Your mission, should you choose to accept it...

[The Heretic]

The scenario:

SETI has detected an alien intelligence 100 light years away. We have decided to communicate with that alien species. This is a one way communication via ultra high frequency radio. The communication will take 100 years to reach the alien species. We know nothing about them except their general location and that they have radio communications themselves. We don't know what kind of communications these are, just that they are not natural signals.

You will be allowed the equivalent of 10 gigabytes of information to send to them.

1) Besides the fact that this will be a radio communication, how will you send the information? Analog? Digital? Compressed? What?

2) What information will you send to them? Be as specific as possible.

 

[Lasher]

How many Simpsons episodes in 10 GBs?

 

[Guest]

 

[Guru]

 

[The Heretic]

The weird thing is that they will get "I Love Lucy" and "The Simpsons" and "The Honeymooners" and even older signals for decades before the new transmission ever reaches them. (ssuming that if we are listening to their transmissions, they are listening to ours?)

The scenario:

We don't know if they are listening to ours or not, but scientists assume that they are not, and that given the distance our typical comm signals we use with each other are not powerful enough to be intelligable at that distance.

Therefore, we have decided to send a very tight beam very powerful signal purposefully intended to be able to be intelligeable by them at that distance.

There are other issues - such as;

1) In one hundred years will they still exist? Once a civilization has radio technology, they may also acquire other tech that may lead them to self destruction.

2) In one hundred years will they be listening for radio signals of any type. It could be that in one hundred years we will no longer be using radio, but will instead be using some other kind of communications tech - such as having two quantum particles that share the same state instantaneously communicate with each other - without any kinds of emissions. This is one of the reasons I think SETI is a waste of time and money - the timeframe that a civilization may exist and use radio is probably pretty narrow, and the chance that we would be listening during the time another civilization would be transmitting in time to reach us is probably so narrow as to be totally unlikely.

But I am more interested in what information people think they would send, how they would send it, and how they would say it.

This was inspired by a show detailing how we chose to do this for the Voyager probe - but no fair going and looking that up. Come up with your own scheme and content. It is a mental exercise.

 

[Guest]

Hardcore porn(make love-not war)

Mars Attacks/Men in Black/the Indipendence day/Contact(We'll kick your ass)

A lot of mathmatical formulas.

 

[SpiceCake]

Aye, aye Captain!

*salutes and stands pertly at attention because her uniform is nothing but a very short skirt and a cute littel cap*

 

[Guru]

 

[ksmybuttons]

Only radio waves? I'd send music. Some of each style.

Difficult to know how to communicate when you don't know how they do it.

Can't assume they hear like we do.
Can't assume they see like we do.
Can't assume they think like we do.

Have to send some of everything.

 

[The Heretic]

I would preface the signal with some simple signal to get their attention, such as bursts of pulses in groups of the first 100 primes. Then, I would send a simple image of humans, made of, say 100x100 pixels. The initial signals should be repeated many times. (I may remember that from the Voyager/SETI discussions I have read.)

Wouldn't you want to preface the whole affair with something that might help them decode/interpret what we send them?

 

[The Heretic]

Only radio waves? I'd send music. Some of each style.

Difficult to know how to communicate when you don't know how they do it.

Can't assume they hear like we do.
Can't assume they see like we do.
Can't assume they think like we do.

Have to send some of everything.

Math is the universal language of science.

 

[The Heretic]

Aye, aye Captain!

*salutes and stands pertly at attention because her uniform is nothing but a very short skirt and a cute littel cap*

Allright! Snap inspection in my office - right now!

 

[SpiceCake]

Allright! Snap inspection in my office - right now!

Yes sir! Right away sir!

 

[Lost Cause]

I'd start with....

A short flick (don't want a long download on their end) showing a quick glimpse of every race on earth, every animal, the different temperate zones, the shuttle, and the international space station. Then show a map of the solar system indicating Mars as Earth, just in case. The flick could be accompanied by various musical forms, as long as it ends with, "Born to be Wild!" Repeat the flick every seven minutes for 6 months.

Build a SETI ear in space to get better signals, start working on a Deep Space One probe for a relay signal booster.

 

[ksmybuttons]

Math is the universal language of science.

But you assume they count like we do...you can really assume nothing regarding aliens. Binary code is probably the most likely but odds can't even be calculated.

 

[Nobby Stiles]

Send them pictures of Hiroshima, Vietnam, concentration camps, Bosnia, Rwanda etc etc. They'd probably figure we were an entire race of psychotic arseholes and come and sterilise the whole planet.

 

[Starfish]

I would send them compressed digital information that would be consisting of a mapping of our solar system, our DNA and image samples of life on our planet. I would include a few low gig diagrams of our planet's ecosystems and atmospheric processes.

I would show them photos of wars, religious images from all of the world's religions and I'd want them to see that extreme of our nature.

 

[Shaq]

See, I didn't even read all that. I hope it wasn't important. I would accept the mission for the money and hope it is something I could just wing.

 

[Starfish]

Send them pictures of Hiroshima, Vietnam, concentration camps, Bosnia, Rwanda etc etc. They'd probably figure we were an entire race of psychotic arseholes and come and sterilise the whole planet.

It isn't this cut and dry. The range of human potential an emotion cannot be deemed as purely evil. That is just giving them an inaccurate depiction of or worth, and that isn't right.

One man may feel despair of all life based on these horrors we have produced, and another may feel remorse but determination to better life for others each day.

Is it right to just take it all away because of many mistakes of a few men?


In my opinion it isn't.

 

[The Heretic]

But you assume they count like we do...you can really assume nothing regarding aliens. Binary code is probably the most likely but odds can't even be calculated.

Just how do we count? Decimal? We have a number of other number systems, including binary, base 16, base 8, and so on. Just about any race that had math could figure out binary. Once the number system was determined (it would take a mathematician about 30 seconds), the math would be relatively easy.

It is the language that would be hard - the syntax, the grammar, the semantics. We can't even teach these things to machines that we invent (computers) - how could we teach them to aliens (actually it would probably be easier to teach to an alien than to a computer - we have taught sign language to primates and dolphins).

 

[The Heretic]

I would send them compressed digital information that would be consisting of a mapping of our solar system, our DNA and image samples of life on our planet. I would include a few low gig diagrams of our planet's ecosystems and atmospheric processes.

If it was compressed, how would you teach them to decompress it?

I would show them photos of wars, religious images from all of the world's religions and I'd want them to see that extreme of our nature.

It is interesting that these images were excluded from the Voyager disk. First NASA didn't want any kind of accusation of government/religion connection, and second there was a big debate about the war/etc. images, and they finally decided not to send them.

 

[SpiceCake]

Just how do we count? Decimal? We have a number of other number systems, including binary, base 16, base 8, and so on. Just about any race that had math could figure out binary. Once the number system was determined (it would take a mathematician about 30 seconds), the math would be relatively easy.

It is the language that would be hard - the syntax, the grammar, the semantics. We can't even teach these things to machines that we invent (computers) - how could we teach them to aliens (actually it would probably be easier to teach to an alien than to a computer - we have taught sign language to primates and dolphins).

*swoon and sigh*