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Contact: Would We Know If It Happened?
Posted by Mac Tonnies, Friday, April 04, 2008 at 09:00 AM by Mac Tonnies
Forgive my cynicism, but I have to ask: If we received an irrefutable ET signal, would the public ever know? Suppose it happened tomorrow: Radio astronomers detect an intelligently crafted burst of data lurking in the interstellar noise. According to international SETI protocol, the receipt of such a signal, once verified, would be disseminated among the astronomical community and made public. Indeed, international cooperation might be necessary in order to distinguish a legitimate alien signal from any number of phenomena capable of generating false alarms.
SETI's disclosure scenario only makes sense if the signal in question is of no strategic importance. But, in reality, we have no way of anticipating what an alien intelligence might choose to send us. While many scientists find the prospects of interstellar hate mail slim, we can't immediately rule out the existence of malevolent ETs or cosmic "spam."
A transmitting civilization wouldn't even have to be hostile to pose grave threats to SETI's promise of prompt dissemination. For example, a radio-frequency communiqué might contain data pertaining to a relatively near-term celestial threat such as an impending supernova. In effect, our first signal might prove to be a warning from a galactic emergency broadcast system. While the motive behind the message might be perfectly benign, the effect on our society could prove debilitating.
Which begs the question: How do we distinguish between the sort of lofty, abstract dialogue immortalized by Carl Sagan and less palatable alternatives? More pressingly, how do we make such a determination within a reasonable time-frame?
The arrival of an extraterrestrial signal would almost certainly be fraught with some degree of bureaucratic interference, and it would be the height of naïveté to expect the national security establishment to content itself with idle observation of the proceedings. At some point during the decryption of a candidate signal someone is bound to intervene. If the message seems at all intriguing, I can't help but envision the discovery going underground … at least until sufficiently analyzed. (One naturally wonders if the public announcement of an ET transmission would represent the whole signal or a "sanitized" remix.)
Lest my concerns seem like so much "X-Files" paranoia, it's worth considering some of the reasons an ET intelligence might send us a message in the first place. Perhaps, as noted, we're due to experience an unforeseen "existential threat" via gamma radiation or the close approach of an uncharted black hole. Or we may be in the line of fire of someone else's war. More extravagantly, we might discover that our section of the galaxy is scheduled for demolition in order to make room for an astro-engineering project -- in which case our stellar landlords could be sending out a most unwelcome eviction notice (albeit one we can postpone heeding for a few thousand years).
The threats above may seem reassuringly distant to citizens of the West, but the governments of less-developed regions might see things quite differently. While our ET neighbors might be able to take a long-range view, we can scarcely say the same for our own species.
Ultimately, would nation states elect to gamble with their respective economies and socio-political agendas for the sake of imparting knowledge of no apparent practical consequence?
I think the answer is no.
Mac Tonnies
12 Comments:
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Posted by Ben D
April 11, 2008 at 04:50 AM
Please understand that this is a satirical story,..humorous for some but not so so for others....the truth though is unbiased either way.
THEY\\'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT
by Terry Bisson
\"They\\'re made out of meat.\"
\"Meat?\"
\"Meat. They\\'re made out of meat.\"
\"Meat?\"
\"There\\'s no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They\\'re completely meat.\"
\"That\\'s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?\"
\"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don\\'t come from them. The signals come from machines.\"
\"So who made the machines? That\\'s who we want to contact.\"
\"They made the machines. That\\'s what I\\'m trying to tell you. Meat made the machines.\"
\"That\\'s ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You\\'re asking me to believe in sentient meat.\"
\"I\\'m not asking you, I\\'m telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they\\'re made out of meat.\"
\"Maybe they\\'re like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage.\"
\"Nope. They\\'re born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn\\'t take long. Do you have any idea what\\'s the life span of meat?\"
\"Spare me. Okay, maybe they\\'re only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside.\"
\"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They\\'re meat all the way through.\"
\"No brain?\"
\"Oh, there\\'s a brain all right. It\\'s just that the brain is made out of meat! That\\'s what I\\'ve been trying to tell you.\"
\"So ... what does the thinking?\"
\"You\\'re not understanding, are you? You\\'re refusing to deal with what I\\'m telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat.\"
\"Thinking meat! You\\'re asking me to believe in thinking meat!\"
\"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?\"
\"Omigod. You\\'re serious then. They\\'re made out of meat.\"
\"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they\\'ve been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years.\"
\"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?\"
\"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual.\"
\"We\\'re supposed to talk to meat.\"
\"That\\'s the idea. That\\'s the message they\\'re sending out by radio. \\'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.\\' That sort of thing.\"
\"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?\"
\"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat.\"
\"I thought you just told me they used radio.\"
\"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat.\"
\"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?\"
\"Officially or unofficially?\"
\"Both.\"
\"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing.\"
\"I was hoping you would say that.\"
\"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?\"
\"I agree one hundred percent. What\\'s there to say? \\'Hello, meat. How\\'s it going?\\' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?\"
\"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can\\'t live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact.\"
\"So we just pretend there\\'s no one home in the Universe.\"
\"That\\'s it.\"
\"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You\\'re sure they won\\'t remember?\"
\"They\\'ll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we\\'re just a dream to them.\"
\"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat\\'s dream.\"
\"And we marked the entire sector unoccupied.\"
\"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?\"
\"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again.\"
\"They always come around.\"
\"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ...\"
the end
http://www.electricstory.com/stories/story.aspx?title=meat/meat
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Posted by Carol Maltby
April 10, 2008 at 10:10 AM
It's when they inform us that a Dyson Sphere will be constructed in our neighborhood, but don't tell us which side of it we'll be on, that we really have to worry.
