Television For an Audience 45 Light Years Away

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."

Naivete....

[VendettaMF]

Why do people continue to delude themselves that an alien intelligence will be able to comprehend communication as we consider it? And if they can that they'll be foolish enough to waste time on decoding, renderring and interpreting an unreachably distant point of light? And if they go that far, why the heck does anyone expect a usefull response?

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?

Television For an ADULT Audience 45 Light-ys Away

[D4C5CE]

...would probably be the more appropriate title.

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:Europe goes intergalactic tonight

[MichaelSmith]

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:Couple things

[VendettaMF]

Why would they bother with an invasion fleet? Surely a one time momentum investment in applying a giant chunk of iron based meteoric junk to the "Terran Problem" is a much more likely scenario?

Re:Great, intergalactic pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

I never understood why it is so wrong for a woman to show her bare nipples in public. I mean, think for a second: it's not the breast per se that is, apparently, immoral, but rather the nipple, since it seems to be ok to show all the other parts of the breast that don't fit into bikini tops -- since those are nothing more than a skimpy triangle of fabric these days, and breasts tend to, uh, overflow it -- or show lots and lots of cleavage aided by {wonder,push}-bras that practically point those things at us. So, clearly, the "forbidden fruit" must be the nipple.

Strangely enough, showing male nipples doesn't seem to offend anyone.

This double standard is really hard to understand. What is so dirty and foul with a woman's nipple that makes it socially unacceptable to show in public, while the male counterpart isn't given as much as a frown? For the life of me, I could /never/ understand why it is so. Stupidity, perhaps?

Re:Europe goes intergalactic tonight

[Anonymous Coward]

but how long will it take to get there? the best bleeding-edge engines conceived would not be able to get to c/20. that is 900 years one way. and the mass won't spread out reducing the probability of it getting picked up. and even if by sheer luck it hits a planet, it will burn up before anyone has a change to study it. electromagnetic transmission is the way to go until we figure out details of time-travel and/or wormholes. extended periods of non-natural transmissions like triangle or sawtooth wave, abs(sin(t)), semicircular waveform, repeating sq pulses with widths following Fib sequence, etc. would make a good signature of intelligent life.

another interesting method that i read a while ago was to transmit high/low signals totaling product of two prime numbers. intelligent life would recognize this as such and create arrange the signals in rectangular pattern to reveal a 2D picture.