"Have We Got a Message from ET?" - Three Dress Rehearsals for Contact Online

All Seeing Eye
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Think about it like this: One of the "ETs" that Dr Tough was communicating with claimed to be using a human being as a "channel"

My, that must be a new avenue for communications

Its rumored the US military is face to face communicating. I suppose that is a step in the right direction.

You speak of a respectful approach to contact. Sure, I suppose that would be nice. But before everyone starts running off with the idea of what we can get from them, how about "They" start the story off from the beginning. All of the attempts at communicating are taken out of context and spread out over the internet.

Well before any of those question you asked were asked wouldn't you want to know that what you were communicating with was actually an extraterrestrial intelligence and not some human pretending to be one?

Of course having a live, flesh and blood alien right in front of you would be ideal but suppose contact were to happen in a less than ideal way such as via an email message to Dr. Tough.

There would have to be a series of tests to prove with some confidence you were dealing with an ET and not some very smart and clever human pretending to be one.

Some tiny bit of information we don't yet have about the universe which is unknown to us right now but with which we could verify would be enough to go to the next stage of communication which were your questions.

There would have to be a series of tests to prove with some confidence you were dealing with an ET and not some very smart and clever human pretending to be one.

Smart Monkeys? LOL LOL j/k

Certainly conformation would be required. There is only one real way to do this. Since human beings have a limited life span, 120 years give or take. The conformation should come from before the time of man. This would eliminate any possibility a imposter could be involved.

If I'm not mistaken, any "Alien" civilization that may be observing mankind would have been around much longer than us. And observing mankind from its inception, and maybe even before.

My question to them would be, can you direct us to a geological location here on earth that presently has not been discovered, and predates 3000 BC. This location would be a great city, hidden technology, or artifacts that would confirm something from our past, in a very meaningful way.

I have noticed many new discoveries of late, by the way. Of course there is one location they can reveal that would once and for all settle the debate of their existence, but it may take some time and effort for them to reveal that "portal" of knowledge.

Have a public, televised event where the "Alien" is asked this question, live on TV. Then wait for the answer...

fixer1967
OK, if aliens form some other world are here on Earth and browsing the net I have a message for them.

First, where ever you do, DO NOT let any humans know that you are here. You will be very sorry if you do.
Second, is there any way I can hitch a ride off this planet? I would even be will to renounce my citizenship to the human race if it would get me off this planet.

You told them to refrain from letting humans knows that they are present, and then you asked them a question which required the disclosure of their presence. Such an explicit desire to renounce your human heritage at the drop of a hat...
It seems that the E.T. are not the only ones sending scrambled messages to their universal neighbors.

I'm more concerned with the surface inventions that were created to eliminate the recourse for fossil fuels, nuclear energy, and even the common type of electricity... Of course, I'm talking about the potential of harnessing gravity, and environmental charges as means of energy.

With tools like those, humans will be able to use high-powered telescopes, means of transportation, and scouting units more efficiently when sending them to planets in a galaxy, far, far away. The performance increase, primarily battery-life will be limitless. No more stuck rover (a propulsion system to its benefit), or strange colored pictures, the machine could actually channel an enormous amount of energy to its gpu + cpu, and take clearer photos. It could also explore with attached prosthetics, and a laser to check if the substance it is probing is save to touch.

These are all things the surface must reinvent, and in the process find a cure for cancer.

JadeStar
There would have to be a series of tests to prove with some confidence you were dealing with an ET and not some very smart and clever human pretending to be one.

Some tiny bit of information we don't yet have about the universe which is unknown to us right now but with which we could verify would be enough to go to the next stage of communication which were your questions.

I always love this part...

And, just "what" tests would you conduct? I'm not at all sure Terrestrial science would know what test to conduct. And, I am very sure ET won't be willing to sit through the antics of some group of Terrestrials.

You need to understand, ET won't be coming here to "prove" anything to y'all. He may, however, be looking for YOU to prove to him that YOU are sufficiently advanced and intelligent.

