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Television For an Audience 45 Light Years Away
beebopdebop writes, "The Irish Times notes that Europe goes intergalactic tonight with the broadcast of a program conceived for aliens and broadcast towards a point 45 light years away in the direction of the Big Dipper. The two naked hosts will present their own unclothed bodies as examples of our physical embodiments, and will tell about daily human existence. Music, art, and our own personal messages will be transmitted as well as discussions from sociologists, scientists, and space experts. This project is the brainchild of the French-based Centre National D'etudes Spatiales and is rooted in seriousness as a natural extension of the gold-plated ambassador disks of Pioneer 10. Those of us wishing to be included can still post messages to be sent into space via a CNES antenna. We will have to wait 90 years to learn whether or not some lifeform was listening."
"Put some clothes on, you flabby bastards."
Since the target is only 45 light years away surely that should be intragalactic.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
"The two naked hosts will present their own unclothed bodies as examples of our physical embodiments, and will tell about daily human existence."
Let's hope they picked Ingrid Swede and Scarlet Johansson. It would be interesting to hear them speak about their daily life.
Tell your friends about xenu.net
Don't we already send out enough signals into space, many of which deal with the subject of life on our planet? If anything aliens would be getting pissed off with being inundated with out crap 24/7... and it doesn't help that they'd be getting about 3000 channels all the time so would find it really hard to tell the difference between them.
On a slightly less serious note, is it really a good idea to teach potentially hostile aliens about how we work (and by extension how to kill us)? Not to mention we know that the only people who are really going to watch are 1000 light-years away waiting for single female lawyer
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
No, we'd have to wait a few years longer. Before 'they' figure out that it was a transmission, before they've decoded it correctly (do you think they use PAL or NTSC? Decisions!) and can begin to interpret it (who says they have eyes or ears?), manage to figure out what we are and what we're actually saying, and managed to construct a reply in a format that we're likely to be able to decode, you're probably looking at quite a few years.
Given that we've only just managed to decipher what our own first man on moon actually said after a few decades, I think you're looking at decades of work.
And all that's before they even manage to create and send a reply, which will take 45 years to get here.
How is this any different from any other european news broadcast??
Great, now we're doing intergalactic pornography. What's next?
It would be a shame to send it once and have them miss it.
This is the problem I have with specific EM signals.
Once they are gone, thats it.
I still think the only real way to communicate with outlying civilisations properly will be with supernovas.
Though, only one message could be send - "Help our sun is blowing u^&"%£%^&!*(())[NO CARRIER]
liqbase
I'd think they would much prefer the latest episode of Single Female Lawyer.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
I've gotta be the first to say this: So with the two naked presenters (presumably male and female adults, I haven't seen the show), exactly how are they going to show human reproduction?
Debbie Does the Big Dipper.
What if the Martians are all like "Nice planet. We'll take it!" after receiving our transmission? Has anyone thought that through? - In any case just keep in mind: if a Martian draws a big circle into the air, it's not the international sign of the doughnut!
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
Why do people continue to delude themselves that an alien intelligence will be able to comprehend communication as we consider it? And if they can that they'll be foolish enough to waste time on decoding, renderring and interpreting an unreachably distant point of light? And if they go that far, why the heck does anyone expect a usefull response?
At best there'll be no response, but should they then pick up on our everyday TV the likely response is surely some form of uncrewed planet buster. I know I'd prefer not to leave a hornets nest like humanity brewing in any corner of my galaxy. No intelligence with a self-preservation process would.
We are a crippled duck, currently hidden in a vast swamp. Our only security being through obscurity. Why the hell do people insist on flailing around screaming for the hunters? Actually, that doesn't quite work. We are a crippled unknown creature, that appears to have the mindset of a ravaging beast, but lacking the ability. Which lives longer? The rabid dog spazzing out in broad daylight in th emiddle of the street or the rabid cat stalking the shadows?
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
Sincerely, The alien operators of FireWall@Dipper.Big
They will already have seen episodes of Knight Rider and they will know that the Hoff rules the universe. Why would they bother with this crap?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Yeah, great idea! Let's beam out the first season of Lost and wait for the aliens to invade us because the finale gave them no answers and they got fed up with waiting for us to beam out the second season...
