Television For an Audience 45 Light Years Away 324
beebopdebop writes, "The Irish Times notes that Europe goes intergalactic tonight with the broadcast of a program conceived for aliens and broadcast towards a point 45 light years away in the direction of the Big Dipper. The two naked hosts will present their own unclothed bodies as examples of our physical embodiments, and will tell about daily human existence. Music, art, and our own personal messages will be transmitted as well as discussions from sociologists, scientists, and space experts. This project is the brainchild of the French-based Centre National D'etudes Spatiales and is rooted in seriousness as a natural extension of the gold-plated ambassador disks of Pioneer 10. Those of us wishing to be included can still post messages to be sent into space via a CNES antenna. We will have to wait 90 years to learn whether or not some lifeform was listening."
The reply: (Score:5, Funny)
Television For an ADULT Audience 45 Light-ys Away (Score:4, Interesting)
We may be sending out the wrong signals though by telling them this world is not just pre-Warp, but even pre-Wardrobe. ;-)
Anyway, there's reason to be afraid someone may also have seriously misunderstood mankind's actual role in reproduction for Aliens [imdb.com]...
Re:The reply: (Score:5, Funny)
This is a European [istheshit.net] initiative, not an American one
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It is? I gotta get outta here.
What?
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Anyhoo, since people started complaining so much about it, I had to dig this [who.int] up (30kg/m^2+ is apparently the definition [wikipedia.org] of "obese"). The European countries are chosen "randomly" (in other words, I scrolled up and down that list, and picked the ones I noticed, until I had a total of ten).
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The 2005 data is here [cdc.gov].
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Sounds like a loophole for airing a porn channel (Score:4, Insightful)
Europe goes intergalactic tonight (Score:5, Insightful)
Since the target is only 45 light years away surely that should be intragalactic.
Re:Europe goes intergalactic tonight (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if they get a broadcast at a certain frequency - how intuitive will it be for an alien listener, that this broadcast will be audio/video in PAL, SECAM or NTSC coding?
Sounds pretty useless to me - about the same chance, as if they send a windows version of the Encyclopedia Britannica out for aliens to browse through...
In comparison, the gold plate on voyager is something more readily accessible - as an effort was made to keep the message simple.
Re:Europe goes intergalactic tonight (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember reading about a conference on communication with ET's where one person prepared a message, not encrypted, but just expressed in a strange way; which is what would would expect from ET's. The message was circulated to all attendees and none of them could extract the meaning, though there was a lot of slapping of foreheads, etc, when the answer was revealed.
So yes, even for people who know they will have to decode an unknown message, it can be hard to meaning with no starting point.
Re:Europe goes intergalactic tonight (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah I saw something similar. The guy had made a file containing the binary data and handed to fellow ET researchers, asking if they could decode it. Nobody was able to do it. The trick was that if you printed out the 1's and 0's using a certain column width, it drew a picture.
There's a LOT of ways to encode data, which might seem intuative to some but will baffle others. I don't think you'll have to go further than the various file formats we got to see that
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how intuitive will it be for an alien listener, that this broadcast will be audio/video in PAL, SECAM or NTSC coding?
Actually if they can't figure out that whole PAL, SECAM or NTSC thing, they'll still get the image in black and white. The black and white part of analog video is built in a pretty obvious manner actually. Anyways I think the most important is that they get a signal from us, so they know that we're here, then it doesn't really matter whether they see us naked or not.
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The two naked hosts (Score:4, Funny)
Let's hope they picked Ingrid Swede and Scarlet Johansson. It would be interesting to hear them speak about their daily life.
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What? And make them think we reproduce like parthenogenesis?
Of course if Scarlett Johansson was a typical human female, we probably would, ceteris paribus.
Re:The two naked hosts (Score:5, Insightful)
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Naked Jungle was just toooo much.
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You didn't hear that it was Dustin Diamond and Paris Hilton representing the physical emobdiments.
Also why are the people on the Pioneer Plaque [wikimedia.org] white?