Anyway, you little test. "some tiny bit of information we don't have..." I just love how this is never thought through. If I were to give you a bit of data you don't have; just how are you going to verify it? That bit of "information" is just like ET; heretofore, UNKNOWN. So, you gonna plug that equation you just received; into what, exactly?

Perhaps you should stick to what you know... maybe test ET's DNA and see IF he is "Human", and/or IF he is related to any Terrestrial.

A human that is not related to any Terrestrial Human, is probably not Terrestrial...just sayin'

The probability that any space faring ET that manages to wind up on Earth, is virtually indistinguishable from Terrestrial Humans is nearly unreasonably high.

We have made leeps and bounds as a species. On that note, we are also money/power hungry as$holes, that would probably be one of the major reasons they dont want to intergrate with us.

Dimithae
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Honestly,I think I agree with Stephen Hawkins on this one.I think we should be the ones hiding and not let the Aliens know we are here. Intelligence does not bring empathy.The more advanced a group is the less likely they are to have any feelings for another group that they feel is 'beneath' them.History has borne this out with humans over and over again. I'll just keep my tin hat on and keep hiding.

thats just the human condition in my opinion

tanka418

JadeStar
There would have to be a series of tests to prove with some confidence you were dealing with an ET and not some very smart and clever human pretending to be one.

Some tiny bit of information we don't yet have about the universe which is unknown to us right now but with which we could verify would be enough to go to the next stage of communication which were your questions.

I always love this part...

And, just "what" tests would you conduct?

Stuff like what Dr. Tough did.

Ask for a new prime number. Or some other bit of NEW information not within human knowledge at the moment.

Personally I'd want ask about the atmospheric characteristics of certain extrasolar planets we know exist but have yet to gather spectra for. That's something we could verify in the near-term once technology caught up.

This is pretty benign stuff. None of it could be used for weapons or a cure for cancer. It's just simple scientific knowledge that can be verified.

I'm not at all sure Terrestrial science would know what test to conduct. And, I am very sure ET won't be willing to sit through the antics of some group of Terrestrials.

They're not 'antics' they're simple questions an advanced ET should be able to know.

You need to understand, ET won't be coming here to "prove" anything to y'all.

And you know this how?

The experiment Dr. Tough set up was specifically an online invitation for ET to make contact. Why wouldn't it want to verify its existence?

It would presumably be smart enough to know that there are plenty of delusional people on earth who pretend to be ETs or channel ETs.

It would presumably also be intelligent enough to know that advanced artificial intelligence such as IBM's Watson could pretend to be ET as well.

So why wouldn't you want to show that you were the real deal if your purpose was contact with humanity through some of the smartest people studying the subject?

He may, however, be looking for YOU to prove to him that YOU are sufficiently advanced and intelligent.

I don't understand what this is? Is this hostility? A personal attack? I'm confused here tanka.

Anyway, you little test. "some tiny bit of information we don't have..." I just love how this is never thought through.

I did think it through and Dr. Tough's group thought it through many times more than I have. There are tests one could presumably pass whose information can be verified either currently or in the near term.

If I were to give you a bit of data you don't have; just how are you going to verify it?

That would depend upon the nature of the data.

That bit of "information" is just like ET; heretofore, UNKNOWN. So, you gonna plug that equation you just received; into what, exactly?

Well new primes can be verified simply and easily.

But I was thinking of data like for example. "Where is the nearest brown dwarf to our solar system?"

Now if Dr. Tough asked that question 5 years ago, and the ET answered it then the information they gave us would have been verified this year in the data we got back from the Wide Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft:

www.skyandtelescope.com...

