Originally posted by greenpawn34
Good Thread.
The choice has already been made and music was placed on Voyager
in the mid 70's and sent 'out there'.
Last report, June 2010, state it is 14 billion kilometers from the Sun and is
heading for another Solar Syatem.
Musici includes Chuck Berry singing 'Johnny B. Goode', Mozart, Beethoven,
pan pipes etc...etc.
The whole list of ...[text shortened]... hey will send us back.
Tom Cruise is bad enough, but an alien version of Tom Cruise.....
The only problem with that idea is the vastness of space and the incredibly small size of the probe compared to even a space rock. Aliens would have to be lucky on a scale that would make the lottery seem like a sure thing.
Even radio and tv signals have gone out 100 light years so our RF wavefront is a sphere about 200 light years across. Even that would have little chance of being detected, although our own technology could detect our own transmissions from further than 100 light years but we don't see anything in those close in stars, suggesting there may only be a few technical civilizations in the whole galaxy at one time.
If a technically capable civilization lasts 10,000 years, which for humans seems a bit of a stretch, but using that figure, a radio wavefront advancing through the galaxy could just be in the wrong place at the wrong time, since our galaxy is 100,000 LY across or so, that leaves physical room for ten such 10,000 year long signal 'pulses' where a civilization is on fire for a brief period of time and then fades away. In that case we may never see a technical civilization in our entire theoretical 10,000 year technically capable history. Does that make sense?
In other words, all this carefully cultured angst about aliens eating us for breakfast is probably wasted effort.
So you are chosen to present us to Aliens.
23 Aug '10 05:15
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