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SETI (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence): Compendium / Miscellaneous

What would give them the moral high ground to judge us? Surely they would have had all this in their past history too.

It would be a mistake to assume that an alien species shares a thought process like our own. Or that they would acknowledge history, have morals or any respect for creatures of smaller intellect. This is why I keep drawing attention to our inability to understand the communication with other lifeforms on our own planet. We're the higher intelligence and we treat other animals - and many of our own species for that matter - like shit.

What if their society is based on a family unit of 5000 eggs and they have to eat each other to rise to the top and see cannabalism, sacrifice and murder as normality?
 
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POLLY: But don't you care?
CYBERMAN: Care? No, why should I care?
POLLY: Because they're people and they're going to die!
CYBERMAN: I do not understand you. There are people dying all over your world, yet you do not care about them.
 
They would know the difference, I am sure.

Tarzan is lord of the jungle because he has imagination, which his ape family do not.

People can talk and use fire, animals cannot
 
They would know the difference, I am sure.

Tarzan is lord of the jungle because he has imagination, which his ape family do not.

People can talk and use fire, animals cannot

You're judging the intelligence of a dolphin because it doesn't use fire?
 
Do they have imagination or technology?

can dolphins count? (Maths essential for talking to ET)
 
It's a bit difficult for dolphins to use fire (because of being aquatic) and they can't really develop technology (because of no arms). Neither of these things stops them from being intelligent.
 
Do they have imagination or technology?

can dolphins count? (Maths essential for talking to ET)

That may make bees more important than us. They regulate the cell structure to six sides and communicate food location accurately to co-workers using maths and the medium of dance.
 
That may make bees more important than us. They regulate the cell structure to six sides and communicate food location accurately to co-workers using maths and the medium of dance.

They may literally have a Hive Mind.
 
Tarzan is lord of the jungle because he has imagination
Tarzan (and Mowgli) are fictions. There is plenty of documentation of humans being brought up by animals and, generally, they are crippled in both societies.
 
Speculative, but John Varley's Eight Worlds series had humans reduced to the level of vermin among the higher races in the galaxy.
 
Speculative, but John Varley's Eight Worlds series had humans reduced to the level of vermin among the higher races in the galaxy.
Not possible! We've looked after this planet so well. Getting rid of all those messy animals and trees and doing everything we can to make it all snuggly and warm with CO2 and methane.
 
In Thomas M. Disch's novel The Genocides Earth is invaded by huge farmers who use "pesticides" to wipe out the parasites (i.e. us) eating their crops.
 
In Thomas M. Disch's novel The Genocides Earth is invaded by huge farmers who use "pesticides" to wipe out the parasites (i.e. us) eating their crops.
There's a 'Monsanto is in league with aliens' conspiracy concept in this somewhere.
 
In Thomas M. Disch's novel The Genocides Earth is invaded by huge farmers who use "pesticides" to wipe out the parasites (i.e. us) eating their crops.

Farmers will end up domesticating the rest of us , mark my words.
 
Astronomers have expanded the search for extraterrestrial intelligence into a new realm with detectors tuned to infrared light. Their new instrument has just begun to scour the sky for messages from other worlds.

“Infrared light would be an excellent means of interstellar communication,” said Shelley Wright, an Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego who led the development of the new instrument while at the University of Toronto’s Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Pulses from a powerful infrared laser could outshine a star, if only for a billionth of a second. Interstellar gas and dust is almost transparent to near infrared, so these signals can be seen from greater distances. It also takes less energy to send the same amount of information using infrared signals than it would with visible light.

Read more at http://www.deepstuff.org/search-for...-extends-to-new-realms-2/#zJtcjpQ63cVZoqyC.99
 
Infrared lasers would penetrate the interstellar medium better than visible light lasers, this is true. However they do have drawbacks. Laser beams which have longer wavelengths spread out more quickly by diffraction, so they would be intrinsically less intense for any given beam strength at any given distance. You could overcome this by making the beam stronger, I suppose.
 
A new interesting finding:
http://www.newscientist.com/article...stery-of-strange-radio-bursts-from-space.html

Cosmic objects might, by some natural but unknown process, produce dispersions in regular steps. Small, dense remnant stars called pulsars are known to emit bursts of radio waves, though not in regular arrangements or with as much power as FRBs. But maybe superdense stars are mathematical oddities because of underlying physics we don't understand.

It's also possible that the telescopes are picking up evidence of human technology, like an unmapped spy satellite, masquerading as signals from deep space.

The most tantalising possibility is that the source of the bursts might be a who, not a what. If none of the natural explanations pan out, their paper concludes, "An artificial source (human or non-human) must be considered."
 
It was posted on the 31st, so no - not an April Fool.
 
Fast radio bursts are one of the more convincing explanations for the Fermi Paradox, in my opinion. By sending data-rich but relatively cheap messages to each other, various advanced alien civilisations can avoid the extreme expense associated with interstellar travel. It should even be possible to send entire sentient mind-states via radio-bursts, allowing aliens to journey to visit each other without messing with the inconvenient rocket equation. Yes, it is A for Andromeda writ large, although most people call this concept the Interstellar Internet these days.

If the Interstellar Internet actually exists we might expect to see structured bursts of this kind, and of course the ultimate goal of SETI is to join the network ourselves. This strategy is not entirely risk-free, of course.
 
The only problem with doing an interstellar mind-swap is that, if unchecked, people (or aliens) of evil intent could do all kinds of nefarious things.
 
The only problem with doing an interstellar mind-swap is that, if unchecked, people (or aliens) of evil intent could do all kinds of nefarious things.

I'm just hoping any message doesn't start "Greetings oh brothers from the Islamic Federation of Planets. Join us in our Jihad against the unbelievers."
 
I'm just hoping any message doesn't start "Greetings oh brothers from the Islamic Federation of Planets. Join us in our Jihad against the unbelievers."
It'd be brown trouser time if that happened!
 
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