December 17, 2007

• I think there's massive flaws in the SETI theoretical model.
• The Teen-Age Message notably included greetings in Russian and English, and a 15-minute Theremin symphony for aliens. Awesome. No Beethoven, Stravinsky or Chuck Berry, but a fifteen minute Theremin solo. Given that we're doomed to fry ourselves anyway, why not let others know we were at least here? And that -- *snicker* -- we thought Pluto was a planet!
• And this is what will happen. Text version: a YouTube clip of the trailer for Cloverfield, in which nasty aliens come and get us.
• Humans. If they're not having one sided conversations with 'God' they're talking into the vacuum of space.
• Or typing words into the vacuum of the internet.
• MonkeyFilter: The vacuum of the internet.
• Okay, so after 'ol Sol, the nearest star to Earth is about 4.5 light years away, and the nearest star that we know of likely to have a significant planet structure is 400 light years away. So, Mr. Zaitsev's radio message takes at least 400 years to get to its audience (clearly an Oldies station) and compel them to action. If their armada could travel at a fairly large fraction of the speed of light - let's say one tenth, or 10,792,528,500,000,000 kilometers per hour, it would take them 4,000 years to get here, provided that they responded instantly. This bring me into Who Cares mode.
• Perhaps it's all just a fool's errand, but at least these science guys are kept busy working on that fool's errand, instead of having to support themselves through something more insidious for the military-industrial complex. IMHO.
• Moo.
• RalphTheDog is clearly not aware of giant intergalactic radio vacuums. What these things are, essentially, are gigantic vacuum cleaners that only gather radio signals. They do not collect lint. Anyway, depending on the size of your Intergalactic Radio Vacuum (IRV), you can speed up the radio signals considerably. Think of it like a snail. A snail moves at x inches per hour. But if you put a ShopVac on it, the snail increases its speed tremendously. The radio waves we send out are being sped up a great deal afte we release them.
• Yes, I fell we're be unpleasantly surprised when there's an official First Contact. As much as those theories of 'a civilization advanced enough for space travel should be intelligent and peaceful enough that it doesn't self-destruct' sound right, can't imagine them coming down here just to teach us harmony and promote world peace.
• [aliens are controlling my dyslexic fingers, help me]
• Granted I'm only going on what has happened on Earth when more advanced "civilized" cultures traveled to different areas to "convert" the natives, but I think I'll renew my tentaclepox shots. *reminds self: don't need beads, blankets, or space glop*
• This reminds me of what Jack Handey said: Advanced alien civilizations don't want to share their wisdom with us because we're not ready, but I bet they'd change their minds after a little torture.
• ::nods at BlueHorse:: Some people have trouble differentiating what they should do from what they can do.
• Welcome to Earth, ye creatures from space. Despite all its problems, it's not a bad place. We've got bean burritos, and opera, and string, And fancy-ass clocks that go "ting-a-ling-ling." We also have hunger, and sickness, you know. We're trying to fix them, but progress is slow. Be ye green, be ye tentacled, made of soft tissue, Come over to Earth! (And take me back witchoo!)
• Bring it on. I'm pretty sure there's nobody out there, so broadcast away. Carl Sagan delivered sobering news to my young mind when I was a lad: we really are alone and very, very rare. Oh, Merry Christmas!
• > we really are alone and very, very rare I dunno. I don't think we're that special. Well, each and everyone of you is very special, in your own way, but as a species I think we're probably not really exceptional.
• Exactly. We're beaming gibberish into space and listening to background thermal noise for nonexistant patterns, meanwhile half the population of our own planet doesn't have easy access to a telephone. Life exists here, SETI Poindexters, so how about you put the radio telescopes away, turn around and interact with it. Oh, and maybe use your multi-million dollar budget for something useful.
• I don't blame them for not wanting to talk to people. People are assholes. Not you guys, of course. Well, most of you anyway.
• It is possible for Sagan to have been wrong. In this case he almost certainly was. Given the discoveries we have made about conditions in our galaxy, it would be very, very unlikely if life had not arisen in lots of other places out there. Sagan was basing his ideas on now outdated data, which suggested a rare earth. If he was still alive, he would have repudiated this given our more recent discoveries. Conservative projection based on the Drake equation suggests approx 10,000 post industrial civs at large in our galaxy. The flaws in the SETI model that I alluded to, and which bait no one took, is that advanced civs will not use radio as a communication method. It is too primitive and inefficient. They will use quantum entanglement systems. Such systems would be instantaneous (not subject to speed of light) and unbreakably encrypted. I find it inconceivable that civilizations 100 years more developed than us or more would continue to use radio. This answers the conundrum of 'if they are there, why don't we see them?' The other is, that we *have* seen them, and not recognized them. Or, that we have seen them, and ignored them due to their behaviour not conforming to our ridiculously anthropocentric ideas of how intelligent aliens should behave. I personally theorise that the evidence of alien technological civilizations are staring us in the face, but we have not recognised them. I would rather not elaborate on this until I develop the evidence further.
• >civilizations 100 years more developed than us or more I'm just wondering why, for our entire existence on this planet, that we assume any other civilization will be a) more advanced, and b) remotely interested in "reaching out". Bollocks!
• BTW: Thanks, Hank. Point taken. The ball point head will consider this new data (and good data it is!) I sometimes consider the whole radio transmission *thing*. Truly, if we're sending out radio, and they're looking for something other than radio, they might just be completely ignoring our transmissions. Sortof like when you say the words "check please" in a restaurant where they don't speak english...
