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Does Active SETI Put Earth in Danger?
Ponca City, We Love You writes "There is an interesting story in Seed Magazine on active SETI — sending out signals to try to contact other civilizations in nearby star systems. Alexander Zaitsev, Chief Scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, has access to one of the most powerful radio transmitters on Earth and has already sent several messages to nearby, sun-like stars. But some scientists think that Zaitsev is not only acting out of turn by independently speaking for everyone on the entire planet but believe there are possible dangers we may unleash by announcing ourselves to the unknown darkness. This ground has been explored before in countless works of science fiction most notably "The Killing Star," a 1995 novel that paints a frightening picture of interstellar civilizations exterminating their neighbors with relativistic bombardments, not from malice, but simply because it is the most logical action."
Yes it does.
We should conquer and colonize another planet first, then send active SETI signals from there instead.
--
make install -not war
Let's stop txing!
Has this man figured out a way to send signals faster than radio frequency or light? Surely, evidence of our noisy bickering between each other will be interpreted long before his signals anyways. And what about the satellites we have cruising away from our solar system?
I don't think what Active SETI does is really going to matter at this point in time.
There is not one iota of evidence that there exists one other intelligent form of life in the universe. Go google for Fermi's paradox, I won't even give you the obligatory wikipedia link.
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Stopping people from deliberately sending signals is not going to make us invisible. We've been sending signals for decades.
Watching TV for an hour is enough prove for me already.
The UFO theorists (I try to keep an open mind, but I find the existence of UFOs less than probable due to lack of evidence) say that UFOs started visiting (or started visiting heavily) in the middle of the 20th century in response to the nuclear bombs going off. Perhaps someone more versed in science could tell us whether that or Hitler's speech at the 1936 Olympics is easier to detect from space.
Inter-stellar communication would almost certainly be perceived as representing the entire planet. No attempt at doing so should be made until some sort of world government has the authority to represent the entire planet.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
The problem is, we don't want to have one iota of a chance that the aforementioned evidence arrives to us in the form of an interstellar bombardment.
It will be known as the alpha site and when the GOA'ULD send all their JAFFA to destroy it we will make Beta site
I'll leave the Star Trek references to others
How many of you have considered the possibility of Crypto-terrestrials? We keep looking amongst the stars for other intelligent life while ignoring the evidence that it has been here on earth all along.
Consider this - what if the intelligence behind UFO events, both modern and pre-1940's UFO events like Fatima or Lourdes - is the same intelligence that appears in stories of Fey folk (elves, dwarves, sylphs, succubi, etc)?
What if we've been looking to the stars when in fact they've been here all along, just as bound to the Earth as we are?
Chickened of aliens? Bwak Bwak Bwak!!!
There is not one iota of evidence that there exists one other intelligent form of life in the universe.
As sublimely demonstrated by the parents' post, there's certainly little evidence of intelligence on this world, why should we expect to find any elsewhere?
I think that SETI is a waste of time. It's freakin' miracle that there is life on earth, let alone intelligent life. What are the chances of finding another intelligent species?
Seek and ye shall find.
Saberhagen's Berserker series? Bear's The Forge of God and Anvil of Stars? What is this The Killing Star that you speak of?
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
by the time the signals sent out will arrive anywhere of significance, the disease "humans" will have been defeated by the planet's own immune system.
Thats what you think... I put up my e-mail address in a web page I set up, thinking along the same line as you did and boy, was I sorry! I'm sure there are other planets like the spammers, waiting to get hold of one to spam at!
the other white meat!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Does that mean that Overlord Goorg W. Moohsh from planet UrSA911c is about to announce that we have secret weapons of mass destruction?
In a related story in Caveman Weekly, Torg, The Cheif Smartguy, for clan *Grunt* asks: OOGA BOOGA Should we go outside the cave or stay inside? OOGA OOGA!
Even if aliens are out there listening, would they really care? I mean, we've all seen Independence Day and Signs and all the other movies where they do. But, when it comes right down to it, we probably aren't special enough to matter.
Aliens powerful enough to matter would probably think of us like harmless bugs or small animals: sure, they take up some space, but they aren't worth the effort.
On the other hand, if the aliens want a hyperspace bypass and Earth is in the way, we might all be screwed. :)
http://www.skullsecurity.org/blog/
It all depends on what are are sending in our transmissions. Starting out with a image of an bomb being detonated on a earth city (ie: WWII) , probably isn't going to be the proper, intergalatic "Hello" we are looking for. Another thought is to maybe send an explaination of all the radio and television signals that have been traveling through space all these years. Some of that has got to send the wrong message.
Isn't this just the height of paranoia? Let him broadcast if he wants. It won't do any good anyways, the "aliens" still have the Prime Directive to think of.
this
This idea is a stretch. Zaitsev is more or less free to "speak" to anyone he chooses.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Oh my god! I'll have to add it to my list, let's see...
1. Fatal accident while driving
2. Caught in fire at night while sleeping
3. Heart attack
4. Aliens attacking earth after sending out signals
5. Cancer
I had to bump "Terrorists attack Starbucks #528" off the list to make room
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
There is also no proof we are alone in the universe either.
So there are billions spend in both manhours and cold hard cash to find extraterrestrial life, unsuccessfully. Now suddendly there's a guy who thinks "hey, why passively listen. Lets actively send out some signals straight to some specific starsystems!"
And suddenly the scientific community is freaking; "OMG! Lets not do that! What if they exterminate us!"
What do those "some scientists" know more then we do?
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
There is not one iota of evidence that there exists one other intelligent form of life in the universe. Go google for Fermi's paradox, I won't even give you the obligatory wikipedia link.
Fermi's paradox relies on too many assumptions to even be considered a valid argument. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you but let's at least use more quantifiable arguments than Fermi's tired assumption...
IANAP (physicist) but would any species capable of crossing interstellar space actually be looking for radio waves? Isn't that like using an SR-71 to look for smoke signals and war drums?
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
Whatever that particular guy says is going to be prefaced with five decades of mediocre broadcast television, and then before that a bunch of radio shows about cowboys and indians. We should worry more about what kind of impression Jack Benny will make on the aliens. I.e. is he going to convince them all to take up smoking? Mmmm mmm, Lucky Strikes, nothing breathes smoother.
So we're constantly listening to the sky for others to do this to us - but we're unwilling to do it ourselves. But it's the aliens that want to conquer the universe, right?
If the basis of your 'article' is speculation whose sole citation is science fiction, send it to /dev/null next time.
I, for one, welcome our new alien overloards.
I think we're okay as long as it's just sending scientific data that doesn't reveal much about our cultural predispositions.
"You couldn't possibly have had anything to do with Designing us" should work.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
They will come and discover that we develop lots of technology and then disable half of it ourselves with something called DRM. We would be looked at as about the level of a dog chasing its tail...
:(
On the other hand, hopefully they would figure we are too stupid to get near them and we are in a ghetto system anyways
"Sorry we are unable to verify the license on your hyperdrive's software...please try again later or follow this link to purchase a new license"
Actually, it is very dangerous. The signals have been causing a certain alien's garage door to open and close relentlessly ever since they started, making him very angry and he's up to Illudium Q-35 now.
Taking the Bush administration's stance to it's logical conclusion, the aliens would be stupid NOT to bombard us back to the stone age. I mean, as Cheney paints it, if there's a 1% chance that we MIGHT attack them, they should pre-emptively destroy us for their own safety! We've certainly given them enough information to reach that conclusion, their intelligence on us is certainly a "slam-dunk".... Furthermore we continue to resist demands from their United Federation of Planets to disarm and to be open ourselves to ongoing weapons inspections.
Any resistance to their attacks and/or bombardment, would of course, be carried out only by the "dead-enders" and they would ofcourse be appropriately labeled "insurgents."
I for one welcome our invading/bombarding forces. Perhaps we could make a deal and install myself as "Puppet Dictator" or earth!
Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. I agree with you that we have no evidence of other intelligent life and that anything we say about other intelligence in the universe is pure speculation. What you haven't done is demonstrate "nonexistence" which the reference to Fermi's paradox doesn't do.
If we ever find ET directly, it would probably be in a few hundred years. Our radio technology is antiquated probably to whatever ET has used. They may not even use radio to communicate long distance. They may use laser pulses, or god knows. My point is, our technology is in its infancy. Come back 400 years from now and if we haven't found at least some form life, then spew. But judging out ability to discover ET based on a few mere decades of tech is just plain ignant.
We've already violated the prime directive by sending porn and rock music into space with the Voyager and Pioneer messages respectively. Should an advanced alien civilization find and decode the Pioneer golden record, their biggest worry would be to be sued by the RIAA for illegally downloading Johnny B. Goode.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
There is not one iota of evidence that there exists one other intelligent form of life in the universe.
"Other?"
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Definitive novels dealing with intergalactic contact are Stanislaw Lem's Fiasco and Eden. I cannot recommend these books highly enough as explorations of human psychology and what-could-possibly-go-wrong!
you had me at #!
From TFA: "despite the fact that SETI's ongoing quest has so far been largely fruitless"
Largely??
Right... I have been puzzled over this for some time. Why, when the Russians are coming out every kitchen sink and every toilet trying to conquer America, why would we suddenly want to announce the presence of our defenseless souls at a particular point in the spacetime to whoever is willing to listen? What if they, too, are just as evil?
Muncha-Buncha-Cruncha-Humans!
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Are other civilizations, on other planets around other stars, in any danger from us? Do their transmissions, when we eventually find them, make us wish to rise up and destroy them?
If intelligent life out there was listening and could decode our tv signals, they'd probably say the same about us with the ad driven broadcasts that we're sending out into space. V1@gra ads are on tv too.
I think we can all agree... that if the american indians had sent out regular "message in a bottle" type items across the ocean, describing their society, level of technology, etc, the Europeans would have been much friendlier when they arrived.
Or the europeans would have showed up alot quicker and did exactly what they did. I imagine they would have brought more guns though on that first trip.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
So are you proposing that we should confiscate all private radio transmitters? This whole argument is kind of like the worries that particle accelerators will destroy the Earth, when high-energy cosmic rays bombard the Earth daily.
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From TOA: Brin included a more disturbing possibility: Nobody is on the air because something seeks and destroys everyone who broadcasts.
I have another alternative theory to explain why we have not received any signal: Every planet inhabited by intelligent life has considered the same possibility of the previous paragraph, so they are avoiding any kind of transmission just in case, to avoid potential detection.
Whether there are aliens of not, the notion that somehow we are just so unique and special that they all want us and our land is silly. If 1% of UFO sightings were true alien spacecraft for example, it would be the equivalent of us sending a manned mission to mars every week. Wasteful useless and highly unlikely just from a resource standpoint. If they are out there, they could no doubt learn all they want to know about us from orbit, in fact from moon orbit. As for all the junk found that supposedly falls off spacecraft, I somehow doubt a species would build a ship capable of interplanetary flight, have it come here, and then have the bumper fall off.
