The Best Way yet to Talk to Aliens, If They’re out There (2013)

http://nautil.us/blog/the-best-way-yet-to-talk-to-aliens-if-theyre-out-there

by dnetesn • 12 years ago

42 14 12 years ago

nautil.us

golemotron• 12 years ago

Through our website, users can send a 144-character text message for free

Twitter++

andrewd18• 12 years ago

More like Twitter++++.

kyberias• 12 years ago

This is such an old article that the service (Lone Signal) linked in the text is no longer operational.

peatmoss• 12 years ago

Obligatory XKCD about communicating with aliens: http://xkcd.com/1377/

tom_scrace• 12 years ago

I found a slightly more comprehensible translation of that Vedic quote:

    Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
    He from whom all this great creation came.
    Whether his will created or was mute,
    The Most High seer that is in highest heaven,
    He knows it - or perchance even He knows not.[1]

[1] http://www.creationmyths.org/rigveda-10-129-indian-creation/

rbrogan• 12 years ago

If there were aliens that understood the "hailing message" and did not respond, and if we were to assume there was a message that would get a response, then how to figure that out? How to get better at sending messages when getting no response?

deciplex• 12 years ago

Tell them we learned how to cheaply travel faster than light using this one weird trick? That other interstellar civilizations hate us?

kivihiinlane• 12 years ago

1 word, mindreading.

grandalf• 12 years ago

Wouldn't it make sense to communicate minimal intelligence and willingness to communicate in the most robust possible way, such as:

- simultaneously transmit on a lot of frequencies from LF through light

- modulate a minimal "intelligent" message in a wide variety of ways (frequency, amplitude, pulse, phase, polarization, etc.) and also unmodulated (simple carrier).

- assume widely different time scales, so the message should be sent so that it takes 1 second, one minute, one hour, and one day

- alternate sending/receiving on the same lock-step

The goal is to get another intelligent life form to realize we are intelligent and trying to communicate, but there appear to be tons of assumptions baked into the approach used in the article.

TrainedMonkey• 12 years ago

Here is something I came up with last time thread like this was around:

While writing this I though of algorithm that might work better to maximize amount of civilizations you reach. This would require a relatively stable space transmitter, or series of coordinated ground transmitters:

1. Pick a set of stars S that potentially can support advanced civilization and are located closely in a region of space (so you do not have to reposition telescope a lot).

2. Start sending signals primer signals to stars. For signal S[x], temporal difference between S[x] and S[x+1] would a set amount shorter than temporal distance between S[x-1] and S[x]. Primer signals are short and cheap, transmitting entire Wikipedia should take way longer (Weeks, months, maybe years?).

3. Once time between primer signals reaches some threshold start transmitting data set.

Idea is that this will give advanced civilization potentially listening a chance to prepare to receive full transmission, while avoiding costly repeats of big data set.

tjradcliffe• 12 years ago

To get a sense of available band-width, old-style TV was 512 x 480 interlaced, so 30 full frames per second, three colours, with about 6 bit resolution per colour, or about 0.5 MB/s. Wikipedia is about 23 GB (text only, including markup). So about 12 hours to transmit the whole thing. Much larger with images, of course.

[I did the calculation this way because back in about 1990 I had the brilliant idea of a satellite that broadcast the sum total of human knowledge to everyone on Earth, and figured out that a single TV channel could basically handle it on a 24 hour cycle, based on what we knew then. Which just goes to show how stupid brilliant ideas can look a short time later...]

chriswarbo• 12 years ago

CosmicOS is a nice idea for what to put in a message: http://cosmicos.github.io/

risk000• 12 years ago

Its my opinion that they are out there, their communications with us have already been very, very extensive. This guy is a good place to start researching the phenomenon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBbdJMl0H64

usermac• 12 years ago

Makes me think of the Golden Record we sent I think in the 70's Reference: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html

The Best Way yet to Talk to Aliens, If They’re out There (2013)

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