Ideas on communicating/traveling through space

[mozirry]

I was thinking randomly after watching a history channel presentation on the study of UFO's and they were talking about ways to communicate through the vastness of space that is beyond our knowledge.

I think right now the most prominent form of research is done on Earth, with radio waves being analyzed and people watching the skys hoping we get contacted first.


As far as pointing towards the sky, how many different ways are there we can send messages or look for them?

Do radio waves move on forever in a vaccum or do they eventually dissappate into nothingness such as sound waves on earth?



What if we are able to kind of slingshot our messages through space? If a physical object can slingshot through the gravitational pull of a massive object, such as a moon, and increase substantially in velocity, what is to prevent the same concept of increasing the speed with possibly a physical craft or possibly a simply some sort of radio wave message?

If there is no terminal velocity in space, what if we could devise some way to force an object to go through constant acceleration up by sling-shotting in a consecutive loop until it reaches the speed of light? Then we could find a way to break that loop and send the object loose on its path.

Could the same concept also work with boosting radio waves? I will have to admit I have no clue what communication is like on this end.

 

[bobsmith1492]

Radio waves disperse over distance like light from a flashlight.

Per Einstein's theory of relativity, EM waves like light/radio travel at a constant velocity independant of reference frame; consequently, you cannot increase the speed of a radio signal beyond the speed of light.

Also, something "sling-shotting in a consecutive loop" would actually be in orbit and would not actually accelerate. To accelerate, it would have to increase in speed while approaching the object, take a partial orbit around it, and leave (with higher velocity) rather than orbit.

 

[mozirry]

I was thinking more along the lines of using some sort of power force to boost the acceleration at each interval, instead of using natural means only.

I read somewhere on the internet that a form of a rail gun could theoretically be used on a conceivable scale?

 

[gerwen]

Even if you could get a ship with a transmitter up to or nearly to the speed of light, the radio waves it would send out would still be moving at the speed of light. They wouldn't be moving at the speed of the ship + the speed of light.

The result would be a transmitter that is far away from earth. Any signal it sends would have gotten to whatever destination you pick faster just by sending it from earth. The signal may be stronger at the destination, but there are probably ways to make a stronger signal that don't involve sending a ship.

Afaik, there is no known way to make information (ie a radio signal) move faster than the speed of light.

 

[Zbox]

I remember hearing something awhile back about being able to accelerate part of a light signal above c with a cesium gas chamber in the same way that they can slow the signal with optical memory. From what I remember it only sounded useful for slowing signals though...