Abstract In this paper we study how to create a radio bridge between the Sun and any other star made up by both the gravitational lenses of the Sun and that star. The alignment for this radio bridge to work is very strict, but the power-saving is enormous, due to the huge contributions of the two stars' lenses to the overall antenna gain of the system. In particular, we study in detail: The Sun–Alpha Centauri A radio bridge. The Sun–Barnard's star radio bridge. The Sun–Sirius A radio bridge. The radio bridge between the Sun and any Sun-like star located in the Galactic Bulge. The radio bridge between the Sun and a similar Sun-like star located inside the Andromeda galaxy (M31). Finally, we find the information channel capacity for each of the above radio bridges, putting thus a physical constraint to the maximum information transfer that will be enabled even by exploiting the stars as gravitational lenses. The conclusion is that a Galactic Internet is indeed physically possible. May be the Galactic Internet already is in existence, and was created long ago by civilizations more advanced than ours. But the potential for creating such a system has only recently been realized by Humans.

    Highlights ► Stars as gravitational lenses provide huge radio signal magnifications (gains). ► “Radio bridges” among any two stars would highly reduce the transmission powers. ► ET civilizations might have done so already in the Milky Way (Galactic Internet). ► In this paper we compute the “channel capacity” of a few such radio bridges.


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    Title :

    Galactic Internet made possible by star gravitational lensing


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Acta Astronautica ; 82 , 2 ; 246-250


    Publication date :

    2012-07-13


    Size :

    5 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




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