Terry Blanton wrote: > Either there are Watchers or we're damned lucky bugs. 😎 Ah... the Watchers. Here is a new twist.
The concept of a "Watcher" as a base level intergalactic probe incorporating advance AI is fascinating. After all, there is little doubt that the expected cost of exploring other planetary systems will be so excessive as to limit the possibility of travel over these distances to small unmanned spacecraft. We can only guess at the features of such a probe by thinking about what we will be able to do some time in the near future - say 2024 when LENR is in full production. Cough, cough. As future builders of such a probe, we have already picked out local candidate planets to visit and it is likely that we will provide advanced AI capability which will store and process all the knowledge of humanity in a device weighing a few kilos - to send there. So, what do you add into the capabilities to make it more useful? Not much, when the cost to send the craft to any target planet near us is maybe $10-100 billion per kilo. Given the cost and weight constraints - the major problem becomes this - how does the AI communicate not only with the sender, once it arrives at a populated planet and finds intelligent life, but with the locals? The obvious answer for this capability is a laser - possibly a laser with a unique wavelength. However communicating with the locals is a different story since they will be less advanced, at least they will be at first. Think about the opening scene of 2001 A Space Odyssey. But we do not need no stinkin' monolith, do we? The chances are such that the initial probe we send out will weigh in at a few kilos and cannot accommodate every auxiliary device which is possible (in SciFi fantasy of course they even send biological life - what a waste of funds). Basically a cost effective probe will send messages back to the source via a directed laser bean and possibly intervene with the locals using the same device - to the extent possible, but only if there is some emergency and if the probe can figure out a decent way to use the same laser to talk to a bronze age mentality. At long last, this scenario brings up the crux of the issue of open minded reanalysis of ancient history - using an interesting laser-based technique called Optoacoustic Laser Deflection (OLD) - which is now used for flame diagnostics. Basically, if one desired, it is possible now to use a laser to modulate a flame and to do so in the audible range - in order to "make the flame talk," so to speak.,, not to mention starting the fire from a great distance away. Do you see where this is going? If not, let me a little more direct: does a "burning bush" come to mind 😎
