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What would happen if mankind receives something like the Arecibo message?


Heimdall5008

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Some days ago I had a discussion with some friends what would happen if someday in the future another species will find one of the Voyager Golden Records. During this we came to the conclusion that the real question (or at least the more interessting to us) is: How would we react, if we discover that we are not alone?

We have distinguished four cases:

  1. Discovery of extraplanetary life: Some probe/rover discovers life on another planet/moon in our solar system.
    I do not think this will matter all that much to most people. The news will be full of it for some days, most people will tell everybody who wants to hear it, that this was always clear and no sane person ever doubted it. A not to tiny fraction will probably declare it as contamination from earth, a scam to get more money for space agencies or a mortal danger to all life on planet earth (like the film Evolution or so :P). But in general I think most will have forgotten it after some days. In the middle to long term it will most likely help the space agencies to get more funding for exploration. Also most likely regulations for sterilization of space craft will get even tighter than now and return of samples at least from the "infected" planet/moon will be out of question for some time.
  2. Receiving a signal, but do not understand it: somehow like the WOW! signal, but longer and clearer to be artificial in nature
    I think there would be a great depate if this signal is artifical or natural or a scam. If it is artifical and only noticed by military/national controlled stations I suspect that they could try a cover-up. For thi scenario, although I deem it the most probable, I have no further idea what would happen. As information on public reaction and circulation is a bit scant and I was not alive then, I cannot really compare it.
  3. Receiving a signal and understanding it at least in parts: like the Aericibo message, also I really do not know how some other race should ever understand this message...
    This would probably be the most interessting solution. There we will get evidence of another intelligence. I do not know what they would send. If I had to compose my own message and just wanted to say "I'm no artifical signal, I'm from an intelligence!", I would just send a sequence of prime numbers (dit-dit pause dit-dit-dit pause dit-dit-dit-dit-dit pause ...). This does not really transfer any knowledge, but it should be understood by every being able to receive this message (as the count and prime numbers are the same in every numerative system). But let's just say we get a bit more complex message. We can decipher something like origin and there system layout or so. What would happen?
    Like in the first example I suspect that certain governments will try to cover-up if they can. Even if they have no good reason to do so, it will be a reflex. We do not know it, so it must be bad... If it goes to the public their will be a gigantic discussion how to interpret this message. Five "experts" will have six opinions how to decipher the message. But I think in the end the contents will not really matter. The fact that we are not alone will matter.
    Some people will clearly use the situation and try to immediately answer with a message of their own. So if the origion would not be too far away, we could (speaking in long term of one message per generation or so...) establish an interstellar "freindship" or at least post office. Other will try to hide. No message may compromise earth. They want to play dead. So this are most likely the extrem positions. I think the genral will either rush into an new Golden Age of space exploration (either united in face of the big unknown or as competition between the different agiencies) or we will go through something akin to the five stages of grief: denial (scam), anger (terroristic attacks against radio telescopes?), bargaining (What if they are evil?), depression and acceptance.
    I for myself would really welcome the first variant. I cannot hope to live for any extrasolar exploration but a radio message, although unlikely, might be the only chance to ever know if there is/was anything other out there. The thought that we are all alone out here is frightening and also the number tell us, that we should not be alone it is a completely other thing as knowing.
  4. Finding physical evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence: like the Pioneer plaque or the Golden Records
    The chances to ever find an alien artifact are way beyond slim. But if it happens, I cannot really think that it would change all that much in comparision to scenario 3. Maybe a global received transmission would be sooner admitted as real than any physical evidence. Here the same principles apply as above: cover-up, accusation of fraud, maybe panic of invasion. But in general I think it would have less impact as a message. The probe would be tens of thousands of years old (in minimum), so the probabillity that its builders are still alive is slim. But a message traveling at light speed is a completly other topic.

What is your opinion? How would you react? How would mankind as a whole react?

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How would I react? Well, #1 is obvious. "Life" is not unique to Earth, we just haven't yet proven to the contrary. No surprise from me there, though I'd question if it was due to contamination from the current or previous probes. (Much as I'm questioning some of Philae's findings on 67P after it splattered itself across the comet's surface.)

