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Crowd-Funded Radio Beacon Will Message Aliens

Posted by samzenpus on from the is-there-anybody-out-there? dept.

astroengine writes "In the hope of uniting people around the globe in a long-duration project to send a radio 'message in a bottle' METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) signal, a crowd-funded project utilizing a refurbished radio telescope in California has begun its work. Lone Signal is a project initiated by scientists, businessmen and entrepreneurs to set up a continuous radio beacon from Earth. To support the operations of the Jamesburg Earth Station radio dish in Carmel Valley, Calif. (a dish built to support the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969), a crowd-funding effort has been set up so that for a small fee, users can send images to the stars. If you're content with sending a text message, your first message is free. The radio dish's first target is Gliese 526, a red dwarf star 18 light-years from Earth, but the project will be considering other stellar targets believed to be harboring habitable worlds."

27 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. I sure do hope.... by cold+fjord · · Score: 4, Funny

    I sure do hope they get this right. It would be a shame if it turned out they created a intergalactic message like this.

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    1. Re:I sure do hope.... by durrr · · Score: 5, Funny

      Don't worry. I'm just going to send a copy of the book "How to Serve Man"

    2. Re:I sure do hope.... by EzInKy · · Score: 2

      Even the presence of an industrial civilization has been given away by sudden changes in the atmospheric composition over the last 150 years.

      It could be that the cleaning up of the mess industrialization caused could be the signal that our brains have ripened enough to be quite the delictable delights for the discerning alien palate. As for nuclear weapons, chances are they would be seen as the equivelant of bows and arrows to any civilazation far enough advanced.

      --
      Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
    3. Re:I sure do hope.... by nickersonm · · Score: 2

      Perhaps such is the intention of our true overlords!

    4. Re:I sure do hope.... by cold+fjord · · Score: 2

      There is certainly considerable merit in what you write. But allow me to present a different perspective for the sake of the argument. Consider the Fermi paradox and our observations of the universe so far. Although it is known that the universe is a very big place indeed, and it is thought that there must be many potentially habitable planets, in our very early and limited efforts we have yet to detect one apart from earth. It may be that they are rare, which would make life rare. If that turns out to be the case, any sort of signal created by a living intelligent being would be highly valuable in enabling other civilizations to locate the planet with life and a habitable environment, that is: earth. The fact that the civilization receiving the signal is intelligent says nothing about their values. Consider the diversity of civilizations on earth over the last 100 years. They have ranged from free and peace loving to extremely oppressive regimes that desired to commit genocide on their own population to extremely oppressive regimes that desired to commit genocide on other populations, and all manner of other combinations. The Soviet Union put the first human into space less than ten years after Stalin died and the horror was still fresh in the mind of Soviet citizens. There are still cultures today that practiced cannibalism within living memory. There are still some stone age cultures on earth at the same time as the US contemplates going to Mars, and has space probes at the edge of the solar system. There is no way of predicting what the value system of that alien civilization will be. The ones that could end up contacting the Earth may be the predator species that lured the highly advanced, peaceful, defenseless race to their planet and made them the slaves of the predators. The possession of neither an advanced technology level nor an advanced culture says anything about whether their culture will turn out to be one we find to be morally good and peaceful, and their society beneficial to contact. Still, it is exciting to consider, isn't it? Maybe they would turn out to be the equivalent of the mythical Star Trek era Vulcans coming in peace, as opposed to the earlier war-like Vulcan cultures. Let us hope that if we ever do make contact, it is in peace and friendship, and to our mutual benefit.

      As noted by this conservative author:

      ... so many people have asked how Germany, which produced Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, could also produce gas chambers -- as if producing great composers should in some way raise the moral level of that society. -- Much talent, little wisdom - Dennis Prager

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    5. Re:I sure do hope.... by BlueStrat · · Score: 2

      that makes us a pretty formidible foe if push comes to shove.

      See, here is where I think many are either failing to see or ignoring/dismissing an important real-world factor.

      Given that;

      1> Unless they're in some space federation/have regular interstellar contact with others they are just as clueless as we are as to how an alien race might react to detecting them with zero data.

