Gizmodo
Radio messages we've sent whizzing out into space over the years to try to contact aliens may simply be too boring for extra-terrestrial beings to answer, say a couple of Canadian astrophysicists. Tedious bits of math, physics and biology normally on offer may just be intellectual spam to alien minds. Find out what boffins Yvan Dutil and Stephane Dumas suggest we should send instead after the jump.
Previous messages beamed into deep space via radio-telescope by scientists have tried to demonstrate our intelligence by sending coded math problems, a bit of chemistry, physics and biology, some data on what we look like and even where we've come from. This may not, however, be good enough for their superior brains. Dutil and Dumas argue that if any alien does decode a message containing essentially trivial data, "after reading it, they will be none the wiser about us humans and our achievements."
The really difficult bit is, of course, trying to work out what would be interesting to an extraterrestrial. Dumas and Dutil suggest that we should try things that will be new and different to an alien, like Britney's last album Paris Hilton's sex tape "social features of our society," or economics or sociology problems. These can still be described mathematically, which neatly gets around the problem of which language to use.
Who knows, aliens may even be interested in our political issues, and so the starry-eyed Canadians have even begun trying to explain our electoral procedure in code: "We can explain our methods, and ask 'what do you use on your planet?'" You've got to hope that the answer is better than hanging chads.
As Dutil also points out, it might be handy to have a clever and interesting message to hand just in case an alien race ever tries to contact us "just to say 'we'll get back to you'"—followed presumably by "leave some math after the beep, and promise not to use your death-rays on us."
[New Scientist]
Comments
Dear E.T. FRIENDS:
Good Day.
With warm heart I offer my friendship,and greetings,and I hope this transmission meets you in good time.However strange or surprising this contact might seem to you,as we have not meet personally or had any dealings in the past, I humbly ask that you take due consideration of its importance and immense benefit.I write to seek your cooperation as my foreign partner. I apologize if this transmission does not suit your personal or business ethics. Please, this is a matter of urgency and I need your assistance very urgent.
good point. any 'space-man' would likely find our physics too simple. so, these guys being canadian should send out 'slap shot' in binary eh, or maybe the first season of the rick mercer report.
Well, it could have been worse.
"If you understand English, please send back 1..."
And lets not forget about the Berserkers.
I would send them "The final countdown" on mp3
AND instructions on how to play it, so after they figure out our math etc they can at least get a reward.
Did I accidentally type in the URL for the UK Gizmodo site? What's the overuse of the term "boffins"? Not a huge fan of having to wikipedia British slang in order to get through an article. Sheesh.
@gallasm: Given the long-documented association of Anglophilia with gadget-hounds, from the ability to quote Monty Python ad nauseum to the ability to quote Black Adder ad nauseum, a base comfort level with British slang is presumably possessed by all of Gizmodo's readership.
More on point, p'raps we could start beaming them reality television. That way, any hostility they may possess towards us will manifest itself as bitchy comments and hair-pulling instead of as death-from-above lasers.
Send them some porn and Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. That's what we want to see when we observe other animals - they're mating habits and what they eat. Pus that movie's hilarious.
Does anyone think that maybe they are just avoiding us. We are the terrible commercial-ridden AM station that nobody wants anything to do with. They just tune us out and avoid us at all costs. We are the bad Denny's of the universe....
How much you wanna bet all thit shitty TV programming that weve been beaming to our ET friends have scared them shitless. All those scifi movies where shooting first and asking questions later was the norm...
I mean really think about, imagine if our first received transmission from another planet was the equivalent of terminator 2!?
God forbid that they see Animal Planet and get pissed off... =P
@92BUICKLESABRE: Now that was funny. Finally we found a target that has never heard the Spanish Prisoner con before.
@radikaled: The best depiction of what would happen if aliens invaded is the first 2/3 of "War of the Worlds": aliens invade, we all die.
No worries though. I imagine aliens' advanced technology also includes spam filtering technology far beyond our primitive programs. That's what has been happening to all of our transmissions - they're being filtered out as spam. So no, we're not scaring them or pissing them off. We're just clogging up their series of tubes.
I'm tired of scientists sending out messages to aliens that even I don't understand. I feel misrepresented and when the aliens visit I'll do nothing other than fail to meet their expectations of me. I'd hope most of us have learned the great benefits of lowered expectations by now. Let's start aiming for contact with the 'C' average alien students of the universe. Perhaps math problems which sum to '8008135' (or 5318008 if we want to test their abilities to turn their calculators upside down) will pull in our type of crowd. Also, in case we're dealing with an alien group who doesn't know how to return a message across the universe, we should probably start firing off tin cans with strings attached in all directions from our planet.
Brilliant!
E.T., unimpressed by (what would perhaps be) the FIRST SIGN OF INTELLIGENT LIFE anywhere else in the universe, needs to be wooed with things that might interest them -- as if Earth were on an intergalactic date with Paris Hilton.
"E.T., it's Earth again."
