 |
| Image credit: ESO |
Distance: 12.02 light years from Earth | Content Flag: Public
The slingshot manoeuvre around Epsilon Indi Ba (the larger of the brown dwarfs) has been completed successfully. All being well, we’ll catch up with the Visitors in 6 years.
I was hoping that they would have responded to my message by now, but so far we’ve received nothing. Assuming they’re scanning the same radio frequency on which they transmitted their first contact to the Cetians, they should have detected it. Yet they haven’t responded.
I’m not sure what that means. Are they deliberately ignoring us? If so, why?
More questions that I have no answers for. Even so, the fact that we are on track does inspire some optimism.
There is a slim possibility that they didn’t receive it, or somehow missed it. The magnetic storm between the two brown dwarfs could have caused some signal degradation, but not enough to make the message unreadable. I haven’t detected any other anomalies or interference that could cause such a problem, but with the science package so severely depleted, I cannot be sure.
In more usual circumstances, I would have continued transmitting the message in a constant loop. However, the transmission requires a lot of energy and our power situation is so marginal that I can’t afford to do so. I will have to try again, but I have substantially reduced the length of the message so that it really contains just enough to say ‘hello’. That means I can send it more times and it will hopefully be enough to attract their interest.
I won’t transmit the message continuously – I don’t have the power reserves. Instead I’ll repeat it on a 12 hourly cycle. I’m sure it will get through – it has to.
Curious as to why there is no answer.
ReplyDeleteIndeed :-)
Delete