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How Do You Greet an Extraterrestrial?
The LA Times is running a story about Earth Speaks, a companion project to SETI, which focuses on how we would communicate with intelligent extraterrestrial life, should we happen to discover it. Far more effort has been devoted to searching for signals or a means to communicate than the question of what we might say once contact is established, and the folks at SETI have set up a website to gather opinions on what the best questions and statements are. "So far, the messages break down into a few distinct categories. Some people want to throw a block party to welcome the aliens to the neighborhood. Others, less trusting, would warn the aliens that we've got guns and know how to use them. Another group, possibly influenced by having seen too many movies, would have us hide under the bed until they go away. 'If we discover intelligent life beyond Earth, we should not reply — we should freeze and play dead,' wrote one contributor." What would you say first to an alien?
got any new porn we haven't seen yet ???
We can't even communicate in any meaningful way with squids, which are genetically far more closely related to us than any possible extraterestrials. What in the world makes us think that it would be any easier to communicate with extraterrestrials?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
...do you actually have any green women in bikinis?
We should definitely show them that we are rational, well behaved lifeforms, with broad interests and predictable interaction
For starters we can offer them a free subscription and RSS feed to /.
Oh wait...
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
just like young children are taught, they could be provided with material for understanding the english language and using it to communicate with us
as they would be more technologically advanced, it shouldnt take too long for their linguists to understand
otherwise, long lost languages like sanskrit which virtually operate on a flowchart could be used as well
its not he same without a rimshot
I, for one, would welcome our new alien overlords.
So we've got guns. I wonder how intimidated a civilization that has the technology to traverse light-years through space would be of our bullets and bombs. If they wished to annihilate us, I wager they'd be able to do it without even giving us a chance to react. If an alien race should contact Earth, I think our best bet would be to at least assume that they have peaceful intentions.
Roll for initiative... :D
I need a new sig...
they seem to be interested in phones... "ET Phone home"
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
...any alien that lands on planet Earth will likely be pale-skinned, dressed in strange clothing & only grunt monosyllabically at you having been sat in front of a console screen for the past 50 years - so just practice your alien communication skills on the average British teenager...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Please fill out these entry visa papers or we'll have to ask you to leave...
If we're lucky, they'll ask someone from the internet who would say something like "O HAI ALIENZ".
If we're unlucky, they'll contact one of the YouTube comment posters.
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
err, dude, we were joking!
Citing that evidence suggests that they have been monitoring earth broadcasts, and that their planet is not within the distribution zone of the earth's intellectual property, and that royalties must be paid immediately for the past 50-100 years of received carrier wave based entertainment that they have received free of cost.
Further, a gag order is hereby issued forbidding the aliens to discuss either this suit or the entertainment materials (hereto fore "content") with any other audience, known or unknown to the residents of earth, until after trial or settlement has been concluded,
Yadda yadda yadda
Give us all your money,
Signed, the MPAA and RIAA industries.
Anyone thinking about how we greet aliens should realize several things
a) anyone in orbit is in a very powerful position. Essentially the ultimate higher attack position.
b) anyone arriving in orbit has very advanced technology
c) kinetic energy
Read Footfall, it posits aliens with the barest of interstellar travel capabilities arriving
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footfall
Freeze and play dead? Someone really should have thought of that _before_ we started broadcasting radio and TV and a planet-wide basis. Those waves really don't stop when they hit the outer atmosphere you know... By now we should be fairly well-known in our galactic neighbourhood.
As for talking about our guns, whoever shows up here has already demonstrated massively superior technology to ours (we are not showing up on _their_ doorstep are we?) so antagonizing them might not be such a great idea either.
So yeah, by all means let's throw a party and hope it isn't us that ends up on the barbecue...
The question presupposes that talking is the correct response. If intelligent aliens visit us here in our solar system we can reasonably expect to be enslaved or slaughtered. Interstellar space travel is a stupendously expensive undertaking, and anyone attempting it will expect a return on their investment at the end. And if you believe in Vinge's technological singularity, the visitor will no doubt be from a post-singularity culture. In that case your chances of being simply engulfed courtesy of that culture's hard-takeoff are close to 100%.
So, forget talk. Running or fighting are your choices.
They would be advanced enough to hear us like we hear them... We emit lots of noise without trying. We would have to face them head on and with as little fear as we can, which means each nation would try to oneup each other in favor, and then war would ensue...
I'd ask them if their political views are left or right wing.
"I can haz cheeseburger?"
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
If we are actually noticed, the problem with the "freeze and play dead" suggestion is that it if it works, we risk convincing them that we are mostly harmless, unintelligent creatures. Earth then begins to look like a habitable, unoccupied planet ripe for colonizing.
While a display of martial might would serve to make the earth look less available, it also risks making us appear savage and again, unintelligent. It might make them feel justified in subjugating us and colonizing earth.
Safest is probably a policy of partial isolation. We should greet others firmly, while revealing little of our own cultures and history. Be respectful, and allow visitors to see a strictly controlled show. Given time, this can be relaxed. If they do seem interested in colonization, prepare for war. Demand commitments to peace and respect for our territory that, if broken deliberately, will give us moral high-ground in counterattacking. But if this should occur, act quickly to establish laws of war--display an aura of civility and discipline. Conversely, if they are interested in an exchange of knowledge, be open and willing--say nothing of atrocities and wars, and let the borders be opened slowly. Control their perception of us, so that we may appear to be a mixture of cultures that they could ally themselves with, rather than merely subjugate.
Does your spaceship run on vacuum tubes?
Eight forms of human language remain uncracked by modern linguists. Surely trying to speak Ventaxian and understand their communication will be nigh impossible. Heck I don't think their characters have been encoded into unicode.
Let alone knowing how their transmissions are encoded or even if they have a concept of DRM. If we don't know their codecs then those broadcasts will simply fall into the cosmic background radiation and remain lost to us until these aliens do something as gross as landing on the White House lawn and actually share their technology via their universal translator.
Who's to say they're even going to be interested in humanity at all. They may decide that ants have a far older and more interesting worldwide civilization which fits their xenothropic principle rather than appealing to our hubris that nigh-hairless primates are the pinnacle of culture and society upon this ball of mud.
On the bright side this guy says it'd be easy to figure out the grammar of a living alien language but there's still the problem of idiom which would only serve the muddy the waters of communication and possibly precipitate conflict.