"What-ever. I'm like so sick of watching the Honeymooners. You guys are like -- bo-RING!"
no guy that's ever talked to a girl he liked on SMS (not sure if the same is true for girls, i have no idea) could ever believe this theory. if they wanted to talk to us, they'd send back messages no matter how inane our messages sound.
"You must forward this message to ten friends in the next 10 hours. If you do not, you will have bad luck for 10 years.
Guys please forward it, my friend didn't and now he is in jail...for something he did not do! That's bad luck."
@youknowit: Nah, that's just life in the city.
@Waka in Japan: Nice... Europe FTW!
@OMG!!! Ponies!!!: If I recieved a transmission from another planet that resembled Snoop Dogg's fatherhood, or Everybody Loves New York, I'd either avoid that planet at all costs, or at the very lease slap them with an intergalactic fine for poluting free space with such trash. Or maybe blow up the planet.
This is painfully stupid. What makes these astro-dudes think that aliens would be any less bored by sociology and politics than math and science? The only difference is that the astro-dudes themselves perceive sociology and politics, subjects outside of their own field, as more interesting. From the point of view of an alien, the distinction is either arbitrary (it's all boring, it's all interesting) or unpredictable (wow! that planet has yarn!!! OMFG!!!)
@Gann: Come on. They'd get hooked just like the rest of us.
"Tonight on Krikkit's Guilty Pleasures: 'Who do you secretly want to boff? Eccentrica Gallumbits or Tila Tequila?'"
Well Snoop Dog and Tila Tequila kinda look like aliens. Maybe.
AVOID EARTH
They've cleverly enveloped themselves in a banality field!
Maybe aliens found more interesting our WWW, and maybe they would seeing Giz.
Don't worry about aliens invading, people. We have no special natural resources that millions of other uninhabited planets don't also have, they aren't going to come all the way over here to put us in camps to perform manual labor, and the odds of our planet being inhabitable by aliens is very slim, so they won't come here to use our planet as home.
But they may just blow it all up, if they misinterpret our social structure and get to thinking that what our governments do is what we want them to do.
Considering all of the signals (TV, cell phones, etc) that drift off into space, it is a safe bet that they know us better than we know ourselves. The fact that they do not respond should be telling us something.
@iscangel:
right! why think i not of that? of course they would seeing giz of our interesting WWW. wouldn't who want not to?
didn't people use to get abducted like left and right?
how come you never hear those crack-pot stories anymore?
and why was it always w/ the anal probing...If they are into that...i say send porn
Actually, do we WANT to have aliens much smarter than us find out that we're here? I thought the exercise is to find out if there are intelligent beings other than ourselves in the universe and not necessarily smarter beings. I actually like the idea of contacting aliens who are about as smart as us but no more. A much smarter being can come and kill everyone to take our resources. Think about it, if you're a hot woman it's kind of dumb to advertise to everyone that you're a hot naked lady living by yourself and defenseless, right?
DEER MALE E.T. WOULD YOU LIEK TO INCRESE THE SIZE OF YOUR P3NIS OR OV1P0S1T0R? NATURAL EARTHLY H3RBAL ENHANCEMENT!
See, we're just approaching this all wrong. They can't kill us with alien death rays if we trick them into giving them to us first!
---------------------------------------------
Greetings Glorious Otherworldly beings;
We are glad in that you are recieving of our communications, as we have need of your assistance in a matter of delicate.
It has come to our humble attnetion that one of your expansive comrade-ships has become crashed on our pitiful planet. We would be eternally grateful to be returning this vessil to you. However, we will require small deposit of 5 uber-death planet buster rays to veryfi your return-planet location. These rays will, of course, be returned to you with your wondrous ship.
We are thanking you for your assistance in this delimma.
Sincerely yours
Earth, Esq.
Aliens don't believe in us anyway. They're probably dismissing our messages as really boring drug-induced hallucinations.
@Noobs-R-Us: good point...although i never pictured you as a hot naked woman before, n00bs...
@Pope John Peeps II: lmao
Send them a Nigerian email scam letter!
Why do we bother sending signals to them? Nuclear explosions, commercial military radios, scientific tests probably emit enough radio to declare our existence
@92BuickLeSabre:
your suggestion is priceless. it coyly points out that we may be, in the opinion of the superior aliens, the "nigerian barristers" of the universe
again, PRICELESS!!!!
@s017jrs: Really? Do my comments just not show up any more or something?
(I kid.)
@Gann: As long as we can completely abolish anything that has to do with techno "music" then the world is a better place.
Porn. Definitely porn.
DEAR HERETICS. WE GREET YOU IN THE NAME OF THE ALMIGHTY EMPEROR. PLEASE RESPOND.
IF YOU ARE NECRONS, PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND AS YOU ARE CREEPY AND YOUR FRIGGING STAR GODS KEEP BLOWING UP OUR TANKS.
@92BuickLeSabre: I know, I replied to Gann's Snoop Dogg/I Love NY post when it was at the bottom of the list.