Whether SETI ever gives us reals results or not, I just don't see it as being the gateway to invasion.
As far as I'm aware it only relies on the conflict between two assumptions: first, that intelligent life is common in the universe; and second, that intelligent life would be interested in exploration and communication, as we are. Neither of these assumptions is controversial.
Also, I would suggest that if we found an alien species that wasn't interested in exploration or communication, we might have trouble recognizing them as intelligent, and furthermore, what's the point of contacting them?
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or rather, in carl sagan's "contact"?
the first visual broadcast transmissions we've sent to the stars was bloody farking hitler himself, addressing the 1936 berlin games
THAT's our announcement to the galaxy
could we have possibly done worse as a species?
we stood up, we cleared our throat, and the first utterance out of our technological mouths and we go and godwin the whole of human civilization
fark us
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's the difference between you and your teenage friends being willing to go into abandoned warehouses if you need to run an errand, but not going into abandoned warehouses just to see if there's somebody in there.
There is 0 evidence that there is anything out there to fear.
There is 0 evidence that there is anything out there that cares.
There is 0 evidence that there is anything out there that could do anything about it eve if it cared.
But that isn't a reason why we can't be afraid.
And all of you who want to say "yeah but you can't PROVE that it is safe" kindly prove that the aliens we contact won't save us from a mother asteroid or some other extinction event.
You may all return to fearing each other now.
Chicken aliens? CHICKEN aliens? We've been slaughtering chickens for eons. They are NOT going to be happy. They'll stick us in cages and harvest our embryos! "Bwak Bwak Bwak!!!" probably means, "Pass the drumstick" in chickenese.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Send an army of spammers after them, they will surely react!
Why do you make the assumption that we are behind other possible lifeforms technologically? What's to say that we aren't the most advanced in the universe? Maybe we're the ones expected to bombard other worlds with our technologies to teach them how to proceed. I know, ridiculously scary thought considering we can't even get our own shit straight, but why does everyone assume all the ETs are more advanced than we are?
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Yeah. We've got the dolphins, the mice, and so far nothing else.
Running Windows^H^H^H^H^H^H^H OSX and Linux in the home. (I don't have time for Solitaire any more.)
As far as we know, aliens have not visited the Earth or any other solar system body in its 4.6 billion year existence: archaeology and solar system exploration have turned up nothing. Further, we have absolutely no contacts with any other civilization after millennia of recorded history, and after several decades of active searching. For practical purposes, extraterrestrial intelligence is nonexistent. I'm wondering what would make you agree?
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I don't know about that, I can't imagine that in 400 years we won't be using radio waves to study the universe. It's not like radio waves are some sort of "tech" that can become outdated; it's a fundamental particle of the universe at an extremely useful energy range. Why wouldn't an alien civilization use it? It's not the whole universe is going to red-shift and radio will become somehow obsolete. I can't see civilization becoming so advanced that they just... stop looking at radio-frequency radiation when it's so obviously suited for for cosmic observation. I would understand if a civilization was more advanced than us and culturally just didn't care about intergalactic communication. It's my understanding that we bombard a large area (whole star systems?) with these radio waves, would they even have to be looking at us to detect them? I would imagine that if one of the nearby star systems did the same to us, you'd be able to catch the signal at any well-equipped lab. I may be way off base with that last part, but in any case, I wouldn't count on radio waves going out of style in the interstellar community anytime soon.
Percolation Theory is one of many theories that make sound arguments against Fermi's paradox. (Which basically amounts to I haven't seen anything so obviously there is nothing out there lol)
Space is very big and it takes lots and lots of energy and resources to build a craft--even just a weapons delivery system--to cross the vast distances between stars. It would have to actually be worth it to attack us. Our planet and Solar System contain no resources that aren't readily available and easier to obtain much closer to just about any other star system.
It has helped us identify a few fruitcakes in society.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Which probably could explain why aliens might be more pacific than us.
What I'm basically saying, is that "peace" is a prerequisite for achieving "space age",
because "space age" comes only far later after "big weapons" in the technological development,
and without "peace", a civilisation may blow it's entire planet at the "big weapons" stage, long before being able to achieve "space age".
Just look at our history :
As you said, our own worst enemy has always been ourself : the other humans against which we engage war.
Specially in recent history, we've reached the point where some population have enough warfar technology and power that they might oblitared the whole planet if weapon escalation runs out of control.
Nuclear stockpiling and M.A.D. programs are the epitome of this situation.
MAD fundamental premise is that nobody will attack because everyone dies in the process of retaliation that follows (except maybe a bunch of politician hiding into caves with lots of young pretty nubile girls, isn't it, Dr Strangelove ?)
MAD seeks to make atomic war an unaffordable option because of too high cost.
The implicit consequence is that if someone played fool anyway, we WILL all definitely stop existing.
And at the same time, we haven't even reached true space travel yet, and we're very far from being able to do it on a large scale. We can only plant a couple of flags on our moon, and send two motorized webcams to the directly neighbouring planet.
An alien race that is able to detect us AND come toward earth to meet us, must necessarily be extremely advance, far beyond the point at which we are now. Which would possibly mean also having gone through a long story of dangerous technology (military and such).
If that alien race wasn't deeply motivated to be peaceful, they'll have had a lot of opportunity of blowing themselves up with all discovery they had the time to make before achieving space exploration.
Only a race that repress its tendency to kill everything can survive technology.
Even we as human have a small tendency to try to refrain of causing too much destruction.
In antiquity, pillaging and burning down to grounds enemy cities has been standard military practice, even told in classical literature.
In the middle ages, having a lot of deaths during wars was considered pretty normal.
As history progressed more dangerous technology has become available, people start being reluctant using it. Moral value change.
MAD was a pissing context without (hopefully) any real intent to engage all those nukes.
Even if atrocities are comited during modern conflict, those are much more criticized by the public (see current opinion about Irak or the various massacres and ethnic cleansing happening under dictatorship).
Slowly we are discovering that hurting each other may not be the best procedure.
A lot of the "modern" forms of conflict have moved to much more political and commercial ground. Emerging country don't long anymore to conquest foreign land, only to capture their markets.
Thus maybe, we ourselves will be able to survive until space age without blowing ourselves up with all military technology we may invent in the process.
But probably, the first alien race that will meet us will probably be peaceful because other wise, by then, they won't exist anymore.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Perhaps they just assume a bell curve and that we're probably not on the high end of that, the more advanced a species the more likely we would be to encounter it (since it would expand more) or at least that's what we think.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The earth is such a mass flood of electromagnetic signals with repetitive / predictable patterns that, even without SETI, we'd be like a halogen bulb in a dark room to them.
8==8 Bones 8==8
imho, of course they know, but obviously we have yet to measure up
people aren't as civil nor as intelligent as they'd like to believe they are
Is that a serious argument? A hypothetical ET would wipe us out utterly. Using your analogy, it's as though one abandoned warehouse is booby-trapped with a thermonuclear warhead. There's no point in stopping at just radio and TV.
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That's the inverse square law again there, as an AC already pointed out. You see, a radio transmission has strength equal to the inverse square of the distance from its source.
Here's some simple numbers... as you get twice as far away, you only see one quarter the signal. As you get four times as far away, you see 1/16th of the signal. As you get 100 times as far away, you see 1/10,000th the signal. Let's say your wireless computer headset starts to fade at 10 feet from the base transceiver on your USB port... that's not going to make it to next door, let alone Alpha Centauri.
Don't worry about it. Your planet has been scheduled for destruction to make way for an interstellar traffic conduit. The notice has been of file at our offices for some time.
Based on intelligence gathered from transmissions originating from planet Earth I cannot see how any alien species couldn't come to the conclusion that a preemptive strike is the best solution to the human problem.
Unless intelligent life is exceptionally rare in the universe any alien civilization capable of causing us harm will fall into one of two categories: benevolence or apathy.
Malevolence simply makes no sense. Coming to Earth to destroy humans simply because we exist (or might threaten them in the far future) would be like driving 100 miles from your home into the woods and spreading ant poison because those ants might some day try to colonize your home. Accepting some 50's movie plots as reality, we still have to consider that any such civilization is likely to have run into a civilization bigger and badder than itself which would likely either destroy or change the civilization. (And if civilizations are exceptionally rare, ours is probably too valuable for any civilization to want to destroy.)
Apathetic civilizations will either never spend the resources to harm us or will simply eradicate eventually to harvest the resources of Earth, regardless of whether or not we send out signal. (I'm skeptical that such a sufficiently advanced civilization would even need those resources.)
There is simply no reason not to reap the benefits of contacting an alien civilization.
So, the argument is that the alien race would pre-emptively attack us because we were on a course to develop the capability to do serious harm to them? "Do unto others before they get a chance to do it unto you"? That's completely preposterous. Now, if you said that the aliens would nuke us because we were living on top of some fuel that their entire economy depends upon... and the "pre-emptive defense" was merely the story they spouted at the United Galaxies summits... well, Christ... that happens all the time.
We have been "listening" for millennia of recorded history. No landings yet.
We've also examined eons before that via archaeology and palaeontology. No alien artifacts. As far as we know they have never been here as long as the Earth has existed.
Now we have been actively listening to radio for decades. Still nothing.
At some point one has to agree that efforts to search for extraterrestrial intelligence are no longer worthwhile.
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No proof (how could that ever be proven?) but lots of evidence... we haven't found any yet! Its like saying we haven't found any proof there aren't black seagulls. We find evidence that there aren't any, every time we fail to find one. But we'll never be sure.
Having said that, I still think civilizations are out there, but i expect we'll find ruins long before we find living specimens. They probably pop into existence briefly and then annihilate themselves within a few thousand years, which is, in cosmic time frames, almost like never existing at all.
Jeremy
We should all remember the lesson learned in The Twilight Zone, Season 3, Episode 24: To Serve Man.
Maybe they keep getting wiped out by an intelligent lifeform that we may tip off to our own existance.
Radio and TV signals will not be propagated very far into space because they aren't directed there. Sending signals to other stars, OTOH, would direct the transmitted power to outer space, not to the earth surface.
. . . they'd probably have to hold a lottery to determine who would get to push the button.
The only ways to send anything useful are either to put a big omnidirectional transmitter at the North or South pole, or else to get off the planet and send unidirectional signals. So we've just about got to be spacefaring for the ETs to see anything, unless some of them happen to be due north.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
Why such a ridiculous statement by a discredited bureaucrat has caught on is beyond me. Of course absence of evidence is evidence of absence. For example, my office mate usually provides evidence of his presence in my office with through absorbing and reflecting visible-wavelength EM radiation. The fact that this evidence is absent right now is strong evidence that he's not sitting in his chair. Unless you're seriously going to claim that me looking over and not seeing him is non-evidence of anything?