#s2/3/4? First I'd be angry that the scientific community sat on this information for 18 months so they could get all their papers written and reviewed for the journals. Then I'd be angry that the message itself is somehow protected by copyright and hasn't yet been released. Then I'd be angry that somebody leaked it on day one but only the National Enquirer picked it up. Mostly just angry that we don't life in some sort of hacker ethos utopia where all information is free.

How would society as a whole react? Well, #1 wouldn't change much. Many wouldn't notice. #2 would be written off as noise after having been puffed up by the hyperactive news media for a few hours.

#3 is where things would get interesting. This is where you'd see a few repeats of Heaven's Gate; some of the heavy geocentric religions would freak out. Most would adapt, many would forever question. By and large it wouldn't change life on Earth unless it included blueprints. (Such a message is more likely to be as banal as your average Facebook post anyway. The intergalactic equivalent of cat pictures. Or food pictures. Or cat food pictures. Or all three at the same time.)

#4 would go to the highest bidder at Sotheby's and then we'd never see it again. Many would write it off as the most expensive fraud ever.

Edited by Cydonian Monk
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"Ho, really, I live in some wonderfull times!"

Note that "The contact" doesn't really matter.

It is the "hidden" information behind that matter: How many. Where. When. With what.

How has been send this message, when, what power of transmission device, from where, and to where can it be hear. It is a "bottle in the see" or a message dedicated to our planet?

Especially the identification of the alien star system and all work for gaining more information about it should be very interressing.

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How would I react? Well, #1 is obvious. "Life" is not unique to Earth, we just haven't yet proven to the contrary. No surprise from me there, though I'd question if it was due to contamination from the current or previous probes. (Much as I'm questioning some of Philae's findings on 67P after it splattered itself across the comet's surface.)

#s2/3/4? First I'd be angry that the scientific community sat on this information for 18 months so they could get all their papers written and reviewed for the journals. Then I'd be angry that the message itself is somehow protected by copyright and hasn't yet been released. Then I'd be angry that somebody leaked it on day one but only the National Enquirer picked it up. Mostly just angry that we don't life in some sort of hacker ethos utopia where all information is free.

How would society as a whole react? Well, #1 wouldn't change much. Many wouldn't notice. #2 would be written off as noise after having been puffed up by the hyperactive news media for a few hours.

#3 is where things would get interesting. This is where you'd see a few repeats of Heaven's Gate; some of the heavy geocentric religions would freak out. Most would adapt, many would forever question. By and large it wouldn't change life on Earth unless it included blueprints. (Such a message is more likely to be as banal as your average Facebook post anyway. The intergalactic equivalent of cat pictures. Or food pictures. Or cat food pictures. Or all three at the same time.)

#4 would go to the highest bidder at Sotheby's and then we'd never see it again. Many would write it off as the most expensive fraud ever.

Agree here,

1 would be huge news and change priory of space missions, probably an budget increase, no other impact.

2 & 3 would be much of the same, except that 3 contains something we could understand as an message. 3 is unlikely unless made easy to understand on purpose.

It would prove it exist intelligent life 3 would pretty much be that they try to contact us too.

Yes various lunatics would try to use this, probably easier with 3 as its an message but we don't understand it. This is not an problem we have long experience handling various lunatics.

If from an pretty close indefinable star it would have more impact even political one. Should we reply, we should anyway try to find out more about the planet if came from.

4 is the real interesting, first off it would probably have real world applications, its an alien artifact from someone who has star travel. Just the material would be interesting.

Main question is that sort of object is it and can we learn anything from it. Can it be other objects perhaps more interesting ones nearby.

First it has to be cleat its not an scam or something we misunderstand. Plenty of ancient astronaut junk around.

If not well we know its intelligent aliens who is able to travel between stars. If we find something like an fossil of an probe we would not learn anything outside of this.

Its also likely to be an one off yes it might be more in the solar system but it would be very hard to find.

Now if you find something like remains of an starship in space it would be an game changer and it would be an race for it.

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Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca, has conquered the New World with 11 ships and 500 mens...

I bet we need no more!

I bet we would have if the natives had managed to send a scout ship over first. ;)

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Would the discovery of intelligent life on other planets not totally contradict every (monotheistical) religion so far?

That would lead to really interesting uproar in the puplic.

