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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!eagle!allegra!alice!rabbit!wolit
From: wolit@rabbit.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: The "I Love Lucy" Problem.
Message-ID: <2124@rabbit.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Oct-83 09:52:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: rabbit.2124
Posted: Thu Oct 27 09:52:04 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 28-Oct-83 04:43:01 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 23

Continuing the previous response...

So, as the TV signal expands through space, it loses strength, and
eventually becomes indistinguishable from the background noise.

Actually, since energy is never destroyed, what really happens is that
it adds (a very small amount) to the background noise -- warming it up
from 2.3 degrees K (or whatever) to 2.30001 (or, in the case of "The A
Team," to 2.4)....

Hey, maybe Penzias and Wilson were wrong:  Maybe it's not the remnants
of the Big Bang we're seeing, but the afterglow of Alpha Centauri's
Big Show, or Rigel XII's Star Trek re-runs!

[My favorite treatment of the whole detection-of-extraterrestrial-intelligence
field was in a 1959 Walt Kelly cartoon, in which a swamp friend of Pogo (I
forget his name; it's been a long time) says to him, "I been readin' bout
how maybe they is planets peopled by folks with AD-vanced brains."  In the
second frame, he continues, "On the other hand, maybe WE got the most
brains... maybe OUR intellects is the universe's most AD-vanced."
He concludes, "Either way, it's a mighty soberin' thought."]

	Jan Wolitzky, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