Search for Terrestrial Intelligence 342
joshv writes: "Scientists have prepared a new message to be beamed out to the stars. Unlike the messages of the past this one tries to include some basic resistance to the noise that might be introduced in transit. The CETI project page contains a link to the new message. It a big bag of 0's and 1's. About 10% noise has been added. Can you crack the code? Details of the project as well as an interview with the one of the creators of the new message can be found in this New Scientist article. A hint to decoding: think simple raster based images and remember your powers of 2." Might want to get your copy of Beyond Contact or at least look at the first message they sent.
The Message (Score:4, Funny)
Terrestrial Intelligence? (Score:4, Funny)
Reid
Re:Terrestrial Intelligence? (Score:3, Funny)
I don't think you got it. The search for terrestrial intelligence was aimed at us /.'ers to see if we could decode the message.
In fact, noone seems to have done this fully, the black and white pictures presented are okay, but there is more!
In addition to the clear pictures, the pythagoras, the chemistry, the planets etc. there seems to be some random patterns in the form of blocks. They're not random. If you tilt your head 45 degrees to the left an try to focus into the patterns, you will actually see som real cool 3D images!
I won't tell you what the pictures are, go see for youself instead. (I saw a link to a gif somewhere else here in the discussion.)
Re:Terrestrial Intelligence? (Score:2)
So was the space program (Score:2)
sigh.
Re:No voices in the sky (Score:2)
Why isn't the parent at a +5 (Insightful/Informative/Underrated) yet? This is one of the most insightful posts *ever* on this forum. If there is sentient, advanced, intelligent life in other galaxies, by the time they arrive they will conclude that we were not intelligent because we managed to kill each other and make the planet uninhabitable for all other Earth species (well, except roaches).
On a side note, have any of the SETI people considered the possibility that sentient beings from other galaxies may not speak English?
Re:Terrestrial Intelligence? (Score:2)
First Message in PDF? (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps they'll have better luck with plain text.
Re:First Message in PDF? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:First Message in PDF? (Score:2)
Hah! Stupid Humans (Score:5, Funny)
I decrypt it! (Score:5, Funny)
Have you seen Bin Ladden??? If so, please contact us at :
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20535-0001
(202) 324-3000
if you're bored... (Score:5, Funny)
----
Imagine if you will... the leader of the fifth invader force speaking to the commander in chief...
"They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"Meat. They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"There's no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."
"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars."
"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."
"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."
"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."
"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."
"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in the sector and they're made out of meat."
"Maybe they're like the Orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."
"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take too long. Do you have any idea the life span of meat?"
"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the Weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."
"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads like the Weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through." "No brain?"
"Oh, there is a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat!"
"So... what does the thinking?"
"You're not understanding, are you? The brain does the thinking. The meat."
"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"
"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?"
"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."
"Finally, Yes. They are indeed made out meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."
"So what does the meat have in mind?" "First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the universe, contact other sentients, swap ideas and information. The usual."
"We're supposed to talk to meat?"
"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there? Anyone home?' That sort of thing."
"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."
"I thought you just told me they used radio."
"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."
"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"
"Officially or unofficially?"
"Both."
"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome, and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in the quadrant, without prejudice, fear, or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."
"I was hoping you would say that."
"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"
"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say?" `Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"
"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."
"So we just pretend there's no one home in the universe."
"That's it."
"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you have probed? You're sure they won't remember?"
"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."
"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."
"And we can mark this sector unoccupied."
"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"
"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."
"They always come around."
"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the universe would be if one were all alone."
Nebula-nominated short story (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Please mod it back up. (Score:2)
I'd probably even go so far as to say they're probably not. Space is harsh. And who's to say we won't be obsolete by our own inventions 1000 years from now.
