If the cosmic phone rings...

Stephen Hawking's recent warning about sending messages into outer space has had a lot of coverage, but of course it's by no means new.

I'd like to know who FIRST said "If the cosmic phone rings, don't answer." I'm thinking it was an anthropologist, in the 1970s. Anybody here know this?

Asertus

This echoed a remark made at the Royal Society’s January conference, when Professor Simon Conway Morris, a Cambridge University palaeontologist, said "if the cosmic phone rings, don’t answer."

source

It took all of 10 seconds to find it on Google....

a reply to: Asertus

Just did a Google search and apparently it was Nick Pope, ex-M.O.D UFO stooge n 2010.

Edit - Beaten to it, but then again I should have been.

No Beldar, the Big Phone.

Nyaaaaah... runs to answer.

And if they send an email, should we open it?

a reply to: intrptr

Hello, and now they even have a App for that. Send messages to space.

2016.spaceappschallenge.org...

a reply to: JustBreatheAgain

Thanks but no need. I have soul power. After we pass we 'hypercube' away, we can be everywhere at once.

a reply to: intrptr

I can feel your soul power. You have a amazing gift.

originally posted by: JustBreatheAgain
a reply to: intrptr

I can feel your soul power. You have a amazing gift.

Thanks, but only human.

a reply to: intrptr

That would make us 'super human' not just human.

a reply to: AdmireTheDistance

Nah, not Nick Pope. He was re-quoting. The original was definitely 1970s becasue it was being quoted at the time of Viking.

a reply to: Asertus

I'm pretty much on board with Hawking slightly, sorta.

I answered an emergency call once and twenty years later it's still a work in progress.

Long story, don't wanna get into it.

I'm still on the job but some of their misconceptions about what we do here is wildly misunderstood.

At least, my dealings.

I'm no miracle worker and can't keep up with their requests.

They want entire custom homeworlds with huge temples for their families and want it overnight, not to mention I don't even get a commission for my work, and some just keep making outrageous work orders and unrealistic and incessant and insistant overbearing demands.

I'm a volunteer charity organization for chrissakes.
Not Magrathea.

It's a long to try and keep up with because we really do want to help out.

It's not that they're bad entities, it's just they don't really UNDERSTAND things take time, networking , paperwork, blueprints, teamwork, construction leasing, sourcing materials, transport and transport costs, and making sure you have enough guys who know what they're doing and how to do it right.

And how draining it is negotiating and putting all this into operation.

If one gets their hommeworld, BAM the phone starts up again with another order and some can get downright mean about the smallest little insignificant detail that isn't what they wanted even though they made a huge ordeal about insisting and specifying that exact thing over and over.

It's never right.

I have no idea how they got my damn number either.

Sorry I don't know the source of the original quote though.
Wish I had known earlier.
It's spot on.

Most of our dealings aren't like that though.
It's just the ones who are make me want to cry and give up my calling entirely.

originally posted by: Encryptor
a reply to: intrptr

That would make us 'super human' not just human.

Hi Encryptor,

Just Human, from Terra, of Sol. It would be super fun to be as big as the Universe or small as an atom, though.

a reply to: intrptr

Sometimes I think what if this Universe is as small as a atom.

Nice post intrptr.

originally posted by: JustBreatheAgain
a reply to: intrptr

Sometimes I think what if this Universe is as small as a atom.

There, see? You can't go there yet, but if you can reach there in your mind, you're well on your way.

Infinity is a state of mind. The only boundary is the one placed there by the 'education' we received down here in this gravity well.

a reply to: intrptr

I agree with you intrptr. There are paradoxes involving infinity. The mind is one amazing machine that only we can control, I hope.

a reply to: JustBreatheAgain

There are paradoxes involving infinity. The mind is one amazing machine that only we can control, I hope.

I liked your imagining the universe as small as an atom. If we reach out our hand past the sun the stars the galaxies, further out than the Hubble Deep Field, there is no barrier to stop our hand, and if so, whats outside that... and that?

Then further still, the Universe shrinks, becomes a fluff of white, a point far in the distance. We look around and see other puffs of white, other whole universes...

There is no end to infinity and eternity, it goes on forever. It has alway been there.

a reply to: intrptr

Great post, you are a smart person. I think you just answered a question that does not have a answer. The question is if the Universe is expending, where is it expanding to? You said "there is no end to infinity."

Now that is deep.

a reply to: JustBreatheAgain

I thought the answer to the Universe was 42?

a reply to: intrptr

great answer!