Using data compression and error correction allow us to further decrease the size of information, increasing even further the amount of data that can be sent per second. The higher the frequency of the signal, the greater its bandwidth and the higher the volume of information you can transmit every second. “One of the things we are doing is moving the carrier frequency to higher in the spectrum, from 8GHz to 30GHz” says Deutsch. We may not be able to increase the speed of transmission however we can increase the volume of information that is transmitted per second. Optical (Laser) communication technology is currently being introduced, but this is still in the development phase. Today, almost all conventional communication in space is conducted using radio waves, which travel at the speed of light through the vacuum of space. If a way around this limitation were to be discovered, it would “violate the laws of information theory and require some rethinking of basic physics”, according to Les Deutsch of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, who has spent years designing deep space telecommunications systems for Nasa. Nothing can go superluminal, reasoned Einstein, since the speed of light is a universal constant. Thus, conventional conversation is no longer feasible.Īccording to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, that’s the way things will stay. To communicate with Alpha Centauri, our closest star-system, located about 40 trillion kilometres away, it would take more than four years for each message to be delivered. Despite the distance, we can still receive messages from them however each message takes 18 hours to arrive. The Voyager spacecraft are already beyond the edges of our solar system, at 19.5 billion kilometres from Earth. And the problems only get worse the further you travel. Conversations between people on Mars and on Earth would be very stilted as a consequence. Mars is on average 225 million km away: about 12.5 minutes at light speed. If we travelled further, though – say, to Mars – then we start to have problems. Enough to lead to awkward pauses in conversation maybe, but nothing too bothersome. This is similar to the delay you may experience when calling someone on the other side of the world. For light to travel this distance, it will take 1.3 seconds. The furthest humans have travelled is to the Moon, approximately 384,400 kilometres away. So far, it has not really been necessary to develop superluminal communication to keep our conversations flowing.
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