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After 35 Years, Another Message Sent From Arecibo
0xdeadbeef writes "Two weeks ago, MIT artist-in-residence Joe Davis used the Arecibo radio telescope to send a message to three stars in honor of the 35th anniversary of the famous Drake-Sagan transmission to M13 in 1974. It was apparently allowed but not endorsed by the director of the facility, and used a jury-rigged signal source on what will now be known as the 'coolest iPhone in the world.' The message encoded a DNA sequence, but no word yet on whether it disabled any alien shields. You can get the low-down on Centauri Dreams: Part 1, Part 2."
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The idea that we can send radio signals to alien civilizations, or receive them, is unfortunately wishful thinking. "Contact" notwithstanding, it's not possible. We could never pick up a radio signal from an alien civilization because the power of a signal from a point source drops off exponentially. And it's not a matter of having a better amplifier either, because radio waves are actually quantized....eventually your signal has degraded to individual photons, and it doesn't take very long. My friend and I calculated that even with a MW-level transmitter, an alien civilazation on Alpha Centauri would need an impractically large dish to intercept even a trickle of photons.
We are very tasty snacks! Here, have our DNA, and grow some appetizers for the long journey!
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Without any context --- e.g., our biochemistry, amino acid structure, nature of DNA --- this message amounts to about the worst practical joke in the history of interstellar communication. It has a relatively non-random structure, so clearly must mean something, and yet they'll never figure it out.
My transmission
Dear citizens of Centauri. I have a large sum of gold, 300 metric tons, I need to move off planet. If you'll deposit a small transfer fee, 3 metric tons of gold, in a local bank I will make arrangements to ship the gold to you. Signed crowned prince of Iowa.
These guys must be loaded. Would you believe the rates they're charging for interstellar calls?
By sending them our DNA sequence, they can then reconstruct a human at their location.
God spoke to me.
Ok, I understand the "coolness" factor of radio transmissions to the stars, but in the end are they all wasted money? I mean, chances are another Hubble mixed with other probes can find where there is other life faster, quicker and easier than radio telescopes. We've been trying these for ages and they haven't picked up anything. So why not spend research money doing things that we know are going to work. Plus, its a whole lot more probable that we will find non-intelligent life throughout the universe than intelligent life. Even if we find life outside earth with the technology level of 1700s earth, they won't be picking up these signals and really for all but the last 100 years, humans wouldn't have been able to pick up this signal. So quit messing around with radio signals and find possible planets for life.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I'ma let you finish, but we already got a reply to the original message!
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
We could have rickrolled them so they could get a taste of our culture!
Sending out a DNA sequence assumes that the receiver understands a great deal about our planet and the molecular basis of life on it.
Think about it, even if they understood the message was about DNA, they would have to know our amino acid code in order to interpret it as the template for a protein. A protein that either did not evolve on their world, or evolved in a completely different way.
In effect, all we saying with this message is that we have advanced enough to recognize that DNA is the basis for life on this planet. Only a sentience that already understood that basis could interpret this message.
It's akin to someone shouting, "a-squared + b-squared = c-squared!" - out-of-context - in the antarctic. It shows you have learned something, but there either isn't anyone to hear you or they won't understand you unless they knew all about you (and Euclidian geometry) already.
In 35 years, we will get back "whogot votedoff AmericanIdol lastweek?"
It's all damned lies and statistics!! I mean 47% of all people use statistics to back up their arguments.
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
So if you're going to send a message, you have to choose one. What did he choose? The DNA sequence for an enzyme.
We used Apple's "Speak" option to vocalize the phonetic code which I then recorded on my iPhone. Here is a fragment of the total message, the whole of which can be decoded unambiguously into the gene for RuBisCo:
Tell me how, exactly, the recipient is going to decode a DNA sequence, even if the basic message can be identified as strings of 2-bit numbers? Not only is DNA specific (as far as we know) to Earth chemistry, but the meanings of the codons, and even the choice to interpret them in triplets is the result of chance evolution on this planet. It's like sending a message in Navajo to Paris, with the assumption that it can be "decoded unambigiously"... because the sender knew what it meant. The meanings of DNA codons are absolutely not a universal constant like binary math is.
knowyourself riddleoflife amthe riddleoflife amthe amthe riddleoflife riddleoflife
<facepalm> Not that the choice of words would mean anything to them, but this shows the touchy-feely-ness that goes along with the lack of foresight that was already demonstrated.