Not on slashdot! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Not on slashdot! (Score:2)
If you print it out... (Score:4, Funny)
Crack the code? (Score:4, Interesting)
Like a regular sequence of on/off that just can't be missed (your "start bits" that get noticed
"Hey, look at this regular pattern of signal! That's weird. And it's interspersed with these garbage; if we just kind of line it up in rows, look, images!" (Assuming the concept of images means anything to whatever intelligence comes across it
(Of course, I might be way off base, as I didn't read the article. Will I get kicked off
-me
Re:Crack the code? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Crack the code? (Score:2)
Yup, that's exactly what they did. (Which makes sense - at least to a being that thinks in two dimensions and represents thought with two-dimensional symbols. The goal is, after all, to make it easy to figure out, even with noise.)
Assuming http://www.huntthepickle.org/~dan/decoded.txt [huntthepickle.org] is the decoded version (Yeah, you didn't read the article, and I was too lazy to download Perl for this old Windoze box ;-)...
"Hmph. Frame 8. Stupid Earthlings haven't even realized that the outermost body in their system is actually two bodies rotating about a common center of mass, not one."
Of course, any extraterrestrial recipient of this signal that had interferometers good enough to call us out on this point would know who we were anyways. I mean, something has to be replenishing the third planet's atmosphere's huge stockpile of molecular oxygen! ;-)
The only thing I don't get is how the aliens are supposed to figure out what the figures in Frame 9 are. They might conclude they're lifeforms (by the chemistry below them), and assume they're the senders of the message, but it'd still be a wild-ass guess.
(The projection of the planet's geography was pretty neat, though.)
Re:Crack the code? (Score:2)
I've been wondering about that. We are used to thinking of continent (land surrounded by water) How many planets do you think have more water than land?
Re:Crack the code? (Score:2)
Re:Crack the code? (Score:2)
If you refute this with the fact that rectangular coordinates are easier to deal with, then just remember that most humans use base-10 for math.
What will SETI@Home make of it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Can we get a program to see the output in SETI@home? Maybe it'll at least give us a hint as to the encoded message.
Re:What will SETI@Home make of it? (Score:3, Informative)
Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Univrs (Score:2)
All your stars are belong to us! (Score:2, Funny)
Advanced alien civilization unlikely (Score:4, Interesting)
As a warm-up, consider the following computer program: Create an array of agents ("the world"), with 50% probability it contains 10 elements and with 50% probability it contains 100 elements. If an agent knows nothing about the world except the rules, for all it knows there is a 50/50 chance that there are only 10 agents in the world. On the other hand, if it knows that it lives in slot #33, it can conclude that there are 100 agents alive. Now for the twist. If it knows that it lives in, say, slot #9, there is not still a 50/50 chance. Instead the probability is 90% that there only are 10 agents because of observational bias. It is so improbable that the agent should find itself among the 10 first if there really were 100 slots that this strengthens the probability of just 10 agents (write the program and let the agents evolve their guesses through genetic algorithms or something, if you don't believe me). Furthermore if we improve the experiment and let the array be of random size, than the best guess for a smart agent would be that he lives in the last slot or in any case that it is very unlikely that the array is, say, a factor 10 more than its slot number. How does this map to reality? Well, you and I know which slot in time that we inhabit (actually the time is not as important as our birth-number). Based on the same argument it is very unlikely that our race will survive for much longer. If we imagine that we will able to colonize planets sometime in the future, and thus increase our numbers even more, it makes the odds even worse.
On to the aliens. For the argument above to be fair, we cannot just make an arbitrary division and count the number of humans. We must count everyone/thing that can somehow reason about this issue. Using the exact same argument, we can note that if there is, somewhere in space-time, a race that spans a large amount of stars (i.e with vast technical superiority compared to ours), it is extremely unlikely that you and I would not be one of them.
The only escape from the logic of the above arguments is, as I see it, either:
1. In the future we will become like the Borg, one hivemind and thus the actual number of people does not matter, since that one mind does not affect the statistics.
2. In the future we will evolve to something very strange, which will be uncapable of posing these questions.
By the way... A little something to make your heads spin even more ;). The above argument also applies to your age. I'll let you figure out the consequences of that one for yourselves... This is not just some crackpot theory of mine, the people [anthropic-principle.com] who support this theory is an impressive bunch (Hawking, Tipler, Barrow, Davies, etc).
