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Just imagine one day a true alien signal comes ringing, and what the public reaction would be? "Yeah, right. Again."
by dmitripopov 7y ago
Just imagine one day a true alien signal comes ringing, and what the public reaction would be? "Yeah, right. Again."
- jonny383 7y agoI guess it would depend how compelling the signal was. If it's just rogue radio waves with seemingly intelligent structure that the average person cannot understand, then the reaction would likely be "Yeah, right. Again". If it's some kind of encoded message containing information that can be decoded and verified by scientific communicators, perhaps not.
- techopoly 7y agoThat's the problem, isn't it? How can we decode a theoretical alien transmission without transposing our own sense of meaning onto it? It's like the X-Files episodes where they find the aliens are using encodings that were designed in modern history by humans. Binary (as if there is one standard binary), bar codes... These scenes are supposed to be huge revelations, but for any sort of programmer or engineer, they seem silly. Which wouldn't be so if they made a point about how the aliens are intentionally using our encoding systems, but that's not how it's presented. Not hating on the X-Files though, that show is awesome.
- swsieber 7y agoIf I were in charge of broadcasting a communication signal into space, I'd make it a very obviously square wave, or something else that doesn't usually occur on its own. So it really depends on if the signal was meant to be seen as a discovery mechanism.
- Koshkin 7y agoA hostile invasion that follows will be the ultimate proof.
- martin_a 7y agoDon't worry, it will most probably be limited to the USA. Aliens always land there.
- richthegeek 7y agoUsually they take a quick detour to destroy Big Ben and the great wall of China first, but after that it's straight to a plucky American kid's backyard.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]