Posted on 06/12/2009 11:21:09 AM PDT by Schnucki
Mankind has been searching for intelligent life in the universe for decades. One of the leaders of that search is Frank Drake. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, he said that daytime television might be the aliens' first taste of life on earth. That, he says, "is scary."
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Drake, after searching for decades, no extraterrestrial signal has yet been found. Are we alone in the universe?
Drake: We are definitely not alone. At the same time, I think it will be very hard to find the extraterrestrials. If they are only slightly more advanced than we are, they may be using technologies that don't reveal them. Not because they are trying to hide themselves, but because of the fact that every evidence that we find of extraterrestrials has to come from some form of energy that is wasted. If they are clever, they will be using technologies that do not waste energy.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The SETI project, though, is searching for radio-signals from other worlds. Does that mean that, if something is found, it will be from civilizations that are not terribly advanced?
Drake: A civilization may remain detectable through radio-waves only for a short time, maybe 100 or 200 years. That means that primitive civilizations like ours are the easiest to detect. We are wasteful. Almost all the energy that we send out with radio-transmitters, for example for our television systems, does not go to earth. It does not even arrive on earth just goes off into space.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: That means that the first thing that extraterrestrials get to see from us could be the daily soaps.
Drake: That is very scary. Particularly at night there are so many crime programs on television, violence and blood and all that. That is a really inaccurate picture
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
No reputable scientist would say “definitely.”
There may be alien life out there, or there may not, but there’s nothing definite about it. I’m a long-time SF fan, but please, this is not real science. Sure, no harm in looking. But we ain’t found them yet.
Maybe we have a bunch of aliens hooked on Maury. “Lemonjello...you are not the father.”
Or maybe they would catch an episode of Late Night with David Letterman and think we’re all Bozos.
Dunno. Maybe it’s not a bad thing that we come with a warning label...
You should check out the White House.
Hmmm, Maybe that's why he won't reveal his birth certificate..!
how dumb.
BY the time a TV/radio signal reaches another solar system it will be so diluted as to be nearly impossible to pick up and getting an entire program would be next to never gonna happen.
They will pick up traces of radio and be able to determine a direction and not actually get to watch anything. IMO.
“There is no evidence of alien life out there, so I conclude there is definity alien life out there.”
Wishful thinking as science.
we should be able to focus SETI on water-air planets in habitable zones of stars soon.
-PJ
If ET’s first glimpse of humanity is “the View”, they would be wise to make sure that the Sol system is declared a “no fly zone”.
The first TV broadcasts were from the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Hitler opened them, showing the way to our future.
That presumes that they can make any sense of a TV signal. We've heard whales "talking" since we "invented" SONAR (by emulating bats and dolphins) but we still don't know what they are talking about and we share the same planet.
Regards,
GtG
Well the aliens certainly can't see anything if they don't lose the rabbit ears for a digital box.
Hope they took care of that.
Have you got your towel , peanuts and beer??
We definitely are NOT alone.
Seriously.
Watch the Jerry Springer show, some time.
Jerry, most of his crew, and most (all?) of his guests are definitely from Planet Freakball.
The FCC will pay to have their converter box installed for ‘free’. Our govt is so efficient
Maybe they'll need one of those new fangled digital converter boxes.. :0)
I presume Drake was using ‘definitely’ in a statistical sense. Astrophysicist, Hugh Ross, is amassing a strong case for life on earth, especially intelligent life, to be an extremely, almost impossible occurence, if it is assumed that life arises by chance, as in the atheist-evolutionists approach to the issue. [www.reasons.org is a great source of the mounting evidence.]
Reminds me of when I saw Cronkite say something to the effect of, "Evolution is an indisputable fact."
Such 'experts' simply do not know what they do not know.
“Particularly at night there are so many crime programs on television, violence and blood and all that. That is a really inaccurate picture.”