Re:Advanced alien civilization unlikely (Score:2, Interesting)
So, it's more a chest-pounding look at us type thing. Maybe down the line some civilization that is more advanced than us will not only be able to travel the incredible distance to reach us, but would try because of a message generated long before they began to exist.
OK, so it doesn't really do us much good, does it?
I'm wondering if we'll bounce it off the moon or some satellite and get the SETI@Home folks overly excited for no reason.
Re:Advanced alien civilization unlikely (Score:5, Insightful)
If it knows that it lives in, say, slot #9, there is not still a 50/50 chance. Instead the probability is 90% that there only are 10 agents because of observational bias.
Huh? Given the following results of flipping a coin, what is the probability that the next flip will be a H:
HHHHHHHHHHH
50%. Because only a 2^12 chance of having a sequence HHHHHHHHHHHH in a series of 12 flips, that is no greater or no less than any other sequence, such as HHTTHTHHTTHH. Just because you are in the 9th slot, that does not affect the outcome of the occupancy of the other 99 slots. Obviously, the first 10 are always filled in your example. So the fact that something occupies those slots does not in any way affect the probability that the other 90 will be filled, at least in your example.
And in the real world, there's no way of knowing if even the other slots are filled
Another probability exercise I've heard is which is more likely, that we are unique in the history of the universe and will continue to be unique in the future of the universe or that we are in the middle of the "bell curve" of life/intelligence distribution throughout the universe? Given that the universe has existed for around 12 billion years and will continue to exist for quite a number more, and that there are rather large number of planets now and were a rather large number in the past and that the odds are that there will be planets in the future, is it more likely that we are the rule or the exception?
It is like the joke about the guy who always carried a bomb whenever he flew because the odds of there being two bombs on a plane were astronomical. There is no dependent relationship between the two acts, so he didn't affect the probability at all.
Of course IANAPE (Probability Expert) so I'm willing to be shown the error of my ways.
Re:Advanced alien civilization unlikely (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Advanced alien civilization unlikely (Score:2)
Huh? Given the following results of flipping a coin, what is the probability that the next flip will be a H:
HHHHHHHHHHH
50%.
No, no, I think you're solving the wrong question.
The situation is that there are either 10 agents or 100 agents - no middle ground. Why this should be assumed, I don't know... Nevertheless, the question, based on this assumption, is this: How probable is it that there are only 10 agents given that a random selection from them (yourself) has resulted in the ninth instance?
I'm no probability expert myself, but I do know that this question is not the same as the one you answered. See, if there were a hundred agents, the odds you would have ended up being ten or less was only 10%. If there were only ten, obviously, the odds were a 100%. And, uh, I can't really figure more than that, with my limited expertise.
I'm still unclear on the applicability of this to the real world, though. (Which is not to say that I think it's invalid... I just don't have time to think about it). :-P
Re:Advanced alien civilization unlikely (Score:2)
It would depend on the coin.
You are correct. Right after I hit submit I said to myself, "Self," I said, "You really should have pointed out that you were assuming a standard coin with an equal probability of landing either Heads or Tails with no probability of it landing on its side."
Who's first? (Score:2)
Somebody (some civilization) has to be the first, and that somebody will probably create the same probability scheme to explain why they haven't heard from anyone else yet.
In a hypothetical universe where civilization eventually comes about, some civilization has to be the first one. That civilization is going to be quite depressed that there's nobody else out there. It's a self-centered assumption, because the probability seems low that you'd be the first, but if there are any number of civilizations throughout the timespan of the universe, one of them had to have been the first one.
Re:Advanced alien civilization unlikely (Score:2, Interesting)
First off you make the absurd claim that With large probability, no civilization exists (nor will ever exist) which is significantly more technically advanced than we are right now.
you then go on w/ a "proof" of said claim. you give a statistical analysis of a well defined system with well defined rules. oh look at the cute computer program everyone!
welcome to your existance. you naive little fool.
We've barely placed any thought to the inner workings of the universe, of life, how it all works. We've yet to figure out whether or not we are unique... A mere statistical oddity... Or whether we're just one more race striving to reach a level of mental capacity and technological advancement to reach the stars.
