I got this from watching In to the Universe with Steven Hawking the other night.
So instead of listening for ETs out there like with the SETI program; how would you feel about sending up a satellite “beacon” that would make it easier for little green men to find us?
As far as how this beacon would work, let’s just say it is equipped with the most advanced technology we have in existence today. I’m not sure if we’d want to use super strong radio waves or lasers or both. (or something I’ve never thought of.) Whatever the case may be, it’s just a really bad ass “We are here sign”
Also, for the purpose of this thread, we can assume that no government spending was used on this project.
Oddly enough, I responded to your question before the poll went up and then I voted NO only to see my comment was no longer there! No big deal, but the gist of what I had said was that if they could find a beacon, they ought to be able to find the planet!
I’m all for it, but keep in mind that we’re already sending out a pretty strong beacon, have been doing so for about 80 years, and aren’t about to stop anytime soon.
I voted “other” because it wouldn’t matter one way or the other what, if any, beacon we decided to broadcast. Other civilizations are too far away, and would never receive it. Or if they did, we would be too far away for them to do anything about it. It just doesn’t matter one way or the other.
If I were an alien who received sucha signal. I think I might assume that the beacon was offereing help or assistance. What if a race in trouble caught the beam, made that assumption, and then showed up on our doorstep?
The majority of humans I’ve met who are “for” alien contact, are under the assumption that the the aliens will be friendly,a nd have advanced technology to share with us. I’d hate for us all to be surprised by a desperate group of folks who spent their last energy and resources to come in our direction because our signal led them to believe that we could save them.
I’d guess it would be a harmless activity, so if people want to, go ahead and let them.
Analogies aren’t perfect, but it might be a bit like communicating with whales. Except we can’t visit them in person. We just think they’re interesting, we record them, listen to them, maybe figure out out to send back a “hello” of sorts, but there really isn’t much we can do for whales that they aren’t already doing for themselves. Even if we could go visit the whales, we’d probably just fuck something up if we tried “helping” them, so we shouldn’t bother.
I just plain love this idea! Beautiful on so many levels! Maybe the beacon in that case would have the Emma Lazarus message! And just to have it all fit, place the beacon on the Mexico border!
I’d like to see NASA devote itself to scanning the skies within our atmosphere for a prolonged period of time, to try and categorise all these pesky ufo sightings that keep occurring.
Although we’re radiating radio noise like a red dwarf, the signal strength at interstellar distances is so low that it will literally be lost in the radio and microwave background. Until we start producing hydrogen frequency spectral lines that are clearly artificial (i.e. large scale nuclear fusion rocket engines) we’re not going to look any different than the dozens of other small metal-rich G glass stars in the Local Bubble, or the tens of millions of such stars in the Galaxy, most of which we can’t see or be seen from.
As for putting out a beacon, I’ll cite the advice of an old Recon gunny I used to know: “It is better to meet your friends than be met by them.” Once we’re capable of traversing interstellar space (if ever) we’ll presumably be able to evade a potential threat rather than being a sitting duck with a flashing like around your neck.
The problem is I see no upside, and a lot of possible downsides. Yes, we can dicker around with our numbers for the Drake equation, and declare the chance of another techno civilization being within detection range as effectively nil, but all it takes is just one dangerous (for whatever reason) civilization or even probe to come along. And once they do, and decide upon overt interaction, they are either going to exploit the planet or exploit us. I seriously doubt they’d just hand us a bunch of tech and let us go to town with it.
Other. I don’t think it matters either way. Any civilization for which it would make a difference between being discovered by them or not would not be able to do anything about it. That is, a civilization that is a capable of harming us is going to be capable of finding us with or without a beacon.
You guys all think of the universe as a hunting ground. I think of it more like a singles bar.
Just change the beacon to repeat, over and over, “I’ve got a Porsche. I’ve got a Porsche. I’ve got a Porsche.” at fifty thousand megacycles. Then - green haired babes!
Actually, I doubt with the distances involved that we need to be worried about Invasion. But Communication could be possible, once we each know where the other is. Surely that’s been the topic of numerous speculative stories. They don’t all end badly, do they?