Summation 2
The two naked hosts will present their own unclothed bodies as examples of our physical embodiments, and will tell about daily human existence.
;). If they just broadcast NN instead, I bet that'll get ET over here in a hurry though.
Naked News has naked presenters telling about daily human existence, so this is old
Oh no... it's the future.
What are the chances that those aliens will be listening on those frequencies, if they are listening at all? What are the chances that we will be still using Television after 90 Years. Have they made proper provisions to schedule the listening activity after 90 years?
So, looking at a random sampling of the uploaded messages, those aliens had better be running all the latest proprietary junk from microsoft. Either that, or be really good in reverse engineering. (And let's hope the DMCA does not reach all the way to Errai!)
We will have to wait 90 years to learn whether or not some lifeform was listening.
But then the MPAA can still sue them for DCMA and copyright violations if they decoded the movie without a license and used parts of our broadcast in their reply!
Tell your friends about xenu.net
In the book "Andromeda Strain", Michael Crichton discussed the various methods that an alien civilization might choose to contact us. Various manifestations of electromagnetic transmission, such as radio or television, are deemed to have too high a distance-to-expense ratio since signals fade in inverse square of the distance: Too little bang for too much buck.
An interesting solution was proposed whereby you would use biological organisms to spread the news of your existence. By spreading vast amounts of cheap, space-hardened spores that contain all the necessary ingredients to regenerate into a complete alien organism, you gain two advantages over EM transmissions: The "signal", in this case the regenerated organism, does not fade, and you can mass-produce these spores very cheaply. These organisms can then help whoever the recipient is to contact the home planet of the alien species.
I think it's safe to say that, barring a significant leap in our understanding of biology and biophysics, we are unfortunately still stuck at an intergalactic stone age when it comes to long-distance communication technologies.
We may be sending out the wrong signals though by telling them this world is not just pre-Warp, but even pre-Wardrobe. ;-)
Anyway, there's reason to be afraid someone may also have seriously misunderstood mankind's actual role in reproduction for Aliens...
That's exactly what I was thinking. Your comment should be one of the 5+ funnies.
That's just great. Yet another announcement for a past event. Thank you /.
Don't we already send out enough signals into space, many of which deal with the subject of life on our planet?
Oh, yeah. They already got our "historical documents" and shaped their entire society accordingly.
Tell them we want Elvis back.
those aliens will be pissed we replaced their favorite show "single female lawyer" with two silly naked people.
we want McNeal!!!
Too bad they will not be able to read the message when it gets there since they will not have the correct regional coding on their TV sets.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Dear Earthlings,
We received your last transmission, but being it DRMed we werent' able to make a recording to study it. Could you please send it again in unrestricted format? We will wait for the 90 years delay. Thanks.
..my full name, address and phone number? They don't even know what PLANET I'm on for Zarquons sake!
Not to mention the piss-poor interstellar data protection laws.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
1) Just because we blast out signals all the time doesn't mean they are perceptible from any distance. None of our normal transmission systems are designed for anything but terrestrial operation. A large number face the Earth, many are low power and omnidirectional, and so on. Not the kind of thing really designed to be noticeable at interstellar distances. The SNR is likely to be too low. So something specifically designed and focused for it has a much better chance.
2) I don't think it's a worry if they are hostile because it wouldn't really matter. Supposing they are a hostile race, and thus devote a good deal of research and effort to weapons development as we do, and supposing their technology is far enough ahead of ours that they could send an invasion fleet (something we are at least hundreds of years away form, maybe more) I think its' safe to assume that we would get rolled regardless of the information we provided. I mean think of it like this: Would it really matter if a society like 18th century Europe gave any info to a foe as advanced as the current US military? The technology difference is so massive that there's no hope. A single armour division would probably be sufficient to crush whole armies.
Now please don't let this give the impression that I don't think this is a massive waste of time and money, it is, but not because of the reasons you listed (it's a waste because in all likelihood there's nothing there).
If they broadcasted naked, the aliens will find out about the lower human horn!!
..we transmit looping reruns of Soilent Green :)
How dare we broadcast this during early alien prime time?
All those alien children will still be up watching TV.
What if they tune in and see our [gasp!] nekked bodies?