I submit that your list of supporters of your theory are impressive, but I would hesitate to bow down to a theory like this.
heres a little twist on your example. given that we exist now, is there not a good possibility that someone else exists somewhere? in the future or past? or even the present? with the billions upon billions of stars in our known universe, what are the odds that we are THAT much of a fluke?
as for your possible escape routes.. a borg mind is the best you could come up with?!?!
from the primer you linked
There are also a number of possible "loopholes" or alternative interpretations of what the Doomsday argument shows. For instance, it turns out that if there are many extraterrestrial civilizations and you interpret the self-sampling assumption as applying equally to all intelligent beings and not exclusively to humans, then another probability shift occurs that exactly counterbalances and cancels the probability shift that the Doomsday argument implies.
now couldn't we take that and notice that we are still here =) and that every day we are still here, the probability goes up that this loophole in the doomsday scenario is valid... that humanity does not comprise the set of all possibilities in the scenario, and that ETs do in fact exist? Just a thought.
Odds of Advanced Alien Civilizations (Score:2)
etc.
Actually the odds are at least roughly similar to the collections of civilizations that we have had here on earth at any random period of time for the history of the species. Say the past ten thousand to fifty thousand years. Select a bunch of random samples, times and locations (ten square Km or mile areas), and see what you get.
the odds may be comparable. and are at least based a bit on reality.
Re:Advanced alien civilization unlikely (Score:3, Interesting)
1. The requirements for elements in the array
2. The number of element in the array
Since knowing the number of elements in the array is presumptious for the nature of this discussion, let us reason that the only possible way to know the total number of elements in the array is to derive the requirements for all elements in the array. Since we have yet to fathom these requirements, we cannot formulate the statistical likelyhood that if we exist as Array(N) then there exists Array(N+1).
Puhleeeze... (Score:2)
Here is the Drake equation [google.com] from the google cache.
A Silly Problem (Score:2)
Except that I can cross from A to B. QED.
This is much the same sort of silly nonsense.
I figure that alien life probably doesn't exist--but I don't resort to silly arguments to `prove' it.
Re:A Silly Problem (Score:2)
Difference between a philosopher and an engineer: They're at a bar and the philosopher says to the engineer "You can't make love to that women, cause there will always be a space halfway between you and her, therefore you can never actually get close and touch her, because to move towards her, you must first move to the halfway point between you and her."
Engineer says "Oh, i'll get close enough."
~z
Re:Advanced alien civilization unlikely (Score:2)
Of course, you need to define a distribution for that to make any sense at all. Plus, the priors are unknown. In order to get anything meaningful out of Bayesian analysis, you need to know the priors, and we obviously don't.
Next, you assume that vast technical superiority = many more inhabitants. Simply not true.
Hmmm. Did you read the FAQ from the site? Question 10.
Re:Advanced alien civilization unlikely (Score:2, Interesting)
Anthropic reasoning says, roughly, "since human life and consciousness seemingly require an extraordinary number of 'coincidences' or improbable events in the artificial set of rules we have derived for the behaviour of things, it follows that the universe was either predesigned to result in human consciousness, or human consciousness is an unavoidable consequence of 'the stuff' universe is made of." How is this unlike saying "it is extraordinarily improbable that my horoscope says that 'you will have many challenges today, and you will meet a tall dark stranger', and yet I had many challenges today and met a tall dark stranger! It follows that my life is an unavoidable consequence of my horoscope!"
Re:Advanced alien civilization unlikely (Score:2)
What the "doomsday prinsiple" referred to on the site you linked says can be distilled into: "given probability X of humanity becoming extinct at any point, then the probability of humanity being extinct increases over time." That is of course true. They follow that up with saying "thus the more humans have lived before you, the more likely it is that you are towards the end of the total number of people that will be born". Which is also true.
However, the first problem is that we don't know how likely it is that humanity will become extinct at any one point in time.
Further, all other factors being equal (which they obviously aren't due to changes in population size, changes in our environment, changes in technology level etc.), the longer humanity survives, the more statistical reason we have to adjust our chance of extinction at any one point in time down, as if the chance of extinction is high, then it would be highly unlikely that we'd made it this far.
