Astronomer Geoff Marcy says, “If Gene Roddenberry is right and the Klingons and the Romulans are really out there, they have to communicate with each other. They aren’t going to do this by stringing fiber optic cables between the stars, they are going to do it with lasers. Lasers are a logical way to go, because you can maintain a level of privacy by confining your laser to a beam narrow enough that it just hits a spacecraft or the civilization that’s around another star three light years away. Not to mention, you save energy. Why spread energy everywhere like a radio transmitter does?
If our galaxy is teeming with advanced technological life, it has lasers crisscrossing it—tens of thousands, millions of them—and we should be able to pick up some spillover. Also, some aliens are going to try to communicate with us. Maybe they are literally pointing their lasers at us and we just aren’t looking.”
–Anil Ananthaswamy. “Hunting for the Great Galactic Internet.” Slate April 8, 2012. Web.