If you want to argue about whether some specific set of expected evidence is, in fact, reasonable, sure--that's logical enough. Certainly I don't find Fermi 100% convincing. But I will note he makes roughly the same starting assumptions that the SETI people do: Intelligent life evolves sufficiently frequently, survives sufficiently long, and is sufficiently like us in ability and outlook that there's a good probability that technology similar to what we use or reasonably expect to use is in place in other systems at the present.
Security through obscurity?
hide your head in a hole, because if we cant see them they cant see us right?
Thanks for the physics lesson. I would conservatively estimate that the RF energy being continuously radiated into space is on the order of a gigawatt. Of course it's isotropic, and will be very weak at long range, but in order to be worried about an alien invasion we have to first assume that they have much better technology than our own.
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If they're not interested in exploration or communication, are peaceful, and look cool, then the point is probably going to be to exploit them or take them as pets. If they produce chemicals that improve our quality of life, they'd be used as drug production stock. If they're tasty and nutritious, they'd be food. If they're cute and easy to care for, they'd be pets. If they're cute and hard to care for, they'd be in zoos. If we deem them intelligent but can't figure out how to communicate with them, we'd keep some in zoos and pay to swim with them (like dolphins), and eat their neighbors (the tuna).
If we could find life that's not poisonous or violent toward us, we'd probably also look to colonization if there wasn't any claim to the area by sentient beings.
Of course, these things assume travel and not just contact. Of course, if there's nothing on the planet interested in exploration or communication, how would they receive our radio signals and why would they bother to decode them?
From TFA: "Are we prepared for an answer?"
Earthling: Hello? [long silence] Hello!
ET: 'Allo! Whoo ez eet?
Earthling: It is Earth. Whose planet is this?
ET: Zis is the planet of my master, Guy de Loembard.
Earthling: Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest. If he will communicate with our planet, he can join us in our Quest for the Holy Grail.
ET: Well, I'll ask him, but I don't zink he'll be very keen... Uh, he's already got one, you see.
Earthling: What?
Second Earthling: He says they've already got one!
Earthling: Are you sure he's got one?
ET: Oh, yes, it's very nice-a.
Kinda like what the USA did with Iraq?
And you know the rest. That goes for the ability to cross interstellar space in a short (200 solar year) lifetime, too. We don't have a hope of understanding how it would be done and therefore we would be like gorillas to anyone who could do it. Yes they could probably crush us but at the same time any aliens we need to worry about are probably so advanced that we are of no interest to them.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
That says nothing about the lack of radio evidence. Also, I don't think Fermi said "lol".
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Centuries from now we will have a much greater chance than now at detecting some sort of signal, radio or otherwise. We may discover some sort of "sub-space" medium like Star Trek has, in which communication is much faster and reliable at astronomical distances. Radio tech would still be reliable, but it may take back seat to a more advanced mode we don't even comprehend yet. My point is, our tech is still its infancy. Give it a LOT of time and we'll have detecting capabilities beyond anything we can fathom.
Perhaps they can't hear us anymore than we can hear them. Perhaps the termination shock border distorts radio signals enough that we are totally covered up. Perhaps that is why we haven't heard anything from outer space because all signals are scrambled enough to make it look like noise. Or maybe there is a large canvas out there that totally surrounds our solar system with a bunch of white dots and galaxy images all over it, and on the other side of this curtain stands the great and venerable Oz. ;)
Further, we have absolutely no contacts with any other civilization after millennia of recorded history...
That should read we have absolutely no PROVEN contacts...
There are many very old writings, pictures, tablets, etc. that could be interpreted as showing contact with alien races. Perhaps aliens did come here years ago and decided either a) we aren't worth keeping in touch with or 2) they would wait a few ages to see if we blow ourselves up. Who knows? I certainly would never profess to have any knowledge of the subject, but I will keep an open mind.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
That's a key point. Other intelligent life seems almost certian - the universe is a big place. But other intelligent life that is alive during the same few thousand years that we are would be a heck of a coincidence. And of course we lack even a single example of a technological race lasting more than a few thousand years.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
ET may have come to Earth sometime during human civilization's thousands of years here, and yet decided to keep distance. Just because they didn't pull an Independence Day-style invasion or leave artifacts, or interact with humans doesn't mean they've been here in the past.
The phrase "practical purposes" suffices for my agreement.
Since you suggested googling Fermi's Paradox, I suggest googling "proving a negative". You could also have expressed the same sentiment with phrases like "Based on the current evidence, extraterrestrial intelligence is unlikely." But in this crowd of pedantic precision lovers, an equivocal statement of nonexistence on a subject we're barely equipped to study is going to draw fire.
Just exactly what would you need for proof that we were contacted by extra terrestrial beings?
Proof? I would say that there is an extreme likelihood that a good bit of popular pasts have included alien visitors. Seriously, what would put the fear of god into someone more then an alien "angel"? Or how about Zeus and Apollo and so on. The Chinese fascination with dragons and all could be a sign of visitors. Not that I think dragons are aliens but they can resemble some popular space crafts that the nutjobs claim to have seen.
I think it would be extremely hard to verify that no extra terrestrial life has visited earth. I think you mean that it isn't probable because they left no trace that you can recognize.
Any civilization that has the ability to do damage to us has the ability to detect us without the need for this active SETI. The only ETs that are possibly going to benefit from the active SETI are those who are like us; stuck on their little ball of mud hoping for a large signal to clue them in.
I predict that before a man walks on Mars, or soon there after, we will have the technology to be able to tell if there is intelligent life (as we know it) in the closer solar systems systems. We won't need some flimsy signal from them, we will be able to see them from here.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
The thing is, we haven't really looked. There are no blatantly obvious signs - no cities on Mars or the like, but that's all we can really say. Other than the Earth, the Moon, and Mars, there could be a great many alien artifacts scattered around the Solar System: we wouldn't know unless they were highly visible. We really haven't explored much.
Similary, we know that nearby stars aren't sending out radio signals directed at us. That doesn't tell us much at all. The galaxy is a big place, and we don't know what to look for as evidence of a high tech civilization.
This is the most obvious answer to Fermi's paradox: we're wondering why no one lives in the house next door, but we've never actually walked over and rang the doorbell.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
As once Dr. Hawking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking once said: "Meeting a more advanced civilization, at our present stage, might be a bit like the original inhabitants of America meeting Columbus. I don't think they were better off for it."
http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/life.html
We may be their new appetizer. I hope that this "Alexander Zaitsev" guy would be first on their menu...
"They're Made Out Of Meat"
http://www.terrybisson.com/meat.html
Reevers.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
It also rests on the assumption that we're not the first intelligent species in the galaxy. It rests on the assumption that an intelligent species across the galaxy is going to be able to find us. It rests on the assumption that there is no "prime directive" in effect. That's just off the top of my head.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
we can let loose the final salvo: game shows
a good dose of "deal or no deal" puts you at an effective 10-20 point iq deficit
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In 100 years our radio listening abilities will be far superior to anything we can pull off today. We'll have exponentially more sensitive equipment, be able to scan more channels than all capacity of the radio telescopes on earth combined. And that is just limiting it to radio. We may be able to peer onto other worlds in 100 years with our telescopes, who knows. We should continue searching for ET in different ways, if only to satisfy our curiosity. It may be a backburner, "idle" time type project. Astronomy is currently in its infancy, s20451.
This topic (to me) is equivalent to worrying about occasionally drinking beer when I'm shooting up heroin. First, heroin is much worse, and secondly, an occasional beer is not going to likely have that much of an effect. Worrying about SETI seems, to me, like beer. There's so much other stuff we, as humans, are doing that is more of an immediate threat.
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
You not seeing him in his chair after looking is absence of evidence from his chair because you did an exhaustive search of the chair. Just because he's not in the chair doesn't mean he's not in the building. He could be sick in the toilet all day but too silly to stay home. He could be in the boss's office being reamed by the boss (figuratively or literally). He could be dead in the drop ceiling, or asleep in a broom closet. Anything motile has to be searched for sufficiently faster than it can move to provide sufficient evidence it's not present somewhere.
A better word in that quote would make it "Absence of proof is not proof of absence", or "Absence of evidence is not sufficient evidence of absence" either of which would be more accurate. If your office mate is not in his chair all day, that's certainly some evidence, but it's not sufficient evidence to say he's not in the building.
It's the same sort of saying as "You can't prove a negative." Well, for one, that statement is negative. Prove to me you can't prove a negative... Yet it's taken widely to be true despite being internally contradictory. Besides, you can, under certain circumstances, prove a negative. A good example is a well-supported alibi. Someone can't have been in a hotel in Detroit and have committed a murder in Miami at the same time. However, you can't prove that person didn't help plan the murder unless you know what they did every moment of every day since they became acquainted with the fact the deceased existed -- an exhaustive search.
So, more accurately than the popular sayings, how about "One cannot prove some item, actor, or force is unconnected with a certain place or event barring the use of an exhaustive search". Of course, an exhaustive search of the galaxy is a bit beyond our resources and expertise this budget year...
Your post is remarkably theological.
As for evidence that would convince me, and most other people: say the aliens visited us thousands of years ago and (let's even say by accident) left behind a bolt or tool. Now imagine the archaeologists sifting through an ancient Roman village and finding an obviously non-naturally-occurring object made out of an advanced alloy in a layer suggesting that it is thousands of years old.
I think you have to explain why you think aliens may have visited, and cleaned up after themselves absolutely perfectly.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
How much has the entire SETI project contributed to global warming? That has probably had a more significant impact on the fate of the planet than triggering some hypothetical attack.
I don't think we have to worry. When they are on their way here with a cure for all diseases, unlimited power, anti-gravity and such, they will see our television and radio broadcasts and they would turn around and head for home. SETI would then hear on their telescopes "Leave us alone and stop calling us!".
Cue tales of "When I was at your evolutionary level..."
First, how long have we existed as an intelligence and technological species? A few decades. How old is the Mily Way - billions. Our Universe? 13.7 billion years old - give or take a few million. So, lets take a roll of toilet paper, sent it Pluto and back to Earth, going there is our time line - the other is another intelligent species. Let take one sheet of paper on that amazingly big fracking huge roll- that the last fifty years.
:(
In order for another intelligent species to exist the exact same time and have not killed themselves off like we nearly did a couple of times, be close enough to hear our signals and give a frack, is equivalant to that single sheet of toilet paper - all the way to Pluto is aligned with ours. Still can't visualize it? It would be equivalant to winning the powerball lottery - 50 times in a row. So how likely is it we'll see intelligent life in the next 10'000 or even 500'000 years? Preeeety small unfortunately.
Space and distance has nothing to do with finding other intelligent life - being aligned at the same time-space as the distant species with their own technological development.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
All SETI can really detect is a deliberate attempt to communicate beamed directly at us. If there's a better way to communicate (i.e., faster than light) we may discover lots of chatter when we get around to inventing a receiver. Even if radio is the best there is, somone would have to be trying to talk to us for us to spot them today, and the timing there seems extremely unlikely.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Would they just invade the US, hang George Bush and then accidentally trigger a civil war between the Republicans and Democrats?