Re:The two naked hosts (Score:4, Funny)
Don't worry, to the aliens, we all look the same... :)
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hm, (Score:5, Funny)
On a slightly less serious note, is it really a good idea to teach potentially hostile aliens about how we work (and by extension how to kill us)? Not to mention we know that the only people who are really going to watch are 1000 light-years away waiting for single female lawyer
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That should make it an interesting day when their invasion army warps into orbit.
Couple things (Score:5, Insightful)
2) I don't think it's a worry if they are hostile because it wouldn't really matter. Supposing they are a hostile race, and thus devote a good deal of research and effort to weapons development as we do, and supposing their technology is far enough ahead of ours that they could send an invasion fleet (something we are at least hundreds of years away form, maybe more) I think its' safe to assume that we would get rolled regardless of the information we provided. I mean think of it like this: Would it really matter if a society like 18th century Europe gave any info to a foe as advanced as the current US military? The technology difference is so massive that there's no hope. A single armour division would probably be sufficient to crush whole armies.
Now please don't let this give the impression that I don't think this is a massive waste of time and money, it is, but not because of the reasons you listed (it's a waste because in all likelihood there's nothing there).
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This is understating the issue greatly. Really, it would be more similar to a tribe of cavemen doing battle with a modern army.
Any civilization capable of mounting an invasion over interstellar distances would likely be many thousand years more advanced in technology.
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Sheesh, some people...
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Yeah, but considering what percentage of that is FOX news, daytime soap operas, infomercials and Jerry Springer, maybe they'd be happy to see some hot naked French chicks without having to invade North Dakota with pod ships just so they can get all the good porn on cable.
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Don't you know that security through obscurity always fails?
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If an alien species capable of interstellar flight really wanted to take over our planet, it would be far more effective to just lug an asteroid into a collision course with earth. No muss, no fuss.
~X~
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If anything aliens would be getting pissed off with being inundated with out crap 24/7...
Why do some people have such a though time putting themselves in the place of the hypothetical aliens. Even among the scientists, some think that the aliens know about us but find us not evolved enough to be interesting to meet. Come on, if we received a broadcast from aliens, even if the broadcasted us their equivalent of Inspector Derrick, we'd be happy as fuck, just to find out that there's some other sort of life
90 years is optimistic (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that we've only just managed to decipher what our own first man on moon actually said after a few decades, I think you're looking at decades of work.
And all that's before they even manage to create and send a reply, which will take 45 years to get here.
Re:90 years is optimistic (Score:5, Funny)
Steve.
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Hope they have Tivo over there (Score:5, Funny)
This is the problem I have with specific EM signals.
Once they are gone, thats it.
I still think the only real way to communicate with outlying civilisations properly will be with supernovas.
Though, only one message could be send - "Help our sun is blowing u^&"%£%^&!*(())[NO CARRIER]
SFL (Score:5, Funny)
I'm going to get my Karma wiped out but... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I'm going to get my Karma wiped out but... (Score:4, Informative)
Incidentelly, I was watching TV with a friend yesterday as I don't own one, and while we flipped through the channels we stumbled upon that program. In the 10 minutes or so we watched, they showed an interview with Orson Welles, telling that he was shocked to learn that so many people took his radio play of War of the Worlds for real and then a guy who on 9/11 first thought that he, too, was in some kind of fake television play. Then they showed a report about early alien/monster movies and how they spoke of the desire and fear we have of the unknown.
Inbetween segments they had a split screen with one panel showing a guy laying on the grass talking about something or other and in the other panels they showed beautiful nature photography.
Quite entertaining, I must say.
Re:I'm going to get my Karma wiped out but... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually they are real human beings, look here [www.arte.tv]
Anyway the program is mainly an artform to me, and the "send it to aliens" is just there as a cover.
The idea is funny, but that's it...
The best part was the letters to aliens from some average people, some were quite funny.
