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Arecibo message (split from The Ksp mun Easter egg)

JoeSchmuckatelli

By JoeSchmuckatelli
in Science & Spaceflight

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K^2

K^2

Posted
Posted
6 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

According to the message we are in a system with 9 planets. 

Since we downgraded Pluto - anyone looking here will only count 8 and pass us by! 

I don't think that will matter all that much. There is so much smaller junk that what we call or do not call a planet becomes kind of ambiguous. If they infer that 3/2 pixel ones are gas/ice giants, they might use that. Otherwise, they'd just look at the direction of the signal, and look for anything with a single, stable main sequence star within reasonable distance, and there won't be a lot of options to chose from.

The bigger problem is assuming they'll notice and/or decode the message at all. It's pretty anthropocentric in its design, and if the aliens' culture of using visual symbols is wildly different, they might not have enough context clues to even interpret it as a pictogram.

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Pthigrivi

Pthigrivi

Posted
Posted (edited)
11 minutes ago, K^2 said:

I don't think that will matter all that much. There is so much smaller junk that what we call or do not call a planet becomes kind of ambiguous. If they infer that 3/2 pixel ones are gas/ice giants, they might use that. Otherwise, they'd just look at the direction of the signal, and look for anything with a single, stable main sequence star within reasonable distance, and there won't be a lot of options to chose from.

The bigger problem is assuming they'll notice and/or decode the message at all. It's pretty anthropocentric in its design, and if the aliens' culture of using visual symbols is wildly different, they might not have enough context clues to even interpret it as a pictogram.

I'm a bit of a dark forest pessimist. No species will have the visual intuition to make any sense of that image. They'll see that it has structure and spray us with roundup or not. It is what it is now that we were dumb enough to send it.

Edited by Pthigrivi
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K^2

K^2

Posted
Posted
Just now, Pthigrivi said:

No species will have the visual intuition to make any sense of that image.

I don't think it's that bad. We have non-mamallian species on this planet that can make sense of pictograms in certain contexts. It's far from certainty that someone would figure it out, but it's also not a guarantee that they won't. In most general terms, at least. If they figure out the DNA chemical composition from that message, though, they're galaxy's champions in solving obscure puzzles, and they deserve the right to decide if we should be sprayed with roundup.

I agree with you that that last bit is a likely possibility regardless of whether they understand the intention or not. So I'm with you on the dark forest bit.

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wasml

wasml

Posted
Posted

I would think they wouldn't need the pictograms to figure out where it came from - they'd look at it's vector and estimate its age based on pitting and backtrack to the star that was in that vicinity at that estimated launch time (assuming its not millions of years in the future). But before they launch the roundup they might consider that we were launching probes to interstellar space tens of thousands of years ago and it might be better to quietly crawl back home and pull the covers over their head (or head analog). A paper at the American Astronomical Society here predicted it will be on the  order of 30,000 years before the first encounter with another star.

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Pthigrivi

Pthigrivi

Posted
Posted (edited)
47 minutes ago, wasml said:

I would think they wouldn't need the pictograms to figure out where it came from - they'd look at it's vector and estimate its age based on pitting and backtrack to the star that was in that vicinity at that estimated launch time (assuming its not millions of years in the future). But before they launch the roundup they might consider that we were launching probes to interstellar space tens of thousands of years ago and it might be better to quietly crawl back home and pull the covers over their head (or head analog). A paper at the American Astronomical Society here predicted it will be on the  order of 30,000 years before the first encounter with another star.

Yes K^2 is close. They might be able to boil down the relationship to basic elements and deduce the vector and signal decay. All the more reason to quash a prospective competitor whenever it’s detected, whether tomorrow or 30k years from now. (Tbh Im not much impressed that humans will do very much with 30k years but more perfectly destroy our environment and subjugate our fellows and stagnate. )

Edited by Pthigrivi
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K^2

K^2

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, wasml said:

estimate its age based on pitting

2 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

signal decay

One downside of a radio signal, in terms of determining its origin, is that light-speed messages do not age. So they can't tell how long the message has been in transit. But you ought to be able to make some educated guesses on a range of plausible distances, and so long as you have good fix on direction, that still can't be that many candidate stars. The message we sent out just can't travel all that far. And especially if it is picked up at a bit of an angle to the galactic plane, that would greatly limit the possibilities.

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tstein

tstein

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Yes K^2 is close. They might be able to boil down the relationship to basic elements and deduce the vector and signal decay. All the more reason to quash a prospective competitor whenever it’s detected, whether tomorrow or 30k years from now. (Tbh Im not much impressed that humans will do very much with 30k years but more perfectly destroy our environment and subjugate our fellows and stagnate. )

Well with some luck  in 30K years we will  have spare marines, our ships will travel trough hell  and other absurd things :P

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KerikBalm

KerikBalm

Posted
Posted
12 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I'm a bit of a dark forest pessimist. No species will have the visual intuition to make any sense of that image. They'll see that it has structure and spray us with roundup or not. It is what it is now that we were dumb enough to send it.