We would need to find intelligent life on this planet before we can find it anywhere else!
They'll either already speak English for no good reason, or there will be an easily available universal translator to help out. Problem solved!!!
DAVIS: We are a benign species, opposed to interplanetary conflict, and believe in equal opportunity for all beings, regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation or planet of origin
STAN: That's nice. Look, let me start over, OK? I want you to tell me what the people on your planet are gonna do to make Stanley H Tweedle a happier man
DAVIS: Is this right?
PRINCE: Stick to the cards, Mr President. All possibilities have been anticipated. Do not deviate from the cards
DAVIS: Congratulations on your birthday!
sic transit gloria mundi
If an alien race should contact Earth, I think our best bet would be to at least assume that they have peaceful intentions.
Or they could just be assholes.
What if they were to arrive in our solar system and not care about us? I mean, what if they didn't care about lifeforms? It's a huge assumption that they are looking for others like them. That's a drive that seems to be uniquely human. As far as I know, no animal on earth goes around comparing surrounding species to themselves. I use the earth animal example because we have no other species to compare in the vicinity of our solar system. But back to the point, What if they arrive and simply ignore us?
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
If they don't have valid passports, there's no way in hell they'll get into the US, unless they sneak in. Plus, wouldn't they have to send a passenger manifest first before they would be allowed to land?
rewriting history since 2109
Didn't any of you know? You say, "Gnorts, Mr Alien". Back in the 60's, NASA realised that the Apollo might encounter aliens on the Moon, so they named the leader of the expedition appropriately (in an anagram, to demonstrate our intelligence and puzzle-setting ability).
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
I propose a dynamic approach: learn as much as possible about them first. We may decide it would be disasterous to attempt contact, and that "playing dead" is the way to go. In any case we might discover that one approach will be better received than another; first impressions may make or break the situation.
All that being said, I don't think the human race is anywhere near the point where we SHOULD make contact with an extraterrestrial civilization AT ALL. We're still just slightly smarter animals at heart, once you strip away the thin veneer of technology and what we laughingly call "civilization". We can't even get along with OURSELVES and our own differences let alone a race that didn't evolve here. We're bigoted, racist, and sexist: We can't decide, AS A RACE, whether we owe our existence to one supernatural being or another, or did we evolve? We make war on our neighbors over resources and things that matter even less than that. We treat people differently, sometimes even ATTACKING them, because their skin is a different color. We treat our females as second-class citizens. Furthermore we mistreat and mismanage the biosphere we live in, poisoning it with our industrial wastes, destroying parts of it out of ignorance or greed, or because it suits us to do so, and damn the consequences.
Never mind US contacting THEM! I say that if they're out there, they're AVOIDING and IGNORING us, because we're not worth knowing yet! Can't blame them if that's the case.
Oh, and go ahead and mod me down to "-1, Troll"; I'll understand because there is no "-1, Uncomfortable Truth" button to use.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
With all the incredible junk we have pumped out via radio waves, playing dead would be a certain way to send the wrong message. On the other side, it might be a good idea to keep all those currently in power and those wanting to be away from the microphone...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It'll be the one thing we have in common, no matter what. However they conceptualize it, unless our first contact is some kind of space manatee that communicates in radio waves, whatever we make contact with will have to have developed transmission/reception capability. Language would be a big puzzle to crack, and probably a really frustrating one... but 2+2=4 everywhere you go.
If they are Vogon, ask them to read some poetry (and pretend to like it)
Imagine yourself taking a stroll through Manhattan, somewhere north of 68th street, deep inside Central Park, late at night. It would be nice to meet someone friendly, but you know that the park is dangerous at night. That's when the monsters come out. There's always a strong undercurrent of drug dealings, muggings, and occasional homicides.
It is not easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. They dress alike, and the weapons are concealed. The only difference is intent, and you can't read minds.
Stay in the dark long enough and you may hear an occasional distance shriek or blunder across a body.
How do you survive the night? The last thing you want to do is shout, "I'm here!" The next to last thing you want to do is reply to someone who shouts, "I'm a friend!"
What you would like to do is find a policeman, or get out of the park. But you don't want to make noise or move towards a light where you might be spotted, and it is difficult to find either a policeman or your way out without making yourself known. Your safest option is to hunker down and wait for daylight, then safely walk out.
There are, of course, a few obvious differences between Central Park and the universe.
There is no policeman.
There is no way out.
And the night never ends.
What makes them think aliens even have anything in common with us? Read some Stanislav Lem for how that might not be true in the slightest.
Take me to your leader!
Privacy is terrorism.
ba weep gra na weep nini bon
I think the best thing would be to ask to be put in touch with whatever governmental body oversees our party of the galaxy and (hopefully) will protect our rights. If there are no rights, then we're screwed either way because anyone that can travel to us will completely out-class. On the other hand, if we can reach the Shadow Proclamatino of Judoon (or the equivalent) we may be granted some form of protection. Hopefully, this protection will take the form of David Tennant.
A convenient snack on those long journeys across the galaxy.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
If they turn out to be hostile, just beam them the rules of cricket - if that doesn't act as an interplanteary virus, they'll think we're all crazy and won't want to come anywhere close, in case it's catching.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
"All your base are belong to us"
Nothing more eloquent is belong to communication.
"Don't probe me bro"
Xaotik Designs
Is welcome them, if they have tech that gets them to our planet then we aren't going to have any weapons to use against them, and hiding won't end it either.
In general I think if they are high enough up the ladder (of tech) to cross the gaps between stars we have more to gain than to lose by welcoming them.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Uh, didn't the Bush regime build some kind of fence to keep out aliens? Quick, someone call Immigration!
If resources are plentiful then there isn't much of a problem.
Deleted
You are within regulation Zone 4. You are using the patents described in the attached appendix without paying the required fees.
You are to appear in court in another solar system in 2 months or judgment will be found against you. The required fees to become current for the use of all patents are shown in the attached appendix. Failure to make a representation at a fee payment hearing will result in bench warrants for seizure of all assets.
And the answer will be: zzaappp!
;).
Pro: Someone will finaly stand up to the MPAA/RIAA
Con: Earth will be in ashes, well maybe it's not that much of a con
"No, we're from, uh, France."