Oh won't somebody Think Of The Alien Children?
Uh, hello aliens. This is what we look like. See, we're soft and squishy on the outside and crunchy on the inside. We still use radio waves to communicate and we can barely reach out of our atmospheric envelope. Hey, wanna come over and play?
45 lightyears isn't that much IMHO. If there is someone that close who can pick up our signals, then there's a good chance that they already have a presence in this Solar System. And they probably would be aware of us since we've already been broadcasting for more than 45 years. Those signals are no where near as strong, but if they're listening on the radio spectrum, then that's most of the way to being able to hear the more feeble broadcasts of 45 years ago.
Even at a modest speed of 300 km/s (or 0.1% of the speed of light), something that can be achieved with nuclear propulsion or ion drives (especially if you use gravitation assists to get you up to speed), that would cover the distance in 45,000 years. We probably have the capability to do that now though obviously we don't have experience in keeping things intact for that long especially when exposed to cosmic rays.
How much technology would it require to maintain a network of self-replicating von Neuman machines around each and every planemo around each and every star in the galaxy? My take is not that much. Anyone sufficiently curious that they'll pick up TV signals would IMHO be capable of that within a few thousand years.Two important questions:
1. Is contact with aliens going to signal the end of humanity as we know it at the hands of our new alien overlords?
2. Are the presenters hot, and can I get a copy?
.evom ton seod gis eht
"I for one welcome our new pervy overlords"
Ok, which one of you have a big, big antenna and a spare room?
because they would be able to travel faster than light AND back in time
In fact, the reason that so many UFOs were sighted in the early 50s was Earth TV was so interesting that many galaxies sent talent scouts. Of course, the reason we were never invited to the Universal Television Network was we only produced boring programming. (They made one exception and aired the first 5 seasons of Saturday Night Live.)
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
How are the aliens meant to receive this???
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
This is a really bad idea! Hasn't anyone there been watching Doctor Who? Sheesh, talk about putting us all at risk from giant reptilian pr0n collectors.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Personally, I wouldn't allow my works to be sent to them aliens as they may have super advanced alien TIVOs and abuse my copyrights.
3 A%22drew%20Roberts%22)%20OR%20(collection%3A(ourme dia)%20AND%20%2Fmetadata%2Fauthor%3A(drew%20Robert s))
Then again, my copyrights will have run out by the time they see my works... Or will they still be in effect...
All except my BY-SA and GPL and other Free works that is.
all the best,
drew
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=(creator%
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
Aliens will never kill humans. Aliens are essentially good. If they did attack us it would be in response to galactic imperialism from the evil earth run U.S. TV stations. When aliens level earth cities with death rays it is a good thing. When humans send TV into outer space it is neo-con airwave imperialism and is a bad thing. We should multiculturalise with the aliens and allow them to destroy everything on planet earth. Regards, Marxist Alien Lover
Ok, but if you don't want the aliens running away screaming, make sure they're hot! The last thing aliens need to see is some old guy talking about how great earth is. Speaking of which, how can someone recieve this broadcast?
Will the aliens have to pay for this service or will it be ad supported? If its free, I'm going to get really pissed! Here, in the good ol' USA, we have to pay $35 a month for low end cable TV, and if I want to see naked people, thats adds a LOT $$$ extra!!! The tv program they are talking about has 2 naked hosts, and its free!!! How cool is that? While on the subject of aliens, will this "intergalactic" tv be acciessibele to the aliens that crosses the border illegally as well? I have to say its good to be an alien (intergalactic or not) these days ;-)
One of the other problems that might occur is the possibility that the recieving aliens don't have the same sensory organs/functions that we do. Even if they found a satelite of ours with an audio recording, what good would it do if they didn't have the ability to detect/interpet sound waves the same way we do? The same could be said for visual recordings. They might not 'see' the same spectrums of light that we do and not be able to see anything on a screen. For all we know, they could only hear magnetic waves and only see sound waves.
Its funny how arrogant mankind is in thinking that any alien species would be anything like him.
First contact will most likely come without any warning and huge communication and culture barriers will occur.
Hopefully both parties will have the patience and understanding to make it work.
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
But the visitors not from the earth are already here, studying our civilisations.