Meanwhile, non-intelligent life will just be ignored or even hijacked (God is even greater...)

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Would the discovery of intelligent life on other planets not totally contradict every (monotheistical) religion so far?

I have no idea to the religios side. I don't think it would have such a great impact in Germany. Although most people are formally Christians, most do not practice religion in a significant way. As way of contradiction, at least as far as I know the book religions there is no where stated, that the earth is the only part of the creation ;)


-

By the way, I just realize just how unlikely scenario 4 is. I just considered that this ancient space probe accidently hits our solar system in our time. But this just the beginnig. We would have to detect it, it will probably not be larger than a few meters, it will have no power and should be without visuals indistinguishable from a meteor. So it would have to pass real close to earth and we would have to (accidently) get a high resolution image with a telescope. And when we realize what it is, it will travel with km/s away from earth, so we will have no chance to capture it...

So let's just say, its impossible :P

Or it would have to be an active probe, but this would be a completly different story. For the sake of the thread I think we should stay away from von Neumann probes.

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Not only is it unlikely that a message ever reaches our solar system, but the universe is 13 billion years old and we have only been listening to radio signals for less than 100 years. The chances of an alien species broadcasting a message that coincides with this tiny moment in time is infinitesimal. It is actually millions of times more unlikely that winning the lottery or finding a needle in a haystack.

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What is your opinion? How would you react? How would mankind as a whole react?

The World : probably like Contact. Although I'd hate people marching around ALMA or Arecibo or VLA or LBT or some other observatory.

Me : Nothing. If anything it'd be a luck.

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I highly doubt humanity has the capability to decipher any alien signal.

The so called Arecibo Message as it was send in 1974 to the M13 star cluster (25,000 light years away) was a binary signal that made up some stylized imagery. It was a grid based on two prime numbers, 23 pixels wide and 73 pixels high.

At the same time it was send the signal was given to multiple scientists and mathematicians with out any further instructions on how to decode it.

00000010101010000000000001010000010100000001001000100010001001011001010101010101010100100100000000000000000000000000000000000001100000000000000000001101000000000000000000011010000000000000000001010100000000000000000011111000000000000000000000000000000001100001110001100001100010000000000000110010000110100011000110000110101111101111101111101111100000000000000000000000000100000000000000000100000000000000000000000000001000000000000000001111110000000000000111110000000000000000000000011000011000011100011000100000001000000000100001101000011000111001101011111011111011111011111000000000000000000000000001000000110000000001000000000001100000000000000010000011000000000011111100000110000001111100000000001100000000000001000000001000000001000001000000110000000100000001100001100000010000000000110001000011000000000000000110011000000000000011000100001100000000011000011000000100000001000000100000000100000100000001100000000100010000000011000000001000100000000010000000100000100000001000000010000000100000000000011000000000110000000011000000000100011101011000000000001000000010000000000000010000011111000000000000100001011101001011011000000100111001001111111011100001110000011011100000000010100000111011001000000101000001111110010000001010000011000000100000110110000000000000000000000000000000000011100000100000000000000111010100010101010101001110000000001010101000000000000000010100000000000000111110000000000000000111111111000000000000111000000011100000000011000000000001100000001101000000000101100000110011000000011001100001000101000001010001000010001001000100100010000000010001010001000000000000100001000010000000000001000000000100000000000000100101000000000001111001111101001111000

This is how it should look like after some colour enhancement: 125px-Arecibo_message.svg.png

But decoded improperly when rows and columns are mixed up you'll end up with this 512px-AreciboMessageShifted.svg.png

NOT EVEN ONE of them even came close!

But is we do indeed get indisputable evidence of other intelligent life in the universe I guess one of two this will happen (possibly both): Widespread (religious) panic and anarchy. Or a total unification of humanity as we no longer see ourselves as inhabitants of a country but rather the world.

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Would the discovery of intelligent life on other planets not totally contradict every (monotheistical) religion so far?

That would lead to really interesting uproar in the puplic.

Meanwhile, non-intelligent life will just be ignored or even hijacked (God is even greater...)

The non-intelligent life will be the people in an uproar ;)

It will be fun to watch the facepalm-worthy backpedaling to try and square their circles to the new reality.