A newly discovered pair of brown dwarfs 6.5 light-years away is breaking records. The brown dwarfs are the closest known, and together they make up the closest star system discovered since 1916. Moreover, WISE J104915.57-531906 (or WISE J1049 for short) displaces Wolf 359 as the third-closest star system to Earth after Alpha Centauri (4.4 light-years away) and Barnard’s star (6 light-years away). Kevin Luhman (Pennsylvania State University) announced the discovery in a letter to be published in April 10th’s Astrophysical Journal.

They're ETs. Presumably if they can travel many lightyears to get here they know a bit more about the universe than we do. It's the one thing both they and us would certainly have in common.

Perhaps you should stick to what you know... maybe test ET's DNA and see IF he is "Human", and/or IF he is related to any Terrestrial.

You made an assumption that ET would have DNA or that it would be based on the same nucleic acids as ours.

Also Dr. Tough's experiment takes place over the internet by email. There aren't phyical aliens going to visit him.

And beyond that, you have assumed ET would be biological, when there are very good arguments that an advanced ET might just be AI.

Asking an AI ET about DNA through email would be pointless.


A human that is not related to any Terrestrial Human, is probably not Terrestrial...just sayin'

The probability that any space faring ET that manages to wind up on Earth, is virtually indistinguishable from Terrestrial Humans is nearly unreasonably high.

There is almost no way an ET which evolved on a completely different planet would at all resemble Terrestrial Humans. Nearly every evolutionary biologist, astronomer, and thinking person will tell you that for good reason: Unless we were somehow related with the same DNA and evolved at the exact same time, there is no way we'd be "indistinguishable".

You have a whole lot of work to prove otherwise.

JadeStar

I don't understand what this is? Is this hostility? A personal attack? I'm confused here tanka.

Never. Its just that there is no logical reason for ET to submit to your inspection. If you "rolled up" on an Ant-hill (to use a favorite comparison of Humans) would you "prove" yourself?

You ask for something that can be verified; like a "new" Prime number. Well, heck, what's the largest one ya got now? Give me 10 minutes; my i7 will generate a list of new ones.

Or some astronomical data? Again, give me a few minutes; I'll mine my database and provide you with seemingly new data that can in fact be verified. Does that work for ya?

Anything you can verify, I can provide; all I need is the necessary technology...I got that.
Anything that you can't verify is absolutely useless, ET is not about to wait around while you learn to understand what he sees as obvious.

I did think it through and Dr. Tough's group thought it through many times more than I have. There are tests one could presumably pass whose information can be verified either currently or in the near term.

Really? See above.

But I was thinking of data like for example. "Where is the nearest brown dwarf to our solar system?"

Now if Dr. Tough asked that question 5 years ago, and the ET answered it then the information they gave us would have been verified this year in the data we got back from the Wide Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft:

Except, ET prolly went home, having other things to do, than to wait on a Terrestrial using the wrong validation methods.

You made an assumption that ET would have DNA or that it would be based on the same nucleic acids as ours.

Also Dr. Tough's experiment takes place over the internet by email. There aren't phyical aliens going to visit him.

And beyond that, you have assumed ET would be biological, when there are very good arguments that an advanced ET might just be AI.

Asking an AI ET about DNA through email would be pointless.

Yes I presumed that ET is biological; I also presumed that he is a "Living" entity. You see, I am far to intimate with these "machines", there is absolutely no way; especially with all my study into the more subtle aspects that I could ever consider a machine, a piece of technology, a living entity possessing a soul and a "Monadic" Hierarchy such as the simplest of "Living" creatures have.

There are synergies based only upon life that take place and elevate that life form to heights that no machine could even "dream" of.

There is almost no way an ET which evolved on a completely different planet would at all resemble Terrestrial Humans. Nearly every evolutionary biologist, astronomer, and thinking person will tell you that for good reason: Unless we were somehow related with the same DNA and evolved at the exact same time, there is no way we'd be "indistinguishable".

Again I must refer you to Hermes.

The notion that ET must be so completely different is absurd in its best case. Further; your evolutionary biologist already knows that the evolutionary process is not random, unfortunately the Astronomer saw fit to attempt to obfuscate the issue, and the "thinking man" believes that the evolutionary process IS random.