How do I know ?
I interacted with one. It showed me three time it's existence and abilities.
They are not made of the same material than us, and do not obey our physical laws.
When they interact us, it is like when you put your hands in a water pool : they
are not from our univers, but from an hyperdimensional univers from which ours
is only a created part. And the body that appears to us is just a projection.
Their intelligence is not human, and they can create very intriguing art and
artifacts. For example ET encounters... UFO that defy laws of physic... Objects that
moves, or appears or disappears...
Angels... from "God" ?
We are just fish in a jar. We really live in a "Matrix".
And our life is just a test.
And planet Earth and our univers is an experiment.
The only information I got from the "outside" of our univers, is that it was structured like an incredibly powerful brain. And that our univers is just a creation of the mind of this brain, like we create numbers, mathematics, and imaginate virtual machines. But of that I have had no proof, apart from dreams that were very detailed and rich.
Pray the living God, study the bible, the coran, and the stories of people who saw "supernaturals" things.
Now I wish you good dreams, and lot of humility, and care, and courage in the hard time.
We should be comvincing anything that is out there of our overwhelming military superiority, and out unwavering willingness to destroy anything that does not submit to our demands. Anything less is courting disaster. Tom
The **AA must be thrilled to have several billion more planets to sue.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
We are top officials of the federal goverment contracts review panel who are interested in importation of goods into our country with funds which are presently trapped in nigeria. in order to commence this business we solicit your a assistance to enable us to transfer into your account the said trapped funds.
(...)
And wait for the gold pressed latinum bars.
Some Movie/Book (Contact?) pointed out that the wakeup signal would have been Hitler presenting the Olympics using his new technology, back in the days when he was just a Rabbler. Let's just suppose we give them a 15 year period to figure this out. ("BlieepHHOONK, someone get an antenna, that was a signal").
That means our best shot was the 1950's, when we disposed of that "Ugly War Stuff" and settled down to a nice decade of TV. 1950 + 90 = 2040. They'll have made their minds up long before a random Euro show from 2006 shows up. Take it away, Lucille Ball.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Being an hopeless astronomy freak, I couldn't help noticing that the article doesn't quite appear to know where they're actually sending the broadcast. On the beginning on the article they're talking about sending the broadcast to a star in Big Dipper. Later, the name of the star turns out to be Errai. All is fine and dandy, except that the Errai resides in Cepheus.
Article does not mention why that particular star was selected, however, it appears to host a known exoplanet, which is quite probably the reason here. Errai also happens to be somewhat more massive than our sun, which means that it progresses through its 'life' faster than the Sol. Any possible life out there has less time to evolve before the star kicks the bucket. It's also a double star, which may make the orbits of the planet(s) in the system somewhat more chaotic.
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.
I suppose our science, medicine, cities, culture is not interesting to aliens.
They'd much prefer to see us waving our private parts on front of the camera. Yea, that's gotta do it.
Because American people are always obese, and European people are always thin and fit?
No, because Europeans couldn't give a rat's arse about nudity, whereas Americans are hung up about it. Long gone are the days when nudity at the beach was confined to poor isolated spots in Europe, it's now accepted extremely widely in almost all the hot sand and sea countries, and even poolside (but less so). And that has an impact on how nudity is perceived on television too.
Actually, much worse than Americans being merely hung up about it, public nudity is not protected in the US except as a means of political protest, and even then it's de facto illegal because the local police in every state will immediately put you in the clinker under random charges. It gets dismissed in the courts if you contest it (and if you don't contest it then you get fined), but despite court dismissal it's still effectively barred by the enforcement arm.
Naturists (and even the US women's TopFree movement) have been trying for decades to get an actual ruling on the subject, but the courts just won't let it come to a judgement, too fearful of bucking the the status quo. It was bad enough even before Bush, but now that the US is a fundamentalist religious state, the chances of removing de facto social inhibitions are even more remote.
That's America for you. Land of the non-free.
Or maybe DVB-T?
If they have the ability to communicate at FTL speeds, it would only take as long as it takes for our signal to get there, then potentially a faster response back.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
Or maybe not...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Just because we send out a message at c doesn't mean it will be returned at c. For all we know they could have already responded we just don't have the technology to listen.
