Timeline for How can we transmit a date to another species?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 22, 2017 at 17:42 | vote | accept | Sandro | ||
| Apr 21, 2017 at 13:28 | comment | added | SF. | "We should maybe assume that WE are the idiots in this potential Blitz Gordon theater out there. I would've thrown that "wooden stick map" on the camp fire if I were in the Arctics and needed fuel." – Speak for yourself! | |
| Apr 21, 2017 at 11:11 | comment | added | LocalFluff | @SF We should maybe assume that WE are the idiots in this potential Blitz Gordon theater out there. I would've thrown that "wooden stick map" on the camp fire if I were in the Arctics and needed fuel. I heard a poor astrophysicist who's into cosmic radiation complain that all of his colleagues erase all of the data he's interested in, because it's just noise to them. We just know how to look for ourselves. And there being any kind of close copy of us out there requires miraculous coincidences in biochemical combinatorics. This is genuinely harder than training a house cat. | |
| Apr 21, 2017 at 11:00 | comment | added | SF. | @LocalFluff: And yet we'd still be able to decode the planet layout. We're even able to decode a map carved in a stick of wood. It's assumed the recipient of our message is not a total idiot. | |
| Apr 21, 2017 at 10:31 | comment | added | LocalFluff | @SF A few hundred years ago the position of the planets in the Solar system would've been the apparent universally common space geography and clock with any then imagined aliens. Since a few decades it's the pulsars instead. I bet we'll have another framework before our message reaches "them". A dark matter map might be much richer. Voyager's message was actually intended for humans on Earth in our time. It was the news that we are physically exploring the unknown now. Needles converting scratches in a rotating surface meant pop music. Even millennials are too exotic to understand that. | |
| Apr 21, 2017 at 10:03 | comment | added | SF. | @LocalFluff: If the physical regular patterns on surface of matter are beyond their comprehension, I don't think we have any means of communication with that kind of civilization. Pulsars are very characteristic objects in the universe, and if the civilization doesn't care about them, it's likely not to be interested in anything we may convey. | |
| Apr 21, 2017 at 9:16 | comment | added | LocalFluff | But how is that pulsar map to be formulated or drawn? Since we only have a subset of astronomy and math knowledge, and they maybe focus on active dark matter or something and don't care much about pulsars, we really need to find some common starting point. Scratches in a golden disk might be completely overlooked by them. | |
| Apr 19, 2017 at 18:27 | comment | added | JohnEye | Looks like someone else had the same idea: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar_clock | |
| Apr 19, 2017 at 18:20 | comment | added | JohnEye | Then just mention the possible ways, for example the steady decline in frequency might be reasonably precise. | |
| Apr 19, 2017 at 17:53 | comment | added | SF. | @JohnEye: I would if I knew :-] I can imagine several ways but I don't know which would be preferable or optimal. | |
| Apr 19, 2017 at 17:19 | comment | added | JohnEye | I think this is a very elegant approach as the pulsars tell you the position in not only space, but time as well at the same time. I really like this answer and I think it's the best one so far, but I think you should elaborate a bit on how to reconstruct the date from the pulsar's frequencies. | |
| Apr 19, 2017 at 9:38 | history | answered | SF. | CC BY-SA 3.0 |