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Naivete.... (Score:4, Interesting)
At best there'll be no response, but should they then pick up on our everyday TV the likely response is surely some form of uncrewed planet buster. I know I'd prefer not to leave a hornets nest like humanity brewing in any corner of my galaxy. No intelligence with a self-preservation process would.
We are a crippled duck, currently hidden in a vast swamp. Our only security being through obscurity. Why the hell do people insist on flailing around screaming for the hunters? Actually, that doesn't quite work. We are a crippled unknown creature, that appears to have the mindset of a ravaging beast, but lacking the ability. Which lives longer? The rabid dog spazzing out in broad daylight in th emiddle of the street or the rabid cat stalking the shadows?
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Your point about our safety is well made. However, what if early explorers decided it was too dangerous to go out? "Nah, there might be monsters in those hills, I think i'll stay home by the fire". Safe, but pretty dull when there might be interesting things to discover.
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Curiosity (we don't care about non-curious civs -- actually, an oxymoron) will ensure they want to figure out what this strange, point emanation is.
You presume unreachability.
We (the current generation) don't expect, nor care about a response.
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Why the hell do people insist on flailing around screaming for the hunters?
I believe it is because we are so desparate to find that we are not totally alone in the universe that we are willing to run the risk of our own destruction.
naivite: yours (Score:2)
Because it's quite likely that intelligent alien life is DNA, RNA, and protein based, has developed vision, has developed color vision, communicates with a linear stream of symbols, and has two sexes. In fact, there's a good chance that it has a body plan similar to ours, is bipedal, and uses sound to communicate. How do we know that? Because a lot of what we are is determined
Your planet has been blacklisted for pr0n-spamming (Score:5, Funny)
This is pointless (Score:2, Funny)
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It was a silicone intelligence.
Futurama? (Score:5, Funny)
Naked News (Score:2)
Naked News has naked presenters telling about daily human existence, so this is old
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Naked News [nakednews.com] has naked presenters telling about daily human existence, so this is old
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Assuming that ET has an entirely different physiology, the would be aliens would have to be into humans through an extension of zoophilia or perhaps develop a form of xenophilia. (Is this the correct prefix when talking about ETs?)
90 years (Score:4, Insightful)
But then the MPAA can still sue them for DCMA and copyright violations if they decoded the movie without a license and used parts of our broadcast in their reply!
Andromeda Strain (Score:2)
An interesting solution was proposed whereby you would use biological organisms to spread the news of your existence. By spreading vast amounts of
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Life, as we know, mutates, and any signal you try to send with it quickly runs out. And mass producing such organisms and sending them out into space is *not* cheap, especially not relative to the alternative of sending out EM signals. (How are you going to get the momentum changes to send these things certain places?) The real killer is that it's ridiculously slow.
And such spores will also fade in the inverse square ratio - in general, anything that sprays out in
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Ah here it is. [phpsolvent.com]
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Nope. The nonigorant get a neat show.
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That is incorrect -- lasers follow the normal inverse-square law, just as all other EMF emissions do. To avoid this, you would have to have a laser beam which doesn't spread out, and of course such a thing is impossible under the laws of physics. All laser beams spread out over distance.
The reason we sometimes say that laser beams don't follow the inverse square law is a bit of handwaving with respect to huma
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Lasers also follow the inverse square law, they just have better constants. Furthermore, coherence is incidental to their directional properties.
LRRR (Score:2)
we want McNeal!!!
DRM (Score:2, Funny)
Why do the aliens need... (Score:2)
Not to mention the piss-poor interstellar data protection laws.
great plan (Score:2)
underwhelmed by the distance (Score:2)
45 lightyears isn't that much IMHO. If there is someone that close who can pick up our signals, then there's a good chance that they already have a presence in this Solar System. And they probably would be aware of us since we've already been broadcasting for more than 45 years. Those signals are no where near as strong, but if they're listening on the radio spectrum, then that's most of the way to being able to hear the more feeble broadcasts of 45 years ago.
