A radiolocation map of the planet showed hundreds of transmitters of white noise, which merged into shapeless blotches. Quinta was emitting noise on all wavelengths.
In the Cold War theory: “What came to mind was an image of “radio warfare” taken to the point of absurdity, where no one any longer transmitted anything, because each side drowned out the other… All bands of radio waves were jammed. The entire capacity of the channels of transmission was filled with noise. In a fairly short period of time the race became a contest between the forces of jamming and the forces of intelligence-gathering and command-signaling. But this escalation, too, penetrating the noise with stronger signals and in turn jamming the signals with stronger noise, resulted in an impasse.”
Other hypotheses considered: “The noise was either the scrambling of broadcast signals or a kind of coded communication concealed by the semblance of chaos.” [It’s a consequence of the Shannon–Hartley theorem that the maximum information is transferred on a channel in the form of white noise.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_(novel)
http://garethrees.org/2012/05/31/fiasco/
2. Radio static
A radiolocation map of the planet showed hundreds of transmitters of white noise, which merged into shapeless blotches. Quinta was emitting noise on all wavelengths.
In the Cold War theory: “What came to mind was an image of “radio warfare” taken to the point of absurdity, where no one any longer transmitted anything, because each side drowned out the other… All bands of radio waves were jammed. The entire capacity of the channels of transmission was filled with noise. In a fairly short period of time the race became a contest between the forces of jamming and the forces of intelligence-gathering and command-signaling. But this escalation, too, penetrating the noise with stronger signals and in turn jamming the signals with stronger noise, resulted in an impasse.”
Other hypotheses considered: “The noise was either the scrambling of broadcast signals or a kind of coded communication concealed by the semblance of chaos.” [It’s a consequence of the Shannon–Hartley theorem that the maximum information is transferred on a channel in the form of white noise.]