The Lighthouse Theory :: the catalyst
Project: The Voyager update project

Our theory rests in the hopes of providing a catalyst that could potentially draw the interest of any intelligent life in the universe to our galaxy, our solar system, our sun, and yes…our earth.

The question, of course, then lies in what exactly that catalyst will be.

One major factor we know is Time.

We are admitting that current technologies, no matter how advanced, will severely limit our ability to send physical objects to distant bodies in space in any relevant amount of time.

The roughest estimate of how many stars there are in the universe is 10 to the 24th, and calculating an estimate of how many planets there are…huge.

But…to date, 267 extrasolar planets have been discovered.

We keep thinking about earth. But our technology today doesn’t even allow us to be able to see other planets outside of our solar system (we just have the ability to calculate their existence). What we can see is stars. So we might need to stop thinking about our Earth per-say and actually about our star—the Sun.

Which brings us back to our Lighthouse Theory: providing a catalyst that could potentially draw the interest of any intelligent life in the universe to our earth.

Whether we develop a concept to “mark” the earth, sun, or solar system doesn’t matter at this point—it’s really about the exploration of potential ways to “mark,” almost like tagging graffiti.

This led to the riff of: “if we can somehow ‘tag’ the earth, what if we can tag some other objects in close proximity…like, shall we say comets?”

Said comets then hypothetically carry our “tag” or “mark” to said intelligent extraterrestrial life, they put two and two together…and so on, and so forth.

This adds a new part to our present theory: providing a catalyst that could potentially draw the interest of any intelligent life in the universe to our earth…

…and then supplementing it with some form of redundant communication (i.e. tagged comets).

Wed, Jan 30, 2008  Permanent link

Sent to project: The Voyager update project