Thursday, March 18, 2010

THIS GUY MIGHT HAVE A POINT





One time, long ago, our pal Aeswiren and I had a discussion as to whether long range probes like Voyager, and even SETI might discover ET lifeforms, but, at the same time, reveal to those lifeforms we were here and ripe for the picking. We were of course, drunk and probably stoned.

“Albert Harrison, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, who is speaking at the meeting tomorrow, will raise concerns about the radio signals humans are sending out to any eavesdropping aliens. Scientists have used telescopes to listen for alien broadcasts for more than 20 years, but we have also beamed our own signals into space. Harrison wonders if we might be sending the wrong kind of messages. "Some of them are serious, but there's a lot of hoopla, like love letters and commercials. What would we make of an alien civilisation if the first thing we translated from them was a commercial for a snack food?" he said. Scientists will debate whether Earth should be more proactive in trying to make contact with aliens by broadcasting signals to solar systems that might harbour life. Some enthusiasts believe any alien civilisation capable of reaching us can only have survived long enough to develop the necessary technology by solving major social problems, such as war, poverty and discrimination. Harrison disagrees. "I do think there's a risk in active searches for extra-terrestrials. The attitude seems to be they're friendly, they're a long way away, and they can't get here. But if you wake up one morning and an armada of extra-terrestrial spaceships are circling Earth, that prediction won't necessarily hold," (Image from the unique Valerie.)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm stoned & I say fuck it, let'em find us & start some shit, they'll fucking regret it! We kill each other for the stupidest reasons, you give us a cause to unite or in the least, focus on a common enemy & we'll probably destroy the omniverse.

That or well...

PUT UP YOUR TENTACLES! GIVE ME THE SPACE MONEY! GIVE ME THE FUCKING SPACE MONEY! KEEP YOUR FUCKING TENTACLES UP! GIVE ME THE FUCKING SPACE MONEY!

-ZAP-

GRAB THE SHINY THING IT HAD! WE GOTTA GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE! GRAB THE SHINY THING!

hcb said...

In spite of all the starry eyed forward thinking humanists and their belief that aliens are innately benevolent, I always thought that SETI and the efforts to make contact was stupifyingly moronic. I don't think aliens are innately evil either. if they're out there, and if they have evolved in such a way they might have designed a technology capable of gratifying a desire to reach across the cosmos to hook up with humans or like sentients, I'd hate to think of what would happen when they get here and discover that Jim Varney is dead. For all I know, they're halfway home by now.

But humans can't find their own assholes with two hands, eight tentacles and a ShamWow. Frankly if I was the kind of alien that people most dream of having to a collective dinner, meeting humans would be very far down my bucket list.

Anonymous said...

And it only cost ninepence!