I thought aliens created us?
Posted on 09/19/2015 9:45:02 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Whistle-blower Edward Snowden has some strong opinions on communications — even when those communications are coming from aliens.
The former intelligence-agency contractor turned fugitive was an unexpected guest on famous astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson's StarTalk podcast on September 18. And, inevitably, the two got to talking about extraterrestrials.
Snowden became an infamous household name in 2013 when he leaked classified documents divulging the government's top-secret mass-surveillance program, which involved collecting personal information on Americans via phone records without their knowledge.
When the news broke, the US charged him with theft and espionage, and he's now living in Russia where he has asylum.
But Tyson scored an interview with him in New York City. How? Snowden rigged a robot that he can control from Russia, and rolled right into Tyson's office at the Hayden Planetarium in New York with his face displayed on the screen.
The conversation turned to encryption and cybersecurity, but here's where an astrophysicist differs from a journalist: Tyson's line of questioning quickly turned to how encryption relates to communication with ... aliens.
Tyson asked Snowden if a highly intelligent alien civilization might be communicating with encrypted messages. And Snowden had an unsettling answer.
First, Snowden said, let's assume that most advanced societies eventually realize that they need to encrypt their communication in order to protect it. This could also be the reason why we've never heard from other civilizations — their messages may have just been melding into the background static of the universe.
Here's Snowden's full answer, from the StarTalk podcast:
So if you have an alien civilization trying to listen for other civilizations, or our civilization trying to listen for aliens, there's only one small period in the development of their society when all of their communication will be sent via the most primitive and most unprotected means.
So when we think about everything that we're hearing through our satellites or everything that they're hearing from our civilization (if there are indeed aliens out there), all of their communications are encrypted by default.
So what we are hearing, that's actually an alien television show or, you know, a phone call ... is indistinguishable to us from cosmic microwave background radiation.
So it could be possible there are alien messages constantly hitting our satellites, and we just don't recognize them because they're so heavily encrypted. (The cosmic microwave background radiation that Snowden mentions is thermal radiation throughout the universe left over from the Big Bang. It basically looks and sounds like static to us puny humans.)
Of course, that's assuming an alien civilization has the same security issues that we have here on Earth, and they need to worry about protecting their communication system from their alien governments, Tyson jokes.
Snowden agreed that aliens might be a little more politically sophisticated than us.
Listen to the entire StarTalk conversation with Edward Snowden >>
I just figured the Bible is true and aliens are not in the future reality of the human race because it would muddy what has been revealed by God: JUDGMENT.
I thought aliens created us?
Amd yet, mankind has been using encryption for millennia
Time for Michael Rennie and GORT to swing by again to deliver another cool it warning to us puny humans.....
Everyone makes the assumption that ‘aliens’ have a spoken language.
“Ak ak ak ak!”
I figure that if you are an alien on another planet, you are so far away that Earth is pretty much invisible. Why, out of billions of stars and planets would you go to one you don't even know exists ?
What if aliens communicate by colors of light ?
Or by pheromones ?
What if they don’t project their ‘communications’ outward into space ?
Signals follow a pattern. Language doesn’t matter. It’s the pattern that sticks out. It’s how packet analysis can determine the type of information you’re transmitting and receiving without knowing the precise info you’ve got.
Encryption disrupts patterns and can blind snoopers to the content.
Even if you beamed a signal straight at another planet in another galaxy, the planet would not be ‘there’ when the signal got there.
AM and FM band frequencies are broadband radio transmissions, and they lack the watts of power necessary to be detectable beyond the edges of this Solar System even by the largest radio telescope receivers, such as the Arecibo radio telescope. Narrow band transmissions may be detectable by the largest receivers out to a distance of a little beyond a thousand lights years (LY), but only when the transmitters are broadcasting the narrow band transmissions with terawatts of power for a periods of time measured in the tens of thousands to millions of years necessary to travel through space to the Earth. Even if it is assumed there must have been millions of civilizations throughout just the Milky Way Galaxy alone, the number of such civilizations willing to transmit this much power for a long enough period of time to be detectable at the Earth at this particular time and distance from the transmitter likely remains quite small if any at all. So, the absence of a detectable radio signal from an alien civilization is no indication whatsoever that they do not exist.
If Aliens are anything like us I don’t want to meet them!
Snowden has watched to many SciFi movies and his commentary on extraterrestrial communications is about as valid as his integrity.
Checked your bank statement online lately?
If any aliens (or Eddie's erstwhile colleagues) were listening in, they should have seen white noise between the IP headers.
Eddie's theory is that, once a civilization is advanced, it encrypts everything, so that eavesdroppers from afar, if they see anything at all, see only white noise, not signs of civilization.
Makes perfect sense. Some science fiction writer should have figured this out a long time ago. I wonder if that happened.
“Eddie’s theory is that, once a civilization is advanced, it encrypts everything, so that eavesdroppers from afar, if they see anything at all, see only white noise, not signs of civilization.”
The alleged Snowden claim is nonsensical.
1. If the “advanced” civilization is attempting to communicate with previously unknown civilizations using radio energy, the radio frequencies to be used are rather obvious due to the limitations of using other radio frequencies, and encryption of the radio communications would be obviously contrary to the purpose of making First Contact using such primitive technology.
2. Using encryption with radio transmissions is far too slow and too weak in power across interstellar and intergalactic distances to be useful for most any communications other than First Contact, which requires the communications to not be encrypted.
3. Humans cannot “eavesdrop” on the radio emissions of alien civilizations, because those radio emissions are too weak in power to be detectable at the Earth, with the only exception of extremely high power (many terawatts) narrow band transmissions designed for non-encrypted First Contact purposes within about one thousand light years (LY) of the Earth. The radio emissions and radio frequency interference emissions of alien civilizations would be undetectable beyond a distance of a fraction of a single light year from the sources due to the dissipation of the radio energy and interstellar plasma.
The whole premise of the alleged Snowden claim appears to be another hoax.
Do humans have deep, meaningful conversations with cows, chickens, or hogs? Or do they simply slaughter them and cook them for dinner?
“Makes perfect sense.”
No, it makes perfect nonsense. See:
[sci.astro] ET Life (Astronomy Frequently Asked Questions) (6/9)
Section - F.06 How far away could we detect radio transmissions?
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/astronomy/faq/part6/section-12.html
i would assume anyone that’s using a gamma beam to communicate would understand, and compensate for, stellar drift during the communications time
of course, gamma radiation would be too slow to get there in any reasonable time frame.
which would leave you with entangled particles as the primary mode of communication... something we could never eavesdrop on or find evidence of
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