Because they aren’t taking our advice to not shout:
Great. So if there is an advanced civilization on Gliese 581d, the very first communication it’ll get from us will be a two-hour long text spam attack. How, exactly, is several billion variations of “u r teh suxxors rofl” and “OMG ur my new BFF aliens!!11!!!” supposed to convince an alien planet that we’re actually intelligent. More importantly, how will this convince them that we’re actually good neighbors?
Seriously, why should they be allowed to put the entire planet at risk like this? Listening is one thing, but deliberately broadcasting (or even, as in this case, narrowcasting) our presence doesn’t seem very smart to me.
The “h” in http is missing for the “not shout” link.
A) I’m surprised a libertarian is asking why they should have the right to make a broadcast.
B) The early warning radars ringing the North Pole make a far brighter beacon.
C) A civilization advanced enough to harm us could detect our presence visually using their sun as a gravitational lens — no need to rely on radio.
See http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=8813 for a dicussion of this technique and contemplate the 2nd comment, as well as the fact that the resolution does not decrease with distance from the target. For more coverage of the gravitational lens mission, google “centauri-dreams” and “gravitational lens” – there has been quite a bit of discussion about it.
D) The ethics of shouting are also discussed frequently at http://www.centauri-dreams.com – for example, see http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=834 (“Should SETI turn active”).
E) Gliese 581d isn’t a particularly good choice anyway.
Fixed, thanks.
My mistake, you didn’t say they did not have the right to broadcast, you questioned whether they should be allowed to broadcast, which is philosophically different. My other mistake: I didn’t mean “resolution” in the above comment — I meant that the focus extends forever (which means that telescopes sent to the gravitational lens don’t have to stop…)
I am OK with the messages sent to another civilization provided that they don’t make us look stupid, say, by using lots of exclamation points or by using all caps on obvious points we are making but emphasize anyway.
We would know if there were a civilization as radio-loud as ours on Gliese 581d, even if they didn’t send us anything directly. So our existence will only come as a surprise to them if they’re less advanced than us.
So I think we’re safe from interstellar death rays. All we need to worry about is interstellar psychic powers, because presumably those don’t depend on technological progress, and are full-blown when the species evolves.
We just need to keep an eye out for what look like outbreaks of mass madness, such as electing a glib narcissist fool as President, or popular proposals to turn over the most technically advanced and profitable sector of our economy to the same people who run the Post Office and DMV, or maybe that the only way to avoid bankruptcy is to spend more.
Ha ha! If any of those wacky things happen, then I guess we might worry that Glieseans are causing our civilization to self-destruct through their magic mind beams.
Yeah, they’d better vet those messages for evidence of lower intelligence… I can see it now:
Alien 1: “Have you see this crap coming in? It’s from that planet Ol*th^diyoq! discovered last chrono.”
Alien 2: “Yeah. The linguistic capabilities of the inhabitants don’t seem to have developed much beyond grunting and squealing.”
Alien 1: “So what do you think — recommend invasion and harvesting procedures for this place at the next Elders’ Assembly?”
Alien 2: “Sounds good to me. Elder Sss**nngghll?q!q is always up for trying new exotic meats.”
Oh shoot. I misspelled “Ol*th^diyoqq!” I left out a “q.”
Andrea, that’s part of our cunning plan to lure the aliens into a false sense of security. We’ll be chuckling evilly all the way to the dinner plate at our cleverness.
Really advanced civilizations will emit no radio noise at all. They are as undetectable to us as Neptune is to my cat.
If you haven’t already, check out Charles Pellegrino’s book Flying to Valhalla. A depressingly smart argument that we should have kept our mouths shut and our heads down.
I go along with the idea that any reasonably advanced alien race will probably have a replicator space probe in orbit around every star in the galaxy. In which case they will know about us at more or less the speed of light, whether we chose to shout or not.
Even worse, what if an alien race tries to reply in what appears to be our native language and our entire First Contact experience is in text-speak?
humans, all yr base blng 2 us, rofl!!!
Man, hand out the tin foil hats and get more spam for the fall-out shelter! When you seriously worry about alien invasions, you discredit anything else your web site has to say. I came here to view your support of Zubrin and his criticism of the Aerospace Corporation’s cost estimates for Mars First/Direct, but I’m leaving with my beliefs that Zubrin is a crackpot zealot confirmed and doubly reinforced.
I came here to view your support of Zubrin and his criticism of the Aerospace Corporation’s cost estimates for Mars First/Direct, but I’m leaving with my beliefs that Zubrin is a crackpot zealot confirmed and doubly reinforced.
Well, that wasn’t my intent, but I’m glad you came to the right conclusion, albeit for the wrong reasons.
What “support of Zubrin and his criticism of the Aerospace Corporation’s cost estimates for Mars First/Direct” are you talking about? I don’t recall expressing any.