Given your reference to applying the argument to my age, then by your reasoning, the older I get the higher my chance of dying soon is. But this is plain wrong for the general case, and can easily be demonstrated to be by looking at real data.
The reason it is wrong is that we have no fixed upper limit on the length of our life and no fixed statistical chance of dying at any point in our life. At birth, my chances of dying at various ages can be calculated fairly well, and from that my chance of being dead at any particular point in time is relatively easy to calculate, since we have a vast amount of data on it, and it will approach 100% after a fixed amount of time.
But at any given time it is not given that if I live an hour longer, my chances of dying in the next ten year increases. In fact you'll find that all else being equal (I don't suddenly decide to live a healthy life, for instance), for many time intervals my chances of dying in the next ten years will decrease.
Why? Because at some ages we are more likely to die than others. If you survive your first year, for instance, you are more likely to be free of birth defects that would kill you early, and thus your life expectancy increases. The same is true for many other periods of your life, even towards the end: Living past a certain age may indicate that you're at low risc for a lot of diseases and problems that statistically would show up in most high risc patients before that age, and thus give you a statistically a higher chance of living ten more years than what you had a year or two earlier.
The same line of argument holds for the human race, but we can't calculate the actual chance of extinction because we have no data to calculate the chances with. We can make rough guesstimates, but thats it. Even so, it is pretty clear that if we just take factors we can estimate, the chance of survival will increase or decrease over time.
To go back to the doomsday principle, the example on their webpages uses a constant population for any unit of time. This is clearly not true for humanity, as the number has been growing steadily, so using the "birth number" as they suggest would flaw their entire argument.
If the entire population of humanity over time will reach 200 billion, then you also need to know the distribution in time of those 200 billion to know whether it is likely or not that you should be conserned about being number 199 billion.
This is easily illustrated by pointing out that common estimates of the number of people that have already died are typically lower than the current population of earth.
The problem is again that we don't know the chance of extinction, we have now basis for assuming we know the expansion of the human race in numbers or placement in the galaxy, nor do we have any basis for estimating the total number of humans that will live.
All of this means that we lack the fundamental basis for using the doomsday principle for anything but hyperbole.
Indeed, the fundamental assumption of the doomsday principle is making an estimate of the chance of extinction at any point in time, and that a higher number of people born before you means that humanity is more likely to go extinct soon.
But this breaks down as it is easily shown that as with age, for some increases the probability of extinction will indeed go down. Given a population of 1 I give you a close to 100% chance of extinction after 120 years. If that population is increased to two, the chance is relatively high that they will be of opposite sex, capable of having children, and will have children. The chance of reaching 120 before extinction is still small, but it is most certainly higher.
Thus, you having a high "birth number" may actually mean that the chance of humanity to survive the next 1000 years or a million years from your birth may be higher than it would have been had you been born a generation ago, when the population was dramatically smaller. Of course a lot of other factors also affect this.
To finally touch on the aliens. Yes, if we get to randomly choose who to become from X number of individuals being born, and a large part of X are non humans, then the chance of choosing human would be small.
However, we have no reason to assume that we ended up as humans as a result of a random process. Actually we have tons of reasons to assume we ended up humans as a decidedly non-random biological process.
And even if we did end up human on a completely random basis, to be able to estimate the likely size of an alien population, we would need to know at the very least the chance of us becoming human.
Currently we can't tell whether our data sample is accurate (if there's no aliens), or completely useless (if there are lots of aliens, and we just don't know about them), so we can't make any reasonable assumptions about that chance.
Which means that using self observations is completely futile and statistically utterly bogus - it's like trying to calculate the likelyhood of being born black by taking a sample of white babies, isolating them at birth so they can't know anything about the existence of black people, and letting them estimate the chance of that existence without using any knowledge of biology.
Re:Advanced alien civilization unlikely (Score:2)
actually its says that there WHERE at least seven balls
First Interstellar IRC chat... (Score:3, Funny)
a/s/l?