If we encounter a civilization of vastly superior technology, the idea that we would possess any capacity to negotiate is more or less absurd. Hiding doesn't work either. Assuming it's them discovering us and not vice versa, the encounter cannot possibly be far from our highly-immobile civilization, and even if we immediately turned off all the power plants and went dark, it's not like there is such an abundance of life-supporting planets nearby that earth could hope to slip through the cracks. It may not even be wise to try and be all buddy-buddy with them, as who knows what sort of culture and religion they follow. ("you dare bow to us? we will surely annihilate you for the insult of that most obscene gesture!")
The simplest and wisest thing to do is let them call all the shots. Speak when spoken to; otherwise, be silent. Look for opportunities to reciprocate any kindness. Any technology they can be convinced to offer is guaranteed to exceed the value of any riches we bring as tribute (which should have value by virtue of uniqueness even if their culture does not experience the same rarity of materials).
If our visitors are demanding and unreasonable human being will almost certainly have to postpone any major rebellion until they are in a position to acquire some of their oppressors' technological resources.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Send them the Voynich Manuscript.
That should buy some time.
With the Vulcan salute, of course!
... preferably Rosetta ones.
Hi, Beer's in the Fridge, bathroom's over there, enjoy your stay...
...in bed
We have no idea how extraterrestrials might see the Universe. It is conceivable that we will not be able to communicate with them in any meaningful way. Even if we can actually decoding their language(s) may take decades or centuries. They may find our languages just as perplexing.
Through what appears to be the universal language of mathematics... what else?
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
What's all this talk about finding intelligent lifeforms "beyond Earth". Shouldn't we really make an effort to find intelligence life on Earth first?
Touring was just making a point, but people have taken it too far and claim that if you can't distinguish, then the computer is intelligent.
So, imagine a space alien arriving in his UFO and failing the Turing test because not only does it not know what baseball is, but can't even understand human language; maybe doesn't even experience sight and sound, but experiences the world in it's own way.
You would fail it's Touring test.
The Carpenters answered this decades ago and it's already beaming it's way across the cosmos:
---------------------
In your mind you have capacities you know
To telepath messages through the vast unknown
Please close your eyes and concentrate
With every thought you think
Upon the recitation we're about to sing
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary, most extraordinary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary, most extraordinary craft
You've been observing our earth
And we'd like to make a contact with you
We are your friends
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary ultra emissaries
We've been observing your earth
And one night we'll make a contact with you
We are your friends
Calling occupants of interplanetary quite extraordinary craft
And please come in pace we beseech you
(Only of love we will teach you)
Our earth may never survive (So don't come we beg you)
Please interstellar policemen
Won't you give us a sign give us a sign that we've reached you
With your mind you have ability to form
And transmit thought energy far beyond the norm
You close your eyes, you concentrate, together that's the way
To send a message we declare World Contact Day
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary, most extraordinary craft
Calling occupants
Calling occupants
Calling occupants of interplanetary, anti-adversary craft
We are your friends
---------------------
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
Q: How do you greet an extraterrestrial?
A: "Hello, extraterrestrial!"
Brock Sampson
So we've got guns. I wonder how intimidated a civilization that has the technology to traverse light-years through space would be of our bullets and bombs. If they wished to annihilate us, I wager they'd be able to do it without even giving us a chance to react. If an alien race should contact Earth, I think our best bet would be to at least assume that they have peaceful intentions.
Well, if you see a bunch of them walking around, holding a large book which they page through occasionally while staring hungrily at people ... time to start worrying.
Besides, we might get lucky and be able to bring down their force shields with a computer virus.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I figure this is right up there with planning what to do with the lottery money.
Please donate your spare CPU cycles to help fight cancer and other diseases
"Hi, nice to meet you! Ignore the clangers, they're racists."
D E C lowC lowG
It would be (al?)mighty interesting to find out what exterrestrial conceptions of God and religion are. How many religions they have (if any), what their worship practices are... ... how much their gods like the taste of earthling flesh...
you know, that kind of thing.
... is whot bwings os tugevza tsuzay.
"Pull my finger..." :)
When the aliens arrive and say, "Live long and prosper," you say, "Thanks."
And when they arrive and say "K'oq h'U Ploq'!" (die, alien scum!), what do you say then? Think carefully, this is important.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
If they are hot aliens then "How you doin' "
If I meet ET I'm going to flip him the bird.
Then give them an energon cube.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Show them you know math! You can't use numbers, those are human constructs. Although maybe you could use Roman numerals. You could try to use an XY system and draw something like sin or cos, although they may not understand our coordinate system. I think I'd go with using geometric shapes to represent PI or something. Like this picture here.
It's a huge assumption that they are looking for others like them.
This touches on a good point.
I've always thought some of the very basic assumptions made by the "Seeking Intelligent Life" community are rather presumptuous.
The assumptions are so basic as to be almost invisible to those who make them, which appears to be nearly everybody. The primary one being that Intelligent Life will be as excited about finding Intelligent Life as we are. --The only considered variables being Intelligent Life's level of technology and level of benevolence.
Being a curious person, I decided to react to the various bits of incongruous signal peeping out from all the noise. Crop circles were one such bit of signal. There are many others. For some reason, (which is not actually, "Some Reason" but rather, like every other bit of signal, upon exploring it, a very clearly understandable reason, and not a very flattering one at that), people block out the threads, try to rationalize them away, and generally force reality through the warped lens of the current popular human belief structures. But if people manage to undo this bit of social programming and honestly look at the information available without bias or a desire to destroy it in favor of the calming, socially acceptable version, then life can be clearly seen for what it really is; The jungle on the other side of the barbed electric enclosure.
The available indicators today, (and there are many, many of them), tell us several things. . .
1. Alien Life doesn't exist within, and more importantly, doesn't perceive physical space/time the same way we do. They're better at it. More evolved. Time is a spatial vector for them along which they can move back and forth at will.
2. They don't consider us equals. Far from it; they consider us food. In much the same way we don't negotiate with cattle or share in cultural exchanges with stands of corn, we are naive to expect to be treated as anything other than a retarded ape species bearing a (significant) industrial resource value. There's a reason there are so many of us at the moment and that world politics are as they are.
3. They've been here "forever" and have been manipulating us for the same length of time.
SETI, while it is rather sweet in its child-like naivete, remains an indicator of just how fsked we really are as a race.
