Physics of creating a deliver-to-Earth-in-future signal

[Frame Dragger]

Thanks Janus, I have read most of LN's stuff, but missed FF. The principle of simple info leading intelligent inquirers to more advanced stuff I already have used. I think it is fundamental to any scheme that attempts to convey really serious volumes of material for functional purposes.

Huge blocks? Yes, where huge means no one would be able to carry them away, overturn them, or destroy them. Granite? Not so sure.

Firstly, I wonder what the most weathering-proof and decomposition-proof rock would be. I have seen granite that had obviously eroded drastically and had turned crumbly, leaking horrible lateritic clay in quantities that had left whole ranges of hillsides. (Where I live in point of fact! It is a major component of our farming land and the nightmare of recently built residential areas.)

As for etching the granite all the way through, I would say that really deep etching or melting, depending on the nature of the rock, ceramic, scrap glass, or concrete matrix (there is not a lot of percentage in using natural rock when you come down to it) filled in with resistant contrast material would be much better. Just the change of texture would remain legible indefinitely. Anyway, anything more than a metre deep is unlikely to be practical or functionally advantageous. Any population that could or would want to destroy anything like that would hardly need it.

You know, I don't just think along these lines for F&SF purposes. I really think that the way things are going, we may well have successors that need to re-boot. Helping them could shorten the process by possibly ten thousand years. A good text on animal husbandry for example could greatly improve their attempts to breed rats as food, guard, and draft animals.

You might scoff at using rats, but what else would be left? Anyway, who are we to sneer? What have we produced from rats? Not counting politicians and celebs of course?

Cheers

Jon

I think I would use Cicades and fruit beetles...

EDIT: Actually, you could spread this information across a number of hardy insect species, and maybe Crocadilians. Sharks might also be a good candidate, as well as tortises, and turtles. Mammals... just breed too quickly, and are too prone to mutation.

 

[Jon Richfield]

That was the inspiration for my idea (using periodic comets/orbits in the place of scattering)... I even read the man-kzin wars (and YES, I am ashamed of that!) when I was younger...

Ashamed of that? You should be ashamed! No shame no gain! Reading trash is part of your education, and even trash of good quality contains valuable material. Good F&SF (which certainly includes much of the Niven & Pournelle material) is fertile stimulation, even when one is reading it at more than one level of criticism! Authors can't all be Wellses, and actually much of even Niven's pot boilers is pretty good material.

To be fair, I also thought of the Code of Hammurabi, which relied on little more than placement, materials, and really REALLY nasty threats.

It was in contemplating such things in the context of the volatile nature of modern information storage media, that I began to think over the need for and nature of the problems.

Go well,

Jon

 

[Jon Richfield]

Also, it would be interesting to imagine a society in which advances in knowledge involved decode semi-secret messages from the past, it would be a *very* different society than the one we live in.

If I understand you correctly, right. Our history is peppered with examples of predecessor contempt and predecessor near-worship, often in combination. Reading the history of such, one wants to scream at one's ancestors "No! Don't go there! Look a bit deeper! Think a bit deeper!" even knowing that one would have done no better.

Advice for our successors should include admonitions against dogma, including dogmatic belief in what we say. It also should include reverence for information, as one of the most precious things each generation can pass on, and generally irreplaceable.

Excuse me. I talk myself into suffering.

Jon

 

[Frame Dragger]

Ashamed of that? You should be ashamed! No shame no gain! Reading trash is part of your education, and even trash of good quality contains valuable material. Good F&SF (which certainly includes much of the Niven & Pournelle material) is fertile stimulation, even when one is reading it at more than one level of criticism! Authors can't all be Wellses, and actually much of even Niven's pot boilers is pretty good material.



It was in contemplating such things in the context of the volatile nature of modern information storage media, that I began to think over the need for and nature of the problems.

Go well,

Jon

This is true, although in my case I just have read, and read so much, I essentially denude entire genres. That leaves me with the lesser offerings, even when they come from talented authors.

As for the latter... given how people respond to chain-letters... it might not be as hard as it seems. We also have so many generations of storage, and even those we've disposed of could be useful to future archaeologists. In all likliehood, it will be our dumps that are most telling.

 

[Jon Richfield]

Ahhh, but then the Evil Regime could destroy that. I suppose the best way would be to follow the lead of the Sumerians and Akkadians, use clay, and follow the Niven-"pollen" model.

Oh sure, but I am not primarily ER-oriented. Mainly incompetence-obsessed. IMO we don't need any ER; we are doing very nicely on our own thank you.

No?

Jon

 

[Frame Dragger]

Oh sure, but I am not primarily ER-oriented. Mainly incompetence-obsessed. IMO we don't need any ER; we are doing very nicely on our own thank you.

No?

Jon

Yeah, I would have to agree with that asessment. Saldy, that also tracks with my notion that attempts to preserve our "legacy" for the sake of uncertain future being highly unlikely. I think we're going to have to settle for extinction frankly, and just hope we don't take too much (more) with us.

Alas.

 

[Jon Richfield]

That brings me back to: "Why?" Why do dying people want to share the information that led in some way to their destruction? Why would people exert their final (but not inconsiderable) effort to something OTHER than immidiate survival? That ALREADY sounds like a very different society.

I can't answer for everybody, but I suspect that it has something to do with reproductive drive in some form or other. Some people go no further than reproduction. Some wish to live forever, even if only because people remember their name (Think: burning of temple of Apollo?) Some wish to live on in their monuments, which is futility that we need no Giza, no Ozymandias to illustrate; just pay a visit to any abandoned cemetery, usually not more than decades old. It giffs to tink!

Me? I reflect that the human world has progressed in many ways, though nauseatingly wastefully, messily and increasingly worryingly insecurely. But that "progress" implies that in at least some ways the average human has left behind more that was constructive than negative. The best form of immortality I can see for myself is such a contribution. It beats the hell out of an eroding chunk of funerary kitsch!

Are you familiar with Piet Hein's Grooks? My candidate for the 20th Century's greatest epigrams.

Giving in is no defeat
Passing on is no retreat
Selves were made to rise above
You shall live in what you love.

Immortality of one's positive contributions might not be as good (or as bad?) as living forever, but it beats hangovers, cirrhosis and putrescence.

As I see it anyway. I do not urge my arguments as cogent, but they work for me.



Jon