Sky at Night

[Kropster]

You would need a pretty sensitive receiver to read the signal from a fag packet sized probe with a tiny transmitter 4 light years away in close proximity to a star sized transmitter. Signal lost in noise.

Just not do-able really.

[Pippy]

51 minutes ago, Kropster said:

You would need a pretty sensitive receiver to read the signal from a fag packet sized probe with a tiny transmitter 4 light years away in close proximity to a star sized transmitter. Signal lost in noise.

Just not do-able really.

Trouble is the idea appears to have been thought up by two none electronics/RF designers/engineers.

Their only real option would be to have a higher powered relay near the system, or maybe a continuous stream of little probes between here and the alpha system acting like a mesh/relay network.

But even that would require antennas with directional gain and suitable tx powers and the best receivers going along with advanced data error correction etc etc.

Although their idea is for each little probe to have a 1 watt LED laser for photon directional propulsion. I guess they would double up as a laser comms system, which would still require a mesh network between the two star systems.

[Ouroboros]

I think this is a very exciting idea but may not be the best way to obtain data on the closer exoplanets.  The money might be better spent on projects like the Darwin astronomical interferometer - arrays of telescopes in space capable of imaging exoplanets and obtaining information on their atmospheres. 

I also feel the idea of sending a probe is a very 20th century solution. One imagines that in the next few decades progress in nanotechnology and biotechnology might enable us to send even smaller  nanobots capable of mining local resources in the distant star system and self assembling the necessary probes to explore any planets they find.  Such bots would have to have a degree of autonomy and artificial intelligence.  Capable of building anything they need, instructions could be sent at light speed to construct new instruments as scientific developments occur here on Earth. 

[Kropster]

4 hours ago, Ouroboros said:

I think this is a very exciting idea but may not be the best way to obtain data on the closer exoplanets.  The money might be better spent on projects like the Darwin astronomical interferometer - arrays of telescopes in space capable of imaging exoplanets and obtaining information on their atmospheres. 

I also feel the idea of sending a probe is a very 20th century solution. One imagines that in the next few decades progress in nanotechnology and biotechnology might enable us to send even smaller  nanobots capable of mining local resources in the distant star system and self assembling the necessary probes to explore any planets they find.  Such bots would have to have a degree of autonomy and artificial intelligence.  Capable of building anything they need, instructions could be sent at light speed to construct new instruments as scientific developments occur here on Earth. 

More than a few decades perhaps. More like centuries.

We landed on the Moon nearly five decades ago and don't seem to have made enormous strides since.

[Ouroboros]

13 minutes ago, Kropster said:

More than a few decades perhaps. More like centuries.

We landed on the Moon nearly five decades ago and don't seem to have made enormous strides since.

Possibly. It's always difficult to predict future progress in technology.  Nevertheless I think it is reasonable to expect certain predictions will come about when they're based on what we currently know in fields like bio & nanotechnology. I'd bet on decades rather than centuries given the rapid rate of progress in these fields. 

What is impossible to predict in technology are developments arising from knowledge we don't know we don't know, as Donald Rumsfeld put it.

[Kropster]

On 16/09/2016 at 13:22, Ouroboros said:

Possibly. It's always difficult to predict future progress in technology.  Nevertheless I think it is reasonable to expect certain predictions will come about when they're based on what we currently know in fields like bio & nanotechnology. I'd bet on decades rather than centuries given the rapid rate of progress in these fields. 

What is impossible to predict in technology are developments arising from knowledge we don't know we don't know, as Donald Rumsfeld put it.

Indeed, perhaps there will be rapid strides, but I remember all the ho-ha around biotechnology a few years back.

It did make progress but not at the explosive rate forecast at the time.

Technology seems to make rapid strides and then settle down to a more realistic rate of progress.

I fondly recall the predictions of the leisure revolution arising from robots and automation, which were all the rage. Nobody would have to go out to work, they said!

Pinches of salt all round required.