There is a "theme" that is repeated throughout nature. It can be found everywhere; string theory, quantum physics, relativistic physics, biology, virtually anywhere you care to look. "Objects" are composed of simpler "objects"; and at the very lowest levels there are only four (4) "flavors" of a single object. This "formula" is the very foundation of the ALL (Universe), and all things depend from it.

And, because of it; virtually all life is based on the same DNA model, with variations due to chemical "base".

Not having a specialist's knowledge of mathematics, I couldn't definitely say that the geometry Dr. David Brin, a member of Dr. Tough's organization, was presented with is extraterrestrial in origin or not. I am willing to consider that possibility, though. I'll describe it on the basis of 'for whatever it may be worth', and suggest why it might be worth greater attention.
Starting with a circle, inscribe the largest possible equilateral triangle inside it. Then inscribe the largest possible square inside the space common to the triangle and the space between one of its sides and the surrounding circle . One ends up with something looking a bit like a crude drawing of a small house with a large peaked roof, inside the circle.
The claim was that this diagram displays a previously unknown way of representing the value of Pi. The area of the circle is Pi times that of the area of the square. The radius of the circle is not measured for use in this formula. One needn't even know where the center of the circle is.

Ross 54
Not having a specialist's knowledge of mathematics, I couldn't definitely say that the geometry Dr. David Brin, a member of Dr. Tough's organization, was presented with is extraterrestrial in origin or not. I am willing to consider that possibility, though. I'll describe it on the basis of 'for whatever it may be worth', and suggest why it might be worth greater attention.
Starting with a circle, inscribe the largest possible equilateral triangle inside it. Then inscribe the largest possible square inside the space common to the triangle and the space between one of its sides and the surrounding circle . One ends up with something looking a bit like a crude drawing of a small house with a large peaked roof, inside the circle.
The claim was that this diagram displays a previously unknown way of representing the value of Pi. The area of the circle is Pi times that of the area of the square. The radius of the circle is not measured in this formula. One needn't even know where the center of the circle is.

Jeez...I should "rest my case"

Firstly; the best representation of Pi is "double".

My point; new representations of existing idea, especially of that nature are not only useless in a practical sense, but can only serve to demonstrate the wide variety of perception that can exist within sentients.

Course, I should prolly recognize a wee bit of handicap in this area due to the fact that I'm an old Computer Scientist

I don't know that there is one 'best' representation of Pi. Am not sure what the 'double' is, to which you refer. Perhaps you could enlighten me?
My take on the geometrical diagram in the Brin case is this: A recognized, credentialed mathematician has looked at this pattern and thinks it noteworthy for its novelty. It gives us the Pi ratio without any reference to the radius of the circle.
Has this solution for Pi been offered up before, in the long, global history of mathematics, from Euclid, onward? It seems not.
We have alternate methods of depicting the Pythagorean Theorem from different times and cultures on this planet. Does such an alternate scheme for finding Pi exist among us, or not, and if not, why not?
The diagram in the Brin case appears to represent a new way of looking at the problem; perhaps too new a way for it to have occurred to any human being. Maybe it requires the perspective of a mind trained in very different approach to mathematics. Some mathematically inclined person with a good knowledge of the history of this subject could probably confirm or refute the radical novelty of this method of finding Pi.

reply to post by Ross 54


Well, I was being a bit of a "smarta.."; A "double" is a Data Type used in programming. It is used to represent values like Pi. It is typically a 64 bit value that will allow me to represent up to 12 digits with a + or - 3 or 4 digit exponent. Thus; a "double" is the best representation.

My point wasn't about the uniqueness or novelty of the method, it was more to the "alieness" of it. Over the past 2000+ years there have been many who have thought about this "task" (the finding of Pi), making the probability that this isn't as Terrestrial as the Planet virtually nil (my double data type would only have it's least significant bit set...the smallest value, with a massively negative exponent)

I guess I'm trying to say that; tests like can not determine the value of the "Terrestrial" property of an object.

