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aliens and hidden messages

den4

先輩
15 Nov 2002
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If I were an alien with the ability to span across the galaxies in vehicles that are very technologically advanced, would I make it easy for pathetic, whining, barbaric earthlings to know I exist? 'course not...

people on earth are so arrogant in thinking that aliens would reveal their presence to the likes of us, either favourably or unfavourably, to help or invade...

more likely they look upon us like we look upon the ignorant masses and basically ignore our petty, insignificant existence when there is a whole, grand, universe out there with billions of worlds to observe and colonize, or just observe, with agendas that have nothing to do with human affairs...

or, more likely, they pick up our radio and tv signals and use them for their nightly interstellar sitcoms with shows like: "More Live Feeds from Terran TV," or "Entertainment Earth Tonight," or "What's My Terran Up To Today?" and laugh at us as we laughed at the Iraqi Information Minister at all the stupid things we do on our world....
 
basically humans believe they are the most intelligent life on this planet....which may be true...but I sometimes think otherwise....

I think problem solving is one measure of intelligence. If aliens were looking into our world now and see that, despite our technological advances in the last couple of centuries, we are still relatively unchanged from the folks several thousands of years ago, they would probably just ignore us or look upon us with mere amusement....

if aliens were to hide their messages from us or bypass us completely, as the article suggests, then my thoughts were mere suggestions of some of their reasons why they would do this....of course, I would never presume to understand them, since chances are they may not even have any rationale that any human could ever hope to understand...just played around with some ideas.... :D
 
As a species, we are relatively young. I like to think that if there were superior (whatever that may entail) beings observing us humans from afar, they would view us with the amused tolerance that adults allow a precocious child.
 
Originally posted by den4
I think problem solving is one measure of intelligence. If aliens were looking into our world now and see that, despite our technological advances in the last couple of centuries, we are still relatively unchanged from the folks several thousands of years ago, they would probably just ignore us or look upon us with mere amusement....

That would be a very human reaction. I imagine they would look at us and reflect upon their own evolution. A culture that's so advanced as to embark on interstellar travel is likely to show respect for other creatures no matter how (under)developed they are.
 
Yeah, that's probably what chicken think of us as well, and yet we find them very tasty... :)
 
Originally posted by thomas
That would be a very human reaction. I imagine they would look at us and reflect upon their own evolution. A culture that's so advanced as to embark on interstellar travel is likely to show respect for other creatures no matter how (under)developed they are.

Culture does not reflect technological advances all the time. A third world nation could be given hi-tech gear and trained to travel interstellar pathways without a complete understanding of all that it entails....kind of like sending a chimp into space and trained to push a few buttons....yes they can travel in space, but that hardly makes them culturally advanced.

Note, I'm not comparing third world nations to chimps, or that third world nations are culturally inferior, but my point is that culture does not reflect how advanced a technology of a given people has to be.....even in first world nations, there are folks that refuse to use hi-tech stuff, preferring natural things over the mechanical....many folks in first world nations believe they are culturally superior because of their technology.....and some third world nations may also believe they have a superior culture for precisely the reason that they lack the hi-tech stuff.....


I guess until we actually meet some aliens (that aren't here to mutilate animals or abduct people for some X-files type scenario) and have some casual talk about whether there actually is a Restaurant at the end of the Universe, I suppose we'll never really know how they feel, assuming that they have emotions at all....

things to ponder.....

on the other hand, it's good to see that Japan is still alive and well after the predictions from Panawave.....even if they did postpone the doomsday date..... :D


damn I'm being arrogant today....to actually think I know something.....when my motto is telling everybody that I know nothing.....time to go stick my head into a bucket of water again..... :O
 
A grave digger's ranting about......

An old article from 21 months ago, but I thought it deserved some more attention. I'd like to ask two questions; one about the original article and the other about the question that Den4 raised.

Question #1: Can someone explain how the encryption scheme proposed by Walter Simmons and Sandip Pakvasa works in a simpler language? Does anyone know if the contraption has been realized in actual communication nowadays? Or has the theory been discredited by now?

Question #2: If it is possible to model a technologically enlightened civilization advanced enough to travel from their planet to ours, would they be more like what Den4 and Twisted pictured, or more like what Thomas and Gaijingirl envisioned? In other words, if they could have done it on their own, would they also have become enlightened in the non-technological areas as well? (such as understanding, mutual respect between intelligent beings, good-will, and communication skills, regard for life beings in general, etc.)

Just so that we don't lose the New Scientist Article link, I reproduce it in full.
New Scientist said:
Public release date: 7-May-2003
Contact: Claire Bowles
[email protected]
44-207-331-2751
New Scientist

Are aliens hiding their messages?
IF WE are not alone in the Universe, why have we never picked up signals from an extraterrestrial civilisation? This long-standing puzzle, known as the Fermi paradox after physicist Enrico Fermi, who first posed the question, is still one of the strongest arguments against the existence of intelligent aliens.
But two physicists have come up with an intriguing solution. They suggest a way in which aliens could send messages to each other across space that not only disguises their locations but also makes it impossible for a casual observer to even distinguish the messages from background noise. Messages sent by this method could be criss-crossing our Galaxy without us ever knowing.

At first glance, sending a message without giving away your location appears impossible. If a signal - a stream of photons - comes from a single source, its origin can always be determined by measuring the direction of recoil of a detector struck by the photons. But Walter Simmons and his colleague Sandip Pakvasa from the University of Hawaii at Manoa have come up with a cunning way around this.

The signaller splits the message into two parts, so that the photons are sent in opposite directions to mirrors located far from the home planet. The mirrors redirect the signals to the intended receiver, who recombines the photons to reconstruct the message (see Graphic).