Well, once you become a multiple planet (and especially multiple star system) species, you become much harder to wipe out.

The bigger you get, the less paranoid you need to be.

To me, the "Dark Forrest" scenario only works if interstellar weapons are viable, but not really interstellar colonization.

Amongst multiple star system species, the MAD doctrine would apply IMO

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Pthigrivi

Pthigrivi

Posted
Posted (edited)
11 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Well, once you become a multiple planet (and especially multiple star system) species, you become much harder to wipe out.

The bigger you get, the less paranoid you need to be.

To me, the "Dark Forrest" scenario only works if interstellar weapons are viable, but not really interstellar colonization.

Amongst multiple star system species, the MAD doctrine would apply IMO

I mean there's also a strong possibility a super advanced life form would just find us utterly unthreatening and uninteresting, like we might see an ant or an amoeba. 
 

Anyway to bring things a bit more on topic whatever this species is seems to be the benevolent curator type. I'll be really curious to see how integrated this is into the tech development and progression. It's the thing that gives me pause because I do want anomalies to be important for science, but if a lot of them are alien monuments are we kind of saying we got fusion or antimatter drives from aliens? Im not crazy about that. Like they might be cool as just goalposts for boom events but I'd rather see tech development come from harder science.  

Edited by Pthigrivi
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tstein

tstein

Posted
Posted
17 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

I mean there's also a strong possibility a super advanced life form would just find us utterly unthreatening and uninteresting, like we might see an ant or an amoeba. 
 

Anyway to bring things a bit more on topic whatever this species is seems to be the benevolent curator type. I'll be really curious to see how integrated this is into the tech development and progression. It's the thing that gives me pause because I do want anomalies to be important for science, but if a lot of them are alien monuments are we kind of saying we got fusion or antimatter drives from aliens? Im not crazy about that. Like they might be cool as just goalposts for boom events but I'd rather see tech development come from harder science.  

There is also the possibility that the first think they receive and decode from us is Star Wars.. then they will try very very hard to never meet us.....

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K^2

K^2

Posted
Posted
8 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

To me, the "Dark Forrest" scenario only works if interstellar weapons are viable, but not really interstellar colonization.

That's what berserker probes are for. If you're a species capable of building AI capable of managing an interstellar mission, resource gathering, and replication at the destination, as well as able to launch something at a meaningful fraction of the speed of light, wiping out a civilization that's just starting out with space exploration is fairly straight forward. Yeah, it might give us as much as a few hundred years to develop our tech, but if by the time we get to it, the Oort cloud is filled with replicating murder bots, we're going to have a hard time.

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KerikBalm

KerikBalm

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, K^2 said:

That's what berserker probes are for. If you're a species capable of building AI capable of managing an interstellar mission, resource gathering, and replication at the destination, as well as able to launch something at a meaningful fraction of the speed of light, wiping out a civilization that's just starting out with space exploration is fairly straight forward. Yeah, it might give us as much as a few hundred years to develop our tech, but if by the time we get to it, the Oort cloud is filled with replicating murder bots, we're going to have a hard time.

And if they launch them too, it's MAD.

If they are just starting out, and you aren't, you have nothing to worry about.

Odds are the first interstellar civilization could colonize the galaxy before another species achieved spaceflight- given the timescales involved and speeds attainable 

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JoeSchmuckatelli

JoeSchmuckatelli

Posted
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Posted (edited)
7 hours ago, K^2 said:

mood set by Pthigrivi and tstein

They are terrible people, it's true.  But we love them anyway. 

Still... It's important to remember why the berserkers were created in the first place... 

Boredom and complacency 

It was all about the game! 

Edited by JoeSchmuckatelli
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shdwlrd

shdwlrd

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, tstein said:

Well in the second at least we go out with a bang!

I don't know how much you know about the 40K universe, but it's a lot worse for the general citizenry than you would believe. There's too much to explain with how horrible the 40K universe actually is.

Just watch: https://youtube.com/@Luetin09

He goes into good detail about the 40K universe.

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tstein

tstein

Posted
Posted
42 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

I don't know how much you know about the 40K universe, but it's a lot worse for the general citizenry than you would believe. There's too much to explain with how horrible the 40K universe actually is.

Just watch: https://youtube.com/@Luetin09

He goes into good detail about the 40K universe.

Oo I know I read the books,  but  between   suffering  alone and suffering but  taking some of the ones causing the suffereing  down to hell with me, I chose the second.

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