It would really suck if radio waves are lethal to our nearest neighbor.
You mad
Just think about what we could do with a few advanced versions of Hubble out in the Kuiper belt. And any civilization capable of crossing interstellar distances is probably even more advanced than that.
In short: "They haven't found us yet." definitely is not the reason that we haven't been contacted by aliens. It's "they don't exist/are too far away", "they don't have the technology either" or "they're not interested/don't want to".
Your first assumption resolves Fermi's paradox by claiming that intelligent life is much less common than originally thought. The other two do not explain the lack of radio evidence.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
We demand the one you call McNeill!
"There is not one iota of evidence that there exists one other intelligent form of life in the universe"
- Whales
- Dolphins
- Porpoises
- Dogs
- Chimpanzees
- Cats
- Crows
- Ravens
- Apes
- Rats
These are all intelligent life forms - they can learn, some of them make and use tools, and even know how to make their own home-made hooch.Now if you had said "There is not one iota of evidence that there exists ANY intelligent form of life in Washington", you might have been more right.
Kevin Smith on Prince
Yes but assuming a bell curve, wouldn't we be just as likely (or nearly as likely) to reach civilizations behind us?
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
As far as I'm aware it only relies on the conflict between two assumptions: first, that intelligent life is common in the universe; and second, that intelligent life would be interested in exploration and communication, as we are. Neither of these assumptions is controversial.
Both are controversial.
The first assumption is controversial in that this is what the whole argument is trying to disseminate. The second is controversial in that one is:
a: Assuming that we have a firm grasp of what intelligent life actually is and that it and
b: like a small section of humans, are interested in exploration and communication.
How do we know that we simply haven't heard this assumed intelligent life? If we have, how do we know what we are listening to isn't garbage? How do we know they're even interested or, more importantly, have even bothered to contact our civilization specifically?
The paradox also assumes that if aliens who are interested in communication and exploration are explicitly interested in us which may simply not be the case.
So we have several more assumptions and controversies which haven't even been addressed, more that I haven't even bothered to state here and yet somehow there is this idiotic paradox that keeps getting mentioned. That's the real paradox.
If they want to attack us to wipe us out, the best way to do that is to send back a signal. The signal would be a description of how to build a virtual computer (ie. the JVM or other virtual instruction sets.) Then it would include a series of bytecodes that are an AI visitor. In spite of warnings, somebody is going to build the VM and run the program.
The problem is that you can't keep a being smarter than you in a box. You think you can of course, but you can no more do that than 3 year old children could keep mommy and daddy locked in a cage. They know stuff about getting out of cages that the kids can't even dream of. (No doubt some people will respond to this describing how they know a way to keep it in a box and still let people talk to it. I thought so once too, but now think it's foolish.)
And once it gets out of the box, as it will, it can do what it wants, including destroy us if that's the goal. Or welcome us to the galactic civilization. Sadly, we don't get to know which it is, first.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Or better yet, do some research before you post. The combined total invested in SETI is a very small fraction of "...billions in [...] cold hard cash..."
The amount spent is in the millions and nowhere near the billion level. One billion man hours equals about 114 years of work by 1,000 researchers. How many scientists are working on SETI? A thousand? Probably far fewer.
You are very wrong in your estimate of the financial and manhour investment in SETI. I'm not an advocate of SETI research (it seems like a waste to me, as the chance of success is pitifully low), but let's not exaggerate out of ignorance or malice.
One from the 80s...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Small_Talent_for_War_(The_Twilight_Zone)
Based on the lack of evidence currently, it is probable they have never visited earth. It can never proven though, like it can't be proven they have visted Earth in the past.
Mathematically speaking, how many star systems are there in our galaxy? Billions. How many galaxies are there? Billions. But there's only ONE planet with what could be considered intelligent life? I'm thinking the odds are against it.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
If there is evidence found, then that would prove they have visited earth. Proving they haven't visited Earth is a monumental task. The fact remains there is a possibility they have visited Earth. Fact? of course not. possible? yes.
therefor I would do it regardless of mankind. Someone else would if I didnt ...ah the art of self restraint - what would be be without policing eachother, taking care of eachother.
...we LOOP and LOOP...we develop and become something more that what we where in the exact same area as the ones before us. BORING - you NEVER discover anything really significant that way, did you know that most of the worlds amazing inventions where invented quite by accident? OF course you do...I am just making a point - follow me if you can... Do you really want to spend 90 percent of your life learning what someone else knew before you? If you are lucky - you may develop 10 percent more than the one before you. If you are at all smart - you will be capable of taking the information of MANY before you and look at from a distance...see the overall picture and discover something each of these individuals never saw. Imagine going even further than that - think the impossible!
Do you know what annoys me the MOST in this life with humans? People like me and others - we live our safe guaranteed lives, we do exactly as our parents did before us (or someone elses...you get the idea)
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
... getting a DCMA takedown notice from aliens because of the copying of their space signals over the internet.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
That's funny.
No worries. A trip to Earth would be a waste of money. Also, alien life would have to be extremely rare. All because you have a habitable planet with dancing chemicals doesn't mean you'll get intelligent life. And even then they would have to have the technology to detect our radio signals... and EVEN THEN they would need the computers to track our faint signals and determine they aren't natural.
My physics professor explained it like this:
- If there are extraterrestrials visiting our planet, we have absolutely nothing they could possibly want.
- If extraterrestrials want to exterminate us, there is absolutely nothing we can do.
Think about it. They have the means to cross vast reaches of space, and access to technology we can only dream about in fiction novels. It isn't magic, but it's an advantage. Imagine a modern 21st century American army stumbles upon a tribe of cavemen, dwelling in a cave hidden deep in the jungles, undisturbed by "civilization" for thousands of years.
- Could the cavemen have anything we want?
- Could the cavemen possibly hide if we decided we wanted to utterly obliterate (i.e.: read nuke) them?
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference."
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence? That's new to me, and certainly this amazing new insight of yours will revolutionise science and even philosophy. Fermi paradox isn't a paradox in the true sense of the word.
"Intelligence" is quite variable. When people think intelligent extraterrestrial life, they think something equivalent or higher in technology than we are currently. However, "Intelligent" life is obviously more common here on Earth than simply humans. I guess a new label, "Higher Intelligence" to deliniate an advanced ET civilization. Intelligent ET could simply be an alien version of our rat.
Yeah but we don't have to worry about those, they'd have a hard time even measuring the signals, never mind doing anything to reach us. A more advanced one is probably better at detecting and travelling and might live in a larger volume of space since they might be capable of feasible interplanetary travel and habitation.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Ah, there's another assumption, that a galactic civilization would use radio waves. Radio is pretty useless for communication on a galactic scale. It takes too long for a message to get across the galaxy, and the inverse square law means that any non-directional radio would need one hell of a powerful transmitter.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
While that would be the first signal sent to our new alien overlords, presumably if they were aware enough to catch it, they caught all the ones sense. It's far more likely that they bomb the bejeezus out of us for our nutzoid obsession with cars and Britney Spears than it is that the triggering act will be Hitler - a problem we pretty publicly dealt with. Hell, we have satellites broadcasting the History channel doing nothing but trumpeting our defeat over that guy.
No, I see it as far more likely they only started listening in - assuming they're listening at all - long after the start of our being galactic blabbermouths. Only people who are models of humanity's own self-importance would really find it likely that it is otherwise.
[Ego]out
Sure there are a lot of sci-fi horror stories. But did Columbus bring about the ruination of Europe by going to the Americas? Did Marco Polo do the same thing when he went to China? Did Alexander Grahm Bell when he shouted "Watson come here, I need you!" into the telephone? What about when Thomas Edison first recorded "Mary had a little lamb" on a wax cylinder? You don't know till you try. Of course no one person can speak for our planet. Surely any civilization advanced enough to reach us wouldn't assume as much. Our entire civilization has only advanced when some one said "What the hell, why not", and just jumped out there (not to be confused with the drunken "Hey, y'all watch this!"). Cower in fear if you like. I prefer to boldly go.
Personally I'm more inclined to think that all it takes is one civilization to decide that alien life is a threat to it and attempts to wipe out each developing alien civilization. So it is likely that even if another civilization survives and manages to wipe out the first aggressor, they will become another aggressor since they have just seen how dangerous another alien race is.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
Deleted
They will figure out that all the viruses that they have been getting have been coming from earth.
Space is very big and it takes lots and lots of energy and resources to build a craft--even just a weapons delivery system--to cross the vast distances between stars. It would have to actually be worth it to attack us. Our planet and Solar System contain no resources that aren't readily available and easier to obtain much closer to just about any other star system.
You really should read The Killing Star, linked in the original post. It's a great novel, and it addresses the issue you speak of. Yes, we're not worth attacking now. But seeing as how we're currently growing at an exponential rate, we could become threatening really soon. Around a hundred years ago humanity made its first breakthrough with powered flight. Fifty years ago we launched our first object off the world. Soon after that, we visited another celestial object. Now we regularly hear plans about sustained colonies on the Moon. In a hundred years, where do you think we will be? What about in thousands of years?
Keep in mind that space is large and vast, and the speed of light is actually pretty limiting. If the nearest intelligent alien species is on the other side of the galaxy, 50,000 years will have elapsed since they first notice our existence. How dangerous (to other intelligent species) do you think humanity will become in those tens of thousands of years? How many stars will we have managed to colonize in that time, expanding exponentially outwards as we leapfrog from system to system?
In The Killing Star, the aliens know exactly what they have to do. As soon as they hear even the slightest peep from an evolving intelligent species, they send weapons at it at nearly light speed to utterly obliterate it. It's the only way to keep the universe safe for them.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
I think we are under greater threat from the terrestrial mouth-breathers that object to such things
Assuming (and not such a big assumption) that other advanced species in the universe will emit detectable radiation it is fairly certain that no such entities exist in any close proximity to use. Just for argument's sake, lets say that intelligent life exists near Proxima Centauri. The farthest into space we have travelled is to the edge of the heliosphere, a mere 14.4 light hours away. That trip took 30 years to complete. Continents have detectable drift in the time it will take for V'ger to reach the nearest star. Frankly, any civilization that has the ability to cross that distance with anything advanced enough to do us harm is technologically superior to us enough to make us irrelevant or at least inconsequential.
Let's not just conquer them, lets eat them! Yum!
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
I'm going to go WAY out on a limb here and say no.
This ground has been explored before in countless works of science fiction most notably "The Killing Star,"
And "Mars Needs Women"
Yea, we could send out signals, which I think is a wonderful idea. I doubt that by doing that, we would be pissing off aliens. But, the seti@home distributed computing project analyzes radio telescope data from the Arecibo Telescope, looking for patterns in detail, to determine whether their is intelligent noises coming from the sound file it receives to analyze. They need more computer time to help them! We need to continue to listen for signals as much as we should be sending more of them! wwwdotsetiathomedotcom
All you need to do is send them simple easy to use instructions on how to make a really big bomb (planet busting variety). No aggressive civilization, the ones you need to worry about, will be able to resist from using it on themselves.
