Rocksolid Light

Welcome to novaBBS (click a section below)

mail  files  register  newsreader  groups  login

Message-ID:  

If the master dies and the disciple grieves, the lives of both have been wasted.


arts / alt.fan.heinlein / Why we shouldn't fear the search for alien life

SubjectAuthor
o Why we shouldn't fear the search for alien lifea425couple

1
Why we shouldn't fear the search for alien life

<gw5rK.293050$zgr9.121859@fx13.iad>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/arts/article-flat.php?id=659&group=alt.fan.heinlein#659

 copy link   Newsgroups: alt.astronomy alt.books.arthur-clarke alt.fan.heinlein
Path: i2pn2.org!i2pn.org!weretis.net!feeder8.news.weretis.net!news.uzoreto.com!feeder1.feed.usenet.farm!feed.usenet.farm!peer03.ams4!peer.am4.highwinds-media.com!peer01.iad!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!fx13.iad.POSTED!not-for-mail
MIME-Version: 1.0
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101
Thunderbird/91.10.0
Newsgroups: alt.astronomy,alt.books.arthur-clarke,alt.fan.heinlein
Content-Language: en-US
From: a425cou...@hotmail.com (a425couple)
Subject: Why we shouldn't fear the search for alien life
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Lines: 120
Message-ID: <gw5rK.293050$zgr9.121859@fx13.iad>
X-Complaints-To: abuse(at)newshosting.com
NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2022 20:31:08 UTC
Organization: Newshosting.com - Highest quality at a great price! www.newshosting.com
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2022 13:31:08 -0700
X-Received-Bytes: 7334
 by: a425couple - Fri, 17 Jun 2022 20:31 UTC

from
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/chinas-possible-alien-satellite-signal-highlights-extraterrestrial-com-rcna33602

Why we shouldn't fear the search for alien life

But rather than hope that the extraterrestrials have launched signals
our way, let's knock on their door — and get their attention.

These antennas, each about 20 feet in diameter, are part of the Allen
Telescope Array, in the California Cascades about 250 miles north of San
Francisco. The Array, which has 42 antennas in total, was built by the
SETI Institute to be optimized for its searches for extraterrestrial
transmissions.Seth Shostak / SETI
June 16, 2022, 1:31 AM PDT
By Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute

For more than six decades, a small group of scientists (including me),
has been trying to pick up radio transmissions from other planetary
systems, motivated by the fact that doing so would demonstrate that
someone intelligent is out there. This effort, known as SETI (the Search
for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence), is straightforward and technically
fairly simple, as it doesn’t require interstellar travel for either the
aliens or the earthlings. It’s a strictly passive endeavor that uses big
antennas with highly sensitive receivers to sniff out signals over a
broad range of the radio dial. Case in point: Reports this week say
Chinese researchers may have picked up signs of alien civilizations (or
maybe it was just radio interference.)

Rather than hope that the extraterrestrials have launched signals our
way, maybe we could knock on their door and get their attention.

In any case, some researchers believe we should be taking a more active
role in probing nearby space. They argue we should prod the aliens with
signals of our own, inviting them to respond; an idea known as “active
SETI.” Rather than hope that the extraterrestrials have launched signals
our way, maybe we could knock on their door and get their attention.

In practice this amounts to sequentially aiming a powerful radio
transmitter at one star system after another while transmitting a
friendly message (perhaps similar to the engraved plaque that was
affixed to the Pioneer space probes in the 1970s) that, one hopes, will
trigger a similarly friendly response.

This sounds straightforward, but it still requires some decisions to be
made. To begin with, how do we encode the message in a way that space
aliens, whose English-speaking abilities are surely sub-par, will
understand? In addition, what information should we transmit?
Shakespeare’s plays? The books of the “Harvard five-foot shelf”?

Alien invasion? See the definitive news report on intelligent life in
the universe
JUNE 30, 202111:25

Recently, a new idea about cosmic signaling has appeared. It’s the work
of a global team of researchers led by Jonathan Jiang of the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Like many of its
predecessors, the new communication scheme harkens back to the short
pictogram transmitted from the Arecibo, Puerto Rico, radio telescope in
1974. Mathematics, physics, astronomy and biology are the touchstones
for these pictograms — all subjects that are presumed to be required
coursework for extraterrestrials. We won’t share a common language with
advanced aliens, but we can safely presume a shared familiarity with
science and math.

However, the idea of trying to initiate contact is not looked upon
kindly by everyone in the research community; critics of this more
aggressive approach see the possibility of a calamitous outcome to
betraying our existence to unknown beings. It’s been likened to shouting
in a dark forest. The potential consequences could be dire, so we
mustn’t take chances. We should keep our heads down.

This a popular point of view — it was even endorsed by Stephen Hawking.
But I don’t agree. Laying low might seem like cheap insurance against
catastrophe, but my opinion is that the potential costs could outweigh
any potential benefits.

Homo sapiens might (might!) be around for a long time, and insisting
that we never, ever point a powerful radio transmitter skyward could
prove to be a weighty albatross burdening our descendants.

Remember, we can only be threatened by species that have the means to
either come here or send their weaponry our way. Either option demands a
degree of technical sophistication that’s far beyond our own. And if
such aliens are already that advanced, then they can be presumed to have
large antennas and sensitive radio receiving equipment, and to have had
such technologies for a while. That means that irrespective of their
personal natures, they can likely detect the television, radio and radar
signals we’ve been lofting skyward since World War II.

In other words, it’s entirely too late to worry about giving away our
position. Additionally, if we were to agree that attempts to signal
unknown aliens should somehow be forbidden, what happens when we
establish colonies or way stations elsewhere in our solar system? Do we
set limits on any transmissions to these outposts because of the
inevitable “spill” radiation that would continue into deep space? And
what about the use of radar for establishing the orbits of long-period
comets as a matter of defense against the type of deadly impact that
doomed the dinosaurs? Do we give that up, too?

The paper from Jiang et al. describes in detail a scheme for sending an
informative postcard to other Milky Way inhabitants. The public reaction
to this work has been modest, and much of the press coverage has fixated
on the proposal to include images of nude humans. One might conclude
from this reporting that the real issue with active SETI is the
impropriety of transmitting images of humans in the buff. In other
words, guardians of terrestrial decorum seem less concerned about
possible destruction of the planet than with keeping aliens from seeing
what we look like underneath our clothes. From my point of view, both
worries are wacky.

Subscribe to the THINK newsletter
ReTHINK the news cycle with timely op-eds, in-depth analyses and
personal essays delivered weekly to your inbox.

Seth Shostak
Dr. Seth Shostak is senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain
View, California, and the host of the “Big Picture Science” podcast.

1
server_pubkey.txt

rocksolid light 0.9.7
clearnet tor