"ET too bored by Earth transmissions to respond"

Surprised to see this covered on the front page of New Scientist, yet great to know that *they* are working on 'improving' the content of messages sent to space... not many people in these parts are believers in crop circles, but should they be 'real' like one 'orb' video shows, maybe the greys and whoever else are responding in kind -- DNA, binary codes and such being the same info in return, thus boring? I don't know, read on:

Messages sent into space directed at extraterrestrials may have been too boring to earn a reply, say two astrophysicists trying to improve on their previous alien chat lines.

Humans have so far sent four messages into space intended for alien listeners. But they have largely been made up of mathematically coded descriptions of some physics and chemistry, with some basic biology and descriptions of humans thrown in.

Those topics will not prove gripping reading to other civilisations, says Canadian astrophysicist Yvan Dutil. If a civilisation is advanced enough to understand the message, they will already know most of its contents, he says: "After reading it, they will be none the wiser about us humans and our achievements. In some ways, we may have been wasting our telescope time."

In 1999 and 2003, Dutil and fellow researcher Stephane Dumas beamed messages in a language of their own design into space. Now, they are working to compose more interesting messages.

"The question is, what is interesting to an extraterrestrial?" Dutil told New Scientist. "We think the answer is using some common ground to communicate things about humanity that will be new or different to them – like social features of our society." Fortunately those subjects are already being described mathematically by economists, physicists and sociologists, he adds.

space.newscientist.com...

The article goes on to mention an error in a 1999 transmission into space and includes a blog where readers can post what they think should be the message sent.

[edit on 19-12-2007 by anhinga]

I've been following that blog. Sadly, most of the contributors suffer from delusions of ET anthropomorphism. I'm glad the guy writes about it. Overall I am positive. But... being a critic....

SETI continues to send messages to ITSELF across the universe.

I'm all for what SETI is trying to do (I've never had a UFO encounter so I can't speak from that angle), but I just wish they could get some freaking breadth into their faith based belief system about the nature of life and intelligence.

Assumptions such as
1) Math is a fundamental property of the universe
2) The other end is likely to be astrophysicists
are awfully big assumptions. I know some people think they aren't big assumptions but I don't think it is as self-evident as they believe.

I wish more people would read Ratner's Star.

The most mind-boggling thing about that space blog on New Scientist is that the blogger interviews scientists that make very poignant arguments about humans and Neanderthals in relation to one another, and then they turn right around and make crazy anthropocentric assumptions again. Insane! Its like they are in an eternal struggle just to escape themselves and just...can't....quite.... do.. it.

[edit on 19-12-2007 by Ectoterrestrial]

I agree, maybe HE is bored and assumes the aliens would be. I think the discovery of a new race by any aliens (including us) would be of scientific study interest to them. Do we stop studying the smallest creatures on the earth just because we already know about them? nope..there's ALWAYS something new to learn.

Originally posted by anhinga
The article goes on to mention an error in a 1999 transmission into space and includes a blog where readers can post what they think should be the message sent.

The error was spotted by Dutch computer programmer Paul Houx, who read extracts from the message in a popular science magazine. Dutil and Dumas then spent several tense days trying to contact the team who were to broadcast the message from a radio telescope in Ukraine. They made the correction just in the nick of time before its broadcast on 24 May.

www.newscientist.com...

Maybe they should have let the error in the message.
If you think about it..that could just be the interessting bit missing. They might try to contact just to say.. "hey nice but that is not just corret what you send here!"

I had to laugh about the title. He does have a point.

Id even go one step further in saying

THEY know all about US, since millions of years. We are the one´s that dont know about them.


If what I say is true, then the act of sending out Signals and Capsules into space is hilariously ridiculous.

Imagine a bunch of ants sending out signals to you, saying "we´re here! we´re here!"...and you sit there like "no sh**"

yeah we send the transmission into deep space to see if theirs inteligent life
out there? the ultimate question, but our way of thinking nobody responds
to our signal why? cause the have spaceships ( ufo's ) that are very fast....i mean why send a signal by radio waves thats gonna take 500+ years to get here or they could travel here and meet us in person ... so when they get here and contact us instead of broadcasting to the world that they have arrived, they contact the US government and thats it.... NOBODY ever hears any more about it....question : why do we the human race send a signal into deep space?
so our governments can make better secret weapons!

SETI is NSA controlled. Same for NASA. Nothing reliable from SETI or NASA.

All Lies. The worst thing is. Most employees don't even know they are lying.

nl.youtube.com... ( Fixing NASA)

nl.youtube.com... (Need to know)

nl.youtube.com... (NASA Deceptions)

nl.youtube.com... (Dark Mission: NASA's Corrupted Science)