And maybe we should be researching practical ways to achieve FTL electronic broadcasts?
Lastly, assuming something does hear us. Are we sure society is ready for intergalactic relationships?
Why would they want the place covered in crap for years? Anybody capable of getting here could just lease their technology to us, then buy our governments just like any other big corporation.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
And the "projections" of these "hyperdimensional" beings into our universe... they don't look like mice, by any chance, do they?
--
RumorsDaily
"All your base are belong to us."
That should get their attention.
Aside from the obvious compatibility issues, doesn't it strike anyone as kinda stupid that these presenters are naked? I mean, by far and away, most human cultures have some form of clothing. It may not be more natural, and it may not show our bodies accurately, but that's who we are. If these aliens want to make contact, that's is what to expect.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
This is a sheer waste of effort and money..
Why do people continue to delude themselves that an alien intelligence will be able to comprehend communication as we consider it?
Because it's quite likely that intelligent alien life is DNA, RNA, and protein based, has developed vision, has developed color vision, communicates with a linear stream of symbols, and has two sexes. In fact, there's a good chance that it has a body plan similar to ours, is bipedal, and uses sound to communicate. How do we know that? Because a lot of what we are is determined by physics, and many of these features have developed multiple times in evolution.
It's also quite likely that if there is any concurrent alien civilization at all capable of receiving our signals, they are millions of years old and have no interest in colonizing earth (because otherwise, they would have done so). It's just as likely that intelligent species, as a rule, exist as technologically advanced species for only a few hundred to a few thousand years, in which case there are not going to be any concurrent alien civilizations capable of receiving our signals.
We are a crippled duck, currently hidden in a vast swamp. Our only security being through obscurity. Why the hell do people insist on flailing around screaming for the hunters?
Now you're deluding yourself: you're deluding yourself into thinking that it is worth traveling 45 light years to do--what exactly? Eat us? Enslave us? Colonize earth? Blow it up? If any civilization has figured out how to send any substantial object (weapon, crew, colony ship) 45 light years towards earth, they have so much energy available to them that they don't need to fear us and that they don't need to bother with colonizing earth either. And that works in reverse, too: by the time we have figured out how to travel 45 light years, we have the energy to either annihilate ourselves completely if we aren't peaceful, or to travel purely out of scientific curiosity, since whatever resource or colonization needs we have, we can more easily satisfy in the solar system.
We're about as much of a "threat" to these people as some native tribe of cannibals in New Guinea is to your average suburban Chicago housewife. On the whole, it doesn't matter whether we let them know that we're here; they probably alread know and eitherthey don't care, or they are waiting with first contact. Of course, the most likely possibility is that they simply don't exist and that we're alone.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Futurama made a joke about aliens geting a tv show that was broadcast about 1000 years ago
- Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained
Anyonw knows how?
"Mmmmm, don't they look delicious! Let's jump into the saucer and head on down to that part of the galaxy. And hey, could you grab that cookbook on the counter?"
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
if there are planets on the target star? Seems like they should have checked that, at least.
If not, then it's just a stunt. A way to get an audience for what would be a flop otherwise. At that distance, they might at least know if there is a solar system there.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
I was wondering how someone would manage to cram a dig at Americans into this story, thanks to both of you for your tag-team effort.
This post isn't even that funny or insightful really. That it's gotten modded up to 5 so quickly says a great deal about the seething anti-American sentiment in the mod community! Not that one couldn't tell by reading a global warming story. Any post that ends with "America Sux" hit +5 in seconds.
Not that I'm one to defend America's current stupidity, but the bias here is so over the top that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Hopefully they arent circumcised, or the aliens will think we are a barbaric race that mutilates each others private parts, and as well fail to give them an accurate picture of real male anatomy. It said that the hosts are from Europe, where they are a more decent and civilised society that respects the basic bodily integrity rights of all persons and do not mutilate helpless children, so I am sure they are intact. In fact, 80% of the worlds population is intact (although it should be 100%, except for those who have made their own choice as an adult). Otherwise they would not be given an accurate picture of the real, complete human body if we sent them pictures of mutilated men, in fact, mutilated men are missing one of the most fascinating and wonderous parts of their body, the most densely innervated and spiritual parts of the body which is designed for the specific purpose of giving its owner intense and unwordly pleasures. The foreskin is probably the most densely innervated fine touch centre on the human body, MGM removes over 20,000 specialised nerve receptors.
