Recieving modulated light from space?

I've been wondering......
Why would ET be using radio waves to contact us? Why not light waves?
It's a simple matter to modulate a light beam.
It's also simple to receive the signal.

Oversimplified, but it would actually work:
1. Take a cadmium sulfide photo cell (or a solar cell) and hot glue it to a telescope eyepiece (hot glue peels off easily).
2. Attach a small amplifier to the cell and turn it on.
3. Rig up some stepper motors and some all-thread rod to a computer to make your telescope slowly scan a sector of the sky.
4. Listen (preferrably with headphones).

I haven't tried this yet, but maybe this summer.

Comments?

37 views and no replies......

Doesn't anyone ever wonder if there are other ways to communicate across the vastness of space?

Or am I just weird.......

hehe i waanna see the chart for ET's morse code @_@


maybe it'll be like this ---__ __ __ --- __ __ __ ---

Both light and radio waves are both electromagnetic waves they just have vastly different fruequencies. Everything on the electromagnetic spectrum travels at the speed of light so light communication would be no more effective. The only way around communicating accross the vastness of this universe (I think) is through some sort of gravitational fluctuation. As gravity and magnetism are the only things that have an instantaneous effect on all the mass in the universe.

PS correct me if im wrong as I know there are an array of physicists on ATS! and I'm only in the ninth grade.

[edit on 21-2-2006 by hobo_321]

[edit on 21-2-2006 by hobo_321]

You are correct, and I'm only 42.

What I was trying to get at is maybe some race is trying to contact us using light and we don't hear it because we're looking at radio frequencies only.
You can transmit voice, data, or whatever on a light beam.

Yeah light and radio waves are pretty much exactly the same thing. It's only us humans who place arbitrary threshold distinctions on the wavelengths to call one "light" while another wave "radio".

I haven't quite figured out yet how to receive a gravity wave, but I remember an old issue of "Scientific American" where they were doing it with a capacitor as the antenna.

Kind of above my understanding....