Bearing all of this in mind, it is hardly any surprise that people would rather block it out and live comfortably in some pretend reality. I'm sure cows do the equivalent thing on their level. --Imagine if all the cows at once decided to use all that enormous muscle power to overwhelm the gates and trample their keepers? They could do this at any moment, but they never will.
-FL
Send them this greeting in Intergalatic Common...
"All your base are belong to us!"
How about "Hey, you can't park that thing here!"
very carefully
Table-ized A.I.
There may be many worlds inhabited by those who fit our understanding of "intelligent". One of them has to be the oldest and/or most advanced. It may be us.
..."Ullo John! Gotta New Motor?"
doesn't it involve hand signals and someone playing a really loud organ?
But this assumption, that intelligence should be enough, relies on another - that those will be similar kinds of intelligence. Which might not be true.
Look at the example with squid. Is it intelligent? Definitely. Does it help us humans in communicating with it? Not really.
Notice that I've said "us humans". The burden of finding a viable channel for communication will almost certainly lie on the more intelligent species - simply because its modes of reasoning are totally out of grasp for "lesser" one. In case of squidshumans we, as a "higher" species, didn't really manage to figure out ways of communication. And it works for vast majority of species on Earth, except those which are very simple or those which are very similar to us (and it's still far from great in this case). And no, domesticated animals don't count - we bred proper responses into them.
The intelligence we might get into contact with will be almost certainly quite different from ours - not necessarilly because of different modes of operation (hive mind for example), but also because it, most probably, had a different timescale to evolve, refine itself.
Overall, it is likely it will be more intelligent than us. And somehow I doubt it will be very close to us, diminishing even further the chance of "close enough to find common ground". At the same time we're already quite advanced, so not exactly falling into "primitive enough".
PS. As a personal sidenote: I think that, eventually, intelligence of our type, one that is well on its way to harness power over genes, is quite short, quite transitory stage towards intelligence that is fully aware, harnesses and embraces...memes. How it would think then? Here's the point - I am unable to comprehend. But we would look to it similarly like animals look to us - totally under influence of genes, not even realising next step.
One that hath name thou can not otter
"Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!"
If its name isn't Gort, we're screwed.
Have gnu, will travel.
bah weep grana weep nini bong!
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Rather than spoil the ending of the classic sci-fi short story Omnilingual by H. Beam Piper, I'll just post a link - it's a short read, like the label says. (A team of explorers on Mars find a dead civilization, complete with an utterly untranslatable library of books....)
...and delightfully crunchy!
The ETs who are here with us on Earth are far above humans in terms of intellectual capacity and technology. So THEY are the ones who decide how any communication with a particular human will occur. The human decides nothing. For more information visit the Dr. Karla Turner memorial website at www.KarlaTurner.org
Saying anything is a bit dangerous until we know their intentions. Evolution and the process of smarter cultivates dumber for food will continue throughout space. We could well become another cattle ranch in the universe. Its best to say nothing at all because its doggy dog out there in the universe.
I would grab my towel.
printf($randomline(sigs.txt) \n "-- "$randomline(authors.txt));
-- myself
We have found it, it's Eddie Torres the Extra Testicle.
The best way to get an extraterrestrial race to become comfortable with the idea of other races would be to infiltrate their media/communication networks and plant ideas that aliens aren't that scary, and maybe they could be quite nice.
- Start with "The day the Earth stood still" (or alien equivalent).
- Move on to some Star Trek like series
etc.
Maybe set up some conspiracy theory to get the population to think for themselves. In general, gradually get the populous happy with the idea of aliens.
Then appear and say hello.
Kinda like what's been happening on earth since mid 20th century.
I for one will welcome our new extraterrestrial overlords
[Intentionally left blank]
I suggest that we line up every piece of digital information that we have and send it all. They can get a half decent view of us that way, and maybe they will do the same at some point, giving us a world of information to sift through. Imagine the advancements if we can understand any of it, and imagine the generations of work if their language or thought is beyond us.
There's really nothing to be done if they are superior and malevolent and on the way, so why not assume they want to be friends?
We've all seen enough movies to know how it should go. The greeting will be:
"Die, you bug-faced putrid tentacle freak!"
said by a U.S. Marine pulling the trigger of a flamethrower.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincos_(language)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CosmicOS
CosmicOS is even a project on sourceforge, so if anybody have skills and will to contribute...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Don't use doves! It scares the martians.
Come Here Often?
I like microcars
"Yo Momma!"
a) We can't even talk to dolphins, though they've got some of our words. How about practicing on other intelligent Earthly species?
b) maybe y'all should turn off the movies, and tv shows, and actually *READ* some real SF (as opposed to sci-fi (pronounced skiffy, rhyming with the peanut butter, and which thinks Godzilla movies are sf....)
There are decades of short stories and novels whose theme is first contact. I remember one from the fifties, where one of our starships meets an alien ship. The ending of the story is both groups take out *ALL* navigation equipment and info, and trade ships.
Then there's a more significant issue: in a galaxy that's what, about 10G years old, and we're from a planet that's had life for over 3G years, *and* we've only had real technology based on science for barely 400 years, what are the odds that we'll meet an technologically-inclined alien race that's withing 200 or 300 years of *our* technology? I suggest the odds are vast that they're either far beyond us - on the order of a nuclear aircraft carrier to a merchant ship of the 1400's, , or far behind (if they're not up to Roman Empire standards, or, say, Turtledove's "The Path Not Taken"), they're more likely hunter-gatherers.
Start thinking of what a Prime Directive *should* be (and remember Buckminster Fuller's aphorism, "we are as gods, and we might as well get good at it"), or how to convince them that we're worth a) paying attention to, and b) that they shouldn't treat us like fire ants.
mark
I keep seeing people posting about how much more advanced than us a species would have to be to reach earth. I simply don't see why thats true. To my knowledge we have at least general knowledge of every major technology we would need to travel between stars, and thats with NASA never having had a budget over about $34B 2007 dollars, and currently closer to half of that. If we spent less time and money on killing each other and bailing each other out, and maybe cared about something other than our own social problems, there's no reason we couldn't have people on other planets as we speak.
Consider this:
For about $135B 2005 dollars we effectively went from flying propeller planes to repeatedly placing men on the moon.