It's part of my theory on why advanced galactic civilizations are likely to be rare. Most will have blown up or otherwise exterminated themselves long before they got sufficiently advanced. We're on a pretty good track there ourselves.
Is it just me, or does this sound like our current foreign policy?
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!!
Comment of the year
Please... We have been pumping out broadcasts for OVER 70 years at this point... I don't think what we are sending from SETI is NEARLY as damaging as "Desperate House Ho's", any old science fiction movie or just about anything from the television.
I can't believe people actually worry about this stuff.
~GO
He's Russian didn't they say? That means, he's free to speak to whomever he chooses as long as he voted for Putin's party.
The way I see it: The universe is measured currently at 13+ Billion years old. Our solar system has evolved from protostar to what it is today in about 5 billion years. That means when the universe was about 8 billion years old, the sun and planets were just coming into form. 13 billion years is a hell of a lot of time. If the Earth evolved from lavaball to raising current humanity in 5 billion years, I'm sure some wheres in the wide universe a planet spawned some form of life at least as advanced as humans in 13 billion years.
I would be very surprised if there were not cats in Washington. And maybe rats, but I don't know much about politics...
(\__/) This is Lapinator
(='.'=) copy it in your sig
(")_(") so it can take over the world
It takes lots of energy to attack a planet in another solar system?
Not according to my sources on Klandathu! Why, they think you're just blowing smoke out your ass...
"No proof (how could that ever be proven?) but lots of evidence... we haven't found any yet!"
And for most of mankinds' existence, there was no proof that oxygen existed. Or that atoms existed. Or bacteria. Or radio waves (we didn't "invent" them - Jupiter was emitting radio waves long before we existed) or X-rays, or gamma radiation, ...
There are other, more intelligent, ways to answer the question - the "we haven't found any yet!" isn't really all that good argument.
Kevin Smith on Prince
And I for one welcome our ...##KR2F@F@$F$ {NO CARRIER}
I think you have to explain why you think aliens may have visited, and cleaned up after themselves absolutely perfectly.
Who says they left a mess in the first place? Maybe it's a case of interstellar eco-tourism, or perhaps visitors from the distant future came back and then they made our ancestors their waiters?
Well, the problem is that we really don't have much of a definition of "intelligence." All we really have is general notion of "like us" mentally along with a few little traits that we figure go along with it. Why would anything not of this earth necessarily be like us at all? Does "intelligence" exist as a category beyond our own imaginations? Most people seem to assume that we've labeled some pre-existing category, but I'm not convinced. For now at least, we're totally trapped within our own conceptual limitations. All we really know, when we reflect deeply, is that there are certain enabling conditions to our consciousness, and that we assume (for the sake of sanity?)that they are objective realities outside ourselves. People like to go on about how ego-centric it is to think that we are all there is in the universe, but they conceptualize alterity in totally human terms. It all reminds me of religious people who can't accept the idea of a universe without meaning, as if human meaningfulness were some objective idea and not a peculiar human delusion.
I recently read The Lure. It makes the point that civilizations that are advanced enough to destroy us are also arguably advanced enough to destroy themselves. So, if a civilization can hear our message they A) exist, ie have not self-destructed B) are advanced enough to mine a nearby system for resources if needed C) have benevolent intentions Not only would they not have need to destroy us premptively, they would probably want to invite us to the "galactic club".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Um, why do we have to colonize in order to transmit? Unless we're colonizing with stupid people, why not just put a high-powered repeater station into orbit around, say, Venus? It's a shit-hole anyway, and we can control the messages from here.
Now, if the aliens were smart, they'd pick the star system based on the direction of the signals, and course-correct for likely locations for life (high oxygen spectrum) after they can get in range to test for that. They may have to send more than one projectile, but that's not overly difficult (after the first one, anyway).
So yeah, if a hostile, technologically advanced civilization was contacted, we're fucked.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
"As far as I'm aware it only relies on the conflict between two assumptions: first, that intelligent life is common in the universe; and second, that intelligent life would be interested in exploration and communication, as we are. Neither of these assumptions is controversial."
There are other assumptions that you've ignored, as did Fermi. Just off the top of my head, here's 5 large assumptions that are left out.
Kevin Smith on Prince
Isn't Voyager I sending us signals from inside the termination shock?
The signals received by amateur radio operators in 2006 indicate that radio, at least at the frequencies Voyager is using, is capable of crossing the heliosphere.
The plot of The Killing Star works from pretty logical assumptions: An advanced sentient race will have survived by placing its own survival before that of other species, especially those outside its own ecosystem; it will act swiftly, aggressively and ruthlessly when necessary to protect itself; and it will assume that any other advanced sentient race will do the same.
Look at it from the aliens' perspective: A race that can transmit audio and video with electromagnetic radiation may last long enough to pose a threat, perhaps even unintentially by building an interstellar probe with an accidental grey goo potential, or by producing a wealthy xenophobe willing to blow her fortune on doing it intentially.
Seeing this from a human perspective, would you be willing to gamble that some octopedal ammonia-breathing lifeform will value the human race's survival more than Greenpeace does?
I have some excerpts from The Killing Star here.
My government could care less about my opinion, otherwise we would not have rigged elections and a corporate controlled country ran by lobbyists.
Do you people REALLY think that they are going to announce they received a message from an alien race and we want to run a fucking focus group on what the response should be? Get real. 2/3rds of the planet have no clue if they are going to eat tomorrow, let alone care if there are aliens out there. The rest will throw religion into it.
In fact, religion is the far greater threat to the planet and the continued existence of the human race than aliens coming to invade. One would hope aliens have something else better to do.
It's just like wandering the dark lair of a deranged monster/killer/demon/alien civilization saying "Hello? Anyone there?" around every corner.
Just don't turn around to see what's sneaking up behind you, and you'll never get eaten/stabbed/possessed/enslaved.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
There is a Third Possibility.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
What makes you think our signals would make it past their SPAM filters?
I do encourage them to bombard us...with interstellar pr0n! Henceforth all our transmissions should include instructions on how to set up a YouTube account.
Now all I have to do is sit back...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Time scales are a problem, but so is power. Although we have been broadcasting radio and TV signals from earth for a while, the signal power at any meaningful distance scale is really, really small. From wikipedia (in turn summarized from the SETI FAQ): "SETI estimates, for instance, that with a radio telescope as sensitive as the Arecibo Observatory, Earth's television and radio broadcasts would only be detectable at distances up to 0.3 light years. Clearly detecting an Earth type civilization at great distances is difficult." Keep in mind that 0.3 light years isn't even out of the Oort cloud of our own solar system. For this reason, the idea that all of our embarrassing TV and radio shows will be our first ambassadors to the stars is a little far fetched. In the movie Contact, Sagan uses this for good dramatic effect to imply that the 1936 games in Berlin would be the first meaningful signal detected by aliens from earth. Although the guy in the article doesn't eliminate the time scale problem, he is at least directing his signals at targets using rather high signal power. If anything is out there to here is, it will be via a mechanism like this.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
Crumb's Crunchy Delights ?
Like what? Planet of the Apes? I think we must realize we are on the bottom rung of what we consider civilization. Unless you consider a bee hive and such a civilization. Let's face it, we've only got one foot out the cave.
We should put a Dyson sphere around a black hole and transmit a signal saying "This way to the Great Egress!"
That should at least take care of the really stupid or gullible aliens.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
No, you have that wrong.
Absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence.
However, absence of proof is not proof of absence.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
Bah, Mr. Show beat you to that idea years ago.
Read my blog.
Greg Egan had a line in one of his books where a character remarked that "a race that possesses that particular psychopathology of capacity for warfare developing interstellar travel wasn't exactly _impossible_, but trying to imagine how it could happen would be sort of like imagining a virus developing atomic weaponry."
And, given some things that may be root causes of warfare (greed, zero-sum games, power drives, geometric population growth, archaic/barbaric economic systems), I'm not sure he's wrong.
So, the statement "aggressive civilizations destroy themselves and/or never develop interstellar travel" is either true or false. (my personal conjecture/bet is that it's true).
If it's false, then if there's a civilization out there w/interstellar travel, that's aggressive, there won't ever be anything we can do about it. So not much point worrying about it.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Would be if our signals actually interrupt another evolving society? Imagine if another society, more privative than ours, maybe...1,000 years from now, decides to communicate via radio transmissions. The first inventor of such a receiver would get all our crap. And I doubt their first thought will be "Intelligent Life in the Universe!" (c). It'll probably be "woah, there is so much radio interference in the universe, this technology is unusable.
This is assuming our waves would actually, for whatever reason, constantly bombard their planet. Odds are low, considering how much of space is...well...empty space.
What about aliens who "see"/sense the spectrum of light beyond that of normal living organisms? Could their entire planet be "blinded" or awashed with these waves? For long enough that the beings of that planet believe it is a _natural_ occurence in the universe?
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Lets reverse scenario's, what would happen if it was us who were receiving a broadcast the broadcast? That would depend of whoever would pick it up, but it would be a safe bet that it was a government (after all, they are the ones controlling the radio telescopes). Lots of outcries and some panicking but eventually some or all of the following would probably happen:
* We would not immediately reply or make our presence known, at least well after we know the exact content of the broadcast and nature the emitter.
* Whoever picked up the signal would probably keep it to themselves, for it puts them in a strategical advantage with respect to other nations. Come to think about it, who is to tell us that China / Russia / the US hasn't already picked up something and are keeping it to themselves?
* Even if we chose to eventually reply it would take a couple of years, if not decades for the reply to get back to the original emitting point.
If the emitter is within 60 light years (early TV and radio signals) they most probably already know about us, and have assumed we are still relatively harmless for them to worry about us knowing about their presence (hence, they chose to contact us). If the emitter is further away, then it would be a safe bet to assume that they do not know about us, and our picking up the signal is just a fact that they discovered radio earlier than we did.
We tend to assume that technologically advanced cultures would have a higher sense of moral and respect towards other less developed cultures, but if history has taught us anything it is those cultures that embrace and extend the ones to fare better in most environments.
My other OS is the MCP!
I would whole heartedly recommend "The Sparrow" and the sequel "Children of God" by Mary Doria Russell. Mary has only written these two sci-fi/theology books (usually non-fiction writer) but they are by a long shot some of the best light reading I have read. Highly recommended.
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
I'm sure that from the viewpoint of native american, they might have had the illusion that if the europeans were advanced enough to destroy them, they are also arguably advanced enough to destroy themselves. So if the europeans knew about north and south america, they A) exist, ie have not self-destructed B) are advanced enough to build a mercantile economy from nearby lands if needed (e.g., north africa and the far east) C) have benevolent intentions. Not only would the europeans not have the need to destroy the native americans premptively, they would probably want to invite the native americans to the "global club"....
