Talking to Aliens
Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution points to a company who will give you one-way long-distance telephone service. Very very very long distance:
Markets in everything -- talk to aliens
A group of engineers has offered a solution for people who want a direct line to aliens - by broadcasting their phone calls directly into space.
People wanting to contact extraterrestrial beings through www.TalkToAliens.com can dial a premium rate US number and have their call routed through a transmitter and sent into space through a 3.2-metre-wide dish in central Connecticut, US.
The service, launched on 27 February, will cost users $3.99 per minute, says Eric Knight, president of the company. He says that a large radio receiver - like the Arecibo dish in Puerto Rico - situated on a distant planet might be large enough for an alien civilisation to receive the calls.
Here is their dish:
My question is that they operate under these FCC regulations:
Our transmitter has been carefully engineered to be 100-percent compliant with all pertinent FCC "Part 15" regulations. Specifically, our system provides the maximum allowable power under FCC Title 47, Part 15, Section 15.247.
Which in part defines the maximum allowable output power as being:
(3) For systems using digital modulation in the 902-928 MHz, 2400-2483.5 MHz, and 5725-5850 MHz bands: 1 Watt. As an alternative to a peak power measurement, compliance with the one Watt limit can be based on a measurement of the maximum conducted output power. Maximum Conducted Output Power is defined as the total transmit power delivered to all antennas and antenna elements averaged across all symbols in the signaling alphabet when the transmitter is operating at its maximum power control level. Power must be summed across all antennas and antenna elements. The average must not include any time intervals during which the transmitter is off or is transmitting at a reduced power level. If multiple modes of operation are possible (e.g., alternative modulation methods), the maximum conducted output power is the highest total transmit power occurring in any mode.
In non-rocket-science-speak, that One Watt highlighted above is the maximum amount of power that they can radiate. A Watt is a measurement of absolute power. Imagine a 60 Watt light-bulb and trying to view it from a long distance. Having a large lens on the receiving end (telescope) helps out a lot but there are certain physical limitations to what can be done and what cannot be done.
Commercial Television satellites operate at much higher power levels (up to ten thousand Watts spread over 48 channels)
How a one Watt signal can reach Arcturus and beyond is better left to the Science Fiction writers out there and this company who charges over $3 per minute on their 1-900 line is better off left un-patronized. #Still, wish I had thought of it first - a nice easy scam...