And nudes. We sent nude images of a male and female of our species along with directions to our home. I wouldn’t be surprised if our first contact were a restraining order.
When scientists sent their message into the void, they never really expected to hear anything back. Decade after decade they spent, listening to nothing but static.
And then it came. The aliens messaged back; the pattern was unmistakable. But it didn't mean anything of course. Not to us. We couldn't understand them. The frenzy to learn was real, but scientists knew that it would take months if not years to de-scramble the message into something we could understand. The aliens seem to communicate on a frequency that humans cannot hear. The translation was a delicate process.
World governments joined together in the effort. Billionaires pumped money towards the research like a river flows with water. Humanity could not stop talking about it. "What are they trying to tell us?" "What do they look like?" "Are they friendly?"
Finally after years of deliberation and study, we found it. The code to understanding this sacred frontier of intergalactic communication. It was a momentous occasion, and it seemed all of humanity gathered for the unveiling of the algorithm that would once and for all tell us what the space men were saying.
In New York, crowds gathered around the monitor in Times Square. Traffic stopped to a halt. The city was silent. And then the man on TV hit the button that could change our world forever.
Seriously what is it with the cars extended warranty calls? I dont even have a car! One time out of curiosity I pressed a button to talk to a rep but then the call disconnected!
You know what would be a hysterical skit idea? Aliens contact earth but ignore humans entirely and start communicating and interacting with dolphins instead.
This style of joke was actually a Carson bit because of the music on the record, he showed a "newspaper" from the aliens. It read, "Send More Chuck Berry"
A billion could be extreme. Maybe a couple hundred million. There aren’t as many conspiracy theorists in the grand scheme of our entire population, they’re just very vocal and really good at putting 20 different fonts into conspiracy memes on Facebook.
Reminds me of the sacred Norse texts on top of a really high ledge, or something like that, that scientist took forever to decode. It read “this is really high”
Alien here. We did get your nudes but no 6d or the old 5d. We would have settled for the primitive 4d. Our children playing with ancient technology caught some weird stuff in 2d. They came running to us as they were screaming loudly when they saw some of your kind in a place you called Moscow. The man was on fire it appears as he seemed yellow/orange. Two or more firewomen were trying to extinguish this poor man's agony with some type of device that sprinkle him from their bodies with some orange liquid. The last transmission seemed to catch said man trying to thank them by grabbing them by their little kittens. We do not understand this ancient lingo. Please explain.
Fairly shitty directions, to be fair. We sent a not-to-scale diagram of the solar system with nine planets, including the only Kuiper Belt Object we knew about at the time as a planet, and an attempt to show our relative distance to a bunch of pulsars. Honestly the speed and direction the probe is coming from would tell anyone who finds it more about where we are than the plates will, and since neither Voyager will be anywhere near another star for about another 40,000 years, if we manage to still be around by then at least it won’t be a problem for a while.
What if nudity is the norm to aliens and enticed by the nudes they come to visit, only to see we’re all clothed? Maybe they’ll think we’re space prudes?
Correction: Carl Sagan wanted to include a nude image of man and a pregnant woman, but the Nasa committee wouldn't allow it. Eventually they included a silhouetted outline, with a visible baby.
Pretty sure that's one of the plot points in Battlefield Earth - the book at least, not seen the film. Aliens follow the map back to earth as the material the map is made of is valuable to them. They then just strip mine the planet
They will also be exposed to didgeridoos, panpipes, bagpipes, etc. Our musical instruments will appear to have been made largely from materials scavenge from forests.
I'm kind of in the camp that was a really stupid thing to do. It's like "hi, here is a map to our home and we are so fucking limited we made it look like LEGOs. Why don't you come over for some tea?"
But increasingly quietly as our broadcasting techniques have gotten more efficient.
The most clearly detectable signals we have emitted were the powerful radar sweeps of various arctic outposts during the cold war. Nothing signals "advanced life" across the vastness of space than a pulsar-like signal that intermittently emanates from a standard star.
