Given that an Intelligent inter-stellar alien race would require contact between ships / colonies, then it seems evident that any of our own communications technologies would be quite useless in deep space. At the speed of light, conventional radio signals and such would be totally useless - messages would take years to travel between the stars. There must be some way of sending a signal that goes faster than light, or gets to it's target some other way. Otherwiseinter-stellar communications will be severely limited in the future, even when we do manage to travel beyond our own solar system.

Does anyone know of any potential means with which to send signals faster than light - and what sort of technology could an alien race use to do this ?

I'm no expert, but maybe we could learn these kinds of things from Star Trek, or at least base our research on something from the show. One thing I saw on Star Trek once was like a slingshot for spaceships. I was thinking, once we got out into space, we could keep on building space stations. We could put a "slingshot" at each one. Messages could be "thrown" from one station to the next. Maybe in about 50 to 100 years, we could make a slingshot like that. I guess they could work by energy "rubber bands" or something that could be pulled or pushed back and catapault something across space.

I think the folk in Star Trek have a method for sending messages across deep space called "Sub Space", but I'm not sure how this works. A lot of the technologies in Star Trek have a habit of becoming reality though ( take the flat computer tablets for example ).

Anyone know how "Sub Space" works - or of any other deep space communication methods ?

Some say that telepathy is instant, and some argue that we have not the ability yet to measure faster than the speed of light so we assume it not possible prematurely..

There are many monks on earth who follow their tradition of age, finding and expanding upon certain human mental abilities within, that usually remain dormant within us all. It was explained that all time and space is really one energy where everything is illusion as all is connected energetically. I guess it depends on the level of perception, but theoretically, there is no space, there is no time or distance. Hence Star Trek were perhaps theoretically correct with their Subspace which sounds like a bypassing of our real world to be able to com that well, but perhaps not technologically developed enough to match the mind level possible in humans today as expressed through things like family telepathy during a sudden death event from across the world to multi connected telepathy as is practiced by certain so called cult groups.

Theory perhaps, but all this only reflects that we are always reflecting our minds when ever we create our communication externally. Especially today with electronic networking and multimedia science, purifying telepathy through electronics perhaps. Eventually we may learn how to electronically interpret our thoughts to mentally operate vehicles, machines and maybe even radio devices dependent not on any such travelling signals, yet multidimensionaly as some researchers fantastically state is happening today with Illuminati reverse technology ad ET help..

I still do not think human has been allowed beyond earth's gravity without escort, and i still do not think he ever will. But again, I am only theorising.
http://www.martinelli.org/
http://www.angelfire.com/realm2/amethystbt...ctelepathy.html
http://www.eternism.com/EternismAndMetaphy...taphysics05.htm

Our Friend Guest actually makes a lot of sense to me.
This is surely a very very good question, Friend Saruman.

StarTrek writers did have a group of scientists working for them.

I really can't see any other way for it to work.
This will be a wonderful thing to study.
I shall explore this a little and return.

I would imagine the only way to travel or send communication faster than the speed of light would be in the ability to distort or bend time itself. And that ability is theoretically possible.

We already posses a medium all we have to do is perfect it like we perfected radio transmission. Lasers will be used for speed of light information transmission, they just hve to figure out how to have rapid modulation, so it can be like a laser morse code. Using binary you could transmit as info as you want.

Star Trek was the first thing that came to my mind as well.

Maybe sending transmissions through wormholes. Natural or created.. ?

I could see some type of laser being able to transmit across space at an incredible rate...it's the imprenting of information on a beam of light that could be the problem. Not to mention...ya' gotta' know where your sending it...

Saruman- Sub-Space could be described as another "layer" to the space-time continum. It is hypothesized (in ST, and by actualy scientists). It is hypothesized that this layer is not only devoid of matter- but possibly distance as well.

This would indicate that Sub-Space is attached at the Quantum level of space- possibly even sub-quantum, since as you get deeper into, distance and time become one... possibly even allowing atoms to exist in two places and times at once. It could be that a message sent as this level could moves faster than light because the ship (or just the energy used for the message) is at the sub-quantum level in two (or even more) places at once.

Another possibly means- as indicated would be to use a wormhole- natural or artificial. This would be advantageous in the upper-most level of Space/Time where we exist... and may be the most practical until we learn more about the quantum physics and construction of Reality.

Is that of any help?