Say what you will about Sagan's message, but at least they put some thought into making a message that gave hints as to how to decode it, rather than just sending some unframed binary mish-mash.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
it's like a radio time capsule.
Imagine if what becomes of humans in 1 million years or so intercept the transmission. It would be like digging up an old fossil record of DNA.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
There's an app for that!
But they did use an iPhone.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
From a link in the first blog posting:
"Later that decade, Davis led a quasi-covert operation that recorded the vaginal contractions of ballerinas with the Boston Ballet and other women, then translated this impetus of human conception into text, music, phonetic speech and ultimately into radio signals, which were beamed from M.I.T.'s Millstone radar to Epsilon Eridani, Tau Ceti and two other nearby star systems. "
That was a tough lesson in dream dispersal.
Did you read the comments on that dude's blog?
I'd have added some of my own, but I just didn't have the heart.
Ouch.
-FL
Now that Pluto is no longer a planet, why is it still included in the message? Shouldn't they be sending an updated version?
Given that we didn't beam out the Wikipedia article for the first message, I'm going to try and anticipate what the alien civilization will see it as by deciphering it myself without reading the article first:
"From top to bottom, the word 'aliens' in white English letters, a purple rock, some Space Invaders, a man with a giant blue head and a staff to his right, some white noise, and a bunch of stars over Planet GMail."
"The amazing thing is, we did it with my iPhone!"
". . . sequence into an analog audio file that I recorded on my iPhone. Then, we actually interfaced my iPhone with. . . "
"Now I have the coolest iPhone in the world."
It's a cell phone, smartphone, mobile, handset, pda, whatever you want to call it. It fits in a category of electronic device that includes hundreds of others. But no, it can't be lowered and referred to by any generic name, it's an iPhone!
Considering that a piece of shite $15 mp3 player could have been used for the task just as well, such glowing praise and repeated brand name acknowledgement is truly not necessary. It makes Apple's marketing dept quite happy, however.
Exactly. I don’t think the phone model would have been mentioned (and with a wink nonetheless) that way if it were another phone.
Besides: Even a iPhone that sent stuff to another planet and got a reply, can’t beat a Linux running Nokia N900 with built-in full root access, from a company whose phones had SSH terminal software available for more than seven years now. </proper-geek-fanboyism> ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Why is it that some guy is taking the liberty to send anything he pleases to the aliens?
I mean, if we're going to seriously entretain the idea that some day some other civilization might receive the message, then such things should be planned carefully to be as meaningful, easily decodable and as non-threatening as possible lest it bite us in the ass some day. That excludes random people with access to the hardware sending messages just because they can out of their own initiative.
Just for a start, iPhone text to speech? There has to be some better way to encode a DNA sequence that would more obvious to decode that machine-generated voice in a human language.
And, if we're not really taking this seriously and this is just a gimmick, why bother in the first place? Surely there has to be some better use of the equipment.
Just give it up, she's, er I mean they, are just not interested in you.
My sig is better than your sig.
What. A. Useless. Message.
The message is nearly meaningless noise. There is structure, but not so much as to not be unambitiously random. The chances are that if anyone gets the message they'd assume it was just noise. What a horrible waste. We would have done so much better sending an obvious integer sequence a few times: more obvious in the presence of noise, and more likely to be recognized as meaningful by a foreign life.
No wonder they didn't want to help this guy out, he's obviously a cargo-cult-wannabe-scientist. "I play with beakers and transmitters, so I'm a scientist too".
Sure— SETI things are more about understanding ourselves and pushing the technological boundaries. But that understanding comes from deep and considered thought about these issues, not by sending some artists to play scientist on some expensive equipment.
We have no idea if the receiver is friendly. Based on human behavior, we can roughly guess that at least 10% of any/all intelligent receivers will be agressive. Why broadcast our location with those odds? It's not logical.
Table-ized A.I.
Even if we make the assumption of organic life, which isn't far-fetched given all of the awesome self-organizing things organic molecules (biotic or abiotic) can do, we have as yet no reason to assume that nucleic acids will be the information carrier in an alien life form. Even if we do assume that nucleic acids are the information carrier, we have no reason to assume that the genetic code is universal.
The evolution of the genetic code is perhaps the biggest mystery in the origins of life on Earth. We are only just beginning to set down a reasonable framework in which to put forth testable hypotheses, but still yet have no way of determining whether the genetic code as it evolved on Earth is the only thermodynamically favorable outcome for such a system, or if it was a fixed accident. There has been some interesting mathematical treatment of the evolution of the genetic code, but nothing conclusive on the mechanisms of its origins. It does seem that molecular biology and studies of molecular evolution are coming into their own in this respect, so answers may not be so many years off, but we still have quite a way to go in our understanding.