Since 2001 we have spent about $865B in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Since Fall of 2008 we have committed about $12.2 Trillion Dollars to "Economic Recovery" plans
The barrier between us and the stars is not some insurmountable technology one, its a matter of money and willpower. The only hope I see is that private interests (including SpaceX and other companies) will pursue these technologies (considering that hundreds of companies have higher revenue than NASA) otherwise I'm afraid we may never get off this miserable rock before we kill ourselves off. You wouldn't bet the uptime of a moderately important website on a single webserver, yet we continue to bet the survival of our species on a single rock floating in space.
When our species encountered another intelligent sister species of near identical genetic code we obviously annihilated them off the planet. We really don't have much basis or fact to say with 100% certainty that the reason we don't co-exist with another intelligent species on Earth is because of our own doing. Humans instinctively parasitize and conquer everything in sight. If a highly intelligent species were to greet us even as friendly beings in the soul interest of simply learning about our primitive ways our ego would explode and we very likely would turn on this species like we have done to so many others extinct and living on good ole earth. The greetings may very well be friendly at first but as soon as that alien being turns his back to us - look out.
There wouldn't be any point in hiding. They'd know we're here. They've probably been watching us for a long time. They'd probably get here and back to their planet very quickly by physics we won't discover for yet another 1000 years. And they're so far ahead of us that they don't need our planet or us, anyway.
Dear Friends,
I am Prince Fayad Musa H. Bolkiah, the eldest son of Prince Jefri Bolkiah, former Finance Minister of Earth, the tiny fuel-rich planet on the outer realms.
Due to problems with a trading guild I was advised to evacuate my immediate family outside the sultanate to avoid further prosecution from them. Before I could do that I was placed under house arrest.
Before my Incaseration, I went ahead to dispatch large sum of fuel with the assistance of friend in a galaxy far away. The fuel has now been deposited as valuables into different private security and trust company for safe keeping.
In order to get the fuel I will need large quantities of the following chemical products, the mineral Be3Al2(SiO3)6,) and the chemical lement with atomic number of 79, details about this follow.
For your assistance i will compensate you with 25% of the total fuel and another 5% shall be set aside to defray any expenses that may arise.
Please I count on your absolute confidentiality, transparency and trust while looking forward to your prompt response towards a swift conclusion of this business transaction
Use of relativistic missiles is idiotic unless you plan and are absolutely capable of killing off the entire universe at once without absolutely any survivors or information left over about your act.
Xenocidal psychos are a threat to any species out there. They are also fair game. ANYTHING you do to them is fine and dandy.
Including killing off 99% of the species and colonizing the remaining 1% on a planet with harshest possible survivable conditions for the said species and keeping them there for purposes of hunting and torture.
The best part?
Any evidence of use of such weapons is a good enough cause for any species to use it on you too.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
We probably want want to avoid large crowds of civilians, even *if* hypothetically they were all benevolent, accepting, and welcoming towards the extraterrestrials and there were no psychos among them. Any intergalactic travelers would almost no doubt be apprehensive (assuming they have emotions like ours :P) as they land on an alien planet... so when they open their ship's door and step on to our planet for the first time, it would probably not put them at ease if it were anything resembling the red carpet outside a Hollywood award show as celebrities exit their limo and try to make it inside.
It would probably be best to avoid attempting any types of "universal" (by our standards) hand gestures, like an open palm-arm raised upward "hi" gesture or (unless they are humanoid and have pointed ears) the Vulcan salute.
In all probability they have a completely different physiology than ours and have no way of knowing whether or they see it as "welcoming" or are doing the equivalent of an alien "grab my crotch and spit on your shoes." We have this problem even with our close genetic relatives--*terrestrial* primates. Where regardless of the culture or upbringing, we express happiness or amusement facially by smiling, inadvertently showing our teeth... yet chimpanzees do not see a smile with exposed teeth as happiness and instead see it as an act of dominance and aggression, sometimes causing them to attack unsuspecting humans. Imagine how many ways we could screw that up with an alien physiology and culture? Think "Mars Attacks!" when someone in the crowd releases a white dove because "they come in peace!" and when the the Martians see it, they freak out, kill the dove and everyone there.
So the answer is:
The team would probably a small group of four or five... and for the composition of the group, I'd have to say that Michael Crichton actually addresses this very same question in "Sphere" (the movie was crap; the novel is amazing) and he actually devotes quite a bit of pages to the reasoning behind the why. (I'd highly recommend the novel, actually, for it's relation to this question to those very interested in the idea)
Basically, the "Alien First Contact Team" is made up of:
[eyeing sig]
"No population -- no popular unrest!!"
-- Groachi saying
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra!
i say give him a cell phone tell him to phone home and watch the hilarity ensue as he tried to get the area code. kinda reminds me of the first time i tried calling europe..
-Noc
He's got a board, with a NAIL in it!
Uh by kicking him in the nuts?
"Take me to your leader."
Morgan Greywolf, "Earth is full. Go home."
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Bentora, Bentora, Space People!
...All your base are belong to us
We are screwed no matter what we do as they are far more advanced then us.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Gort, can you open this jar for me...
I would argue we've already taken the first step by teaching various primates sign language. This makes us perfectly capable of talking to other species - species extremely similar to humans yes, but different species nonetheless.
Next step? Dolphins. Dolphins have a complex language, call each other by name, and have an advanced social structure. The fact that a sonar component likely alters the "words" of their language much as body language does for us makes it language like nothing a human speaks... but that's exactly the point. We'd have to learn to use a language that probably isn't possible without the aid of technology (but tech that we can most definitely build), and we'd have to deal with the added challenge of dialects and the fact that there's no way there's a single global dolphin language - they're way too spread out for that. With dolphins were looking at a species of similar intelligence, MOSTLY similar senses, and an innate understanding that each other are in fact capable of speech, even if speech isn't quite the same thing for each species. This would be a huge step forward - we'd LEARN a language rather than teaching one, and one that's very different from human ones. We'd also get used to the idea that sometimes we need tech to talk in ways that the human body simply can't - and we'd have the first functional implementation of that field of tech.
If we can reach a point where it's possible to have a conversation with a dolphin, why not take it further? A few people have mentioned squid. We may not be able to fully "talk" to a squid, but we could probably achieve some level of communication - and as a squid's anatomy is a lot more alien to us than a dolphin's, that would be useful.
