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posted by martyb on Thursday August 17 2017, @01:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the V'Ger dept.

Was NASA hasty in including a pulsar map to Earth on the Pioneer plaques and Voyager Golden Records?

Forty years ago, we sent a map to Earth sailing deep into the cosmos. Copies of this map are etched into each of the twin Voyager spacecraft, which launched in the late 1970s and are now the farthest spacecraft from home. One of the probes has already slipped into interstellar space, and the other is skirting the fringes of our sun's immediate neighborhood. If it's ever intercepted and decoded by extraterrestrials, the map will not only reveal where to find our watery little world, but also when the space probe that delivered it to alien hands left home.

[...] "Back when Drake did the pulsar map, and Carl Sagan and the whole team did the Voyager record, there hadn't been very much debate over the pros and cons of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence," says York University's Kathryn Denning, an anthropologist who studies the ethics of sending messages to extraterrestrials. "Now, however, as you know, there is a major debate among scientists and a variety of stakeholders about the wisdom of doing anything other than listening."

[...] "In those days, all the people I dealt with were optimists, and they thought the ETs would be friendly," Drake says. "Nobody thought, even for a few seconds, about whether this might be a dangerous thing to do." So what are the chances of the map actually reaching extraterrestrial shores aboard the Voyagers? "Very small," Drake says. "The thing is going something like 10 kilometers per second, at which speed it takes—for the typical separation of stars—about half a million years to go from one star to another. And of course, it's not aimed at any star, it's just going where it's going."

Of course, aliens could just use gigantic space telescopes to find Earth and other watery planets instead of accidentally intercepting a tiny spacecraft. And humanity will either be super-advanced, post-apocalyptic, or just gone by the time aliens can find a map and head for Earth (even if they have faster-than-light travel, the spacecraft won't be relatively far away from Earth anytime soon).

Also at Boing Boing and The Sun (not that one).


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Arik on Thursday August 17 2017, @03:25AM (2 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Thursday August 17 2017, @03:25AM (#555112) Journal
    When we saw ourselves as on the cusp of really civilizing, back about the time this went out, we assumed that more advanced civilizations had already completed the process and would naturally be non-threatening, either actively helpful to us or non-interventionist at least. It was a more innocent time.

    As time has gone on we've collectively lost that vision. The wall came down but all that changed was the sides swapped. Cynicism is the order of the day. Instead of assuming that we are reaching civilization and those more advanced will have achieved it, it's more common now to assume that civilization is always and only a cover for barbarity. As we normalize our own barbarisms, so we now assume that our betters will do the same, and therefore instead of eagerly looking forward to first contact the trend is more and more to see it as a danger, a catastrophe waiting to happen.

    On the surface these are questions about the outside world, but the answers we reach have more to do with our internal world.
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @10:18AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @10:18AM (#555211)

    There is certain periodicity to that change of mind. Let's hope that Voyager arrives to its intended audience when they are in more civilized phase of their cycle. Personally, I hope they will be intrigued to study our line of thinking and cooperate with us in their studies because they understand that having another angle is beneficial. However, if they see us as some sort of themselves, only bad, stuck at a lower point in development they already moved from, or spoiled and decadent, lost from the true path (both of stances are common between cultures here on Earth), in other words, having nothing of much authentic value to them, then we can expect to get "straightened up" by them, like so many nations in history of our world.

    If history of colonial and neocolonial wars teach us anything, it is probable that aliens would seek and find allies among Earth nations and groups which believe they have been wronged by the Earth-ruling top-dog constellation of nations. The war with aliens would most likely be a WW between Earthlings themselves, only with "leveled field" - former underdogs would get support of advanced technology equipped alien war party destroying or rendering useless critical military assets of Earth's top dogs. War by proxy keeps masters alive. After the initial peaceful introduction to collect better view, they would probably start the war to eliminate the strongest opposition (USA and other G-7 countries, and anyone else siding with them) through support to revisionists and opportunists, and when they succeed, the aliens' allies themselves will be the next to be disarmed and indentured, now that the strongest guys are no longer around to form coalition with against the aliens. That is roughly similar to the main scheme of destroying Native American empires of Aztec and Inca by European invaders - a plan which proved successful.

    The moral of this story is two things: first, the world not based on genuinely and seriously considering balance of satisfaction of all its constituents is more vulnerable than the one which adheres to principles of fairness, and second, you should never let your stronger ally completely annihilate your adversary if there is any chance that you may need your adversary as an ally if your present ally becomes your new adversary (however, if you are the strongest of the bunch, the two of them may gang against YOU).

    • (Score: 2) by Lester on Saturday August 19 2017, @09:57AM

      by Lester (6231) on Saturday August 19 2017, @09:57AM (#556318) Journal

      That is roughly similar to the main scheme of destroying Native American empires of Aztec and Inca by European invaders - a plan which proved successful.

      Signing and break treaties until genocide also works, as North American European proved successful.
      Straight extermination, like Australian against Aboriginal proved successful.

      You think in similar forces. Don't. If they are so advanced, you must think not in the clash of two civilizations, an advanced one and a backward one. It's better to think of modern civilization against Amazonian tribes. And probably that's too optimistic. A better analogy is colonization of a land where there is only wild fauna. Probably the cost of exterminating us will be ridiculous for them; When we clean a forest to get a field we don't fight against trees bears and wolves. You don't sign treaties with wolves or bears; they may be a pain in the neck for some time but never a foe. Perhaps aliens can just spread some kind of disease to exterminate population.

      As any intelligent creature, they probably have intellectual curiosity and want to do some research. As any creature from lions against hynas to Homo Sapiens against Neardenthal, they expand and have to expel others to get more resources. The question is which of these motivations will be stronger. Perhaps we are not that interesting, they have seen a lot like us, so they only need our soil or water or sun or what ever.

      And, yes, thinking they will be peaceful and gentle is stupid. We are not going to be gentle for too long if we find them first.

      No matter what protection laws we have, if someday it is possible to get there easily, Billy Gates will buy a mansion there, and that will be the first step. And if Billy Gates does something that upsets native and one of them kicks Billy Gates, there will be retaliations.