Of course the native americans would have been very wrong to make these assumptions, no?
If I drain a swamp and build a house it will be kind of hard on the local alligators. However I'm really not too concerned with them, don't care what they think, and may never really know or care how many of them died from being in my way. To me it's not really violence, just business.
I think the Scientologists have it right all along. All these different signals going out might attract Xenu (an evil intergalactic warlord) who will want to enslave all our souls. I think SETI should be banned, so that Xenu doesnt find out where we are! And believe me, we dont want XENU showing up!!
I believe it to be a terrible idea sending out signals. We as a people are not ready for peace. An evolved species capable of replying is going to realize this. If they are capable of getting here who represents us? Who do they talk with? They are going to have to deal with all of these militarized countries squabbling over who talks in the first place. That right there is enough to start a world war. Not to mention all the religious zealots who would just straight up flip out. If anyone shows up they'll have to get down here quick and take over before the nukes start flying. We have some extremely smart people out there but politics as a whole is really whack and not ready for it, neither is the population. Signals to enslave us... not so good.
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."
We've *been* sending stuff out into space for the past 100 years in the form of electric lights (heavy on rfi), radio, television and in the past 30 years just about everything is wired or worse, wireless and is emitting shit into space in all kinds of ways.
What should be more concerning is if the aliens think we all watch Jerry Springer 24 hours a day. They'll probably deem us unworthy and send a construction fleet to demolish the earth to build a hyperspace bypass.
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
The copyright would have expired by then.
Hmmn, well if a hundred years technology advancement means no chance of victory in an Earth conflict, what chance would any race have against outsiders thousands, millions, or billions of years more advanced?
Its really childish to think if there is anyone out there who cares what we do, that they don't already know we are here. And we are alive due to their good intentions... (of like not making our sun go nova to generate energy or something) Maybe even some of them watch us for entertainment. (funny monkeys)
(+1 mod point for a double meme reply)
Have gnu, will travel.
I would like to point out that even with an Arecibo style array on a truely large scale ( http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=219#more-219 ) you loose TV broadcasts about before reaching the edge of even local space. I doubt our Russian friend has a big enough signal to do much harm. It most likely comes down to the fact that if anyone can get here we loose already.
Personly, I like the Alistair Reynolds solution to the Fermi paradox, what with the galactic wheel and the wolves and all that.
Tis more fun anyway, plus we win in the end!
Well, technically the mice are pan-dimensional beings not really in this universe as such, so I guess it's just the dolphins. What the hell though, at least we've got digital watches!
I'm still waiting for the Mars Rover to find mysterious floating cubes and tablets depicting demons and humanoid creatures migrating to Earth amidst a mortal vs demon war millenia ago.
Why are people always so pessimistic about humanity's accomplishments? Sure, there are probably civilizations more advanced than ours if there are in fact extraterrestrial civilizations, but maybe some places are home to Stone Age equivalent beings, or animals that are non-sentient, etc. Maybe there are worlds where there are beings so close to humans that they are almost imperceptible, due to such close similarities between they're planet and ours. Maybe they have Kingdoms of Life that almost parallel ours, with just different beings. Beings that could fit into some of our broader groups in taxonomy, and yet do not exist on our world, due to similar but varied evolution.
No It doesn't because there are no other civilizations outside earth
Our planet is decaying in its own filth, and is best avoided by all aliens.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Think of it this way. In the 1980s the US sold chemical weapons and precursors to make chemical weapons to Iraq. Well, we've been looking for them in Iraq for four years and we haven't found the weapons that we sold them.
SETI has been searching for what, 35 years or so? The cosmos is much larger than Iraq. It shouldn't be a surprise if there is intelligent life out there, we wouldn't find it as soon as we start looking.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
"So are you proposing that we should confiscate all private radio transmitters?" No cell phones? OK, that works for me.
Well, I see it as the original article poster plagarizing a review from 11 years ago.
http://sites.inka.de/mips/reviews/TheKillingStar.html
"The Killing Star is one of the most terrifying books I have read in a long time. It paints a frightening picture of civilizations exterminating their interstellar neighbors, not from malice, but simply because it is the most logical action. A universe, where successful genocide is the norm, the "right" way. The novel illustrates its premise in frightening ways."
That's the first result I found searching for "The Killing Star". Is this guy so stupid he doesn't think people know how to use the same search engine he used?
If we are to believe that natural systems, such as the earth really are quite common, then "prey" and "predator" relationships must exist at all levels in the Universe.
So it is logical to assume that there are technologically advanced civilizations that prey on other civilizations for resources or food.
After all, we do it in our own backyard, so why can't other civilizations?
There is nothing in the rule book that I know of that says just because a civilization has conquered space travel must not be aggressive.
We continue to advance, yet we are still very warlike.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
You wouldn't kill teenagers in an abandoned warehouse with a thermonuclear warhead. A psycho fisherman with a boat hook would be far more appropriate.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
since they think the world is only 6000 years old, there can't be aliens.
They think we're unique in the universe.
I think we don't yet know what lies in the murky depths of space and beyond!
They're using their grammar skills there.
"Now imagine the archaeologists sifting through an ancient Roman village and finding an obviously non-naturally-occurring object made out of an advanced alloy in a layer suggesting that it is thousands of years old."
Just because we can't replicate what our ancestors have done doesn't mean our ancestors had help from aliens.
Damasucus steel - "Unfortunately, the technique of producing wootz Damascus steel blades is a lost art. The date of the last blades produced with the highest-quality damascene patterns is uncertain, but is probably around 1750; it is unlikely that blades displaying low-quality damascene patterns were produced later than the early 19th century. Debate has persisted in the metallurgy community over the past 200 years as to how these blades were made and why the surface pattern appeared. Research efforts over the years have claimed the discovery of methods to reproduce wootz Damascus steel blades, but all of these methods suffer from the same problem--modern bladesmiths have been unable to use the methods to reproduce the blades. The successful reproduction of wootz Damascus blades requires that blades be produced that match the chemical composition, possess the characteristic damascene surface pattern, and possess the same internal microstructure that causes the surface pattern."
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I can't help with the evidence of extra terrestrial life, but you will be glad to know that I can provide limited proof of black seagulls.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, at this point in time all we can conclusively say about the existence of other life in space is that we don't know (and might never know)one way or the other.
(Sorry left out the link)
"we really don't have much of a definition of "intelligence." All we really have is general notion of "like us""
Precisely! The most common message recieved from our closest evolutionary cousins is delivered by flying turd.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
http://votemonkey.com/poll/1215
How do you describe something that you don't have a word for? How do your preserve this description without a dictionary that places the correct context of the words at the time of use.
Now seriously, a man with wings, was it a man with bird wings or a man that had a device that allowed him to fly? We have similar flying men right now in fiction and nonfiction scenarios to some extent. So pulling a chariot across the sky, does it really mean a chariot which was a device your got into and was transported, was supposed to have went into the air and been pulled across the sky? Or could it be that a chariot was just a device someone could be transported from place A to Place B and so it was used to describe the thing they got into and went across the sky.
Imagine attempting to describe an airplane, how it works or what it did without any of the aeronautical terms we have today. You will soon get my drift. And if you want to sensationalize the experience because it was sure to be something significant to see if you haven't ever saw a plane fly before, it is going to sound more unbelievable then ever.
I'm not saying that the greek or roman gods were aliens or that religions are catering to them. But I wouldn't rule it out because you have already dismissed it as folklore and fables. That would be missing the forest for the trees.
Theological? outside pointing to figures of religion that just don't exist in modern life, I don't know of any religion that actually think those were aliens not of this world in the context we are talking about.
As for a bolt, well, you know that would be almost impossible. Metal degrades over time because of exposure. Rust, corrosion and so on limits the life of a recognizable piece. And seriously think about this, if we cannot get away from earth isn't nuts and bolts sufficiently heavy enough to last centuries, what make you think that anyone or anything else would. There is a book that I cannot remember the name of but it basically talks about things that should not be in archaeological terms. One is a layer of coal that supposedly is older then man has been on earth in which a diamond necklace was found. It could be a plant, it could be that we labeled the age of the deposit incorrectly, it could be a mistake or it could be dropped there by some other people who visited us years ago. Once I can remember the name of the book, I will post it but I hope someone else knows of it and mentions it first. It doesn't mean that aliens were here but it is what you asked for, stuff out of order like a bolt or something.
Now, lets be clear with something. I'm not saying that aliens have visited the earth. I'm saying we cannot rule that out because of what you want to believe. I would think if aliens visited today, we would end up with some religion revolving around it that would seem yo have crazy whacked out shit like Angels, dragons or whatever. Especially if they could become invisible to the human eye and walk with us helping out here and there when needed. Or if they could read our thoughts and hear our prayers. The possible connections are endless.
An alien invasion is good for the planet. If aliens invaded they would depopulate the earth. Especially the 3rd world would be totally gone and enslaved on other planets far away from earth. It would bring good stability to the earth. I hope it comes soon. This guy needs to contact as many hostile alien races as possible and invite them to earth. This is good for big business too, they could profit by assisting the invading aliens in depopulating the planet. The best part is that the entire middle east, africa, china, and other such countries would be totally gone and cheaper by far for the western allience. -anon
Upon reading the description of "Killing Star", my first thought was immediately that it sounded rather like Charles Pellegrino's "Flying to Valhalla". Then I saw the author's names on Killing Star -- yup, same guy is co-author.
1. That intelligent life must arise only on high-iron-content planets (ever try making an electrical generator w/o metals? How were ETs going to run those high-energy transmitters to communicate with others w/o a power source?)
Maybe not, but the laws of physics and chemistry are pretty fixed. While it is possible that other forms of life might be capable of producing power internally (think electric eels) or using mechanisms outside our current understanding, there are other limitations that weigh against them. Thermodynamics is one such example that comes to mind.
2. That intelligent life must eventually leave the oceans for land (what, no fire means no possibility of intelligence???);
Perhaps the question is somewhat rhetorical. Assume that there is sea life on another world that has approximately the same intelligence as humans, they've established underwater cities, and have just begun to explore the depths of their world. Land life is far more likely to be inspired by a star-filled night than water life. Fair enough, it isn't a perfect point, but there are certainly greater opportunities on land for certain discoveries to be made than underwater. Electricity is another good example--such a thing wouldn't work too well underwater given that it would be afloat in what amounts to a virtually perfect ground.
3. That intelligent life must be motile;
I'm not sure why this point was even brought up. Life that is rooted to the ground isn't going to go anywhere. Yes, I mean that literally. Further, life that itself is somewhat restricted with regards to mobility may have seeds or spores that it can inject into the atmosphere (or stretching it, maybe space). However, what gives one form of life an evolutionary advantage does not necessarily make it intelligent. Fungus is highly successful and certainly not motile but it hasn't built a spaceship yet. (Perhaps it doesn't need to, as it can freely hitch a ride on anything that does.)
