Roach

DOCID: 3052333
FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
Lambros D. Callimahos

We are not alone in the universe. A few years ago, this
notion seemed farfetched; today, the existence of
extraterrestrial intelligence is taken for granted by most
scientists. Even the staid National Academy of Sciences
has gone on record that contact with other civilizations
"is no longer something beyond our dreams but a natural
event in the history of mankind that will perhaps occur in
the lifetime of many of us." Sir Bernard Lovell, one of
the world's leading radio astronomers, has calculated
that, even allowing for a margin of error of 5000%, there
must be in our galaxy about 100 million stars which have
planets of the right chemistry, dimensions, and
temperature to support organic evolution. If we consider
that our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is but one of at least
a billion other galaxies similar to ours in the observable
universe, the number of stars that could support some form
of life is, to reach for a word, astronomical. As to
advanced forms of life-advanced by our own miserable
earth standards-Dr. Frank D. Drake of the National
Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West
Virginia, has stated that, putting all our knowledge
together, the number of civilizations which could have
arisen by now is about one billion. The next question is,
"Where is everybody?"
The nearest neighbor to our solar system is Alpha
Centauri, only 4.3 light years away; but, according to Dr.
Su-Shu Huang of the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, its planetary system is probably too
young for the emergence of life. Two other heavenly
friends, Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti, about 11 light
years away, are stronger contenders for harboring life.
Nevertheless, if superior civilizations are abu~dant, the
nearest would probably be at least 100 light years away;
therefore it would take 200 years for a reply to be
forthcoming, a small matter of seven generations. This
should, however, make little difference to us, in view of
the enormous potential gain from our contact with a
superior civilization. Unless we are terribly conceited (a
very unscientific demeanor), we must assume that the
"others" are far more advanced than we are. Even a 50year
gap would be tremendous; a 500-year gap staggers
the imagination, and as for a 5000-year gap... (By the
way, if they are as much as 50 years behind us, forget it!)
It is quite possible that .. others" have satellite probes in
space, retransmitting to "them" anything that sounds
nonrandom to the probe. But they have probably called
us several thousand years ago, and are waiting for an
answer; or worse yet, they have given up; or, more
probably, they have reached such impressive
technological advances that they have destroyed
themselves. In this connection, Professor Iosif Shklovsky,
Russia's greatest radio astronomer, has cited the profound
crises which lie in wait for a developing civilization, any
one of which may well prove fatal:
(1) Self-destruction as a result of a thermonuclear
catastrophe or some other discovery which may have
unpredictable and uncontrollable consequences;
(2) Genetic danger;
(3) Overproduction of information;
(4) Restricted capacity of the individual's brain,
which can lead to excessive specialization, with
consequent dangers of degeneration; and
(5) A crisis precipitated by the creation of
arti ficial intelligent beings.
Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti were the targets on
which Dr. Drake focussed his' attention in the spring
1960 in Project Ozma, an attempt to detect possible
intelligent signals from outer space. The frequency
selected for listening was 1420.405752 megacycles per
second, or a wave length of 21 em. This particular
frequency, postulated independently by two professors on
the faculty of Cornell University, Giuseppe Cocconi and
Philip Morrison, happens to be the radiation frequency of
atomic or free hydrogen which permeates space in great
clouds; moreover, this frequency is within the range of
radio frequencies able to pass through the earth's
atmosphere. Presumably, the significance of this
frequency would be known to other intelligent beings in
the universe who understand radio theory. We are still
talking about radio waves as the communication medium;
other possible media might be masers, lasers, or the as yet
undiscovered and unnamed "rasers." A technology
superior to ours might even have learned how to
modulate a beam of neutrinos (weightless, uncharged
particles that physicists on earth find it difficult even to
detect); if so, "they" may have to wait a century or two
before we learn how to build a neutrino receiver.
The growing presumption that life exists in other
worlds led, in 1971, to a six-nation multidisciplinary
conference held in Soviet Armenia on Communication
with Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The U.S. delegation of
about two dozen scientists was headed by Dr. Carl Sagan
of the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research at
Cornell University. The report of this conference,
published in 1973 by MIT, deals with such subjects as
the evolution of intelligence, the lifetimes of technical
civilizations, and the number of advanced galactic
civilizations. Last November a group of scientists at
Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico sent a three-minute
message beamed at Messier 13, and this represented
man's first attempt to take the initiative in
communicating with another civilization. The project was
conducted by the National Astronomy and Ionosphere
Center, which operates the Are"ibo Observatory for
Cornell University and the National Science Foundation.
Messier 13 is a cluster of 300,000 stars on the edge of the
Milky Way, 24,000 light years away, so if the message is
received and answered promptly, unless we happen to hit
them on one of their three-day holidays we should have
their answer in 48,000 years, give or take a day or two.
Actually, the main purpose of the experiment was to
dramatize the capabilities of the world's largest antenna
at the Arecibo Observatory.
If another civilization were trying to establish
communication with us, it would first embark on
attention-getting signals of such a nature that we could
distinguish them from random cosmic noise; once we
receive a recognizable signal, we have a good chance of
u'nderstanding the message. For example" they could start
with trains of signals corresponding to the natural number
1, 2, 3..., followed perhaps by prime numbers. They
might continue with equal-length extended signals
consisting of start and stop impulses, with occasional
pulses in between; when these signals are aligned flush
over one another, they would show a circle, the
Pythagorean Theorem, or similar geometric design.
These attention-getting signals would be followed by
what amounts to early "language lessons," interspersed
with items of technical information to help bring us up to
the level of our superiors, "them."
It may be assumed that the sense of sight, or an
equivalent, is possessed by all higher' forms of life; the
problems of communication could thus be greatly
simplified through the medium of a "raster"
representation such as that of a television screen. After a
conference held at Green Bank in 1961 to discuss the
possibility of communication with other planets, one of
the participants, Bernard M. Oliver, made up a
hypothetical message on the raster principle. The
message, consisting of 1271 binary digits or "bits," is
shown in Figure 1.