The key idea is that the message is encoded not by the pattern or sequence of photons sent over time, but by their positions in space. For example, this can be done by shining the light beam through a stencil.

If the image is tiny enough, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - which limits the amount of information that can ever be known about a microscopic particle - means that measuring the position of the photons makes it impossible to gain accurate information about the direction in which they are travelling. So if you detected the message, it would be impossible to determine the origin of the two beams. "The mere act of reading the message introduces enough uncertainty to make it useless for direction-finding," explains Simmons.

Neither the intended receiver nor any eavesdropper would be able to locate the home planet of the sender. What's more, it would be impossible to detect the message at all without extremely sophisticated technology. In order to recombine the beams and recreate the message you would need to detect the arrival time of the photons extremely accurately to identify pairs of photons split by the sender. "Such photons are distinguishable from the background of stellar photons because they arrive very close together in time," says Simmons. "But any eavesdropper, like us, might not realise this and see only the background."

"The proposal is ingenious," says Jonathan Rosner, a physicist at the Enrico Fermi Institute in Chicago, although he says it is hard to tell if the method could work in practice. Paul Shuch, director of the SETI League in New Jersey, also points out that being able to disguise a sender's location would be extremely useful for secure military communications here on Earth. "In a few decades, when it's declassified, we may well find that such a technique is already in use."


###
Marcus Chown
UK CONTACT - Claire Bowles, New Scientist Press Office, London:
Tel: 44-207-331-2751 or email [email protected]
US CONTACT - Michelle Soucy, New Scientist Boston Office:
Tel: 617-558-4939 or email [email protected]

New Scientist issue: 10 May 2003

PLEASE MENTION NEW SCIENTIST AS THE SOURCE OF THIS STORY AND, IF PUBLISHING ONLINE, PLEASE CARRY A HYPERLINK TO: New Scientist | Science news and science articles from New Scientist

"These articles are posted on this site to give advance access to other authorised media who may wish to quote extracts as part of fair dealing with this copyrighted material. Full attribution is required, and if publishing online a link to www.newscientist.com is also required. Advance permission is required before any and every reproduction of each article in full - please contact [email protected]. Please note that all material is copyright of Reed Business Information Limited and we reserve the right to take such action as we consider appropriate to protect such copyright."
You can pull your head out of the bucket full of water, Den4. The Gaijin debate has heated up again, and your confession to arrogance couldn't be more fitting for the subject! :p
 
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den4 said:
or, more likely, they pick up our radio and tv signals and use it for their nightly interstellar sitcoms with shows like: "More Live Feeds from Terran TV," or "Entertainment Earth Tonight," or "What's My Terran Up To Today?" and laugh at us like we laughed at the Iraqi Information Minister at all the stupid things we do on our world....
The might look at Earth as one huge "Big Brother" event :D
 
Two specific flaws I noticed...

New Scientist said:
If the image is tiny enough, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - which limits the amount of information that can ever be known about a microscopic particle - means that measuring the position of the photons makes it impossible to gain accurate information about the direction in which they are travelling. So if you detected the message, it would be impossible to determine the origin of the two beams. "The mere act of reading the message introduces enough uncertainty to make it useless for direction-finding," explains Simmons.

Neither the intended receiver nor any eavesdropper would be able to locate the home planet of the sender. What's more, it would be impossible to detect the message at all without extremely sophisticated technology. In order to recombine the beams and recreate the message you would need to detect the arrival time of the photons extremely accurately to identify pairs of photons split by the sender. "Such photons are distinguishable from the background of stellar photons because they arrive very close together in time," says Simmons. "But any eavesdropper, like us, might not realise this and see only the background."
I have to go out to pick up my kids so I'll be brief. I probably need to consult data sheets showing the level of background noise, but here lies one major problem that might void the genius of the theory.

The proposed beam splitting scheme might work if the relative background noise were low in comparison to the two twin-signals arriving at the detection site(s). However, the theory also assumes that the 'beam' of photons are close to several photons only, not the usual bundle of high amplitude light waves (electromagnetic waves) in order to keep the detected energy level weak enough for the quantum effect of uncertainty to kick in.

If the backgound noise level is varied enough, that might easily get in the way as "true and significant" noise numerous and strong enough to mess up the artificial transmission of signals. [This is especially so considering the fact that the only signals we are interested in, whther random or artificial, have such a low energy levels that that will not betray the direction(s) of the source(s) of origin. This means that we will be picking up signals coming in from all directions which certainly increases the number of unintended reception due to noise from the cosmos.](1)

[Another difficulty that should be mentioned is more fundamental and therefore seioursly undermines the theory proposed. Briefly put, as for the margins of errors for the position and momentum of a particle under observation, the product of these two margins of errors cannot become indefinitely small. If the precision in position measurement is increased(which is equivalent to precison in time in a physical measurement), the precision in momentum must decrease. This means that although we started out to measure the 'weak signals,' we don't know precisely how weak they are due to the principle of uncertainty.

To overcome the two fundamental obstacles we would need to play around with various models of 'adequate signal levels' to see if there exits a window of signal range that will allow us a working system of signal detection without the side effects of undue back ground noise and self-defeating time precision approach

We should remember that the aliens assumed in Fermi's paradox are also getting unwanted signals from all directions, and really need to think this out before we can say we have made a breakthrough in fail-safe, secure communication.](2)

Just one afterthought that I thought would be relevant to the discussion. More later, gotta run!

Edit: (1) and (2) added afterwards.
 
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I see dead people 0.0; they dont know their dead!! ok im a Sceptic....but aliens dont exist if they do...well phooey!
 
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