      2> Given [1] above, there is realistically a 50/50 chance on whether or not they will react with hostility just as they see the same odds from their side regarding humanity.

      3> Given [1] & [2] above, the only safe move to assure that your species survives is to launch an immediate and extinction-level attack, one possibility being accelerating several sufficient-sized asteroids towards Earth (or the alien planet) so that by the time they arrive in the Sol system (or the alien's system), they're traveling at greater than a tenth of the speed of light.

      Since neither we nor they would know whether or not such an attack is on the way due to the centuries-long timeframes, logically specie survival would depend on detecting other races and destroying them first while remaining undetected.

      I'm not so sure that intentionally and pro-actively revealing our presence is such a great idea.

      It's like the question of what happens if someday a human starship encounters an alien starship out in space. If you return to Earth without destroying the alien ship, the aliens will know where our home system is and can launch an extinction-level attack. Same thing for them.

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
    6. Re:I sure do hope.... by marcosdumay · · Score: 2

      Fermi Paradox concludes that we shouldn't even exist, because the aliens should be already here before we had a chance to appear. It's extremely improbable that aliens are common enough for some of them to come here, but still rare enough for none be here already, as the Sun is quite young, and our galaxy could be colonized in just a few millions of years with ships moving in plausible speeds (the kind of speed the project Orion would acheve). Or, TLDR, there is likely nobody out there.

      Even then, this thing still bothers me. It's the perfect illustration that if people can do something stupid, somebody will. There is no upside to the project, just huge (extremely unlikely) downsides; yet, it's going ahead. There are plenty of other stupid things with huge downsides that we are getting able to do...

      --
      Rethinking email
    7. Re:I sure do hope.... by 0111+1110 · · Score: 3, Informative

      That is a myth more or less. Those transmissions would be damn lucky to make it to Pluto let alone another star. Maybe to Alpha Centauri if there is a kilometer scale dish there.

      Transmitting a signal to another star is non-trivial, uses a huge amount of power, and isn't likely to happen with unintentional leakage. You pretty much have to either aim a beam at a target or have an omnidirectional transmitter with truly immense power.

      James Benford, along with his twin brother Gregory Benford (Timescape etc) has written some fascinating papers on the subject from the POV of the sender and the receiver. Very well thought out stuff and required reading for any amateur METI projects. But this won't be the first intentional METI transmission anyway. Alexander Zaitsev has sent a number of messages at various targets already using a 70 meter radio telescope in the Ukraine. Those were relatively brief transmissions though. This project will be transmitting continuously. A pretty big difference, although one that would only matter to a pathetic, cowardly species.

      --
      Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
    8. Re:I sure do hope.... by icebike · · Score: 2

      Any species with the capabilities of "sending big rocks" wouldn't fear dinosaurs and rodents, nor fail to notice that their diabolic plan had failed so miserably.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    9. Re:I sure do hope.... by 0111+1110 · · Score: 2

      It's pretty much inevitable that someone is going to do this on any planet with intelligent life of the sort that can build radio telescopes. Short of a planetwide police state to detect such projects and eliminate them there's really not much that can be done to stop them.

      The chances of there being any intelligent life on a star within 100 or even 250 ly are astronomically small and 18 ly is so close that any highly advanced species would probably already have detected the oxygen/nitrogen/methane/water vapor etc in our atmosphere and would have been attempting to contact us either in person or via EM wave modulation.

      So why bother if it's so unlikely to succeed? Because we can and because we should at least make the effort to start eliminating nearby targets. Eventually, when we get to a search radius of a few hundred ly or so we may even succeed and then everything will change forever.

      --
      Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
  2. We should stop this by countach · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I am hereby setting up a crowd funded effort to bomb and destroy this radio dish. I don't want any aliens appearing on my front doorstep. We've all seen the movies, this never ends well.

    Seriously though, it seems to me incredibly arrogant and self centred for a private group of people to try and contact aliens, because the potential results of aliens turning up could be catastrophic, and that's a decision that all mankind should make together, not some private group.

    The only reason I'm not concerned is that I think this has precisely a zero point zero chance of success.

