Description
A Bracewell probe would be constructed as an autonomous robotic interstellar space probe with a high level of artificial intelligence, and all relevant information that its home civilization might wish to communicate to another culture. It would seek out technological civilizations–or alternatively monitor worlds where there is a likelihood of technological civilizations arising–and communicate over "short" distances (compared to the interstellar distances between inhabited worlds) once it discovered a civilization that meets its contact criteria. It would make its presence known, carry out a dialogue with the contacted culture, and presumably communicate the results of its encounter to its place of origin. In essence, such probes would act as an autonomous local representative of their home civilization and would act as the point of contact between the cultures.
Since a Bracewell probe can communicate much faster, over shorter distances, and over large spans of time, it can communicate with alien cultures more efficiently than radio message exchange might. The disadvantage to this approach is that such probes cannot communicate anything not in their data storage, nor can their contact criteria or policies for communication be quickly updated by their "base of operations".
While a Bracewell probe need not be a von Neumann probe as well, the two concepts are compatible, and a self-replicating device as proposed by von Neumann would greatly speed up a Bracewell probe's search for alien civilizations.
It is also possible that such a probe (or system of probes if launched as a von Neumann probe) may outlive the civilization which created and launched it.
There have been some efforts under the SETA and SETV projects to detect evidence for the visitation of our solar system by such probes, and to signal or activate such a probe that may be lying dormant in local space. Variations in the echo delay times of radio transmissions, known as long delayed echoes, or LDEs, have also been interpreted as evidence for such probes.
1991 VG, a peculiar near-earth object, has been suggested as a candidate for a Bracewell probe from an extraterrestrial civilization.
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“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)