For a long time now there has been an idea that hopefully if we (humanity) sent data (mostly audio signals) out towards space then an alien race would pick it up and it would be like Star Trek or something. Another hope is that the information (mostly satelite signals) that’s streaming around the planet would travel the cosmos for eternity and so even if people died out or the world was destroyed humans would leave a legacy.

However there has recently been speculation, I am not familiar enough with the topic to know if this can be confirmed or is just theoretical, that within a distance of a few light years these signals would just break down into presumably indecipherable noise. This is supposed to be news to make fatalists like myself despair that when it’s over for humans it’s all over. However it occurred to me just a moment ago that if what I’ll refer to as “clear” data (there is probably an actual term for original complete signals) breaks down into noise over a certain distance, it should also be possible to utilize some sort of scrambling or encryption in order to do the reverse. That is, if a signal breaks down into static you should be able to send out a type of static that will eventually turn into a signal. Or something like that, my point is to reverse the process somehow. This would probably be complicated and is possibly beyond current technology. But I think it should eventually be possible.

In truth there are probably too many factors involved in long range data transmission/communication, and the usefulness of such things at this time is debatable. I am personally a lot more inclined to believe that if there’s alien life out there it’s more apt to enslave and or destroy us than become our best friend. Call me a pessimist but if we indiscriminately kill creatures that are “below” us (insects) and raise others for the sole purpose of eating them (cattle) then I can only imagine that the most likely life forms we contact will behave in a similar matter. In fact the best we could hope for would be that there’s nothing else out there. Back on target though, devising ways to get data to remain clear, or to clear up when sent over vast distances (if I recall a light year is like 1 billion km or something) seems to me to be something that wouldn’t have many other applications. If you could control the phenomenon over select distances it would be a useful intelligence technology, a sort of encryption method. You could possibly even just use it for private telecommunications. However I don’t see how it could work easily like that, or I’m just talking about encrypted communication as it is now in the first place. I’m not really that interested in looking into the matter.

But if you want to contact aliens and rain doom upon us all, or if you’re interested in creating human posterity then you might look into it: sending out noise which will eventually assemble into a clear signal.