Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
the other white meat!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
It doesn't matter how many radio or TV or any other kind of signals we pollute space with. Everybody knows that we aren't going to be contacted by any alien races until we build a warp drive so they can detect the warp signature.
Namaste
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
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.
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
Yeah, and we all know that we shouldn't send mixed signals to our enemies. That's why I propose we nuke the moon to prove we mean business.
Oh well in that case our magic will work against them so we're fine. Magic doesn't work against extraterrestrials, that's the issue here. When dealing with aliens you can't just wave a wand or plant some beans or pull some sword out of a rock, no sir. You need to either use a gigantor gun with like twelve barrels and a 200-lb magazine that doesn't ever run out of ammo, or cybernetic implants in your body that give you superhuman strength and agility. And while we're not quite far enough on cybernetic implants and gigantor guns that non-Shaq people can even lift, magic's been around for years.
I like basketball!!1!
Not too late...
If these alien civilizations support the MS Outlook protocol we can simply send out a retract message and clean it all up before they notice.
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
. . . they'd probably have to hold a lottery to determine who would get to push the button.
No, that would be "rocketry" followed by building the "Apollo Programme".
-- Sauer