Why didn't the aliens just send it to that dish pictued by their crop formation? 
The "Arecibo reply"
- Thread starter The Borg Queen
- Start date
There's sort of a problem here. DNA by the nature of the chemical bonds CAN'T have 3 strands. It would be unstable. The reason DNA is great for encoding our "program" is that the chemicals on one strand are directly complimentary to the other strand. When you reproduce the two halves of the DNA, you get two identical copies (in theory -- it still fucks up sometimes). Whith a third strand, there wouldn't be a way to copy the third strand, so that data would get lost.
And really, if the message WAS from aliens, why the heck do they have 9 planets? Pluto got demoted because it's not a planet, surely aliens can figure that out?
The only real test would be aliens giving us information we don't have. If I was going to convince someone I was from a more advanced society, I don't send them pictures of myself -- I'd send them blueprints of something that they don't have. If we got bluprints to a hyperdrive (one that worked) in a crop circle, we know it ain't from earth because we can't build one.
Maybe I'd send back pictures of something that "leaked" and just recently reached Earth. For example, the Gilse planet we found is 20 LY from earth, if the aliens are from Gilse, they could send back an image from TV from 1987.
It seems like either of these would be harder to fake (if we get the cast of LOST or Harry Potter, then we know that the circlemakers were from within the solar system, whereas getting TJ Hooker is more plauseable). In other words, knowing too much would invalidate the message.
What needs to happen is that the message has to be varified as something that college students and other hoaxsters can't do, or at least something that if they try to fake it it will be detected. So far, even this message isn't one that can't be faked if someone knew what the original message said.
I see there being little-to-zero evidence that crop circles are extraterrestrial in origin. However, I also don't think the "Arecibo reply" was created by the same hoaxers who created the circular pattern ones. Much more likely it's a separate hoax perpetuated by bored astrophysicist graduate students.
Some remarks on your comments though:
That's not entirely true. I can imagine a system where a DNA strand of three parts splits in to those three parts, each gets copied twice, and they recombine (much in the same way our double helix does) in to three copies. Maybe then their cellular division would go three ways each time instead of two ways? :-)
Maybe they're so entirely different from us (mentally) that leaving crop circles seems like a reasonable way to proceed for them. For example, when we see an ant farm, there is no obvious leader, the colony is self-organising (a 'Queen' is in reality nothing more than a birthing machine, she's not the commander). Imagine ants that were as intelligent as us, living on another world. Who would we talk to? What might we do to communicate with such a civilisation? Might our efforts to communicate be interpreted in strange, wrong ways?
It'd be from 1967. 20 years there, so in 1987 they'd be watching 1967 TV, which they could then send back to us, taking another 20 years, so arriving in 2007.
TV is a really hard thing to decode though. If you don't know the refresh rate (horizontally or vertically). Even if you could decode it, who knows what they'd see? Perhaps their eyes work on different frequencies. Perhaps they don't have eyes at all and use echo-location. Even if they do, perhaps they're giant floating bags of gas in a Jovian planetary atmosphere, and wouldn't recognize human beings as life-forms on a 2D projection of a 3D scene. Perhaps they don't use radio waves to communicate, perhaps they developed quantum communication or laser links first, as part of an utterly different technological history driven by different needs and different kinds of minds...
Also TV is very weak. It spreads out a lot, and by the time it's 20ly away, it may simply be too weak to detect. Much more likely that SETI will pick up a directed communications beam (of coherent radio waves) which has been sent at us on purpose or by accident. Even then, SETI don't monitor a huge part of the sky. From memory it's only a single-figure percentage, and a tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
I think it's extremely unlikely we'll ever pick up alien radio transmissions with current or near-future technology, except possibly by chance, without significant extra efforts. SETI is not a popular thing to fund versus fighting cancer or funding wars, though.
And even if we do receive something, who knows if we're able to understand or decipher it? The WOW Signal still remains a mystery, so perhaps we already have. If it is an alien transmission, we have no idea what it means.
Some remarks on your comments though:
That's not entirely true. I can imagine a system where a DNA strand of three parts splits in to those three parts, each gets copied twice, and they recombine (much in the same way our double helix does) in to three copies. Maybe then their cellular division would go three ways each time instead of two ways? :-)
Maybe they're so entirely different from us (mentally) that leaving crop circles seems like a reasonable way to proceed for them. For example, when we see an ant farm, there is no obvious leader, the colony is self-organising (a 'Queen' is in reality nothing more than a birthing machine, she's not the commander). Imagine ants that were as intelligent as us, living on another world. Who would we talk to? What might we do to communicate with such a civilisation? Might our efforts to communicate be interpreted in strange, wrong ways?
It'd be from 1967. 20 years there, so in 1987 they'd be watching 1967 TV, which they could then send back to us, taking another 20 years, so arriving in 2007.
TV is a really hard thing to decode though. If you don't know the refresh rate (horizontally or vertically). Even if you could decode it, who knows what they'd see? Perhaps their eyes work on different frequencies. Perhaps they don't have eyes at all and use echo-location. Even if they do, perhaps they're giant floating bags of gas in a Jovian planetary atmosphere, and wouldn't recognize human beings as life-forms on a 2D projection of a 3D scene. Perhaps they don't use radio waves to communicate, perhaps they developed quantum communication or laser links first, as part of an utterly different technological history driven by different needs and different kinds of minds...