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As a Christian, I would fall in to the category of seeing it as further evidence of God's glory -- assuming it was a message vetted and determined to be unquestionably authentic.

That said, I think a lot of folks would lose faith over the matter. Others (especially nutcase fundamentalists) would likely consider this "Moon Hoax 2.0", an engineered attack on their beliefs.

I should also note that following evolutionary theory, the idea of "God" or a "higher power" likely evolved in order to promote behaviors that further a species at the cost of one's self. As a survival strategy, it seems reasonable to expect that other intelligent species would have evolved similar mechanisms. Perhaps the first message, if deciphered, would be religious propaganda?

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Would the discovery of intelligent life on other planets not totally contradict every (monotheistical) religion so far?

That would lead to really interesting uproar in the puplic.

Meanwhile, non-intelligent life will just be ignored or even hijacked (God is even greater...)

I read an article not too long ago (I'll see if I can find it) that summed up how the world's major religions would handle the discovery of extraterrestrial life. Surprisingly, most would be cool with it, although there would be some discussion on the matter (for example, Catholicism would have to decide if ETs are also born with original sin and therefore need saving). The only one that would have a major problem is evangelical christianity as practiced in the US. For them, apparently the news would be devastating.

Edit: Found the article right here.

Edited by JetJaguar
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Should aliens ever make their presence known?... this world would fall apart in a day.

Why?

To answer that, I have a better question: Should they show up, who are you going to listen to and want to follow?... those little green guys with the superior technology who travel through space... or the incompetent government/religious leaders (and media) incessantly yelling at their puppets, telling them what to do.

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Should aliens ever make their presence known?... this world would fall apart in a day.

Why?

To answer that, I have a better question: Should they show up, who are you going to listen to and want to follow?... those little green guys with the superior technology who travel through space... or the incompetent government/religious leaders (and media) incessantly yelling at their puppets, telling them what to do.

Superior tech doesn't mean superior government/religious leader or superior puppets :D

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I highly doubt humanity has the capability to decipher any alien signal.

The so called Arecibo Message as it was send in 1974 to the M13 star cluster (25,000 light years away) was a binary signal that made up some stylized imagery. It was a grid based on two prime numbers, 23 pixels wide and 73 pixels high.

At the same time it was send the signal was given to multiple scientists and mathematicians with out any further instructions on how to decode it.

-snip-

This is how it should look like after some colour enhancement: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/55/Arecibo_message.svg/125px-Arecibo_message.svg.png

But decoded improperly when rows and columns are mixed up you'll end up with this https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/AreciboMessageShifted.svg/512px-AreciboMessageShifted.svg.png

NOT EVEN ONE of them even came close!

But is we do indeed get indisputable evidence of other intelligent life in the universe I guess one of two this will happen (possibly both): Widespread (religious) panic and anarchy. Or a total unification of humanity as we no longer see ourselves as inhabitants of a country but rather the world.

Even in the correct form I don't see how that image can convey anything useful at all.

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Even in the correct form I don't see how that image can convey anything useful at all.

You can provide a representation of the solar system, the wavelength of the message and the height of humans relative to it, and which planet we inhabit. That's the stuff I recall.

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You can provide a representation of the solar system, the wavelength of the message and the height of humans relative to it, and which planet we inhabit. That's the stuff I recall.

Recall, or determine independently? If I weren't a biped I would probably thing the dude in the middle more resembled an airplane than a life form.

By the way, what about the historical precedent of when we discovered the "canals" on Mars? Society didn't collapse, but just look how many people suddenly became 'experts' on Martian society for a time. Just imagine what we might end up with in our modern day, with a verifiable message.

Edited by ComradeWolfe
Spelling / funky touchscreen keyboard.
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Superior tech doesn't mean superior government/religious leader or superior puppets :D

At the very least, everything they'd have would be superior. You think inferior beings would have the mind and intelligence to conquer space? One look around this planet should for the most part answer that question.

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You can provide a representation of the solar system, the wavelength of the message and the height of humans relative to it, and which planet we inhabit. That's the stuff I recall.

Well, if you come up with the idea that the message length is an two prime numbers multiples and try an image you would try both ways something else would be bone stupid and the correct version shows some order.

However any message not sent as an welcome message would not be possible to decode, and digital message compressed and encoded in unknown way,

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