Interstellar Communication

This isn't so much of a short story as a theory. I'm currently reading a book by a celebrity scientist, the celebrity being the result of his lifetime of study of space and time. In his book he asks great colossal conundrums like 'Is there a God?' and 'What is inside a black hole?' and then sets about answering them with musings and citations from likeminded scientists from different parts of history.

He prefaces the book with the distinction between science and religion noting that scientists seek to explain with rationale (I'm paraphrasing), and then leads into large tracts of extremely theoretical theory that require a degree of faith to accept, and at times provide nothing more of an explanation from fact X to fact Y than riding the mental wave of an iota.

One of the questions in this book is, 'Is there other intelligent life in the universe?'. I have yet to read this chapter of the book, but I have come up with an experiment that if successful would prove that there was. This opens up a number of debates:

1) On earth, mankind would be regarded (by mankind mostly) as an intelligent life form, so if intelligent life forms elsewhere found out about us, would they plunder us for our natural supplies of carbon monoxide?

2) If the science presented here worked and proved the answer conclusively, would maligned organisations (ie the media or even the GAA) seek to dismiss the findings out of hand until they had worked out a way to profit from it?

3) Should I make an appointment with a psychotherapist?

Like with the book I am reading, it's not rocket science, though it will be when we go to say hello to our new neighbors. And obviously, because this has never been done before (unless the Russians, Chinese and Americans haven't got around to writing their white papers yet?), the idea is going to need a bit of fine tuning in the experimental apparatus area.

The idea is this:

Question: What is one way of proving there is someone else nearby?
Answer: Communicating with them
Question: What form does the communication take?
Answer: A mutual format
Question: Does that mean we email aliens@space.org and say hello?
Answer: No
Question: Then how do we communicate?
Answer: By a means of something that travels through universes and galaxies
Question: Like what?
Answer: Light
Question: It would need to be strong light to shine into space?
Answer: We have one - the Sun

If I continued on with this Q and A dialogue, you would just get the impression its some millennial blogging to try and get a job or a girlfriend. Suffice to say, I believe (or theorize at this point) that we could leverage the sun, ours and other galactic inhabitant's to transmit and look for signals. Signals or patterns of communication that other interstellar scientists have also thought to transmit in the same way.

Katie Bouman, a university student, recently was able to take a picture of a black hole 26 thousand light years away using 5 telescopes at different parts of the world. Using this notion, we could reflect light back from our sun at say 5 global points out into space, but with a uniform flicker. Depending on the wavelength of light and how accurate the computers were as well as how big the mirror apparatus were (potentially huge areas), we could cast phased light signals. This could even be done with satellites orbiting earth.

We could send morse code at ultra high, and super slow speeds. We could turn the earth into the solar system's first mouse spinner. There are many salutation options with which we could beacon out to an incredible infinity.

If there were intelligent life forms in other galaxies and if they were as intelligent as us, then they might too, seek to project light interference with their brightest asset (their sun) in the hope that we could pick up their signal. In turn we could build observatories with the sole purpose of scanning celestial orbs which are not suns but have non normal light emanating from them.

Or perhaps, they are seeking appointments with their psychotherapists.