Should NASA Broadcast a Message to the Universe?

Post Reply New Topic

https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2022/04/05/nasa-is-about-to-broadcast-a-message-to-the-universe-should-they-n460173

A "scientific conclusion" drawn from a sample size of NOTHING.

Even with being someone who happily pays NASA directly for various items of attire and trinketry as shown below,
I look at things like that quote and think,
"NASA, the other faith-based religion!"

Wrong.  The sample size is ONE.  Ever hear of a planet called 'Earth'?

Still a sample size of None regarding their broadcast's potential audience, someone other than us.
That is what I'm talking about.
And the content in what I quoted "“Logic suggests a species which has reached sufficient complexity to achieve communication through the cosmos" should have made it clear to even the most casual observer that I was talking about samples of such species, but I suppose some observers may be rather more casual than others.

Haven't NASA already sent Voyager I and II with a naked picture of white people



Even in deep space there is no ethnic diversity/representation

I always thought they were Hawai'ian.

That'll be news to the Hawaiians.

Meh . . . whatever.

There is nothing to be done about it, except whinge needlessly.

methinks that if at least one especially noted scientist [RIP] thought it was a bad idea, i'd give that big-brain's worries some major weight.

Somehow if we can send "noises" or space junk to them, then they already know about us.

The idea that an advanced civilisation that is perhaps thousands of years more advanced than us (millions?) would need to wait for us to send them radio signal greetings is beyond a joke

Not necessarily.

We arent giving them our driver's licence and social security number nor the security code on the back of our credit card. So they cant necessarily f**k us over.

The idea is to send them a radio greeting card that says "here is where we live. This is our biology, and...the house keys are hidden under the door mat."

And those things that you're talking about that we have sent out arent exactly the same thing as what they are proposing.

These astronomers are talking about using a space telescope to send - one- very powerful- radio signal. Far more powerful than any commercial, or other normal radio broadcast. They maybe sending it in some form other than a normal broadcast- like maybe in morse like pulse patterns - (not as a TV signal with info about us, but as a pattern of pulses that wont degrade over interstellar distance). Normal TV and radio broadcast degenerate into static in only two light years (only halfway to the nearest star). They are probably talking about sending patterns of pulses that (they believe) advanced aliens could figure out the meaning of- pulse that would not deteriorate the way a TV signal would over distance.

If there were little green people on a planet around a star 70 light years away they would just now be receiving the 1948 season of Milton Berle's Texaco Star Variety Show. But it would just be static. And they would not have any of our material "space junk". Physical objects and radio transmissions are two every different topics.

About "space junk". Physical material objects made by man are mostly in earth orbit. Very little gets sent away from the inner solar system in the direction of the stars. And up until now no manmade space craft can move anywhere near the speed of light (which is also the speed of radio and TV emissions). The farthest any man made object has traveled is just three times as far out as Pluto. The Viking I probe is now 14 billion miles away. Only a few "light hours" from the sun. While even the nearest star other than the sun is four light years away. So its true that our radio signals have been going out for a hundred years (hit maybe the nearest twenty stars in every direction). and TV signals have been going out for about 75 years (hitting maybe the nearest 15 stars in every direction), our physical space junk will not even be at the distance of the nearest star for thousands of years. And even then it wont fall into an actual exo solar system for millions of years after that, if ever, because the odd of hitting another star system are so slim.

We are a very (relatively) primitive organism yet we are on the verge of being able to scan earth like planets in distant solar systems. Within the next 2-3 decades we will be in a position to scan/detect for advanced civilisations in space.

If this is how far we have come, it would be slightly (to say the least) ludicrous to think that a civilisation that is thousands of years more advanced (even millions) would be waiting to get episodes of Mr Ed or radio programs of the Goonies to spark their interest in us.

Scientists on earth are simply playing cautious because we dont see anything in the blackness of space. That doesn't mean the near part of out galaxy isn't teaming with aliens able to use cloaking devices to not reveal their existence to us.

I doubt that they would deliberately "cloak" their whole planet just to hide from us. But they may well do what were already starting to do:switch to fiber-optic, or move to some other technology, that would make them go radio silent. That IS a thing astronomers worry about.

So you're admitting that your point about space junk is irrelevant. Basically you're just citing the Fermi Paradox, by saying that if the aliens were advanced enough to hurt us then they would already have physically traveled here, and already have done their worst (and we wouldnt be here now). Maybe. Maybe not.

Hopefully this will finally trigger the long anticipated alien invasion.

No I mean't cloak their vehicles. You are discussing technology that might be already ancient to an interstellar civilisation. For all we know our entire solar system might be encased in a cloaking bubble so we cant actually detect the universe beyond



Which is my point, If they existed then they aren't going to wait for us stupid earthlings to send them space junk with writing on it before considering blowing us up. My best guess is we are too primitive to interact with directly.

A lot of scientists think we are the aliens. Earth was terraformed and we are a product of interstellar "seeding" OR gene splicing OR both