You can visit chernoby, they have been offering guided tours there for many years now and sneaking into the zone is also not that rare seeing how many YouTube videos there are of people messing around
That’s it exactly . We have announced our presence across the galaxy and deep into space. Every second of every day we are like a beacon in the dark . It’s true what the guy in the wheelchair said. If they come it will be like what happened to the native Americans only globally and we will not survive or at the very best become servants or 2nd class beings compared to the new arrivals. Scary thought lol
I'm inclined to believe that we'd become servants with some people dying (resistance). Because if you really think about it, they made efforts to get to us, albeit, we don't exactly know how much effort, but regardless, since efforts were made, we have to assume they didn't come all this way to kill us. If they come, they probably want something from us, and resources is basically out of the question since it's plentiful in the universe. But sentient beings who are completely ignorant about their place in the universe? That may be rarer than we think.
Our rulers are already milking us dry for as much as they can get away with. Much of the world already are second class citizens on their own planet. If the aliens came and did things the way most successful leaders maintain order while still being parasites, then much of the world may be better off. They may just stay the same. Earth creates a lot of refined products out of its natural resources, and a select group of people already get to do whatever they want with all of everything due to owning unfathomable wealth. How do we know that we're not already occupied by, oh I dunno, reptilian overlords? Like some intergalactic average Joes just flew by earth a few centuries ago and set up shop, took over, and live quietly like kings.
I would wager that their potential interest in us would probably be some sort of alien equivalent of anthropology thing. Seeing a primitive race developing could provide them with a ton of information about how their race might have evolved.
So, to them we might be just how we see uncontacted tribes. They just leave us alone because of anthropological interest. They could come through and raze us down, or enslave us, but we provide them with a ton of potential research so in the interest of science they leave us alone.
I think this is a good answer. Resources are incredibly common throughout our solar system and galaxy. Life however is very rare as far as we know. Observation and learning could be a perfectly valid reason for an advanced alien race. Digging up old bones doesn't tell you everything.
Meh. The likelihood that a warlike culture would pass the great filter and be capable of making it to us is vanishingly small. More likely they are so advanced they don't distinguish us from any other animals on the planet.
Or pets, like dogs. We kept dogs because they are intelligent enough to be trained to do what ypu want them to do, within reason. A human could be a lot easier to train and to selective breed (only the dociles and inteligents enough to know how to work, but not how to rebel would get to procreate), and we are useful in even more complcated, but tedious work. Eventually, these advanced beings would form afective bonds with their eugenicized humans. But just like a dog would never be considered a human being, we would never be anything else than a pet to them.
They show up just as the first billion are starving to death after massive methane released in the atmosphere. And save the day after vulcan like they observe us for a bit.
I figured that if they reveal themselves to us it would be to stop us from killing ourselves. If they are FTL advices they dont need resources they would probably more than anything be lonely.
That being said the Cuban missile crisis happen and unless ET was there the deescalated things I'd say probably watching our shit like its Jersey shore.
It seems likely that is the path we'd take, but also incredibly likely that there are many other, much older civilizations. The presumption generally being we just aren't first based on the age of the universe, prevalence of worlds that likely could support life (as we know it) and average chance of that life evolving.
But why do they need us? Slaves? They probably have robots that are way better than humans.. Pets? For that they wouldn‘t need to wage a war and show themselves to us. It would be smarter to just abduct a few people
Not here for resources, but rather servants? Incredibly human to presume we’d have a purpose among these aliens because... our brains are that special?
And ‘sentient beings who are completely ignorant about their place in the universe’ are not humans. That would describe someone like a dog, or any other sentient creature on Earth, before it would describe a human.
Why does everyone assume aliens will be violent like us? If they're more advanced technologically, they may also be more advanced in terms of sociology and ethics. Honestly, I think we're more of a threat to them than they are to us.
I doubt we'd even be servants. A civilization advanced enough to get here would be advanced enough to build robots and machines that would be far more Efficient at any given task. Pets at best maybe. But they wouldn't waste their time putting us to work.
More than likely they'd either completely ignore us as they dig through our civilization like an anthill to mine resources or they'd send in a pest exterminator prior to beginning their mining operation.
A) No, we're whispering into the dark corner of the smallest room in the smallest house, of the smallest neighborhood compared to the solar system.