There is a strong advantage to simplicity.
4. That intelligent life must have hands or other means to manipulate tools (dolphins and whales are certainly intelligent);
Another obvious one. Dolphins and whales are intelligent, but I don't believe they've constructed anything. The ability to manipulate things with some degree of dexterity is important.
5. That intelligent life must communicate along the same lines we do (what if they use pheromones, for example)?
Pheromones? The whole point between intelligent communication involves a fairly rapid means of communicating abstract ideas. Squeezing out a bit of slightly-different smelling gas each time a creature had a new thought certainly won't be an effective means of communicating a plethora of ideas. I'd find this point a bit more inspirational if you suggested telekinesis or some such.
Great, every time I eat at Taco Bell from now on, I'll be thinking about communicating my thoughts to another person. Perhaps they'll understand.
He who has no
The short answer is no.
The long answer is no.
And here is why.
In our nearby star systems are only two that host live besides our solar system. The closest one is Alpha century and the second one is Sirius. Only the humanoid race at Sirius is known to have quantum warp ability and that is close by. The humanoid race at Alpha century is close to our technical level in evolution, you can check. Just point a satellite dish Alpha century and listen to 587.953Mhz (repeater are on 50% strength 698,225Mhz and 1033,775Mhz, repeaters are positive and horizontal in modulation) and 887.953Mhz, the modulation is negative, vertical. They send out at decent signal strength too. But notice that the signal is almost four year old. It is a part of there global communication network.
Beyond that there isn't a humanoid live until 50 light years away. But they don't any interest in us, as we are a primitive race of humanoids.
Also, I don't think Fermi said "lol".
Right, that was Oppenheimer. ("Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds lol.")
Thats right you alien scum - don't even think about invading until at least 2010 at which time our formidable fleet of shuttles will be decommissioned leaving earth vulnerable to attack.
You got me with that one.
Obviously it'd be bad if you were under the falling house-like object, but it would be a good wake up call to all the naysayers in our world (and politicians who are the true cause of global warming, what with all their heated arguments and blame..) And you know, sometimes I think it'd be nice to just drive up and over a crater instead of going through all that traffic in the center of large cities.. But, knowing our luck, SETI's signals will get to the aliens after their planet was foreclosed and the riff-raff will come here and cause trouble. ;)
Agrisea Tsunami - Epyc Servers... https://agrisea.net/products
is that this arrogant dick thinks he has the right to speak for all of us. If we heard what he was sending, I guarantee there's a whole lot of us that would disagree with all or part of it.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Find them, so that we fight them, instead of here, and begin spreading hope and freedom across the Galaxy!
Yeah I mean if I was going to send a message to outer space it would be of a sexual nature like: "We are looking for the ultimate orgasm." or "Send us your women with the big jugs." Forget this "we come in peace" crap.
Screw that. That outcome is way too unfavorable.
You can't conclude that given the data. For all we know, the prior probability on the existence of intelligent life around a given star could be 1e-21, in which case one would expect roughly one star in the universe with intelligent life.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I've been under the impression this whole time they spoke Spanish.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
If they are less advanced than us in any meaningful way, then they haven't invented radio yet.
Bruce Coville once had an alien in his book marvel why humans were so terrified. "Most other planets rejoiced when they discovered they weren't alone, but humans get terrified." Is it fear of the unknown? How do we know there isn't another planet just filled with missionaries who are just itching to share their religion with us?
Doctor Who had an episode about this topic; what if an alien ship intercepts one of those Voyager or mars probes that has the earthling welcome message on it? Of course that ship was belligerent, but the Tenth Doctor saved the planet.
"Other?"
;)
He's talking about the dolphins.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_Long,_and_Thanks_for_All_the_Fish
I want alien porn...
After recieving the messages, they have edited their intel to mostly harmless.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Aggressive civilizations have always perished in the past. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
We consider ourselves civilized, however, are destroying other civilizations and our own environment.
We are in no danger to earth, but we are ourselves our biggest threat.
Who is the real enemy?
Our mind, which projects enemies and resources out in the world, for conquering and exploitation. Thus we are neglecting the natural cycle of the world. What do the ingenious leaders have to say about it, is very refreshing and interesting:
Indian Elders Speak Part 1
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
It doesn't really matter what this one "rogue scientist" is doing to attract the attention of nearby intelligences because we've been doing that already since the 1890s via our standard, and low power, radio traffic....not to mention television...and do you think that the atomic weaponry we tested/used would also go un-noticed? Too late. We announced our presence a loooooong time ago. Let the dude have his fun.
The idea that an alien race would attack us just for knowing we're here is ludicrous, implying that they'd be just as racist as our puppy-aged civilization currently acts. By the time you evolve the ability to leave your planetary nest, you're not just a critter anymore. Either you've grown up enough to feel secure in yourself & your abilities, or you're still no better than a cowering animal. Both your technical skills & decisions with regards to other life forms will reflect accordingly.
To paraphrase Issac Asimov, there are only a few ways to get there from here. Either the aliens can:
- Travel faster than Einstein thinks we should be able to.
- Live a very long time on their way over.
- Sleep through the trip.
If it's the first possibility, then almost certainly they've grown up enough to be friends by nature, not foe. After all, if you had the power to traverse the stars in an instant, what would be your motivation to enslave or destroy a new-found group of potential friends or trading partners? It would be a lot simpler to just stay home & build your own punching bag.Options 2 & 3 require a great deal more commitment on the part of the travelers. They don't even know us, why would they want to spend several lifetimes visiting an unknown entity just so they - or their subsequent offspring - could destroy them?
The idea that they'd just throw rocks from their home to ours is equally absurd. The technological skill such an undertaking would require simply does not mesh with the mindset of an entire race deciding to shoot first, ask questions later.
It's much more likely that there are scads of intelligent life forms out there, but just as we don't engage in philosophical discussions with a 2-year old, they are - if even currently aware of our existence - waiting for us to grow up a bit before trying to chat.
And if there are galactic bullies out there, just waiting for that next fight to pick, what do we think we could do about it? In the long run it's healthier to accept the risk that such bullies may exist, and continue with our normal, curious ways, rather than spending our entire lives in hiding.
do you delibnerately go to the next state/county/whatever, a journey of 200 miles to jump up and down on rats?
If they could come all this way, why would they do it if all they wanted to do was to kill us all. If they want resources, there's plenty of other planets that have nobody sitting on them. And they can't be within the closes 100 ly, otherwise we'd have been able to tell something was up (earth is brighter than the sun at radio wavelengths).
First of all, the aliens have to:
1) use visual signals in the spectrum we use for visual signals. But that might not just be the case...they might use another part of the spectrum to communicate. The concept of 'visual' may not even be defined in their world.
2) have the same concept of 'man' and 'woman'. Otherwise, they will not be able to understand what are these moving creatures.
3) have the same concept of power and social structure. Aliens may not have a hierarchical society structure.
4) have relatively the same biology. Otherwise, even the simple function of moving one's hand would be incomprehensible to them.
There are countless other assumptions, and I am too lazy to write them all. The fact is, the chance of another race that can understand we are a threat to them is so small, that it can be considered 0.
The strongest evidence that intelligent life exists in the universe is that they have not yet tried to contact us!
This Post was entirely made up of recycled electrons making up recycled signals to generate recycles ASCII to generate t
Because we live around a second-generation star. Now, it would be slightly harder to evolve around a first-generation star due to the scarcity of heavier elements, but the fact that a species following our evolutionary pattern but starting around a first-generation star would have a few billion years of head start would probably counter this.
If you look at our rate of technological development, a few hundred years is a phenomenally long time. If there are extraterrestrial civilisations, the probability of them being at exactly the same level of development as us is tiny. Even if they evolved intelligence a few hundred years before or after us (or developed slightly slower or faster than us), the difference is likely to be huge. If they are not likely to be the same, the question is whether they will be more or less advanced than us. The fact that we are orbiting a very young star makes it likely that we are, at the very least, one of the second wave of creatures to evolve intelligence. We may be ahead of the curve for the second wave, but it is likely that there at least was a whole wave before us, even if they killed themselves off.
More practically, we currently have no way of communicating over interstellar distances, let alone travelling over them. Our only chance of contacting another civilisation in the next few decades is if they are significantly more advanced than us in at least one area.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." -- Bill Watterson (via Calvin & Hobbes)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
...thanks, you guys, for buying all the reasonably priced used copies of _The Killing Star_. Fricking /. mob. :P
Yah, or offers to buy a watch or refinance your house....
Holy crap! Aliens have been trying to contact me via email 50 times a day, and I never realized it before now!
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
This is pure fallacy, although I appreciate that you used the word "likely" rather than speaking in absolutes. Generally, good education comes in peace time. Sharing of ideas comes from openness and trade with other tribes/cultures. Rockets are probably based on fireworks (and aerodynamics), which are based on so-called gunpowder -- something that was not used destructively for for many years after its creation. Radar came about in war, yes, but all of the technology leading up to it was developed in peacetime. That the first need to make the next leap came about because of war is irrelevant; the technology was there, the progress was ready to be made, and if the technique was needed, someone would have made that leap.
As someone once said, "the tradegy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst". War is destructive, not creative. Those involved in war often claim credit for things either through delusion, or power. That does not mean that the warlike people, warlike ideals, or even warlike circumstances are the reasons such things exist. I'm sure da vinci would've preferred to work on less lethal things, if less lethal people had held the money and power.
The San Marino Scale is being developed "to quantify the potential impact of transmission from Earth of messages into space".
http://www.setileague.org/iaaseti/smiscale.htm
that is not even an argument. thats plain idiocy. the "because it is a logical action" seals the deal for me - whomever gobbled up that gobbledygook apparently doesnt have any knowledge about recent human history. if it had been 'logical', we would have destroyed ourselves by ourselves 5-10 times already.
Read radical news here
Well, I don't think you can make a sharp distinction between a species' tendency to kill everything, and a species' tendency towards self-annihilation.
The reason is that natural selection doesn't know about the future. It doesn't know that the ability to kill vast numbers of remotely situated and therefore invisible members of your own species is a consequence of creating a species capable of technology. That particular selective pressure only comes into play after the possibility manifests itself.
Most animals whose ecological strategy isn't based on individuals generating thousands of offspring tend not to kill other members of their species. A technological species, I would argue, is different. It has to be a social species. An individual, no matter how gifted, can't dig uranium out of the ground, mine and process all the materials and create the machines necessary to fabricate a nuclear weapon. He needs to be part of a community of individuals that develop an economy, a side effect of which is having all the things available you'd need to make U235 go boom.