This, from a guy in a country that put 6 million Jews in cattle cars and exterminated them only 55 years ago. In that sense, TV violence gives a “really inaccurate picture” of human nature—just not the way the scientist thinks.
Stardate 100101.00100100101011101101110111
Agent 0010010101010101
“We have investigated the life form on number 3 of Sol, and it is, unfortunately, made of meat. Not meat with a carbon core, but just meat. We picked some up and probed them. The were all meat.
The electromagnet signals you reported in your letter are created by the meat. They consist of meat noises, sometimes coupled with picures of meat. There were some logical signals which were more interesting, but eventually we discovered that they were also meat noises, more highly encoded than the others.
We will not be inviting them to join our civilization. Some forms of life are just too disgusting.”
Maybe not. If we go near the speed of light, our life cycle will slow down even as years and years pass on Earth.
I learned that from science fiction.
“We are definitely not alone. At the same time, I think it will be very hard to find the extraterrestrials. If they are only slightly more advanced than we are, they may be using technologies that don’t reveal them.”
They’re probably in collusion with those sneaky, pesky Keebler elves. It sure is hard to find them making cookies in hollow trees too.
Drake is very reputable. Which is why I was surprised he’d say that I tend to agree with him but, even still, that wasn’t smart.
“No reputable scientist would say “definitely.””
Well, they would if it were about definite stuff like Global Warming.
Not quite, the first ever television broadcast was transmitted by John Logie Baird in 1925. He sent a moving image from his laboratory to the next room. It was the head of a dummy used by a ventriloquist. In order to see what a human face would look like Baird fetched twenty year old William Taynton and thus he is the first human ever to be broadcasted on a moving image. The next year he sent another image through telephone wires to Glasgow from London. In the next year he sent the first ever transatlantic broadcast.
Regards,
GtG
Sure we do.
Whales: “Heeeeeey, baaaby!”
Orca: “Fish, Kevin!”
Grand Admiral Ooobliga of Planet Zork's SETI has managed to:
a) Detect Terran analog TV broadcasts and
b) Decode them ... (both audio and video) and even assigned the correct audio and video channel pairs.
Analog TV died today. Eventually, that cessation of signal will reach Planet Zork.
Do you suppose that ADM Ooobliga will interpret that as Terrans switching to a more efficient technology, or Terrans blowing themselves to Kingdom Come?
Whoops. I had some iPhone punctuation there.
ETs are too smart to come here. Even a glimpse of what the wirkd has become would turn your average ET green!
I suppose Grand Admiral Ooobliga must be working for the SEZI ...
Men In Black are, of course, unaffected.
Hey where is Ford and Trillian?? Maybe they could show us the aliens.
Lets be so concerned what they think of us and shut down all TV programs.
Yeah, you are a true scientist
At the same time, I think it will be very hard to find the extraterrestrials
Kook.
Yes, the proper thing would be to discuss statistical probabilities. But as you suggest, that, too, is very difficult.
On the one hand, there are a LOT of galaxies and stars out there, and probably a fair number of planets. We have spotted a few planets around other stars, but likely not of a kind to harbor life, so that’s still a bit of a question.
The more difficult problem has been raised by the microbiologists. Advanced life, or even life at all, is statistically unlikely. Even vanishingly small.
So, it’s a very large universe, but it still may not be large enough to harbor life on other planets. We just don’t have enough evidence to be sure. So we can construct hypotheses and theories, we can look around with telescopes and radiotelescopes, and we can listen for alien broadcasts. But so far, we haven’t found anything definite, or even sufficent to tell us roughly what the odds are— anywhere from astronomically large to vanishingly small.
I know we’re not alone in the Universe. And God certainly has revealed himself. :)
Of course — Bambi is Lost in Space AKA Space Kadet.
Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Daaaaaaaaaaaaa, Daaaaaaaaaaaaa
Da, Daaaaaaaaa
Da, Da, Da, Da, Da, Da, Da, Da
LOL
I wonder if they will complain to Comcast?
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