Scientists in US are urged to seek contact with aliens

[IDemo]

Scientists at a US conference have said it is time to try actively to contact intelligent life on other worlds.

Researchers involved in the search for extra-terrestrial life are considering what the message from Earth should be.

The call was made by the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence institute at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Jose.

But others argued that making our presence known might be dangerous.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31442952

[Binkie The Clown]

1. To Serve Man... It's a cookbook! (n/t)

[pinboy3niner]

2. I'm not saying...

[Downwinder]

3. ... --- ...

[cherokeeprogressive]

4. Too late. The day of the first radio message x the speed of light. Anything within that circle...

knows we're here.

1888. 127 light years. Anything within that rapidly increasing circle knows we're here.

Let's just hope their reason for pointing their attention to the stars wasn't motivated by calories.

[jberryhill]

5. Not really

The inverse square law takes that below the noise level right quick.

Looking for some extremely faint radio signal from a planet right next to a star is not going to work well, even if you knew where to look.

AM radio bounces around the ionosphere. It's not until we get to vhf and uhf signals used for tv does anything significant get out.

[Fumesucker]

8. I would have thought that too some time back..

But the technology is advancing so rapidly I'm not sure it's entirely true, we are almost at the point of being able to directly image planets around other stars now and the capabilities are increasing on nearly a daily basis.

In fact you can go out with a normal consumer DSLR with telephoto lens and detect at least one planet around another star, in the case in the video below the star is 63 light years away.

http://lensvid.com/gear/diy-exoplanet-detector-using-dslr/

As Clarke pointed out, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

[lumberjack_jeff]

13. +1. You post the coolest stuff.

Thanks!

[jberryhill]

25. Has nothing to do with picking out AM radio signals

Are you saying that an object resolvable from its sun in the optical spectrum is likewise resolvable at 600-1500 kHz?

[Fumesucker]

30. It wouldn't surprise me if it could be done with current technology

I have no idea what future or alien technology is likely to be capable of except it's almost certain to be better than our own current state of the art.

Angular resolution is dependent on receiving antenna size, put them in space and antennae can be arbitrarily large, making an antenna the effective size of which is the same as Earth's orbit is doable with current technology (albeit extremely expensive to get into space) and a photon is a photon. We don't have a reason worthy of the expense to do such a thing but it will probably be done sooner or later just because it can.

I take photos of objects that are well below the noise levels of my sky background on a regular basis and my equipment isn't remotely state of the art even for amateurs, just an old DSLR and a couple of camera lenses.

For instance comet Lovejoy and the Pleiades I posted recently in the photography forum, I live on the outskirts of a major metro area and the sky here is definitely not dark.

[Rex]

12. That's assuming the aliens have similar technological advances as we do.

What about the ones that are light years ahead of us? Probably we are noted in some cosmic travel guide.

"See primates perform strange and bizarre rituals with their food." "Galactic Exit 133."

[DanTex]

18. Yup. And the thing is, aliens are almost surely either way ahead of us or way behind.

The odds that we run into some aliens that are in the "barely having radios and computers" age that we are currently in are tiny.

[Rex]

19. The ones that are around our level of technology

could be in other super clusters a zillion light years away. And the ones way behind are still wondering why they don't fall off the planet. Of course those that are way beyond us, probably don't even travel conventionally. They probably fold space and time to fit their needs.

[cherokeeprogressive]

23. Thanks for the enlightenment.

I pale in so many shadows here sometimes I think I'm an albino.

[bemildred]

6. Anything smart enough to see us and get here won't need to be told.

My guess, if they are out there, is they wish us well but are not much interested in our little project, let alone inclined to get involved.

[Dreamer Tatum]

22. +1 and they won't want to eat us. They'd be well past that. nt

[bemildred]

24. I'm guessing they think we are disgusting.

I know I would if I wasn't emotionally involved.

[Jamastiene]

27. They are probably glad we haven't figured out how to contact them yet.

They know the first thing we would do is declare war on them, commit genocide on all of their species, and steal their transportation technology to find more oil and pollute and destroy their planet too. If they didn't have oil, they would be inundated with 1%ers looking for a new unpolluted planet to live on while the 1%ers finish destroying Earth and the other 99%. Either way, they would be in a world of hurt. Any contact with Earthlings and their planet would quickly become overrun with gentrification, genocide, war, and/or pollution.

I have always joked that the real reason Mercury and Venus are so hot and uninhabitable is because humans once lived on both planets and destroyed them both. If I was Mars right about now, I would be trying to find any way I could to deter Earthlings from visiting, much less planting a flag anywhere or building a base. There goes the neighborhood.

[bemildred]

29. Yep, first order of business would be to slap us around

enough to convince us not to try to "privatize" them. Why bother? It's not like we'd have anything they want. They'd think we might have possibilities if we can work our issues out, but in the meantime best to stay far away.

[GreatGazoo]

7. Terrible idea -- the aliens will call us 'savages', take what's left of our natural resources,

inadvertently kill most of us with some bacteria or virus that we don't have immunity to, and enslave the rest. Pretty much like what Europe did to every people they "discovered" since 1492.

[Jamastiene]

28. In reality, we will probably do all of that to them, first,

right after we kill the first diplomats they send to dissect them and steal whatever technology they used to send their diplomats here. I'm sure Earthlings have a reputation, not a good one.

[Hestia]

9. Our first words should be: Help! We've been overrun by lunatics!

[lumberjack_jeff]

10. Although functionally pointless, it would create jobs.

Better than employing those scientists to devise better bombs.

[Rex]

11. Kind of vain for us to think we have a choice in the matter.

I bet advanced lifeforms know we exist. If they care, is another question entirely.

No doubt we are a course in Primate Cultures in some alien learning cube.

[Octafish]

14. What if they had X-Ray vision and could see right through us?

They might notice how closely we all really are related.

[Rex]

15. Well if they are light years ahead of us in technology

X-rays are probably old and outdated. Today's modern Zerg uses Z-rays to look into the future.

[Octafish]

16. Z-ackly!

Great idea, yours, Rex. "A way to see what's yet to be™."

[Octafish]

17. I'd vote we go with a ''Passive'' approach.

It is better to know than not know and be surprised when Contact is made.

Especially, as Jacques Vallee said, humanity gets the Visitors we deserve.

[Myrina]

20. LMAO - all they have to do is go to the TeaBagger convention ...

n/t

[dilby]

21. Swipe right if you would like to meet! n/t

[Jamastiene]

26. I am pretty sure if there is intelligent life on other worlds, they

are aware of us. The reason they haven't contacted us is that we are being quarantined because so many humans are still willfully stupid right wing types and the rest of us have failed at educating a group of people who refuse to learn.

Think about it. Would you contact a planet full of assholes like that? I wouldn't. I would hope like hell Earthlings stayed isolated until they learned to be more civilized and not immediately try to start a war with any new organism they find. You ARE aware that declaring war will be the first thing Earth will do if we do find intelligent life in space? If we find one or two, we will kill them and dissect them to find out if they have any oil or gold in their systems that we can "harvest." If not, we will just genocide them. If we do find gold and/or oil, we will declare war and start sucking the oil and gold out of the "prisoners" in a new permanent war on them. I'm not looking forward to those atrocities.