Considering that the genetic code itself is somewhat evolvable (there are a couple of organisms, bacteria IIRC, that have reassigned one of their duplicate codons for a 21st amino acid), there really isn't any good reason to assume that alien life forms, even if biochemically similar in most other respects, would have the same genetic code. For all we know, we may have just sent off a good bit of nonsense (genetically speaking), even if they could decode the sequence and understand it as a nucleic acid sequence.
It seems to me that it would make much more sense to send something mathematical: a sequence of primes, a Fibonacci sequence, or some other sequence that would never appear as a "natural" unintelligent signal. Something like that would be an unmistakable sign of intelligent life (at least intelligent enough to work out math and send it in a signal). Sending a genetic code seems like a complete waste of time (disregarding those who think that sending any kind of signal is a waste of time).
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
I guess that rules out Quake then...
You do realise that sending a message with an Apple product is tantamount to declaring war? Goddammit, did you not see that documentary with the MacBook?
... in August 15, 1977.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow_signal
"stfu already"
I wonder if we are going to get one back: "Can you keep the ^%£$&^$*$&^ noise down!"
The Arecibo message was designed to be as easy as possible to decode, it would be possible to do so with just a pencil and paper.
They should keep sending this same Arecibo message each time, rather than making cleverer and more complex ones.
The reason for this is that the content is not so important, compared to the importance of allowing another species to recognise and decode it.
The alien species could correlate the signals they received, and multiple copies of the same bit pattern over time would stand out above random noise.
If a different one is sent each time, it would look more like noise.
Twenty five years is nothing compared to the time scales involved in interstellar travel, and indeed interstellar radio communication.
Lets keep this simple and not try to get clever with it.
"Based on human behavior" how? 1 in 10 of our responses to alien messages have been aggressive? 1 in 10 of humans would lead an interstellar invasion fleet according to polls? I'm curious.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Theres an app for that
Regular broadcast is already attenuated so much , that it is virtually indistinguishable from noise a few dozen AU from our planet...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Pluto is a planet, it's just one of 5 dwarf planets. So yes, to be completely accurate, they'd either need to ditch Pluto or add Ceres, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris.
All that said, I'm guessing 'ET' woouldn't give two shits about the dwarf planets. He'd see the gas giants, and maybe our 4 inner planets. If they looked really close, they might see some assorted rocky and icy belts, but nothing worth mentioning compared to the other planets.
Of course, part of the idea of dwarf planets is to make them open ended, so you don't need to memorize all of them. The analogy is to mountains: there are lots of mountains, people don't memorize them all, but they're still given special recognition.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Don't even joke about that. What are the odds that they're going to be able to see an object as small as Pluto?
"I'm counting four rocky inner planets, four gas giants, and... well, shit, there's no ninth planet. Moving on..."
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Or they might stop and say, "Oh, hey! We were about to build a hyperspace bypass through your solar system. But now that we know it's inhabited, we'll reroute that and give you an on-ramp. And by the way, here's the technology for zero-point energy, faster-than-light communication, and the meaning of life. Welcome to the club!"
Pointless Calculation...
What if they tried to send the exact same information to a neighbor, using Verizon wireless...
As a text message:
Base Pairs in DNA: 3,080,000,000
Total # Characters 6,160,000,000.00
Text Message Limit 160
# Text Messages: 38,500,000.00
Rate per Text Message: $0.20
Cost: $7,700,000.00
Using Verizon's 1.99/MB data rate:
Megabytes Data 770
Cost Per Megabyte $1.99
Total Cost $1,532.30
Mailing a Baggy full of sperm:
44 cents.
Seeing the look on your neighbor's face when she opens her envelope:
priceless
"Can you hear me now?"
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
"Ok, I understand the 'coolness' factor of radio transmissions to the stars, but in the end are they all wasted money?"
The only "wasted" money is his own. Let a man do something cool with his life without being criticized for adding billions to the federal deficit. As something of a romantic, I'd hope that he could make enough money selling that iPhone to a collector of mankind's First Contact artifacts to pay for the trip.
I hope he has family or friends on M13 or that M13 is within his calling plan. Otherwise he will need significant funding.
Alien #1: We're getting a weird signal from that yellow star.
Alien #2: I thought I told you not to bother with yellow stars and only listen to the orange ones - yellow stars won't have INTELLIGENT life.
