Technosignature Research Portal

Civilizations which expand beyond a single planetary system will desire a way to communicate between their settlements, probes and spacecraft. This is a different scenario than "beacons" intended for unknown recipients, which may be less desirable to civilizations unwilling to bear the significant cost of interstellar altruism.

Optical messaging can take several forms, including lasers and modulated starlight, and offers the advantage of greater data density than lower frequency areas of the electromagnetic spectrum, such as radio.

Detectability

• Because optical messaging is designed for large amounts of data over lengthy distances, this represents one of the more detectable technosignatures being sought.
• One challenge with any sort of messaging, is the readability, or even recognizability, of communications not intended for an eavesdropping third party. Communications may be encrypted, and further, may be encrypted in such a way as to not even be recognizable as communications.

Research