Dartmouth Events

Title:  "The Unreasonable Efficiency of Messages in Bottles"

Abstract: Writing a message down and tossing it (sometimes "in a bottle") is often stunningly more energy-efficient than using various forms of wireless communication -- if you're not in a big hurry.   In fact, messages in bottles can be so efficient that it is arguable that our first evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence will come from a artifacts hurled across interstellar space rather than through radio messages detected by the SETI project.  We will discuss the basic physics and communication theory of these crazy assertions and then muse about ways these ideas might be applied both close to home and light years away.