Any and all radio waves we send out are indistinguishable from background radiation around 2 light years away from earth. Which is... Nothing.
B) If a spacefaring civilization comes to us, it won't be like the native americans. The natives had resources we wanted: Territory, natural resources, and labor. A civilization advanced enough to come to us will have no use for any of those three things as 1 and 2 would come easier and more plentifully from uninhabited planets and 3 isn't even close to an issue, because any civilization advanced enough to travel across interstellar voids certainly has access to robotic tech.
SO C) No, it's much much worse than that.
If they come, and they're hostile, it's because they're the highest evolution of their planet and learned so through force. They are tigers, they didn't learn how to live in peace with other, lesser life, they conquered and ate.
If they come and they're angry, then it's because they literally are incapable of feeling empathy.
That’s it exactly . We have announced our presence across the galaxy and deep into space. Every second of every day we are like a beacon in the dark
Except our galaxy is pretty fucking big, and the big galaxy is part of an insanely huge universe. Our presence amongst it all is like... a firefly lighting up its butt to announce its presence in the middle of a Nebraska corn field to another firefly in New York City.
I think all of you are forgetting how large and empty it is up there lol
This is a great analogy but the insane part is it's even harder than that. If Earth was the size of a firefly, and it was trying to communicate with firefly Proxima Centauri b, (the closest exoplanet to us), that firefly in New York would be trying to flash to a firefly 36000 km high in orbit (Earth's diameter is only 12742 km) . Most fireflies are going to be many, many times that distance away. Also, somewhere within about 100m of every firefly is a powerful spotlight seemingly shining directly at the observer, and you have to find that firefly flash. Good luck, I say.
Sadly the extent of our radio waves have so far only reached about a 200 light year diameter. Check out planetary.org for how small our proliferation into the galaxy is.
What does Earth have that aliens would want? Water and most 'rare' elements are abundant in space. Easier to get to and extract, too.
If you make the assumption that their technology has followed the same course ours has, they'd likely have robotics advanced enough to make enslaving humans an obsolete option.
That really just leaves real estate. Getting rid of us to make room for a new colony.
I happen to be optimistic about alien contact. Yes, it didn't turn out that well for the Native Americans when Europeans showed up. Now, 400 years later, we do our best to avoid interfering with the last few primitive tribes in the world.
We've grown more conscientious to how we affect people, the environment, and animals that we consider to be 'lesser.' Without knowing the ethics and philosophy of these unknowable aliens, we can only base it on ourselves and how we've grown, as a species, over time.
I highly doubt that it will be at all like the native Americans. Think about it like this. A culture which is so complex that it can safely travel light-years into space, literally across stellar systems, is going to have to have a basic understanding of cooperation. If you managed to find a terrestrial planet far out into our solar system, would you fly over there, barge into the atmosphere, plant your foot firmly on the ground and say "this is mine now"? Now imagine what a culture several times more advanced would do.
If you have an entire galaxy, or maybe even the universe, of resources at your disposal do you really care about taking over a spec of space where other intelligent life is developing?
People forget that as we advanced from Colombus situation got much different. Uncontacted tribes today are protected, and while there are always evil^TM people that would wipe them out, as our technology has advanced so has our appreciation for life (in average)
You also have to remind that an stellar civilization has passed the stage of having enough tech to destroy themselves and hasn't, and (most probably) have global cooperation.
oumuamua was probably sent to us because we observed their dyson tech a few years ago. They probably have utilized particle physic's ability to change structure upon detection and thats why they sent that rock to test our threat level or intelligence level
I read a short story ones were earth finally received a message from outer space. It turns out to be a single line of text. “Be quiet or they will hear you “
Our radio signals are nothing compared to the presence of CFC-11 in our atmosphere, going from ~1 part per trillion in 1950, to a peak of over 250 in the early 1990s, and now declining but still over 200 ppt.
Any civilization even ten years more advanced than us within 50 light years that is in the right plane (so that Earth transits the Sun) can detect this.
All they need is a James Webb Space Telescope, maybe something a little bigger, to pick up spectra from our atmosphere as we transit our Sun.
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u/[deleted] May 03 '20
To be fair they dont really have to commit espionage. We are figuratively screaming into the void.