@EBone: Don't you know anything? Aliens hold hands to exchange long protein strands.
they probably did see some of our movies that depicts us killing them or dying from a cold or something else. So in my opinion THEYRE SCARED
I'm in ur radiofrequenceez, sending you mathz.
loldeathray
@nutbastard: "To Serve Man... It's a cookbook!!! It's a cookbook!!!"
Seriousely if you were beaming "The View" and "Roseanne" at MY planet, you'd best believe I'd blow your asses up.
@EBone: Given some of the internet pr0n out there, I'd be leery of transmitting pr0n to aliens. While it may titillate and arouse human, it likewise might send aliens the message that we are tasty.
Even worse, transmitting pr0n to aliens might be like an Osama tape - a provocation of war sent on a semi-regular basis resulting in military retaliations. Our only hope in that event is that, like our war efforts in Afghanistan, the aliens half-ass it while engaging in a protracted war against Alpha Centauri.
Besides, what makes you think that aliens haven't hacked into the world's largest repository of internet porn - Geek Squad Corporate Headquarters
If there are aliens, how can we assume that they will use the same modulation and/or computing schemes that we use? And how can we assume that they use the same or can even understand our math system?
@OMG!!! Ponies!!!: Yeah I wonder how many "personal" pictures or videos the Geek Squad has found on clients computers and kept.
Aliens are slave drivers...Durf...Finally...all those Saturday cartoons in my childhood years paid off!
All your base are belong to us
All your base are belong to us
All your base are belong to us
All your base are belong to us
All your base are belong to us
All your base are belong to us
if you want them to come down to us, send em a picture of goatse with a little dash of tubgirl and they'll come...
...to destroy us
Howsabout some hot cow porn action or The Anal Farmer's Almanac -aren't they into that?
@idlemind:
because so far, the limits of biology and physics (which guide math and life development) are well stated and suggested to be "laws", and have proven to be as so as far as we have travelled thoughout our universe (granted, not very far)
if we didn't believe them to be "laws" or found other planets where they don't hold, then they'd really put the kibosh on our education systems. since they are thought to be laws, these same prinicples would guide alien development and if they had any intelligence, they would be able to understand them.
there probably aren't any aliens, but whatever.
Dear Aliens:
We are a planet of xenophobes who believe in fairy tales and kill or oppress anyone who believes in a different fairy tale. Despite our recent technological advances, we are still so barbaric that our largest military and economic power tortures other people and considers a nuclear attack against a civilian population because their government might (but probably not) be developing nuclear weapons "on the table." If you confirm your existence to us, we will most likely hunt you down, kidnap you, and vivisect you in order to understand your biology. If we need a convenient excuse to strip our population of some more of their civil rights, we will invent some flimsy justification for invading your planet.
Won't you come and visit us soon?
You know those morons down the road who play their stereo too loud, have garbage strewn all over the front lawn, and way too many kids ... yeah, that's us.
The idea that we are the only planet in the universe, currently supporting life is completely insane, and egocentric. Intelligent life may be hard to come by out there, but according to any probability statistics, we can't possibly be alone. Taking that into account it stands to reason that an advanced civilization may indeed want to come and conquer earth.. The main exploitable resource being -A life sustaining planet-
"Good planets are hard to find"
Also we have only been sending out communication signals for about the last 100 years. In the grand scheme of things we may not even have been heard yet. It may take 1000s (or any other random #) of years to reach a target. Not to mention the 1000s of years it would take for them to return our call.
Then again maybe we are just talking to our selves.
@RexLuna:
my last post, but probabilistically, that's not really true. there's only one species on our earth that created and rides around in cars for example, and over 4 billion years, there have been several species (an understatement). we are frightened by large numbers and small numbers just the same. plus, we don't really know what life actually requires. we have basic postulates, but don't know within what "degrees of freedom" those requirements operate. if we find simple life on mars, then the possibilites increase of course.
and if an alien civilization could get to earth, they probably don't need inhabitable planets that much.
And we have only been sending and receiving messages for around 100 years, but those messages are much older due to distance travelled across space. So we can speculate that we are perhaps among the oldest advanced species there is, or that there is none dramatically older than us, because their messages would be currently hitting us. There might be some at a similar development stage to us and their messages just haven't gotten to us yet.
@strider_mt2k: Why don't we just cloak ourselves within a Someone Else's Problem Field?
Actually, it is quite probable that we are the only life in the universe. The statistics are simple, and freaky. I read about this in the New York Times. The conjecture is based on two assumptions:
a) If you consider life in the universe's entire existence as a timeline with a beginning and an end, the present moment is probably within the middle 95% of that timeline. In other words, we are unlikely to be living at the beginning 2.5% of life's entire existence, and we are also unlikely to be living at the final 2.5% of life's entire existence. We are most likely in the middle 95%.
b) It is unlikely that we are alive at an exceptional moment. If you take that middle 95% and pick a moment from it at random, the odds are very slight that you will pick an exceptional moment. The odds are enormous that you will pick a "mundane" moment--that is, a moment that is mostly interchangeable with any other moment. The overwhelming likelihood, then, is that we live in a moment that is indicative of 95% of the entire existence of l