Now of course, there's likely to be even more significant differences between us and life on other planets... but if we already have experience in speaking to other species, then we're well on the way of being able to communicate with aliens. Like all technologies, you start with simple developments that aren't all that difficult with what we already have invented, and advanced the tech (and attached science) from there.
Of course, this all assumes that the aliens aren't so amazingly advanced that they can simply hand us tech to automatically understand what they're saying, in which case the answer to the question is "we don't do anything at all, they do." That's something we really CANT assume, especially if we're dealing with launching a signal to a destination light years away (which implies similar tech level) as opposed to them landing here (which means that at the very least, they're beyond us in vehicle development, and quite likely many other areas as well.)
Freeze and play dead? Someone really should have thought of that _before_ we started broadcasting radio and TV and a planet-wide basis. Those waves really don't stop when they hit the outer atmosphere you know... By now we should be fairly well-known in our galactic neighbourhood.
TV and radio braodcast are not detectable after a few dozen AU, at msot 1 light year (nearest solar system is 4 LY and galaxy width is measured in tens of thousand of LY to give you an idea). The reason for that is that the signal are not directional, and thus the strength of the signal goes weaker as you increase the sphere from which it diffuse to. At a distance we are speaking of, it is virtually undetectable. More or less you would have to make a powerful directional and very narrow signal toward another system to be detected at a few LY distance. Which is why SETI can only detect another specy which WANT to be detected for the same reason.
As for being well known , we would be well known only in a very very small corner of our galaxy EVEN if the signal could travel such a distance... At most 100 LY if you count the first radio broadcast (and be VERY very very generous).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I suggest 3-4 for a good balance.
3-3 may even be less threatening, but then they may think us too primitive.
Take our leaders with you!
This unique sig is intended to make this user more recognisable.
With a nice cup of tea, of course, and a selection of biscuits and cakes.
Next question?
Stick Men
Tell them "Humans are best taken with a bit of salt. BBQ sauce might help too"
Not sure what I'd say, but I'd defintely have my towel with me for the trip.
Never try to beat a professional at his own game!
Well, there is a lot of room on Marklar. If Marklar here wants to bring his marklar to Marklar, that would be fine. Just take our marklar back to Marklar and bring all the marklar back with you.
Homer Simpsons Shows How
This is the ONLY ONE CORRECT WAY.
You can't handle the truth.
That one planet would be a space equivalent of a death camp. Only the primary purpose would be torture.
Torture first, extermination later.
What?
They would be a species that considers xenocide a valid strategy for first contacts with other civilizations.
No penal colonies for them.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Intelligence doesn't have to be measured in physical inventions (but I likely think it would manifest that way). Maybe the squids have the most awesome philosophy, stories, poems, songs, dance whatever.
Intelligence species don't necessarily have to care about other species - humans can't put on a good chemi-lumescent light show for beans, and maybe that makes us look F-ing retarded and boring to them - get the idea?
Other lifeforms might be so weird and alien to us, that we may never communicate effectively with them or want to because there might never be anything interesting to either of us
. For God sakes, the West has a tough enough time trying to communicate with the Middle East, let alone Ceti-Alpha 6 sand bug colonies.
..........FULL STOP.
Huh?
?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Thanks for that link! It was a great story.
The proper greeting requires one to drop trou and present one's anatomical Antarctica. What do you think all that anal probing was about? The reason they've just dropped all abductees right back off is because every time they've said 'hello', they were ignored. If we return the gesture properly we get the secrets of nuclear powered personal jet packs, flying cars, and chrome jump suits with big fins around the shoulders, just like in the pictures. Improperly, and the greeter goes FOOM. The difference is the little light bulb embedded in the tip. Good luck
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
There are lots of different kinds - human slave labor, entertainment, livable space, etc. Hell - maybe they'll use Earth as a factory to make all sorts of toxic crap, so their homeworld won't be polluted.
Having another planet will almost never be a bad thing.
..........FULL STOP.
Seriously any alien species than can traverse interstellar space is not going to be interested in talking to schizophrenic monkeys. If they exist, they certainly have the capability and the reasons, to stay hidden from us. You see, TFA answers it's own question. We're not ready to greet aliens until we can present a unified front with a single message that speaks for the consensus of humanity.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Thanks for posting that. Fascinating read, and 100% on-topic. Never thought of that being the primary method of understanding another alien culture, but it makes sense!
Before commenting on the Bible, please read it first
What I find interesting and mostly overlooked about this topic is that people expect alien's to have devolved technology in the same manner and order as we have.
One example, People always say that any race that can cover the vast 'sorta' emptiness of space would be smarter than us by default. That is assuming that they, the alien's, didn't stumble upon 'Faster Than Light' travel at the same time they where working on something that would have seemed totally unrelated. If you look at some of the greatest breakthroughs here on earth you will often times see that people stumble upon them purely by accidental while working on totally unrelated stuff.
I would wager that, when we do meet some aliens, we will discover that we have some advanced technologies THEY don't (porn, novel ways to kill each other, Windows 7, batman, etc) just as they have some we don't. (Robotic sex slaves, FTL drives, novel ways to make popcorn, etc) I think it will, at least at first, lead to a "you show us yours and we're show you ours" type of friendliness but who knows if that will last once the (MP/RI)AA gets involved.
Two truely smart races would combine technologies freely as the universe is so damn huge it's not like there isn't room. Here on earth we are use to fighting over resources but in space you have trillions of empty planets, moons, etc so really there is no reason to fight over much of anything unless your race has 3.2453x10^10000000000000000 members... And even then to fight risks loosing what you already have.
Reveal as less information as possible and only proceed to reveal more valuable information once they have revealed valuable information.
Basically, say "Hi" first and then proceed to get a good two-way conversation going.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
My biggest fear regarding aliens is if they are not offshoots of individuals but of a colony structure, such as an ant. In that instance, we would be doomed. They would not hesitate to take over our resources and us for the good of their colony.
The barrier between us and the stars is not some insurmountable technology one, its a matter of money and willpower.
You sir, are confused.
The fastest man-made item http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/spacecraft/q0109c.shtml reached 150,000 mph (41.67 mi/sec). Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is going only 38,500 mph as it leaves our solar system. The closest star to our solar system is about 4 light years away (5,800,000,000,000,000 miles away).
