US Navy Was Ordered To Listen For Martian Broadcast

MarkWhittington writes "It seems that a SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) experiment happened decades before the Project Ozma occurred in 1960. The historians at the blog Letters of Note have uncovered a telegram sent in 1924 by then Chief of Naval Operations Edward W. Eberle instructing the United States Navy to listen for radio transmissions from the planet Mars."

Comments

Re:And...

[Anonymous Coward]

Noise.

Transmission was heard...

[Anonymous Coward]

They did catch a radio transmission, which said "Yvan eht nioj".

Re:Transmission was heard...

[Tablizer]

They received a radio commercial: "Get your Human Ant Farm now! Watch humans toil away in your very own transparent human farm! They're so cheap that you can just throw them away and start over rather than clean the cage. We all know how smelly earthlings can get, zboys and zgirls. Your zmom will be so proud!"

Re:Transmission was heard...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, I don't believe any of us would have been able to figure that if you hadn't pointed it out.
Oh, ha, ha, ha, ha, it's so funy, ha, ha. ha.
Thank you.

Re:Transmission was heard...

[the_arrow]

Ah, but "a million to one" chance always succeeds! But it needs to exactly a million to one... A million and one to one chance, or a 999999 to one chance will fail.

Underfunded?

[sanosuke001]

So is that why SETI doesn't get more funding? The Navy knows there aren't any signals out there because they're getting their allies to block any new incoming transmissions...

It all makes sense now!

Re:Underfunded?

[gtall]

Actually, they've stopped because a more interesting problem arose. They are spending all their resources on attempting to detect intelligent signals from the U. S. Congress. So far, the noise has completely overridden any underlying signal but they still hope for success with ever more sensitive equipment. It was thought that when Biden left, this would raise the signal to noise ratio, and it did for awhile. At least the noise decreased. But now it appears that the vice-president's office is acting like a radio black hole even able to suck intelligent brainwaves from escaping. The proof is apparently in the speeches the vice president has given since becoming vice-president. Alien abduction and replacement cannot be ruled out. Anyhow, a radio black hole has never before been seen in the natural universe and so close scrutiny by Navy scientists is called for.

There are two parts thought to be present in any Congressional signal if there be any all. The Republican part, it is theorized, is very attenuated but appears to vacillate between sanity and insanity. The phase of the moon figures in here. The Democrat part is chaotic in a strange way, the chaos appears to wrap back on itself. This has the effect of entirely isolating them in an electronic brain trap, no new ideas come in or go out. The Navy feels the key to unlocking this trap is frontal and backtal lobotomy leaving only the lower base parts of the Democrat brain intact. To catch the Republican signal, should it indeed be there, trained dolphins with lasers on their heads will be required. In the meantime, tin foil hats are being distributed throughout the government in the hopes of preventing any dangerous emissions, which might be present but at undetectable levels, from impacting the nation.

The Navy, in an interim report, says that apart from a mysterious exponential rise in the national debt, no active Congressional signal is present. Said Admiral Wavey-Gravy, "Some of us believe Congress doesn't really exist given they seem to have no discernible effect on the surrounding political environment; it is as though 1000 Klieg lights turned on and no Congress-critter materialized to bask in their warm glow." When it was pointed out to Adm. Wave that news conferences were being held daily by Congress-critters, his response was, "You mean alleged Congress-critters, it isn't like anyone actually caught them doing anything intelligent, is it?"

Not Mars

[Max Littlemore]

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope
Earth.
Yip yip yip yip yip yip.
Huh! Look. Aaaawwwwww. Radio.
Radio.
Yip yip yip yip yip.
Radio
Uhuh, uhuh, Radio. Yipyipyipyipyip.

Re:Not Mars

[elrous0]

Speak for yourself. That show turned me into a multi-cultural hippie with a overly-romanticized view of people who live in garbage cans. How am I supposed to pursue a career in politics after they made me so accepting and open-minded?

Man,

[Tablizer]

what I wouldn't give to be able to put a transmitter on Mars and fuck with them. "Bring me all your pretty girls and best beers or face destruction, puny Earthlings! And spell out 'Earth is Stupid' with your battleships so we can spot it from space."

tone, tone, tone

[Tablizer]

"We're sorry, this is a long-distance call. Please hang up and deposit 8 million gold bars."

Re:tone, tone, tone

[Anonymous Coward]

That works out to $3.52 trillion in today's dollars, if you use London Good Delivery bars (400 oz./bar * $1100/oz * 8 million).

And it works out to a sticky mess if you use Good Humor bars.

LHC

[Tablizer]

Message received: "This is the Large Hadron Collider from the future. Do not attempt to [static.......] last warning."

Re:LHC

[Ukab the Great]

"...use the LHC to distill vodka. It makes terrible vodka...."

Well, sure.

[Anonymous Coward]

We want to know if they're talking about stealing our precious bodily fluids.

Re:This is good science

[Anonymous Coward]

This is good science. In 1924 we didn't have any strong reasons to think that there wasn't intelligent life on Mars. If anything, the evidence seemed to favor the other direction. Moreover, simply having ships listen in wouldn't have cost that much money. So this was an experiment with potentially very high pay-off compared to the resources it took. This does lead to some interesting ideas for a scifi story in which they do find signals. NaNoWriMo anyone?

Sadly this coincided with the great Martian radio strike of '24. All martian DJs were marching picket lines at the time.

Re:And...

[Ihmhi]

Yes. The Jonas Brothers pay a yearly licensing fee to High Overlord Ykkkkkkdrzkl.

Re:Missed opportunity

[jamstar7]

They should have slapped a portable radio on the rovers. Then again cell phones might have been a better move. If AT&T is providing service on Mars there's no way the signal would reach Earth. It's crappy enough when you are standing under a tower.

I wouldn't wanna have to pay the roaming charges for a cell fone on Mars.

How to receive martian broadcasts

[digitalhermit]

The process of creating a martian broadcast is actually quite simple. The technology is decidely low tech and can be put together in a short afternoon using some wire and a bit of electronic ingenuity. With a Linux PC, a CAT5 ethernet cable, a scissors, a few twists of some SEND/RECV pairs and you can soon detect Martian broadcasts. It's possibly to do it entirely in software also, perhaps with some creative use of the BOND0 adapter, the bonding module, and some misplaced balance-alb statements, but it's hardly worth mentioning.

Are you mad? Joke would be on you!!!

[syousef]

"Bring me all your pretty girls and best beers or face destruction, puny Earthlings!

Are you MAD, man? If they took you seriously they'd launch all the pretty girls into space! Noooooooo!

Re:Specifically...

[Kagura]

Have you met a hospitable woman?

Re:Syfy (please no)

[jandoedel]

SyFy must be written by syentists.

Re:Evidence of artificial structures on Mars?

[TheRaven64]

Wow, scientists have found evidence of macroblocking caused by a discrete cosine transform-based compression algorithm in pictures of Mars! Shocking news!

Re:Bah! They heard nothing!

[elrous0]

Yeah, but with those odds the big Martian cities have to have at least a few people in them.