Do not believe the myths. The foreskin is a very healthy and normal part of the body. In fact, in Europe and Japan, where circumcision is nearly unheard of, the life expectancies are in fact the highest in the world, and far ahead of the US. Japan is #6. Sweden, also a mostly intact country, is #7. The US is #48. Sure there are other factors, but this shows MGM is not needed for good health and that people do fine without it. They also have an AIDS rate that is half that of the US and a penile cancer rate in Europe that is lower than that of the US. In fact, nearly all problems the foreskin is blamed on can be fixed without circumcision, or are often not serious at all to require such a drastic amputation. Amputation must only be considered a last resort option, in the most extreme necessity.
Circumcision is nothing less than an unnecessary mutilation of the male body, decision to make greedy doctors money, an unnecessary amputation of a healthy body part without their owners consent, and a stealing of up to 95% of erogenous pleasure from men for the rest of their life, and a deprivation of their most basic human right to a whole body. If an adult wants to have them selves circumcise, go ahead, its your choice, and your body. But do not do it to children, who are too easily coerced and cannot give full consent. By prohibiting unnecessary, elective MGM of children we are preserving the persons right to make the decision for themselves as a fully informed and consenting adult, when they have the best chance of making the right decision for themselves. Its our bodies and it should be our choice, regarding such clearly unnecessential and unnecessary mutilations.
For more info:
http://www.cirp.org/
http://www.nocirc.org/
Or fuck them over with a huge number of copyright infringement lawsuits. Those pirate aliens are probably recording everything!
I agree with the many people saying that any alien intelligence probably would not be able to decode such a transmission, but the transmission itself is all that is required, not the specifics of the contents. (Mind you, we have been sending these out for years anyway) If any communication with a completely unknown alien intelligence is ever attempted then it will have to start with the lowest common denominators; the most likely ones being transmission type and maths. What I mean is that using radio waves to encode a 2D representation of 3D space using light and sound in a format designed for Earth-based electronic boxes in a language arbitrarily created over hundreds of years (many native speakers of which still do not understand it fully) has so many assumptions made about the recipient that any significant response would be as likely to occur on YouTube as sent through space back to us in a format we understand. Therefore the common denominators are maths, because that is a universal truth outside the realms of physics (who cares whether in a different universe electrons have a slightly different charge? a^2 + b^2 = c^2 will still apply to right angled triangles), and the medium of transmission (since anybody receiving a radio broadcast comprehends radio, anyone recieving laser transmissions comprehends lasers. If the aliens don't understand radio/lasers/whatever-else-is-used then it doesn't matter because they won't acknowledge the existance of the transmission anyway). Once contact is made then a common language/encoding can be built up (picture the difficulty of communication during live satellite news interviews, but multiplied by a hell of a lot) This reminds me of a TV drama/documentary exploring what might happen if alien intelligence is discovered. An astronomy centre on Earth picks up a repeating source of energy that they think is a pulsar, but it turns out to be a directed laser beam pulsing on and off in a ratio of pi (ie. on for an arbitrary length, off, on for the same length, off, on for the same length, off, on for 0.1415927...... of that length). It turned out that Earth's broadcasts had reached an alien intelligence lightyears away, and through their detection of the radio waves' source they had crafted a response (so the content didn't matter, just the radio signal itself) using lasers to reduce the power output needed. This pi signal had been received for decades, but nobody noticed it, and it was only when one bright young researcher sent a duplicate response that things started getting interesting, with a whole new language of mathematics encoded in laser pulses being built up as a common medium of communication between the two races (thus we learnt whole new ways of applying maths which the aliens had developed centuries earlier, that lead to new technology utilising this maths, etc. [for those who watch the Fast Show, imagine the implications of Dexter Math!]) and at no point did the transmissions contain naked people, pretty pictures of flowers or anything else which assumes something outside of maths and lasers (although it is theoretically possible that over a vast timeframe the transmissions' complexity could have built up enough to transmit something like this, that would be making assumptions about sight, sound and other perceptions. I mean, even cats get confused by a mirror for god's sake!) So in summary, they won't understand what is in the transmission, so just send anything mathematical that can be easily understood, keep sending it over and over, use radio waves to broadcast across the galaxy but switch to lasers when a recipient is pinpointed... oh, and remember to employ plenty of bright, young researchers (my CV is attached......) PS: Thank you /. for obliterating my formatting and making me look like a dumbass
...so as not to offend the Ferengi.