That works out to about 3,941 years to travel there at 150,000 mi/hr.
We definitely do not have the technology to accomplish or even begin that goal. We'd need a multi-generational ship, capable of growing food without sunlight. It would need to survive longer than any culture or nation has by far.
So perhaps you understand why we aren't planning to visit other stars at all now?
... is him a Vulcan? A Klingon? Borgs? Capellans?
Only after you have cut them open do you know what color their insides are.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
What I would like to know is how would our government respond. Guns & tanks or flashing lights and an organ?
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.
... Then offer them an Energon goody. Works (almost) every time.
Send Chuck Norris. He will present the aliens with a subpoena demanding that they allow us to bug their spaceships.
And as Chuck Norris departs the meeting, we will have Keyboard Cat on a jumbotron with really big speakers playing to send him off.
It's only fair that we let the aliens know what they're up against.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
They've been watching our tv and listening to our news for a while now...how about we greet them with, "Let me explain..."
-- A cat is no trade for integrity!
This was settled in the late 60's....
"Gnorts, Mr Alien!"
(Read it backwards if you missed the gag...)
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Our best hope is that they come to our world for trade and tourism and other miscellaneous perversions.
Were capitalists we know how to deal with traders and tourists and pervs.
"What happens on earth...stays on earth".
First, you brush up on your Ferengi and check out Kraixlist on subspace ISM to see if any civilization wishes to anex a freshly vacated class M planet.
When advanced human civilizations came into contact with less advanced human civilization, they most always took advantage of the technological disparity (think of the Spanish conquistadors, or just about any time Europeans came into contact with "natives"). It's nice to think that technologically advanced "aliens" would also be enlightened altruists, but, in a first contact situation, we'd be better off keeping our collective heads down and letting their actions speak for them.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Na Nu, Na Nu would be out of the question.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
- Hey dude, you want a beer ?
- Â&30xFB6745 Â$! KZZRGT
- PSSSSSHOOOOM !! ...
- Aww, so sorry mate for the mess it made in the vacuum you live in.
And there we are, facing 5 more billion years until the next encounter....
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
All your base?
So, got any books entitled "To Serve Man"?
If I decide to build a vacation house in the Everglades it might get a little rough for any alligators that happen to live on "my" lot. I'm not going to care if they've been there since sometime in the Mesozoic. I'm aware that alligators have some kind of intelligence, however I'm not that interested in it. They will never understand where I came from or how I got there, or what the hell I'm doing inside that big glass box my contractor put up on their best feeding ground. Any that get in my way will be dealt with, it doesn't matter how well they plan their defense. About all they can do is hope that I'm not a predator...
Shouldn't we agree on which language to greet ET in before we discuss the message? Not only will 100 different messages be confusing, but so will those messages in 100 different languages.
Bah weep gra na weep nini bong.
Rather than make an expression, the simplest thing is to probably just start counting primes, round robin with the basic elements we know.
Announce it, move an object to show it visually, perform a movement, etc...
Like in Contact. We heard the primes and knew there was some meaning there.
It could be our understanding is seriously misaligned with theirs for anything else.
And we do it nice and slow. Call out one, then wait. Call out three, then wait.
They know where the progression is, and we've opened the door for them to do something with it.
During the waits, we are paying attention the best we know how, and see where it leads.
An expression, like 2+2=4 is higher up the ladder than simple counting is. Probably not the best way to start.
Unless we missed a day in school somewhere, primes are gonna be known, and a progression of them would be seen as meaningful structure.
From there, it's a matter of their senses being able to deal with our utterances, and ours to theirs.
I don't know about you guys, but if that were to come to pass, I think I would be scared shitless and excited at the same time. Won't happen, but it's fun to think about.
Sometimes I work with my animals, or a very young baby and feel a bit of that. Not the scared part with the animals, but sometimes with the baby. Those first impressions last a lifetime!
I've managed to get into modes with the cat where we are looking at one another for a minute or so. I always wonder what the cat is thinking at that moment. Usually, animals look away quickly. When they don't, and you actually get to read them a little, it's cool.
In any case, communicating with those different from us is always fun to think about. We really are kind of lonely in that way, or we crave the learning that would come from that kind of experience. At least I can cop to both.
Blogging because I can...
Can't believe no one posted that one yet.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"His Master's Voice" by Stanislaw Lem.
He seems to be the only classic science fiction writer throwing cold buckets onto the ridiculous idea that it would be easy to communicate with alien intelligences.
Warn them that the Earth is infested with a plague species (Homo sapiens Linn.) which wants to take over every habitable planet in the universuum, and thank them for demonstrating their technology.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
"Hey, is that guy boring you? Why not talk to me for a while. I'm from another planet".
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
The second we started broadcasting radio signals, we started talking to aliens. When we started having geostationary satellites we started beaming signals in a beacon that made it around a shadow of a satellite sweeping the earth's rotation and orbit. Which is not perfect coverage considering other bodies and the sun, still pretty good.
We can only hope they weren't listening.
Maybe the topic of the thread is how we can develop FTL travel to jam our previous signals before they reach the destination and instead explain that most of what is broadcast from our planet represents the worst of our culture.
Assuming one of Slashdot's readers is using a satellite internet service or possibly a wireless terrestrial connection, this discussion has made it there before any light-speed communications made after discovery.
So on behalf of our planet, please don't judge us by our average citizen, also don't visit for 500 or so years because we'll probably nuke you(which will tickle your ships..possibly recharging them via energy sink shields.) Then again if any of the show you've undoubtedly watched "X-Files" is accurate, please stop abducting stupid people and keep your genetic mutation virus to yourselves. Colonize some other planet congruous to your species that is uninhabited due to recent planetary cataclysm, please.
BTW: Enjoy the LOLcats.
And no amount of sauce will fix that.
That would be near the tops on my list - you've got to consider what would drive them to seek us out and drop in to visit. Could it be there is something they need???
Most likely we would be the intragalactic Stuckey's (Cracker Barrel, if your under 40) and that would so not be cool....
All your base are belong to us!
I would bring them to the next bar and get wasted with them. Nothing better to say hello to earth than getting wasted!
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
It turns out it's man.
If that doesn't work, then bend over and kiss your ass, goodbye!