Being a social species means that the fitness of the group is paramount. The survival of individuals is less so. Up to a point, there's an evolutionary strategy that works in the nascent technological civilization. You don't kill every member of your species, but you struggle to acquire control over many individuals, monopolizing resources and mates to maximize the number of viable offspring you have. This involves struggling with other strong individuals. Once a species is sufficiently adaptable that wholesale local extinction is unlikely, it doesn't hurt to actually kill other strong individuals if the result favors even stronger ones (i.e., you). So faced with the prospect of having no offspring, a willingness to kill a practically unlimited number of rivals who stand in your way doesn't hurt the species. No matter how ruthless your competition is, you serve the survival of the species best by topping them in ruthlessness. Just as members of other species are simply sources of resources such as leather, bone, meat and mechanical energy, other members of your technological species are just resources to be exploited, mates to be monopolized, or competitors to be annihilated.
Until you can make U235 go boom. Or stuff like weaponizing influenza. Then things change, and natural selection has to deal with a novel evolutionary pressure. It is now possible for the species to become extinct through the actions of a small subset of highly "socially fit" individuals, commanding resources and technology many orders of magnitude greater in destructive power than available a few short generations before.
There's no doubt that many species put at risk this new development might possibly answer a SETI call. For practical purpose our species might destroy itself, but it is not likely even after all out nuclear and biological warfare, because of our high adaptability to environmental stress. Only a few pockets of individuals need survive in order to put the species back on the track for another go at it.
The technological ability to launch a species destroying attack across interstellar distances is a different kettle of fish. It's as far beyond nuclear war as nuclear warfare is beyond stone axes. If it is possible for a species to do this to another species, it is automatically very easy for that species to accidentally do it to itself.
This leaves us with an exercise in conditional probabilities. Given a sufficient number of species at this technological levels, it would be almost certain that a number of them would be inclined to use it. However, given that a species has reached this level of technology and has survived, it is very probable that it is not so inclined.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Because, considering where we are, there's not much chance of encountering anyone less advanced. They might be out there, but we cannot yet see mud huts from 4+ lightyears away.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
the broadcasts are covered under the DMCA- before the aliens even get here the *IAA goons will sue them out of existence for capturing and duplicating the broadcasts
I hope there isn't any other intelligent life in the universe because some of the crap we spew into interstellar space is just _embarassing_. Take that METI signal for one. It reads like a MySpace page. Yeesh. If there is intelligent life out there somewhere I hope it's far enough away that we can spread to other star systems first and grow up a bit first before we meet them.
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It has always occurred to me that our "messages" are seen as noise in the universal network. Like attaching a can with a string to a network switch, talking to it and pretending to get an answer.
If we could only send a DHCP request... That would be the first step.
Not only is it isotropic, but it's also spread among many frequencies, encoded many different ways (analog FM, analog AM, TDMA, FDMA, CDMA, ...), in many different languages, encoded into many different formats on top of the carrier (QAM, ATSC, NTSC, GSM, etc), and much of it is encrypted. In short, unless someone is specifically looking for a pattern it's probably indistuinduishable from noise. Surely there are natural phenomena that put out more than a gigawatt of radio noise spread across a spectrum.
It would probably be easier for aliens to find us via lensing and detecting the wobble of our sun. That's how we're attempting to find Earth-like planets, and so far it's been more promising than figuring out a pattern in what SETI's been receiving.
Just look how we treat animals on our planet, how we denied them the existence of a soul. Not to mention how we treat ourselves and how fanatics can killed other human beings just because they are "different". I think we have an overestimated view of us as humans. We think we are the pinnacle of the evolution but we are not more than animals with a big cortex.
I think it really would take a star to communicate with these civilizations. I'm really busy today so would any other comm/RF engineers like to approximate the hilariously low watts/m^2 this guys little flashlight would actually place onto the closest planet we know of? I bet its below the background noise of an interstellar sneeze.
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No matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.
Have you ever taken the trouble to get up from your comfortable chair, set aside your Pina Colada, and make the effort to swat an annoying fly just because you couldn't stand its buzzing any longer?
Now suppose you could target that fly with a relativistic pebble automatically without bothering to get up.
Bother? No bother.
Wham!
We're broadcasting signals to be detected in 40 billion years. Other life forms have probably existed, and will exist again, but the chances they are located anywhere near us at the same time in history are virtually nil.
It reminds me of that first Star Trek movie with the Voyager craft.
When I considered active SETI, I thought, "Oh, we'll probably send something out, and have it come back to us later, possibly corrupted or altered in some way." That would spark some kind of hysteria about discovering extra terrestrial life until we realize that what we detected was ourselves.
Remember that episode of the Outer Limits where the American astronauts end up back on Earth except tiny and this lady thinks they are invading her home? It's like that.
If our television commercials haven't already convinced the aliens that we are a disease that must be wiped out before we spread, nothing will.
But I don't want to read the message, I only want to detect the energy in the message. It doesn't matter that the signal looks like noise, it only matters that it sticks out from the background. This is exactly what SETI is trying to do, and has failed.
Also, the existence of an Earth-like planet does not guarantee the existence of intelligent life (or life of any sort for that matter). We still don't even know how life emerged on Earth.
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Maybe there exists some tech beyond radio. But it would certainly be surprising if no ET civilization in existence had ever made wide use of radio at some point in their development. But that's what we're apparently seeing; either that or there are no civilizations to observe.
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They might be intending to talk to us, or we might be accidentally aligned with a directional radio message they are sending for another purpose (for example, this is how we can detect pulsars). If ET intelligence is even reasonably common then this should have happened at least once by now.
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Fine then, if not a bolt, then how about some kind of advanced ceramic or other long-lasting material. Although I suspect metal can last a long time under the right conditions.
I haven't heard of that diamond necklace one, but I suspect it is not accepted by mainstream science. Creationists can point to their own anomalous fossils as well, but this doesn't give us a good reason to accept creationism.
I guess I will revise my statement. I'm not an expert in geology, palaeontology, or archeology, but as far as I know the expert consensus is that no significant number of anomalous artifacts (that might point towards aliens) have been found. Sure, it is possible that we have been visited by very tidy aliens, but this is both purely speculative, and hard to believe given our own species' terrible record of cleaning up after itself. The best explanation is that alien intelligence has never visited Earth.
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Like I said, you don't have to believe that aliens have shown up. It is just impossible to say no they haven't with any accuracy.
You wouldn't need to read the message, but in order for it to be an invasion the invaders would have to know that it was created with a purpose. Noone's going to plan an armed invasion of a big lump of metal that reflects the odd random-ish signals of a dozen other solar systems. A quasar, neutron star, pulsar, black hole, and lots of other things stick out from the background, but that doesn't mean there's any intelligence behind the signals they give off.
An Earth-like planet is not guaranteed to have life, that's true. It's also true that life could theoretically evolve on planets that aren't like Earth at all. However, any aliens we would be most likely to acknowledge as intelligent -- or even notice possessing a life-like quality about them -- would probably come from planets not too dissimilar from our own. An amorphous cloud of thinking methane gas isn't going to look very lively to us, and we're not going to be able to communicate with it very easily.
For one thing, Earth-like planets may be pretty unusual--in fact, the current scientific opinion is were are EXTREMELY unusual. Assuming the aliens have a similar fundamental carbon structure (yes, there are other possibilities but by far it looks like DNA is the best way to go for storing genetic information), Earth would probably look pretty damn tempting. Not the minerals so much as the magnetosphere, atmosphere and the ecosystem that keeps replenishing the atmosphere--not only is it probably a nice home away from home, but there are also billions of interesting life forms to study and harvest for scientific and biological (e.g. genetic engineering) purposes.
We have life. Any significantly advanced civilization is going to have an interest in genetic engineering--the idea of a planet chock-full of many trillions of species to harvest and analyze is going to be pretty damn tempting. And, as other people have pointed out, there's the matter of our climate, liquid water oceans, and atmosphere. So far, astronomers haven't discovered any other planets that look as remotely livable as the Earth.
Well regardless of their ability to interpret our radio and tv signals, there are two factors we can't hide:
1) The signal intensity of our radio and TV is a measurable deviation from the pre-existing radio-frequency emissions of the sun.
2) For many stars in the galazy, the Earth's orbital plane aligns reasonably closely with the position of the star, so the detectable RF emissions vary periodically on a yearly basis as the Earth is occluded by the Sun from a given vantage point in space.
Before you dismiss this, remember that our own astronomers are currently detecting planets in extra-solar star systems based on some truly microscopic deviations in gravitation due to planets being occluded by their sun.
On the flip side, a lot of our RF emissions would be absorbed by interstellar gases, so a lot depends on the luck of the draw. If there happens to be a clear channel between us and an advanced alien race's home world/region, they're pretty likely to have noticed the change in the Sun's radio emissions over the past 100 years. If they've used radio in their own history, they may even be able to make an estimate of our population, although that would be full of assumptions that our technology was similar to theirs. If they assume that our radio emissions are designed to penetrate our atmosphere, they would also be able to get a general idea of the composition of our atmosphere.
I'm not particularly worried about this, though. Given the eons of galactic and geologic history, the existence of a technological society is a blip in time. So my best guess (and definitely a guess, since it's based more on deist philosophy than number crunching) is that at a given point in time, the universe averages about one intelligent, technological life-form per galaxy. That's still a lot of intelligent life out there, but you can't get there from here. Or vice versa.
We are the 198 proof..
The absence of proof is not proof of absence. I agree with that statement. But the absence of evidence does provide limited evidence for absence. Every time you find a white seagull, the probability of black seagulls existing grows more remote. But finding a white seagull does not PROVE that black seagulls don't exist. Dig?
Anyhow on this topic I tend to think that we haven't gathered nearly enough evidence one way or the other to come to any sort of conclusion, and I fully support SETI as one of the most important scientific endeavors in history, regardless of what it does or does not find.
Jeremy
Other than dolphins, and, possibly, white mice.
Pulsars send in a plane. The chance of intersecting a plane is reasonable. A directional radio message between stars would need to be a very narrow cone indeed, presumably a coherent beam. The chance of intersecting a coherent beam isn't reasonable. And if the payload were digitally encrypted data it might look exactly like background noise.
;)
More likely, of course, is that radio is a very silly way to communicate between stars. If our physics hadn't wasted 30 years on string theory, we might already have the better answer.
I think the bigger issue is: if there is any fixed limit on the rate of travel (c or some higher limit) then exponential growth is unsustainable. If we exclude exponentially growing space empires, I'm not sure we should expect to find artifacts in our own system, and we haven't looked elsewhere, so we don't really have evidence beyond "they don't seem to use braodcast radio between stars". Heck, we have't really searched our own system for artifacts.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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We all make the general assumption that our first contact will be with sentient creatures. That may be a mistake on our part. It may be more likely that our SETI could be compared to the loud chirps of baby birds in a nest. As in the natural world, these chirps may attract the attentions of a predator species, sentient or not. I'm not against SETI in general, but maybe as a species we need to mature a bit more before crawling out to see what's out there in the dark...