Advice: on VPS providers
An invite to build an intergalactic bypass.............
By now, they've no doubt concluded that all they have to do is wait another couple hundred years for us do the deed ourselves, thereby saving the aliens a bundle on the cost of deploying military assets.
Cheers
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
unreachably distant point of light
Unreachable for us. Maybe not unreachable for them.
IMHO, what we don't know about physics is probably much larger than what we do know. And any civilization with a few million years to sit around and think about it might know more about the topic than us.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Any civilization 45 light years away is currently watching broadcasts of "My Mother The Car." As a result, they've probably concluded that this planet must be destroyed for the survival of the galaxy.
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If that **AA hears about this then we'll be forced to slap some DRM on it to make sure them aliens don't copy it. BTW, I think we would also have to FedEx them a player.
"Would it really matter if a society like 18th century Europe gave any info to a foe as advanced as the current US military"
Yes it would. The legions of musket men would destroy the US navy in a matter of seconds. Yes, this is a video game joke. No, I didn't read the article at all.
I RTFA'ed. I hope the aliens don't see the broadcast. They'll probably send a planetbuster back. I mean, let's say I'm an alien and I get this signal beamed over to me. I have no cipher to decode it, unlike that pretty gold disc that was picked up in interstellar space last week, so I put my scientists on the case and they spend many, many moons decoding the signal. But now they're talking in a language I can't understand. Now I have to study cues in the video for years to try to figure out what they're saying. Finally, I get it. Then I hear: "We have seen your crop cicles. Stop by and say hello." You fucking bet I'd push the button.
The only redeeming value about this broadcast is that there's an off chance of a human sexuality demonstration. Pr0n made for aliens is something I don't have in my archives yet.
-R
We should make sure to tell our alien viewers that we can be harmed only by feeding us a few ounces of the finest chocolate or by frequent blowjobs.
--
make install -not war
for the South Park version.
"If your parents never had children, chances are you wonât either." -Dick Cavett
I was watching French in Action a few years ago, and thought that this might be a good way to introduce an alien species to humanity and a particular culture. It's a foreign language telecourse that's produced entirely in the target language of French, so in order to be effective, it needs to demonstrate the usage of the language, as well as every concept a human being needs to talk about. The only problem is that this approach would inevitably focus on one culture, no matter which language you choose.
I do agree that it's completely pointless to send out a single one-time message. It seriously needs to repeat many times, for a long time. Who would pay for that?
Granted, the directional signal will get noticably broader by the time it reaches the destination, but does not anyone else see the term as self-inconsistent?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
and perhaps we should broadcast this to people on earth to see if there are aliens amongst us?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
just because our transmission technology goes light speed doesn't mean a faster transmission method doesn't exist.
Did I miss something fun?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Intergalactic? Interstellar at best. get your astronomical terms right: solar system: Big Interstellar space: bigger Intergalactic space: freaking humungous
You never catch me alive
We will have to wait 90 years to learn whether or not some lifeform was listening.
Wrong! They've discovered faster-than-light travel ages ago. We'll only need ~50 years.
Although even this is presumptuous: it doesn't tell us whether someone was listening, but whether, after listening, they still wanted to talk to us.
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." -- Calvin
I am the man with no sig!
In one of Jared Diamond's books, I think maybe the Third Chimpanzee, he makes an interesting point, after discussiong how human civilizations glady overwhelmed and exploited any other civilizations of which they became aware and had the capacity to do so, that sending out messages to alien civilizations (let's dodge the question of whether any actually exist since anyone sending a message implicitly assumes they probably do) represents pure folly given our lack of technological prowess.