    1. Re:We should stop this by 0111+1110 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Those radio broadcasts are unlikely to even make it to Alpha Centauri with reasonable sized recieving antennas. With planetary scale antennas it might be possible. The military radars are another story, but they would be randomly aimed and relatively infrequent and not transmitting any sort of coherent message.

      This wouldn't be the first attempt at METI. Alexander Zaitsev has sent a number of messages to various stars including Gliese 581 using his 70 meter RT-70 radiotescope located in Yevpatoria, Ukraine. He is the chief advocate for METI among professional astronomers and makes his case well I think.

      His messages were relatively brief however and are unlikely to be noticed even if there is an intelligent civ at one of his chosen targets. What would new is the idea of a full time, dedicated transmitter sending messages out 24/7/365 aimed for long periods, like say 6-12 months, at a single target so that if anyone is there listening there would be at least some chance of them noticing our signal.

      --
      Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
  3. goatse by danlip · · Score: 2

    enough said

  4. Proper lead account for? by KitFox · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Rookie error #3: Point the radio transmission directly at the star.

    Unless the target is moving directly toward or away from us relatively speaking, pointing it at the star will target where the star was 36 light years before the transmission will arrive. If it -is- moving directly toward or away, are they accounting for Doppler?

    --

    @Whee

    1. Re:Proper lead account for? by Xyrus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Of course, rookie error #1 is getting involved in a land war in Asia and rookie error #2 is going in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

      All kidding aside, I'm not sure I like this idea. It's not really a good idea to announce your presence in an area where the natives could be restless and you could be considered "tasty".

      --
      ~X~
    2. Re:Proper lead account for? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's a 30-metre antenna. If they're transmitting radio waves with (say) 3 cm wavelength, the beam will be 0.001 radians ~= 0.05 degrees across. For the star to get out of this beam before the signal arrives, it needs to be travelling at over 0.001 of the speed of light, which is ridiculously fast for a star. So, pointing straight at the star isn't a problem.

      Doppler shifting isn't a problem, either. It's only important if your transmitter and receiver have been tuned to exactly the same frequency; and aliens aren't going to know the frequency of our transmitter anyway. (That is, they'll have to sweep across a wide range of frequencies to find it anyway, so a small Doppler shift isn't going to make a difference.)

  5. Re:why transmit drivel? by snowraver1 · · Score: 2

    How would an alien decode the .jpeg, .bmp, or whatever else we send them. I think we should send a message like in contact. Groups of pulses arranged in prime number sequences. It's distinct, it's easy to decode, and it would be near impossible to be natural.

    --
    Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. This comment may not be copied in any way including, but not limited to caching.
  6. What if they are predators? by Rubinhood · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Can the senders please make sure that if those guys are predators, the rest of us are safe. Thanks.

    As a side note, I tend to feel strangely unsure that such things are a good idea when unknown extraterrestrials receive more attention than starving 3rd world fellow terrestrials.

  7. Re:why transmit drivel? by hawguy · · Score: 2

    You don't compress the image, you present pure sequence of pixels with scan line and frame completion markers as on the Voyager Golden Record. Have a look at it, the instructions to "play" the disk are engraved on the disk and are crystal clear even to young teen: I was 13 when I first saw it and system was obvious.

    Sure, start things out with your pulses, then go to diagrams and pictures like the Voyager Golden Record

    Crystal clear? Really?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Sounds_of_Earth_Record_Cover_-_GPN-2000-001978.jpg

  8. Re:Indians... by hawguy · · Score: 2

    Why do I have this indelible image in my mind... a bunch of Indians come together and crowd-source wood to build a big bonfire on the shore - hoping it may be a guiding beacon to travelers coming from far out at sea.

    Anytime two societies meet, it usually doesn't end well for the less advanced one. They could possibly come in star ships...we can barely put a man in orbit.

    An Alien civilization that can cross the Galaxy in a Starship to come see us is probably not going to find any natural resources or living space that they can't already find elsewhere. There'd be little reason to take over Earth, unless they see us as a threat, and that's doubtful.

