Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Black Hoyle Sun

Consider:



A satellite is launched to study the Sun. A few weeks into its mission we suddenly lose contact with it. Immediately before failing, though, the satellite radios back its findings and the initial interpretations have physicists scratching their heads. It appears the Earth is moving through some sort of beam, originating and possibly transmitting from the Sun. This beam is somehow tracking the Earth. To top it all off, there appears to be some type of data exchange going on, something to the effect of “a hundred million textbooks a year.” With pen and paper I figure out that this rate amounts to a little more than six and a half million bits of information a second.



Question:

What do you think is going on here?

???


Answer:


Beats me. I’m only a hundred pages into Fred Hoyle’s book October the First is Too Late. But I have to say it’s a very intriguing set-up. It seems to have something to do with time travel, and a data rate that large fits nicely with the amount of bit info you might find when dealing with biological organisms …

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