Slashdot Mirror
Search for Terrestrial Intelligence
joshv writes: "Scientists have prepared a new message to be beamed out to the stars. Unlike the messages of the past this one tries to include some basic resistance to the noise that might be introduced in transit. The CETI project page contains a link to the new message. It a big bag of 0's and 1's. About 10% noise has been added. Can you crack the code? Details of the project as well as an interview with the one of the creators of the new message can be found in this New Scientist article. A hint to decoding: think simple raster based images and remember your powers of 2." Might want to get your copy of Beyond Contact or at least look at the first message they sent.
No wonder no one responded!
Perhaps they'll have better luck with plain text.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
Look, they can only count to 1! Zarqblast, how do you think they made it to radio's with only 0 and 1's?
The message should read :
Have you seen Bin Ladden??? If so, please contact us at :
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20535-0001
(202) 324-3000
Dunno who wrote this, but this story reminded me of it:
----
Imagine if you will... the leader of the fifth invader force speaking to the commander in chief...
"They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"Meat. They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"There's no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."
"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars."
"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."
"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."
"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."
"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."
"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in the sector and they're made out of meat."
"Maybe they're like the Orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."
"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take too long. Do you have any idea the life span of meat?"
"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the Weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."
"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads like the Weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through." "No brain?"
"Oh, there is a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat!"
"So... what does the thinking?"
"You're not understanding, are you? The brain does the thinking. The meat."
"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"
"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?"
"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."
"Finally, Yes. They are indeed made out meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."
"So what does the meat have in mind?" "First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the universe, contact other sentients, swap ideas and information. The usual."
"We're supposed to talk to meat?"
"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there? Anyone home?' That sort of thing."
"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."
"I thought you just told me they used radio."
"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."
"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"
"Officially or unofficially?"
"Both."
"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome, and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in the quadrant, without prejudice, fear, or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."
"I was hoping you would say that."
"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"
"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say?" `Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"
"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."
"So we just pretend there's no one home in the universe."
"That's it."
"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you have probed? You're sure they won't remember?"
"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."
"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."
"And we can mark this sector unoccupied."
"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"
"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."
"They always come around."
"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the universe would be if one were all alone."
It's called the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Who's interested in getting responses from dumb aliens?
-- SIGFPE
It's by Terry Bisson. He's aware that it's circulating the Internet unattrubuted, but fortunately it seems he doesn't have a problem with it.
And the brethren went away edified.
I decoded the image and here it is! Those damn scientologists were right! This just proves my theory that the reason all those powerful folks become scientologists because they have actually spoken to Xenu! This "Search for Terrestrial Intelligence" is really just another scientologist ploy to get other alien races to follow the wisdom of Xenu!
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Since slashdot will lameness filter out the asterisks in it, heres a perl script to decode it (sorry about the crap code):
/g;
:-(
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
my($out) = "";
while()
{
chop;
s/1/*/g;
s/0/\
$out = $out . $_;
}
# Remove first 69
$out = substr($out,69);
$rowlength = 127;
my($nextrow) = "";
do
{
$nextrow = substr $out, 0, $rowlength;
print $nextrow . "\n";
$out = substr $out, $rowlength;
}
while($out ne "");
exit;
The output wont go through lameness filter
But its here anyway.
Mr Thinly Sliced
I mean, I speak english, I live on earth, and the pictures by themselves are meaningless to me.
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
Of course, making sense out of the resulting image could take a while. At the top they're counting in binary, and seem to be assigning an arbitrary symbol for each number. The symbols seem to have been chosen in an attempt to make them out even when partially garbled. Those symbols and certain pictures are then used throughout the rest of the image. Heh, and check out the naked ppl!
If it knows that it lives in, say, slot #9, there is not still a 50/50 chance. Instead the probability is 90% that there only are 10 agents because of observational bias.
Huh? Given the following results of flipping a coin, what is the probability that the next flip will be a H:
HHHHHHHHHHH
50%. Because only a 2^12 chance of having a sequence HHHHHHHHHHHH in a series of 12 flips, that is no greater or no less than any other sequence, such as HHTTHTHHTTHH. Just because you are in the 9th slot, that does not affect the outcome of the occupancy of the other 99 slots. Obviously, the first 10 are always filled in your example. So the fact that something occupies those slots does not in any way affect the probability that the other 90 will be filled, at least in your example.
And in the real world, there's no way of knowing if even the other slots are filled
Another probability exercise I've heard is which is more likely, that we are unique in the history of the universe and will continue to be unique in the future of the universe or that we are in the middle of the "bell curve" of life/intelligence distribution throughout the universe? Given that the universe has existed for around 12 billion years and will continue to exist for quite a number more, and that there are rather large number of planets now and were a rather large number in the past and that the odds are that there will be planets in the future, is it more likely that we are the rule or the exception?
It is like the joke about the guy who always carried a bomb whenever he flew because the odds of there being two bombs on a plane were astronomical. There is no dependent relationship between the two acts, so he didn't affect the probability at all.
Of course IANAPE (Probability Expert) so I'm willing to be shown the error of my ways.
We sent the equiliviant of the IRC message....
A/S/L?
Supries that the planet hasn't been kick/banned already.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The chances are so close to 100% as to be 100%: you're obviously flipping with a two-headed coin. Odds are 1:2^12 that you're not cheating!
--
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