SETI recieves signal from SOL type star!

[Lancer]

Did you wonder, just for a second? Well I made it up, it's not true, yet. What if it were though?

You're watching Monday night football. Halftime comes and you step out on the deck for a smoke. Lets say you saw something you couldn't explain. Dull lights in the sky at night. They form a pattern and don't move. You watch with great interest at first, but slowly your interest fades. What can you do about it? Besides, the game is on and from the sounds something is happening. You go inside, grab a beer from the fridge and check out the action. Later you go out and whatever it was is gone. You go in and go to sleep.

So what if SETI dramaticly announced 'contact'?

There would be a few parties, some hype, but you have to get to work tomorrow...

It would be meaningless. Two civilizations trapped by distance. Communications back and forth would take decades, maybe centuries.

'SETI recieves signal'

[Eli]

Well I made it up, it's not true, yet.

Bah! I was opening lots of space news sites while the thread was loading to check what's going on.

[MikeH]

Of course it's not true. Football season is over, I don't have a deck and I've given up smoking so how could it happen?

It wouldn't be meaningless anyway. It'd be a massive head fvck.

[Lancer]

Eli

Mike, that's my point. It would be exciting...but the most disappointing thing. The anti-climax would be stunningly boring.

[Zylka]

That would at least ignite huge religious panic and/or wonder, with massive earthly implications

[Lancer]

I doubt it. What implications?

[Berzerker]

What a waste of money. Yeah, politicians know better than us how to spend our money...

[Zylka]

I doubt it. What implications?

Free baptisms at Walmart

[Solver]

I would just say "finally everyone will know what I have forever known".

[FrustratedPoet]

Re: SETI recieves signal from SOL type star!

Originally posted by Lancer
Did you wonder, just for a second? Well I made it up, it's not true, yet. What if it were though?

It would be interesting, but not really relevant to me. Who cares if some civilization 10 billion light years away once sent a radio transmission deep into space. They've probably been extinct for 9.9 billion years anway. The most stupid thing we could do is try and reply, although I bet we'd do it anyway.

Maybe we could play a PBEM game of Civ with them? 20 billion years to play one turn sounds pretty standard.

Having said that, it would be good to have some kind of definitive proof that life IS out there. If there is one other species that has advanced to our stage of civilisation then there must be others. However, as we discuss in the other alien thread at the moment, the existence of super-intelligent pan-galactic lifeforms isn't necessarily good news for us primitive apes.

[Dauphin]

Re: Re: SETI recieves signal from SOL type star!

On hearing that we received a signal my first question would be "What does it say?". If its directed at us I would be more concerned than if it was just traffic noise.

Originally posted by FrustratedPoet
It would be interesting, but not really relevant to me. Who cares if some civilization 10 billion light years away once sent a radio transmission deep into space. They've probably been extinct for 9.9 billion years anway. The most stupid thing we could do is try and reply, although I bet we'd do it anyway.

Such an old and distant signal would still be a great scientific find even if not a social earthquake. At any rate, if we do detect any signals they will likely be within a couple of hundred light years of Earth.

[Alexander's Horse]

wrong number

[MrWhereItsAt]

Seeing as the only way they could have received a signal and replied by now, that would equate to the time radio was invented - a round trip of less than 100 years, probably. I'd imagine that there would be quite some extra interest in space technology to get as far as sending a less than 50 year mission to establish contact.

For the first 10 years anyway, then some dumbass President would screw things up by claiming the money was needed more for building strategic missiles, betcha.

[Dauphin]

AH, especially if its a collect call.

[Q Classic]

well, first, we'd be puzzled as to what exactly the message meant, and surprised that the chose to send back a distorted version of our first broadcast--the 1936 olympics. then, we'd figure out, slowly but surely, that on top of that signal, there was data.

once we found out there was data, we'd be surprised at the sheer amount of it--but unfortunately stuck on how to decode it; at least, until a titan of the new economy gave a shot at it and figured that the data might be assembled into virtual three-dimensional cubes. once we tried that, we'd find that the data provides plans for a machine that apparently would hold five people.

we'd select five people to go into the machine, after much handwringing and political upheaval. we'd send those five people down the machine, only to have them appear to have gone nowhere.

they would claim that they were on some intergalactic journey, one which spanned over 24 hours and led to vega, among other places. but without proof, we would disbelieve them.

until we found out that there was a pattern in pi.