Related papers: Interstellar communication. IX. Message decontamin…
Catch 22 of cryptography - "Before two parties can communicate in secret, they must first communicate in secret". The weakness of classical cryptographic communication systems is that secret communication can only take place after a key is…
Widely-deployed encryption-based security prevents unauthorized decoding, but does not ensure undetectability of communication. However, covert, or low probability of detection/intercept (LPD/LPI) communication is crucial in many scenarios…
We address the question of to what accuracy remote sensing images of the surface of planets can be matched, so that the possible displacement of features on the surface can be accurately measured. This is relevant in the context of the…
Suppose that there are $n$ Senders and $n$ Receivers. Our goal is to send long messages from Sender $i$ to Receiver $i$ such that no other receiver can retrieve the message intended for Receiver $i$. The task can easily be completed using…
The ubiquity of information transmission via molecular communication between cells is comprehensively documented on Earth; this phenomenon might even have played a vital role in the origin(s) and early evolution of life. Motivated by these…
We argue that the tools of decision theory need to be taken more seriously in the specification and analysis of systems. We illustrate this by considering a simple problem involving reliable communication, showing how considerations of…
Short-term survival and an exuberant plunge into building our future are generating a new kind of unintended consequence -- hidden fragility. This is a direct effect of the sophistication and structural complexity of the socio-technical…
Informally, steganography is the process of exchanging a secret message between two communicating entities so that an eavesdropper may not know that a message has been sent. After a review of some steganographic systems, we found that these…
In considering the reliability of numerical programs, it is normal to "limit our study to the semantics dealing with numerical precision" (Martel, 2005). On the other hand, there is a great deal of work on the reliability of programs that…
Recent technological advances could make interstellar travel possible, using ultra-lightweight sails pushed by lasers or solar photon pressure, at speeds of a few percent the speed of light. Obtaining remote observational data from such…
Icy satellites represent compelling astrobiological targets, but their rocky interiors must be better characterized. Fundamental research programs and thematic workshops promoting ocean world interdisciplinarity are key. Future missions to…
The classical simulation of physical processes using standard models of computation is fraught with problems. On the other hand, attempts at modelling real-world computation with the aim of isolating its hypercomputational content have…
Any physical channel of communication offers two potential reasons why its capacity (the number of bits it can transmit in a unit of time) might be unbounded: (1) Infinitely many choices of signal strength at any given instant of time, and…
Many scientists have expressed concerns about potential catastrophic risks associated with new technologies. But expressing concern is one thing, identifying serious candidates another. Such risks are likely to be novel, rare, and difficult…
The search for extraterrestrial communication has mainly focused on microwave photons since the 1950s. We compare other high speed information carriers to photons, such as electrons, protons, and neutrinos, gravitational waves, inscribed…
Can quantum communication be more efficient than its classical counterpart? Holevo's theorem rules out the possibility of communicating more than n bits of classical information by the transmission of n quantum bits --- unless the two…
Interstellar signals might be intermittent for many reasons, such as targeted sequential transmissions, or isotropic broadcasts that are not on continuously, or many other reasons. The time interval between such signals would be important,…
People often have things they want to say but hold back in conversations, fearing vulnerability or social consequences. Online, this restraint can take a distinctive form: even when such thoughts are written out - in moments of anger,…
This note is intended to foster a discussion about the extent to which typical problems arising in quantum information theory are algorithmically decidable (in principle rather than in practice). Various problems in the context of…
The enrichment of the intergalactic medium with heavy elements is a process that lies at the nexus of poorly-understood aspects of physical cosmology. We review current understanding of the processes that may remove metals from galaxies,…