Well said.
What we all need to read is this good book that teaches us in a precise, emotionless way of dealing with platenary defenses.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Imagine the humans of 1900 trying to pose a credible threat to or hide from the humans of 2009.
The Taliban and their ilk do a fair job and they're firmly rooted several centuries in the past.. and just where is osama bin laden hiding? The most advanced superpower the world has known has been trying to find him for years now with no luck at all.. cunning, guerrilla tactics and fanaticism go a long way.
And then there's Will Smith.. ;)
I will use the universal language of prime numbers
OutputLogic
"Hello, please help me get away from this bunch of lunatics!"
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
Help
Approach with gun-ports open as a sign of respect... What could possibly go wrong!
For instance: in the television series Babylon 5, the Shadow race became an incredibly advanced race through repeated chaos and trial. Because of this, they dealt with all the minor races by attempting to instill chaos and trials so that the truly strong races could become stronger, and the weaker races were eliminated.
It was an ideological belief that chaos and destruction were the best ways to foster improvement, and they destroyed races out of an ideological, but in their minds benevolent want to improve the less advanced species around them.
FanFictionRecs.net
"Welcome to Earth. We taste terrible, by the way."
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Chemistry would work the best since there are so many obvious constants. ionization constant of pure water. All the orbitals of an iron atom. A benzene ring is ubiquitous. Curie temperatures. Melting and boiling points.
Except for the benzene ring what you are describing is physics i.e. the physical properties of materials. It might be the physics of a 100 or so years ago but that does not make it chemistry. Besides there are plenty of other obvious constants in physics: charge of an electron, mass of an electron, proton, neutron etc. nuclear masses, atomic orbital energies, spectral lines etc. although perhaps in another 50-100 years these will have been recycled into chemistry as well?
Didn't we already cover this in the original Transformers the Movie??
"Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong"
All you world belong to US.
With some Reeses Pieces.
...
Okay so I watched the first episode of "How do you solve a problem like Maria?"...cute teen girls, folks. And at the end, Andrew Lloyd Webber himself calls up a couple of the girls that didn't make the first cut. All but one of them was very reserved and ultra polite. I thought that if that happened in America there would be so much bleeping in the audio and dog-level pitched screaming. So, if you meet an alien, take a cue from the Brits.
... well, this is awkward.
Well, apparently, you only have to fool the majority of people for a little while.
Here's one response:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQoSCEMzJYE&NR=1
Starring Morena Baccarin. As a bad guy. Man, is that genius. I'd probably do whatever she told me to do.
--
$tar -xvf
"All your base are belong to us."
I can't believe no-one's mentioned this one. An alien species, more technologically advanced but with much less depth of thought, compassion or empathy than displayed by (some) humans. Technology doesn't necessarily equate with moral values that we would recognise. Hell, geographical distribution on Earth leads to some serious disparities in ideas about "right" or "wrong".
Time to call in the Men In Black.....
"Life is pain Highness. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something"
Westly, The Princess Bride
I think our only hope would be that a race advanced enough to make it here would be peaceful. Maybe a bad assumption, you'd have to do like Teddy Roosevelt, talk softly but carry a big stick.
I also think it's entirely possible that we wouldn't be able to relate to the aliens in any meaningful way. Maybe they spend all their days exchanging various molecules between themselves and us talking to them face to "face" and hitting them with exhaled CO2 would be a grave insult.
"Come Get Some"
Before you design for reuse, make sure to design it for use.
My personal favorite is: "Our planet is decaying in its own filth, and is best avoided by all aliens"
Other choices are: "We are a benign species, opposed to interplanetary conflict, and believe in equal opportunity for all beings, regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation or planet of origin", "Congratulations on your birthday", and "We look forward to sharing the many benefits of our combined knowledge".
Our radio emissions are effectively omni-directional, and as such, fall off like 1/r^2... so for all practical purposes, those "I Love Lucy" reruns are lost in the noise. If they had an idea what carrier frequencies we were using, and did something like FFT over a really, really long integration time, they might pick something up, but I doubt it. There's too much space and doing so would take too long.
"If you come in peace, surrender or be destroyed. If you're here to make war, we surrender."
Ever since I was a boy (back in the 1960's when space was exciting) I've wondered what I would say if encountering a non-terrestrial intelligence. I still go with my answer then ...
"How do you finance your space program??"
--
"I gotta get off this rock!"
It's a sign of respect.
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
They just don't get it.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
To avoid any hostility, do not greet them with:
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
>What would you say first to an alien?
Gesundheit, perhaps? :)
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
Was a quick post, what can I say?
Blogging because I can...
# ## ###
1 2 3
# + ## = ###
1 + 2 = 3
# = 1
## = 2
### = 3
1,2,...,9,10,11,...,18,19,20,21,...,98,99,100,101,...
That is where you start to explain the numerals we use and give examples of the symbols we use for equality, divison, subtraction etc. It shoudl convey we have a decimal system with symbols (numerals) indicating quanity and how the scale progresses.
The for a given language (say english) you would put in a condensed:
(Picture of an apple)
APPLE
(Recording of somone saying Apple)
A is for Apple, Ape, Achivement,b is for boy, bag, bong, baby,c is for cat, can, color, ... , x,y,z
(recording of someone saying the alphabet with an example of a word with it)
This will help express that symbols have sounds associated with them and that stringing together letters make words.
(red colored square)
Red Colored Square
(red colored triangle)
Red colored Triangle
With the Red example we assume they have figured out that we are A: Intelligent and B: Trying to explain things to them at this point.
The Red Colored Square and Red Colored Triangle is telling them two basic grammar points: adjectives and nouns.
Then we would do a:
(Picture of a horse standing)
Horse
"The Horse is standing"
(Picture of a horse running)
"The horse is running"
From that point they could quickly develop a noun, verb, adjective, adverb understanding of a language. Then they just have to pull a Leeloo and watch a bazillion years worth of TV to get the idea.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
"Don't make me call Chuck Norris you green blooded cowards!"
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Off topic but - Wow, great story Scott! Do you have any other recommendations of good scifi on gutenberg? I really enjoyed the read :-)
australian project gutenberg is better than the original.
"Don't make me call Chuck Norris you green blooded cowards!"
Yep. That would do it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Yo hommie!
OR
FUCK YOU!!!