Even at a modest speed of 300 km/s (or 0.1% o
they would arrive before the signal is sent.... (Score:2, Funny)
In fact, the reason that so many UFOs were sighted in the early 50s was Earth TV was so interesting that many galaxies sent talent scouts. Of course, the reason we were never invited to the Universal Television Network was we only produced boring programming. (They made one exception and aired the first 5 seasons of Saturday Night Live.)
Where's David Tennant when you really need him? (Score:2)
Super Advanced Alien TIVOs? (Score:2)
Then again, my copyrights will have run out by the time they see my works... Or will they still be in effect...
All except my BY-SA and GPL and other Free works that is.
all the best,
drew
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=(creator%3 A%22drew%20Roberts%22)%20OR%20(collection%3A(ourme dia)%20AND%20%2Fmetadata%2Fauthor%3A(drew%20Robert s)) [archive.org]
Alien senses (Score:2)
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"Star in Big Dipper"? Errai is in Cepheus. (Score:3, Informative)
Article does not mention why that particular star was selected, however, it appears to host a known exoplanet, which is quite probably the reason here. Errai also happens to be somewhat more massive than our sun, which means that it progresses through its 'life' faster than the Sol. Any possible life out there has less time to evolve before the star kicks the bucket. It's also a double star, which may make the orbits of the planet(s) in the system somewhat more chaotic.
O_O (Score:2)
They'd much prefer to see us waving our private parts on front of the camera. Yea, that's gotta do it.
Possibly not 90 years (Score:2)
How THAT Will Go Down (Score:3, Funny)
Or maybe not...
I want to watch this show (Score:2)
Re:Great, intergalactic pornography (Score:5, Funny)
Inter-dimensional porn?
As a second thought; how could we ever make pornography that turns aliens on? Just imagine a dog or a lizard trying to get you turned on? (or a fat chick)>
What if the mechanisms of reproduction are very different as ours? Maybe they would think of us as ugly stupid mamals, mainly driven by mating instincts and obsessively seek out into the universe for mating-partners. They OR would avoid earth, or send out more probing UFO's. Eitherway, not the desired result.
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Re:Great, intergalactic pornography (Score:5, Insightful)
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And to those sorry people who have girlfriends with the last names of GIF and JPG. With the population of American geeks here, it surprises me that noone has yet wondered why we don't do it properly and send those aliens goatse.cx.
Re:Great, intergalactic pornography (Score:5, Insightful)
That's actually not true. In other theocracies it's often the same or even worse.
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I think it has to do with the erogenousity (or something of this kind) of the female nipple, and/or maybe lactation. Basically, girls are supposed to have "fun" out of their nipples, some even can orgasm just from having it stimulated, as men are not supposed to feel anything in their nipples.
The funny thing tho is how children are not supposed to see boobs (including nipples), as if it could shock them, as babies suck nipples and grab their mother's boob.
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Au contraire, we share that distinction with a number of other countries that have their governments controlled by strong fundamentalist religious groups.
Now I can sleep at night (Score:2)
This post isn't even that funny or insightful really. That it's gotten modded up to 5 so quickly says a great deal about the seething anti-American sentiment in the mod community! Not that one couldn't tell by reading a global warming story. Any post that ends with "America Sux" hit +5 in seconds.
Not that I'm one to defend America's current stupidity, but the bias here is so
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Either that, or you never get undressed without having sex in the process.
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I knew foreigners were weird, but you don't even take your clothes off to do it?
lol, that's just like when I try to make some smart ass remark but then I realize that I didn't get it right and that my remark would only make me sound dumb. Basically what you said is just as if the GP had said "Oregon is in the USA" and that you replied, "So the USA are in Oregon?".
The GP says that nudity is considered pornography in the USA, not that pornography consists in nudity.
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Really? so it's 100% ok for women to go naken or barely clothed in muslim countries?
-1, Offtopic. The GP is talking about nudity being considered pornography, not about the alrightness of being naked. So to use your idea, do people in muslim countries consider that pictures of naked people are pornography? I don't know, you most likely don't know and nobody cares anyways.
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Re:This is cute but you don't need to look so far (Score:2)