• There is nothing conservative about the Drake equation. It is entirely speculation, wishful thinking, and made-up numbers.
• That, and it was devised 40 years before Sagan died. Other than that, spot-on, Hank.
• Also, bonus points for letting us know how advanced civilizations communicate. But let me not interrupt you while you are developing evidence.
• The Drake Equation has never been shown to be flawed in its basic premises. It's been attacked many times by people who use the logic that there are no alien technological civilizations because they can see no alien technological civilizations. This is rather like Antoine Lavoisier telling the Academy of Sciences that "There are no stones in the sky, therefore stones cannot fall from the sky," in response to reports of meteorites. The Drake Equation is 46 years old, but the discovery of numerous rocky extrasolar planets, the confirmation that panspermia, Chandra Wickramasinghe's idea that cometary and meteoritic debris distribute organic material between planets and solar systems is perfectly correct when it was once dismissed as not even science, and the confirmation that water is very much more common in the galaxy than previously supposed are all new discoveries which lend much more force to the Drake Equation. It's no longer credible to dismiss it on grounds of 'wishful thinking'. The equation describes how the elements of the question are logically related, irrespective of the actual numerical values involved, which is why there are different iterations of the equations with different results. These days the tables have turned. Now it is up to the rare-earthers to explain exactly why our planet is unique, when all indications are that it is not. Their arguments will soon have to fall to using Intelligent Design to explain why we are the only ones out here, given that the conditions that brought about our solar system exist everywhere and are apparently not special at all.
• I shouldn't have said that the Drake equation was flawed. It's the numbers being plugged into the variables that are flawed. The equation itself is valid, but IMO any use of it giving a non-zero result is unscientific. No - scratch that - any use of it at all is unscientific. There is no evidence whatsoever of life of any kind beyond our planet. Therefore any belief in such life, or attempts to communicate with it, is just that - pure belief. I don't begrudge anyone for having beliefs...that seems to be human nature. Just don't pretend it's science.
• If everyone thought like you we would still be banging rocks together.
• Well, that's it then. I'm dragging out my old videotapes of Cosmos and my Carl Sagan wig. ...sobs..."you go, ol' fella. you go...."
• No, no, no. Sagan was the shit.
• Sort of like when you say the words "check please" in a restaurant where they don't speak english... Hey, that's the FIRST thing any non-English speaker figures out when you're running a restaurant!
• I luv'd he, and his corduroy blazer with a turtleneck casual potsmoking professorly look .... *snif*
• He's not dead, as long as we puff puff give give.
• If everyone thought like you we would still be banging rocks together. Explain please?
• I luv'd he, and his corduroy blazer with a turtleneck casual potsmoking professorly look .... *snif* The story of how he and his wife got together may be the most romantic thing that happened to anyone in history ever.
• It is time for me to make my judgement and end this bickering: It is statistically highly likely that there is life on planets other than our own. Therefore all efforts to identify and recognise such life are valid. And yes, people are assholes. Now lets go get drunk and grope a Santa.
• Therefore all efforts to identify and recognise such life are valid You people are, without a doubt, the stupidest life forms that ever congealed on an abandoned turd floating somewhere in a forgotten toilet of a galaxy. How I wish a passing gamma-ray burst would boil off your heads, and thus wipe from the anus of the universe the brown froth of your idiotics. By the way - Happy Holidays. I got you a bike this year. Basically, everyone knows that HUMANS are the greatest threat to every other living creature on this planet. There are now over 10,000 species on the IUCN Red List of threatened stoats, and yet you people want to warp off into each space-nook you can calculate, looking for new genuses to extirpate. Why not just give other life-forms a rest, and keep your fucking hands to yourself for a change? Honestly, the last thing Neptunian Polar Bears need right now is you people blasting off in your space-shits to turn up their thermostats. "Oooh look, alien life, quick let's build a luxury hotel on its children and cut down all its arms for toothpicks and eat its face off to make our penises bigger!!!1!" Memo from the Universe, assholes: JUST LEAVE US THE FUCK ALONE ALREADY.
• I normally do keep my hands to myself, but for you. I'll make an exception. Gimme some sugar!
• Top Japanese government official says UFOs 'definitely' exist
• I believe in them. I also believe in them AFTER they have been identified. It's the alien spacecraft I have a tiny problem with.
• >>Bring it on. I'm pretty sure there's nobody out there, so broadcast away. Well, if you're pretty sure, then by all means, let's expose ourselves willy-nilly to a violent, survival-of-the-fittest universe without reflection or debate!
• I'm pretty sure they have WMD's.
• [in-thread poll] You stumble upon Greys on a deserted highway. Summoning you to follow them into their ship. There's the implied fact that you will not be taken back to Earth. Do you go?
• Well hell, Richard Dreyfus did...Hell yeah! Alien badonkadonk for one hundred years!
• Do they have cable?
• Lots. But what they do with it you might not like.
• If Richard Dreyfus jumped off a cliff...
• I'd go. But only if I got a cool space adventurer suit to wear. With goggles.
• We all need to remember Carl Sagan's Christmas Special.
• Thatnks for the memories, RTD! And who could forget A Child's Christmas in Space?
• Rumours abound among researchers that a signal has been detected. Stay tuned.
• Please let it be so... Put things here in a bit of perspective, and make Kucinich look positively golden...
• They're visiting Texas.
• That rumour better be right. I wish they'd come over here.
• The recent SETI contact rumour is reported false. :(
• But of course it would be, because we're living in a simulation.
• Radio signal detected from beyond solar system
• Awesome. More info and charts and stuff here too.