Stardatecards™ connects the Internet to a laser-fitted telescope converting digital images and text to near-infrared wavelength, laser-emitted, light signals. Utilizing a significant laser energy power, the messages are focused through the telescope to collimate the parallel beams of light and aim the transmission at the intended astronomical object.

The laser emissions will travel infinitely because, unlike the rays of light sent out from a standard light bulb, laser light rays remains ‘coherent’ - that is to say parallel to each other and without energy loss to the surrounding environment.

As gravity bends light, when the laser light of a Stardatecards™ message arrive at a star or even planets around stars, the light is bent around the object. That is how astronomers are able to see stars that are behind those closer to us, the light from the distant star is bent around the closer star by gravity - and able to be viewed from Earth.

Stardatecards™ are eternal because the light emitted by the laser remains as parallel beams of light that do not loose energy, and are bent around stars and planets so that they do not run into them.

About Deep Space Communication

Laser light messaging is much more efficient than carrier waves through radio telescopes and it is likely that any advanced civilization in space would use laser light based communication, rather than radio waves. That is why SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is now searching for light emissions from other stars.

Stardatecards™ use of the configuration of laser and telescope ensures that messages sent are discernable at very great distances. Any advanced civilizations in space with a program similar to SETI, who may be looking at our sun, would look at our star for a brief, brilliant flash of light, that momentarily would outshine the reflected light of planets orbiting it.

In the case of Stardatecards™, they would see laser light emissions in infrared spectrum, and know that the light meant the presence of an advanced civiliation able to communicate across the vastness of space.

Astronomy magazine (September 2002) notes “ …we are capable of both sending and detecting infrared lasers, which might be a reasonable way to communicate. Infrared lasers can penetrate dust clouds better than optical lasers and would be easier to distinguish from starlight.”

SETI researchers have written that we double the chance of making contact with advanced civilizations in space if we are sending, as well as receiving laser light messages. Sending a Stardatecards™ message for you or a loved one invites you to send a message that will last in the Universe forever, and not to make contact with alien life forms. That just might be a secondary result. Please read the article below for information on interstellar transmissions.

Speaking Up: Whispering to the Stars
About the Science of Interstellar Communication

For most of human history the range over which we could communicate by voice was limited to about 10 meters, although great effort could extend this to a few hundred meters. That is to say, we have the power to speak directly over distances up to a hundred times our own scale height. Being clever beings, we eventually found ways to communicate over greater distances, through smoke signals and trumpets.

The invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 shattered the bounds of distance. Within a year voice communication was extended to 11 kilometers with the first long distance call from Brantford to Paris, Ontario. Within a century communication across our solar system by radio beacon became possible. Respectively, these three advances extended the distance over which we could project our thoughts by factors of 100, 100 thousand and 100 billion, approximately. But, until now, extending our voice to the stars has eluded us.

In 1961 researchers, Dr. R.N. Shwartz and Professor Charles Townes, first described use of technology that would make interstellar communication in light possible. Schwartz and Townes showed that Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (laser) could produce a sharp, monochromatic pulse of light, which, if narrowly directed, could momentarily outshine the Sun and remain detectable across any distance of space in that direction. Sharp pulses of narrowly focused laser light produce rays that are perfectly parallel, rather than the fanning out of light that occurs from a bulb. Laser light focused through a telescope, as occurs at Science Alive! The New Zealand Science Centre, further narrows this specific beam of light to exist as a recognizable signal over the vastness of space.

Stardatecards™ are engineered laser signals that speak out to the stars. If an observer were to look back at our galaxy many millions of years from now, they might see Stardatecards™ transmissions. A sharp brilliant pulse of light that says intelligent life exists. Stardatecards™ are a message in a bottle cast upon the great Cosmic ocean - the laser light focused beams will travel, unattenuated, in space forever.