Also TV is very weak. It spreads out a lot, and by the time it's 20ly away, it may simply be too weak to detect. Much more likely that SETI will pick up a directed communications beam (of coherent radio waves) which has been sent at us on purpose or by accident. Even then, SETI don't monitor a huge part of the sky. From memory it's only a single-figure percentage, and a tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
I think it's extremely unlikely we'll ever pick up alien radio transmissions with current or near-future technology, except possibly by chance, without significant extra efforts. SETI is not a popular thing to fund versus fighting cancer or funding wars, though.
And even if we do receive something, who knows if we're able to understand or decipher it? The WOW Signal still remains a mystery, so perhaps we already have. If it is an alien transmission, we have no idea what it means.
I can see your point that they might not see our TV signals like we do. But if they can't figure out a TV signal, what makes people think they can figure out the aricibo dot-matrix image?
The reason that I was thinking TV is that what you see is a straight-up image encoded. Provided that you can figure out the frequencies, what they see doesn't need to be interpreted. It would show human faces, different devices, etc. It would also be harder to fake an image. If you'd used my faulty maths, you'd draw something related to 1987, when what you should be drawing comes from 1967.
With aricibo, even once you have the image on a computer screen, figuring out what it represents might be difficult. Even after reading the Wpedia entry, I still can't figure out how the chemistry data is encoded. I'm not sure that I could tell without prior knowledge that the helical structure is DNA rather than something else. It would require interpretation once it was re-displayed on the other side.
But either way, I don't think aliens are going to travel 20LY to carve stupid pictures in wheat. The cattle mutilations don't make sense (we can clone a whole fuggin' cow from a few stomach cells, they need all the naughty bits WTF???). And they aren't buzzing random cities either.
The reason that I was thinking TV is that what you see is a straight-up image encoded. Provided that you can figure out the frequencies, what they see doesn't need to be interpreted. It would show human faces, different devices, etc. It would also be harder to fake an image. If you'd used my faulty maths, you'd draw something related to 1987, when what you should be drawing comes from 1967.
With aricibo, even once you have the image on a computer screen, figuring out what it represents might be difficult. Even after reading the Wpedia entry, I still can't figure out how the chemistry data is encoded. I'm not sure that I could tell without prior knowledge that the helical structure is DNA rather than something else. It would require interpretation once it was re-displayed on the other side.
But either way, I don't think aliens are going to travel 20LY to carve stupid pictures in wheat. The cattle mutilations don't make sense (we can clone a whole fuggin' cow from a few stomach cells, they need all the naughty bits WTF???). And they aren't buzzing random cities either.
People need roof antennae just to get local stations; since signals are reflected back by the upper atmosphere, I doubt much gets into space. A nearby intelligence might be able to detect the fact of transmissions, but they wouldn't get much information, even if they knew how to decode.
And I never bought into the "alien logic" argument. They may have different customs and methodology, but, if they are a technological, spacefaring civilization, their thinking won't be that different. "Alien logic" is usually just invoked to excuse the bizarre, childish behavior of aliens in close encounter stories.
And I never bought into the "alien logic" argument. They may have different customs and methodology, but, if they are a technological, spacefaring civilization, their thinking won't be that different. "Alien logic" is usually just invoked to excuse the bizarre, childish behavior of aliens in close encounter stories.
>>RJ
yeah, that and the aliens seem to like snogging with rednecks. That ain't logical at all.
yeah, that and the aliens seem to like snogging with rednecks. That ain't logical at all.
All Seeing Eye
Admiral
Its obviously a hoax because the Arecibo message sent from Earth was that stupid and made up of complete nonsense that even the most mentally/technologically advanced civilisation out there would look at it and not make head nor tail of it and wouldnt even know how to put together a reply.
I mean come on even I could have designed a message that made more sense than THAT!
I mean come on even I could have designed a message that made more sense than THAT!
when talking about crop circles and hoaxes, it's important to note that the first guys to do the hoax circles admitted that they got the idea from reports of crop circles they had read about. now it's still a big leap to go to aliens or time travelers. more than likely some sort of atmospheric phenomenia
>> Mule
True, but I have a bit of trouble with the notion that these are aliens. If you'd travelled billions of miles, why carve in the wheat of some redneck? Why not ... knock on the front door? Or maybe land on the White House lawn? They aren't trying to keep their existance secret (at least based on soposed sightings), so why are they only carving in wheat fields?
Besides that, the crop circles themselves aren't anything that human knowledge can't reproduce right now. So we're at square 1. We have a few admitted hoaxers, and absolutely nothing about the circles is hard for humans to figure out right now.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's a duck. There's nothing about these figures directly pointing to alien origin, so chances are this is a smurfed up human thing.
True, but I have a bit of trouble with the notion that these are aliens. If you'd travelled billions of miles, why carve in the wheat of some redneck? Why not ... knock on the front door? Or maybe land on the White House lawn? They aren't trying to keep their existance secret (at least based on soposed sightings), so why are they only carving in wheat fields?
Besides that, the crop circles themselves aren't anything that human knowledge can't reproduce right now. So we're at square 1. We have a few admitted hoaxers, and absolutely nothing about the circles is hard for humans to figure out right now.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's a duck. There's nothing about these figures directly pointing to alien origin, so chances are this is a smurfed up human thing.