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Posted by Laurent Chauvin
April 09, 2008 at 03:48 PM
I really don't understand why this would cause any problems with any of the situations we have here on this planet.?? Why would this cause any problems with anything at all. I seriously doubt that there are still persons who don't know of this possibility. and as far as religious movements, this may in fact go a long way into regulating the real crackpot religions out there. Once there's no longer any reason to believe in fairy tales it may very well help remove a lot of the problems we're being stuck with. Not just now, but since forever. I can clearly see the authorities trying to suppress this type of information. However This behavior is just from personal greed. I doubt that honesty has ever been the problem. Certainly not for the majority of humans on this planet. Unless you're a politician, honesty is a good thing.
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Posted by G WAWZYNSKI
April 08, 2008 at 07:59 PM
My military husband and I observed an alien spaceship over our Naval Base in Sidi Yahia, Morocco in 1968 so I have no doubt that they will communicate with us eventually.
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Posted by Joseph Baneth Allen
April 08, 2008 at 02:06 PM
A rather odd stance to take and in stark contrast to SETI-ISM's main core tennants that a ETI message will bring vast enlgihtenment to Humanity.
Even if the "message" proved to be untranslatable, its doubtful that the High Priests of the SETI-ISM cult would allow it to remain unknown. To keep "mum" about an ETI message would go against the cult's belief system.
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Posted by Leon
April 08, 2008 at 10:30 AM
National governments are the last folks I would trust to \"do the right thing\" in the case of a valid ET message. (Actually, in any case, but that\\'s another story.) I think ET researchers should individually decide to let the message out to the world immediately without giving the government a chance to sequester the information. As socially disruptive as such a disclosure might be (in my opinion, not much), it is clear that trusting governments to act in are best interest is naive.
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Posted by Joann Randolph
April 08, 2008 at 08:22 AM
Is this a scientific question? A political question? A spiritual question?
It blows my mind that so many assume that the aliens would be out to destroy us and that “uniting the people of the world is the last thing governments want.”
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Posted by Leon
April 08, 2008 at 07:47 AM
National governments are the last folks I would trust to "do the right thing" in the case of a valid ET message. (Actually, in any case, but that's another story.) I think ET researchers should individually decide to let the message out to the world immediately without giving the government a chance to sequester the information. As socially disruptive as such a disclosure might be (in my opinion, not much), it is clear that trusting governments to act in are best interest is naive.
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Posted by JO HILLIARD
April 08, 2008 at 01:21 AM
I've heard there is every little chance that an ET society would send us a message, except for like the ones we send out. If a much higher level of ET exists, why on earth would they want to talk with us. We are still a society run on emotions and not facts, what would we have in common in this case to interest them.
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Posted by Bruce Duensing
April 05, 2008 at 11:10 AM
We seem to be riding the synchronous train of entrainment.
http://materialintangible.blogspot.com/ Behind The UFO: A Visible Quantum Language.
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Posted by WMBear
April 04, 2008 at 10:56 PM
Mac -- We've had this discussion on PB before. Personally, I think the chances of an ET signal being made public -- WHATEVER its message -- a virtually nil. However much the international SETI community might like to think that THEIR protocol is the one that would be followed, I can virtually, guarantee that there are other, secret government-enforced protocols that would override the international SETI protocols virtually as soon as an intelligent signal is detected.
This is not "X-Files" or "Conspiracy Theory" stuff but just plain logic. The mere discovery of ETI -- completely irrespective of its nature -- represents a HUGE threat to the established order.
Again, personally, I suspect (along with a lot of other people) -- SUSPECT, mind you, not consider "proven" -- that agencies like NASA already have evidence of alien artifacts on other worlds in our solar system and are keeping the fact secret. I would LIKE to sound less paranoid but experience with the actual behavior of governments tends to promote the validity of SOME "conspiracy theories" of this nature, to my mind anyway.
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Posted by OTS10091
April 04, 2008 at 05:37 PM
Maybe they know that and have been initiating contact on an individual basis, of course we call those people wackjobs dont we?
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