I looked over the history of the values obtained for Pi, and how they were gotten. The geometric expressions were quite old. The Shulba Sutras in India, the Rhind Papyrus in Egypt, and the refinement of the polygonal method by the ancient Greeks. None of these resembled the diagram presented in the Brin case. Symbolic mathematical methods eventually supplanted geometric ones.
Let anyone produce an authentic record of a diagram or a description of a method of finding Pi that amounts to the same approach as that offered to Dr. Brin. Until then, I will consider its extraterrestrial origin an open question, and a valid possibility.

A preference for a geometric, as opposed to an arithmetic or algebraic method of defining Pi, and one so at odds with the usual approach of Pi = circumference divided by diameter, or some variation thereof, seems notably 'alien' to me.
en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by Ross 54


I won't argue about how unusual / unique the approach is. "Alien" seems an apt description, but; Alien != Extraterrestrial (I'm sorry ... Alien does not equal Extraterrestrial).

Given a short amount of time an application could be developed to find other unique methods of determining a value equal to Pi.

You and perhaps the good doctor's fellows should also remember "what" Pi actually is.

The number π is a mathematical constant that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter and is approximately equal to 3.14159.

Pi is a "definition" and is itself defined as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.

Your triangle and square are either; simply another method of demonstrating the same relationship, or only coincidentally the same numeric value. I vote for the latter.

Have you guys seen this declassified NSA document?
As far as I understand it is a decoding of a message received from space.
I think I first became aware of it through Grant Cameron

www.nsa.gov...

I believe that it was established that this was an NSA exercise in code-breaking, and that the extraterrestrial label was added 'just for fun'. The fact that this material is unclassified and was released in 2004 tends to support this interpretation. The release of a real ET message would have created much more of a stir at that time, I think.

We've seen similar things from the U.S. government. Emergency preparedness releases for the public have been couched in terms of fictional 'zombie' attacks, in order to pique interest. It wasn't expected than these would be taken literally.

Dr. Frank Drake, SETI scientist, once created a fictional ET message, as a long binary string of numbers. He sent it to his colleagues to see if they could properly decode it, producing a rough drawing of an 'alien' and his solar system. It was intended to determine if such a message, in one were ever received from space, would be understood.

tanka418
reply to post by Ross 54

 

I won't argue about how unusual / unique the approach is. "Alien" seems an apt description, but; Alien != Extraterrestrial (I'm sorry ... Alien does not equal Extraterrestrial).

Given a short amount of time an application could be developed to find other unique methods of determining a value equal to Pi.

You and perhaps the good doctor's fellows should also remember "what" Pi actually is.

The number π is a mathematical constant that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter and is approximately equal to 3.14159.

Pi is a "definition" and is itself defined as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.

Your triangle and square are either; simply another method of demonstrating the same relationship, or only coincidentally the same numeric value. I vote for the latter.

If it would be a simple matter to find this, and other novel geometric methods of determining a value equal to Pi, one wonders why this hasn't been done repeatedly in the past, and isn't already well known. This is just what has happened with different geometrical demonstrations of the Pythagorean Theorem.

Is the Pi ratio in the diagram we have been discussing merely coincidental ? I'm inclined to doubt it. Take the fact that the chord across one sixth of the circle is the same length as a side of the square, and the same as the radius of the circle. Had anyone realized before that this chord is the same length as the radius ? This relation seems built into the circle in a rather simple way. It doesn't give the impression of randomness or mere coincidence.

Ross 54
I believe that it was established that this was an NSA exercise in code-breaking, and that the extraterrestrial label was added 'just for fun'. The fact that this material is unclassified and was released in 2004 tends to support this interpretation. The release of a real ET message would have created much more of a stir at that time, I think.