Let's build a beacon to tell aliens who we were

The New Scientist ^ | 02 December 2011 | Chris Wilson

[Daffynition]

Somewhere in the cosmos, 36 light years away from us in the direction of the Hercules constellation, a series of electromagnetic waves stretching across 30 million miles of space carries a message from Earth. Each of the 1,679 signals it contains falls in one of two frequencies – an FM signal that translates to a bunch of ones and zeroes.

This message originated in 1974, when it was broadcast from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico to commemorate the facility's renovation. The authors of the message, Carl Sagan and SETI founder Frank Drake, hoped that any aliens who happened to receive it might notice that 1,679 is the product of two prime numbers, 23 and 73, and if you arrange all the zeroes and ones in a grid of 23 columns and 73 rows, you get a series of simple, ASCII-like pictures, including a double helix and a crude image of a person. Whether or not an alien civilization could crack the code, they would at least notice something funny about these FM signals. They're 10 million times stronger than the background noise from our sun.

[JoeProBono]

[Gideon7]

I share the concern of Stephen Hawking that we maybe should not advertise who we are and where we are at least someone picking up those signals might come visiting with sinister intent. Better that we just listen first.

“Like a newborn mewling in the forest, we are calling the wolves down upon us.” The Forge of God by Greg Bear.

With the advent of HDTV and digital compression, Earth today looks more like a random natural noise source. That should give us some cover.

[JoeProBono]

[JoeProBono]

[Daffynition]

La familla

[Daffynition]

[Daffynition]

[JoeProBono]

[ßuddaßudd]

yeah, probably.

[Reeses]

50 or 60 years from now - or sooner - a small lab of determined scientists - perhaps a dozen people or less - will be able to tailor make a possibly unstoppable virus and release it on the world

After thinking about it I think you are right that we are much more likely to kill ourselves than be killed by aliens. Another risk is robots/computers once they exceed human ability and can manufacture themselves. Like humans did they are now evolving fast on the battlefield. If the rule that only one advanced intelligence can exisit in a domain is true, the robots may compute their only option is to kill us off and we will be unable to stop them.

[The_Media_never_lie]

Hopefully, the program might discover intelligent life on earth. Little evidence.

[Daffynition]

And where have you been? The present Occupiers of the WH, are the most brilliant, ever to have done so.

[The FLOTUS cow, looks as if she got her neck tangled in some barbed wire while grazing...8-I]