine, countless miles of cabling, and a consensus on how data is cached, transmitted, requested, and received. It's much closer to say the internet is your device's association and consensus to as many other similarly associated devices.

[EuchreJack]

Good point, I edited my post.

[Telgin]

That's also tangentially relevant though.  It's possible that advanced societies use something other than radio transmissions, like modulated axion beams or something.  If that's the case we won't even know anyone is out there talking until we develop that technology ourselves.  And in the case of axions specifically it's possible that only very precisely aimed communications is even possible, so we're not going to be picking up alien transmissions anyway except by blind luck.