  9. Re:why transmit drivel? by iggymanz · · Score: 2

    oh dear.

    I I- II are one, two, three. - is zero

    you should now be able to answer the rest of your questions.

  10. Planetary Resources Arkyd-100 Space Telescope by sanman2 · · Score: 2

    It's great that Slashdot is giving coverage to the above story, but how come they're not giving timely coverage to the fact that Planetary Resources has announced a new Stretch Goal for their existing Kickstarter campaign:

    http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1458134548/arkyd-a-space-telescope-for-everyone-0

    They're promising that if the new $2M fund-raising goal is crossed, they'll use the extra funds to upgrade their Arkyd-100 Space Telescope to search for exo-planets. This is a fantastic idea, especially given the recent breakdown of NASA's Kepler planet-finding probe.

    I hope you will all consider pledging some money to this fine Kickstarter campaign too, because finding more of those alien worlds will help to expand our horizons and our aspirations of the future.

  11. you joke, but... by foreverdisillusioned · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is at best a waste of money. I know he catches some flak for this, but Stephen Hawking has it right. There's no reason at all we should expect intelligent alien life forms to deal with us as respected equals, especially if they are considerably more advanced. At the same time, it would be too much to hope for them to ignore us. Our planet would be a treasure trove of scientific interest to them, and even practical interest in the same way rainforests are useful to biochemists or bacteria are useful to genetic engineers. The altruism argument ignores how very limited it is here on Earth. Forget intercultural conflict, how many people give/gave a shit enough about dead dolphins enough to boycott tuna? Or save the poor bonobos? Their intelligence is a lot closer to ours than ours would be to any life form advanced enough to travel the stars (unless they had some kind of taboo on both genetic and cybernetic enhancement.) Overall point being: altruism isn't a prerequisite for advanced spaceflight, but relentless pragmatism is.

    Fortunately, what with the speed of light being what it is, this shouldn't be of any immediate concern.

    Also, I think there's a recent 'obligatory' xkcd that's quite on-topic here if anyone wants to whore some karma. In the what if section.

  12. Did anyone else read the title as by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Crowd-funded radio bacon?

  13. Re: Language barrier by Jeremi · · Score: 2

    This all assumes that large-scale interstellar space travel is economically feasible for a sufficiently advanced civilization.

    It's just as likely that it isn't (eg sending the Lizard Armada to another star requires way more energy than the Lizards are willing to spend, even if we are delicious) and therefore we as a species are safe wrt being eaten.

    --


    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  14. Gold Here! by Bayoudegradeable · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Perhaps it will sound like this: Greetings Mr. Cortez! You are searching for gold, we are having it! Please visit our lovely Aztec mines. You will love our gold! Have a nice time with our women while you are at it. Please, cross the ocean and come visit us. We don't even have gunpowder! We don't have resistance to small pox either! See us soon!

    Or perhaps.... Hey Spike! Wanna go dig up some bones?!

    --
    Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
  15. Re:Only travels so far by 0111+1110 · · Score: 2

    I've actually done the math (link budget calculations) and a 30 meter radio telescope is actually large enough to reach quite a bit further than Alpha Centuari. With an adequately powerful transmitter (a minimum power output of something like 300 kW with sufficiently long pulses (>= 0.3 milliseconds) and a sufficiently narrow band signal Gliese 581, at 20.3 ly, is well within its reach. With a megawatt you could get even quite a bit further than that. At least out to 50-60 ly. Of course a lot depends on the size of the dish on the othe end. This assumes a dish on the other end of only 30-60 meters or so and a frequency up in the X band at 9-12 Ghz as well as a relatively short attenuating journey through our atmosphere by aiming at less than 45 degrees from the zenith. Since it's quite likely that there will be multi-kilometer scale dishes on the other end this should be quite conservative. Unfortunately I haven't seen any numbers on the power of their transmitter. That information as well as the transmission frequency, pulse length, and bandwidth are all key to how far their signal will reach. For short pulse lengths (microseconds) and the resulting wide bandwiths you'd need a gigawatt scale transmitter, although the average power would be quite a bit less.

    --
    Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.