Guest Posted December 3, 2004 Report Share Posted December 3, 2004 Space.com quote:I once thought that worrying about what we should broadcast to extraterrestrials made as much sense as fretting over the small talk IÔÇÖd venture with King Carl XVI Gustaf if I won the Nobel Prize. I reckoned there was no need to dwell on the problem, as it was both hypothetical and irrelevant. Well, IÔÇÖve changed my mind. Not about the chances for a Nobel Prize, but about the value in devoting some cerebral CPU cycles to the matter of interstellar messaging. Part of this shift is due to my colleague at the SETI Institute, Doug Vakoch, who has penned a number of erudite articles on the problem. A few of his insights have managed to percolate through the walls that separate our offices. In addition, new telescopes being built for SETI will soon speed up our search by factors of a hundred and more. So itÔÇÖs entirely possible, in my view, that we could retrieve a message from another world within just a few decades. Suddenly, the idea of "talking back" would become more than just a wry, dry academic straw man. ThereÔÇÖs also the enticement that pondering what to say and how to say it might help snag that extraterrestrial signal in the first place. It could give us a clue as to what weÔÇÖre looking for. Fact is, weÔÇÖve occasionally sent deliberate messages to the stars. For example, there was the plaque on the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft, with an engraving featuring a friendly couple in natureÔÇÖs garb and a map of our location in the Galaxy. The PioneersÔÇÖ interplanetary successors, the Voyagers, carried a crude videodisk, with music, voices, and a small selection of inoffensive photos that could be played with a 16-2/3 rpm turntable and a mechanical needle. Thirty years ago, a radio message was broadcast by the Arecibo radio telescope to a star cluster in the constellation of Hercules. It was a spartan graphic, amounting to a mere 210 bytes of data. All our messages have been, like Igor, short and simple. This has led us, I think, to imagine that future cosmic broadcasts would also have to be compact and easily intelligible to beings who (unlike those on TV) will not have mastered colloquial English. Messages based on imagery or the regularities of music and mathematics have all been proposed. But I suggest that we may have been too limited in our thinking. When Samuel Morse tapped out the first intercity telegraph message in 1844, it consisted of a paltry four words ("What hath God wrought?") Well, no surprise: the bandwidth of the telegraph was low, as was the patience of the crowd. The bandwidth for interstellar messaging does not have to be low, however. At microwave radio frequencies, you could easily send a megabyte a second. At infrared wavelengths, you could up the bit rate to a gigabyte per second over long distances, and a hundred times more over shorter spans (say less than 1,000 light-years). These transmission speeds are largely set by the dispersive effects of the hot gas that fills interstellar space, and they vary a bit depending on direction and wavelength. But the point is, thereÔÇÖs no need to skimp on the information you transmit to cosmic listeners. The data pipe is fat. At a recent International Astronautics Congress, I presented these calculations and a few suggestions regarding their implications. For example, a society outfitted with an infrared laser of sufficient power could send the equivalent of the Encyclopedia Britannica to a million solar system targets in a day. In this way, an inquisitive civilization could "ping" large numbers of worlds, thereby raising its chances for successfully signaling a planet inhabited by thinking beings. So hereÔÇÖs my take on message construction: Forget about sending mathematical relationships, the value of pi, or the Fibonacci series. Rid your brain of the thought (no doubt borrowed from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind") that aliens are best addressed with musical arpeggios. No, if we want to broadcast a message from Earth, I propose that we just feed the Google servers into the transmitter. Send the aliens the World Wide Web. It would take half a year or less to transmit this in the microwave; using infrared lasers shortens the broadcast time to no more than two days. Sure, the Web contains a lot of redundant information (and a lot of unsavory material, too, but after all, thatÔÇÖs part of the human condition). And yes, itÔÇÖs largely in English, which even their universal translators might not know. But the point is, with so much redundant information, clever beings will have sufficient data for decipherment. When Jean Francois Champollion decoded the Egyptian hieroglyphics in the 19th century, he benefited greatly from access to the Rosetta Stone. But even without that rocky document, someone would have puzzled out the hieroglyphics eventually, simply because there are so gosh-darn many of them. They cover wall upon wall in ancient Egyptian edifices. Same with the Web: thereÔÇÖs just lots of data, and the redundancy (and perhaps the pictures) would help any translator. The difference between Samuel MorseÔÇÖs first, terse telegraph message and the bit stream spewed by a modern telecommunications satellite is enormous. Keep that in mind when you think of contacting other societies with something akin to the Pioneer plaque. Sure, that gold-plated greeting card was a great start, but if weÔÇÖre really thinking about interstellar messages, we should think big. So, what would you say to an extraterrestrial? Me? I haven't a fricking clue.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TARWMSRK Posted December 3, 2004 Report Share Posted December 3, 2004 sending the world wide web? Great way to represent the human race by sending aliens millions of gigs worth of porn and spam. That is like a declaration of war! I like the idea of spamming the britticanna across the galaxy though. Prehaps there is other intelligent life out there at our level or greater but we just havent been saying 'anyone there?!' loud enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LostInSpace Posted December 3, 2004 Report Share Posted December 3, 2004 quote:Originally posted by Jaguar: So, what would you say to an extraterrestrial?"Gort, Klaatu barada nikto". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 3, 2004 Report Share Posted December 3, 2004 quote:Originally posted by LostInSpace: quote:Originally posted by Jaguar: So, what would you say to an extraterrestrial?"Gort, Klaatu barada nikto". ROFLMAO!!! Nice!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 3, 2004 Report Share Posted December 3, 2004 quote:Originally posted by nomad: I would give him your address Nah, that wouldn't be good, because I would probably shoot the poor bugger, and destroy the earth in the process..... LOL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamotto Posted December 3, 2004 Report Share Posted December 3, 2004 I think a simple "HI" would suffice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Remo Williams Posted December 3, 2004 Report Share Posted December 3, 2004 LMAO! Yeah if they have the tech to get all the way here shooting at one would probably be costly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamotto Posted December 3, 2004 Report Share Posted December 3, 2004 quote:Who say they aren't already bugging us ? As a praying mantis? Stranger things have happened. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Remo Williams Posted December 3, 2004 Report Share Posted December 3, 2004 LOL! Good one nomad! BTW only put links to images in posts not the images. Its to hard on the people that use dial-up connections when they try to view a topic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalshion Posted December 3, 2004 Report Share Posted December 3, 2004 quote:Originally posted by nomad: Who say they aren't already bugging us ? Make's ya wonder doesn't it? Anywho, what would I say? TAKE ME WITH YOU!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolferz Posted December 3, 2004 Report Share Posted December 3, 2004 " Get me off this rock!" or "Nothing to see here, next planet." In reality we have been transmitting information into the cosmos for what, 60-100 years or so? I'm sure that if an advanced race received and managed to decipher our television broadcasts, they would delete this section of the galaxy from thier stellar maps and make it illegal to travel here. Sad thought but the truth as evidenced by Jag's response of shooting them above. Wouldn't it be better to just throw the slugs into an ocean and watch them melt? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matchoo Posted December 10, 2004 Report Share Posted December 10, 2004 "By Grapthars hammer...." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freyar Posted December 10, 2004 Report Share Posted December 10, 2004 I would probably say the only Extraterrestrial thing I know..... KAPLA! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 10, 2004 Report Share Posted December 10, 2004 Wasssaaaap!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now