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I'm not really convinced that quantum communication is the best way to speed up transfer rate. If you can build antennas that big surely there are better options
I'm a long fan of minutephysics but this video felt particularly useless to me.
1) "Regular messages are too slow, so we need to compress them using quantum information" except it doesn't speed up communication at all, speed of light is the limit
2) All the theses of the video are swiftly undone by the caveats, which promptly remind us that quantum communication is only possible if you have exchanged additional information ahead of time (quantum entanglement can't transfer information at superluminal speed)
3) None of this addresses the Fermi paradox itself: at most it answers the question "why aren't they sending us messages?" when the real question is "why can't we see them"
Sorry for nitpicking, there's some fun and interesting food for thought in the video, but the whole setup is a poor excuse to talk about quantum communication in a somewhat lousy way
I adore this video because I haven't thought about this aspect of the fermi paradox. I think about the fermi paradox sometimes and this is a new angle to me
Another issue: quantum information still needs a classical channel (like light) to send, so even if stars are all as close together as we are to Alpha Centauri (which they're not), it would still take over 4 years for each message to be received. Which, even with perfect error correction, is too slow for effective communication other than a "WE ARE HERE" signal.
more likely explanation: any intelligent alien civilizations are also trapped on their own planet of origin, like us, due to the incredibly vast distances of interstellar space, and have no need for such communications, nor generate enough power for us to receive their broadcasts.
People often don’t understand why we don’t see life on other planets. Space is so vast that civilizations could be separated by hundreds of light years, and we still do not fully have the technological capability to detect life at those distances.
For example, and just to be clear, this is only a rough illustration and not based on any published calculations. If the Milky Way contains about 400 billion stars, and we assume 1% have life, 1% of those develop technology capable of sending radio signals, and that 1% are evenly spread across the galaxy, that would leave about 400,000 technological civilizations in total. Because the Milky Way is roughly 100,000 light years across and about 1,000 light years thick, spreading those civilizations through that enormous space means the average distance between them would be around 270 light years. Human radio technology has existed for less than 150 years, meaning a civilization 270 light years away would not have received our radio signals yet. They would likely need to have been technologically capable for much longer than we have in order for us to receive their signals. And this does not even account for all the naturally occurring radi
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1) "Regular messages are too slow, so we need to compress them using quantum information" except it doesn't speed up communication at all, speed of light is the limit
2) All the theses of the video are swiftly undone by the caveats, which promptly remind us that quantum communication is only possible if you have exchanged additional information ahead of time (quantum entanglement can't transfer information at superluminal speed)
3) None of this addresses the Fermi paradox itself: at most it answers the question "why aren't they sending us messages?" when the real question is "why can't we see them"
Sorry for nitpicking, there's some fun and interesting food for thought in the video, but the whole setup is a poor excuse to talk about quantum communication in a somewhat lousy way
For example, and just to be clear, this is only a rough illustration and not based on any published calculations. If the Milky Way contains about 400 billion stars, and we assume 1% have life, 1% of those develop technology capable of sending radio signals, and that 1% are evenly spread across the galaxy, that would leave about 400,000 technological civilizations in total. Because the Milky Way is roughly 100,000 light years across and about 1,000 light years thick, spreading those civilizations through that enormous space means the average distance between them would be around 270 light years. Human radio technology has existed for less than 150 years, meaning a civilization 270 light years away would not have received our radio signals yet. They would likely need to have been technologically capable for much longer than we have in order for us to receive their signals. And this does not even account for all the naturally occurring radi