Should people really broadcast these messages until we have at least mastered interplanetary war and perhaps colonized another solar system, by force if necessary? Given human history and assuming continued scientific progress two things are pretty apparent:
1. We'll eventually cross to new worlds and even solar systems.
2. We'll destroy anything that stands in our way.
Somehow I suspect that any sufficiently advanced technological civilization, human or otherwise, would have the same priorities. To be honest, I'm not too terribly concerned about this transmission reaching anything, but it's a valid question and shows a bit of hubris on the part of the broadcasters to the rest of humanity. It's in the best interest of any civlization to establish contact when and only when they have gained the upperhand technologically. The only thing humanity has as a signficant dissuading technology right now is the possibility of nuking itself, with no offensive capabilities whatsoever.
If the alien happened to be Admiral ZEX...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I sure hope they don't send any pictures of fat broads.
Alien astonomer calls up his wife : "Hey Honey! They're advertising a new fast food joint over in Sol sytem, let's go there for dinner after work ok?"
... my mommy say's i'm not allowed to talk to strangers....
So in 45 years extraterrestials can get sick of reality TV too!
Support Liberty, Support Ron Paul
The exoplanet was detected in 1989, then retracted, and then the retraction was retracted. Appearantly.
Stop the brainwash
That's somewhat the feeling. They can take very discreet forms yet be key to the "fate". They demonstrated me the ability to switch bits in the RAM of computers. This is a very fine grained interaction. They probably subtly influence people by touching their neurons. Then you may also say that I exhibit symptoms of schizophrenia and that I am hallucinating by believing in some sort of influencing "god". So be it. It's part of the great plan of the "mice".
Pwned.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
There are some building blocks involved in broadcasting a 2-dimensional moving picture. I'd think sending pictures sequentially one after the other is common sense, so what's left is turning a 2d pic into a 1d signal. It's done one line at a time, from top to bottom, with a repeating marker signal between each line. There will be two repeating marker signals, one between each scanline and one longer signal between two frames. These will be the first regularities anyone will notice. When each line of data is the same lenght in the signal, it's reasonable to assume the picture is rectangular. Bingo! And it's intuitive that the amplitude represents brightness! It's easy to count the number of lines between "vertical refreshes", and the number of "pixels" on each line should be roughly equal - a square is an intuitive special case. Now, there is some trouble involved in figuring out the modulation method, but AM is the simplest and rather intuitive. They can make good guesses about the modulation by the frequency spectrum of our signal. This is assuming they've discovered the importance of Fourier's transform too! :).
Sure, once they get the picture rolling, it's important to put things to scale. Maybe broadcast it in real time, so they have the time axis right from the start. Size is harder. They'll know which way is down if the video shows people walking around and dropping things, but they won't know if we are big or small. They can guess based on their own ecology though =).
Would be interesting to get such a sample to play around with!
What someone said about PAL / NTSC / foo, don't you think it's surprising how much you're actually seeing from a video signal even when your TV's setting is wrong?
A much better and simpler option is to beam them Star Trek episodes. I would prefer the original TOS ones, but with the updated visuals of space and spaceships. It would show that we are, well, good and advanced! It's more safer! And maybe in 90 years (when they get those signals), we do have some more of the technology shown in the episodes! Vicki
They RIAA probably doesn't even care.
i hope the people on it will at least be reasonably fit and attractive ;)
i mean we really dont want to be broadcasting bloated flabby people's images into space, an alien species will think that we are ripe for farming like cattle
Let's hope they don't have laws against alien porn.
I see a big revenue opportunity here for the people of Earth.
Once these aliens have found out how to decrypt our signal, we'll sue them for violating the DMCA.
We'll all be millionaires!
This should be quite change from the "I Love Lucy" broadcasts they're receiving now.
What?
I'm a bit surprised that they'd pick Errai, of all stars. It's only three billion years old, which puts it at the same age as the sun at the time that cells with nuclei first appeared: not the best candidate for decoding a radio message. On top of that, one of the two stars is a subgiant, which means its in the process of swelling into a red giant, so it's probably cooking any planets it might have that could support life.
The U.S. Constitution needs to be ammended with a "separation of business and state" clause.
We will have to wait 90 years to learn whether or not some lifeform was listening.
It could be a lot longer if they decide not to respond. The word quarantine comes to mind.
Tag lost or not installed.