this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
2487 points (100.0% liked)

Science Memes

15392 readers
2345 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (4 children)

**This also means that aliens can reprogram all of our satellites. **

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

Yes if they can track them in middle of space.

It's impressive that we can still send data to the satellite. I mean you need to send the signal to the place where the satellite will be in 24 hours.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

No, it doesn't. Commands could be authenticated using a pre-shared secret. Even public cryptography existed prior to Voyager 1's launch (by a year).

Based on the state of computer security at that time I would guess that's unlikely, but then again it was the Cold War.

Anyway, just because it is possible it doesn't mean anyone can do it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

If they had a way to affect our technology in a meaningful way at interstellar distances we can assume their understanding of mathematics is significantly more advanced than ours.

If their understand of mathematics is that much more advanced we can assume that their knowledge of cryptography is also much more advanced.

They'd probably be able to crack our encryption fairly easily.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nearly all such satellites would have highly directional antennas, so the aliens would have to be neat earth before they could do that. Voyager is not expecting a command signal from anywhere else but Earth. The signal would have to originate not more than a fraction of a degree from Earth from Voyager's perspective.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

So they just need to go behind it?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wasn't there a documentary about this?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)