Alien #1: But this signal it's definately not natural, look at it.
Alien #2: Smeg!, not astronomical phenomena known could make this signal it appears so, so random.
Alien #1: Let's try to decipher it.
Alien #2: Oh lets!
They try and try, but there is just no rhyme nor reason to the signal. Also it is never repeated, so it is assumed to be locally generated noise. It's called the 'Smegma Signal' and is a popular subject among those aliens who are known to wear tinfoil trousers to protect their brains from 'psychic waves'. The other aliens assume they probably sat down to hard when they were a larvae and tore a nerve bundle or three.
...
No wonder why we can't find intelligent life out there. There is probably several thousand really interesting alien civilizations out there and they each are sitting there wondering if they are the only ones out there. So, every 35 years they send a brief message out into the universe expecting one of the other civilizations to notice that particular transmission over all the background noise. Of course, they each justify it because of lack of funding but they really shouldn't complain when they don't find intelligent civilizations either.
On top of that, sending a DNA sequence is simply stupid. If I were to receive a message from an alien civilization, I'd be far more interested in their sciences, culture, and theology than a short sample of their DNA. I'm not sure what I'd do with that.
What about Orcus? Why is Orcus left off of everyone's list of dwarf planes? I know there might be too many to memorize but it's a cool little anti-pluto.
No thanks. Earth (particularly, U.S.A) is brain-dead.
Yours in Baikonur (Cosmodrome),
Kilgore T.
But TV etc. is done to serve a (local) purpose. Beaming a signal into space is done merely to beam a signal into space. Your TV comparison is like saying, "Well, since I ate M&Ms at camp, the bears might already know about us. Therefore, I'll heat up this chocolate bar and blow the scent into the forest with a fan".
Anyhow, I've heard that radar is probably the most detectable signal we send out, not TV and radio.
Table-ized A.I.
Maybe they need to include Pluto so everyone who gets both messages will recognize it's the same spammer that keeps bothering them with infomercials.
forget quake, what about interstellar pr0nz
> The message encoded a DNA sequence
Great. Now they'll shove it into a machine and start cranking out babies to see what they're like.
Indeed, from their tech level, it'll prolly be trivial to "simulate" an actual planetfull of people, to see how they'd behave and treat one another and then they'd find out that we're all nasty sacks of...
Uhhh. Oh oh.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"Damn, I just get a busy tone when trying to call Earth. They are official deleted from my phone book!"
Alien race re-creates humans based on DNA sequence received from Arecibo. Hilarity ensues....
So? Who cares? Is it relevant to the story - I mean, do they tell us what the model of all the computers they use? What about the companies involved in the construction of the radio telescope?
The sad thing is, this probably wouldn't have made Slashdot if another phone had been used.
I agree with the other poster too - if he had have used another phone, it wouldn't have been mentioned. Because most people just get on and use products - they don't stop and say "Hey isn't this cool, I can do this on my Iphone", giving a free advert to Apple, even though everyone else can do the same thing.
- I'm posting this using a Windows PC with Intel Core Duo processor *ding dong ding dong* -
It is nice he provided a good bit of PR on the web for Arecibo. The bit about using an iPod is essential to his artistic statement I suppose, "coolest iPod in the world" is maybe something that could have gotten Apple to fund Arecibo if he had been at all interested in it. That would have gotten the director on his side too.
May I suggest the one thing we should NOT send is our DNA sequences.
1) Low security. If they were able to do anything with it I would be pretty worried! Sending them the key to our metabolism is a Bad Idea.
2) Impossible to fully decode without knowledge of Earth biology.
3) A very inefficient signal. A better message could have been devised, with much more fun and stimulation, by a competent university department.
4) I have a problem with a guy who says this sort of thing to Arecibo's interim director. It is typical wannabe bullshit. I've worked with artists but none would have the balls to go to a scientific research center and tell them that SETI is not about finding aliens. As if he had never read Contact.
Because Orcus hasn't been recognized by the IAU yet. Sedna and Vesta, as well.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Greg Bear's Forge of God and Anvil of Stars books cover this too. Basically, civilisations that don't learn to shield emissions early on in their development attract von Neumann machines that pre-emptively attack noisy civilisations before they become interstellar. There's a galactic organisation that tries to rescue targeted civilisations, and punish the makers of the probes.
FoG covers the Earth getting destroyed (no spoiler necessary, the cover depicts Earth going boom) and Anvil follows Earth's children as they are guided on a mission of revenge - great books, IMHO.
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
messages to outer space, how about
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or
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