http://cryptome.org/0005/nsa-aliens-spy.pdf

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לזיין את הקופים

The Rev

We can't even communicate with ourselves...



The Rev

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clive

i aint readin all that shit.

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deadhead94

Does anyone else find it funny that by the time the Voyager golden records are found (if ever), we will have been extinct for millions of years?

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adventure

If we are basing life on other planets around the fundamentals of our organic chemistry, isn't it possible there are limits. Maybe with our given elements we are incapable of light travel or other forms of space exploration. You can't build a working space ship with Legos; its physically impossible. Our physical possibilities have to have limits. Also, our mental capacities has to have limits. A dog could never design a car, never, it's just not smart enough. Maybe we just are not smart enough to explore that far.

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Coming Full Range

deadhead94

That assumes that there are many more elements than we have room for on the periodic table. That math doesn't work. Also, the ones we don't have last for fractions of fractions of a second on average. It also assumes that the laws of physics arbitrarily change at different points of the universe.

When we unify gravity with the other fundamental forces, we will have time machines, but the speed limit is still going to be there. By which I mean 299 792 458 m/s.


Silicon based life would be pretty cool though. Boron based life even cooler.


Somewhat relevant,

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adventure

I would assume that the physics of the universe would remain pretty constant, if we are basing our existence on a big bag ideology.

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Coming Full Range

deadhead94

The laws of physics are constant in every theory except maybe "god did it".

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adventure

bang^!!!

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Coming Full Range

deadhead94

I feel dirty for indirectly implying that creation is a scientific theory. Even if it is sarcastically.

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SageTree

Why assume that there aren't physical laws with which even "God" has to work in?


Step outside of Christian theology Brother man, it's holding you down for no good reason.

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deadhead94

To do that, one would have to assume there is a god. I can't bring myself to do that even hypothetically.

Only people who believe the abrahamic fairy tales try to get me to agree with them. The other religions have never even tried.

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SageTree

Did you ever consider that a feeling you explain with Science that another may explain with 'God'?

I think most people's rejection of God or Any Ground of Being comes from the 'Abrahamic Fairy Tales' they've been told instead of doing any investigation for themselves on what other people feel this 'God' idea is.

That's extremely ironic to me if "Abrahamic God" is the point you perceive me to be aiming at, because all I'm saying is 'stop considering 'God' through an Abrahamic lens'.

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deadhead94

Yes, I don't take those people seriously. They aren't intelligent enough to look for an actual answer. They use "faith" as an excuse to be ignorant of the world.

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SageTree

Generalizations make life easy, eh?

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deadhead94

For what other reason would one choose god over science?

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SageTree

Oh dichotomous, absolutist thinker.... where do I begin with that answer?

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adventure

Please do not take this as we are trying to gang up on you:

I find it funny that you use the word "ignorant" when you blatantly claim "I can't bring myself to do that even hypothetically[think of there being a God]"

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Coming Full Range

Flamingnun

tldr: there's no god, srsly.

Next.

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SageTree

A well read, educated narcissist is still a narcissist.

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