My god, it's full of Xenus! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My god, it's full of Xenus! (Score:5, Funny)
+1, Litigious Scientology Reference
Decoding script and decoded file. (Score:5, Interesting)
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
my($out) = "";
while()
{
chop;
s/1/*/g;
s/0/\
$out = $out . $_;
}
# Remove first 69
$out = substr($out,69);
$rowlength = 127;
my($nextrow) = "";
do
{
$nextrow = substr $out, 0, $rowlength;
print $nextrow . "\n";
$out = substr $out, $rowlength;
}
while($out ne "");
exit;
The output wont go through lameness filter
But its here [huntthepickle.org] anyway.
Mr Thinly Sliced
Re:Decoding script and decoded file. (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the message as a monochrome png [sixlegs.com].
--Chris
Re:Decoding script and decoded file. (Score:4, Informative)
P1
127 2149
to the top of the message, and running the command:
pbmtopgm 1 1 output_stream.txt | pgmtoppm white | ppmtogif | gif2png -fO > msg.png
--Chris
Re:What the first frame means. (Score:2)
primes, other then 15, person making this must've messed up.
That 15 is in there just to f*** with their heads. We can't have the aliens thinking we're too smart, or being totally sure that the sequence with 15 in it isn't somehow important.
Re:What the first frame means. (Score:2)
Actually it makes more sense than trying to ask a question, as it makes for something obvious to talk about in a reply.
Re:What the first frame means. (Score:2)
You mean the first message another species receives from us is a troll?
Re:What the first frame means. (Score:2)
the probleme related to 15 has been fixed.
Why does that not inspire confidence?
Contact (Score:3, Interesting)
Once we DO make contact.... (Score:2)
It a big bag of 0's and 1's (Score:2, Interesting)
Which actually gives us a hint on where to start with decoding: there's an obvious pattern, however, the length chosen for the lines is not identical to the pattern.
In other words, first thing to do is rearranging the line lenghts to match the pattern.
If I take the random piece:
00001000000001100000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000110000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000011000000000000110011
00100010001001010010001000100000001010000
00000000000011000100110000001000000101001
00100001000100001100000000100000000000011
00010000000001010010010101010010000001100
I would rearrange it as:
00001000000001100000000000000000000000000*
00000000000001100000000000000000000000000*
00000000000001100000000000011001100100010*
00001100000000100000000000011000100000000*
(*end of line cut due to lameness filter)
The noise is obvious from the fourth line. It becomes a bit trick if you get noise in the time-domain, but still nothing to complex. It certainly looks like they use a fixed 'word' length.
Organise the data into rows of 127 characters... (Score:2)
I can't figure out what language it's in though. Those characters are weird. I'm guessing that the mathematical notation, besides using weird characters, is pretty like what we're used to. In that case I think I can also make out A=pi*2^2 and C=2*pi*r next to a picture of a circle.
Re:Organise the data into rows of 127 characters.. (Score:2)
They start with O = 0 and X = 1 to express binary numbers, and then use those to define digit characters. They go on to define other things with those digits.
How can they understand the pictures? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, I speak english, I live on earth, and the pictures by themselves are meaningless to me.
Re:How can they understand the pictures? (Score:2)
Exactly my thought. We find it hard to understand - what about the intended recipients?
I also worry that they've just gone and given away some of our most important discoveries (eg, three cubes around a right angled triangle) for free to any hostile race, and a map of great locations to hover spacecraft over in preparation for destroying.
Good one! What clown thought that up?
;-)
(And I hope it wasn't government funding that paid for it either. Gee, my taxes going to help get myself killed.)
Re:How can they understand the pictures? (Score:2)
When they want to send a message to you, they'll just put it on prime time.
Re:How can they understand the pictures? (Score:2)
I speak english
As aliens probably don't speak english, you first have to learn to think without language. Then you'll have to learn the new language which is defined in the picture itself.
Try, it *is* possible (Score:2)
At the top it introduces numbers (0-12 then a few others). It shows a number in base 1 (just dots), then in binary, then the symbol they want to use for it, with their symbol for equals in between.
It then goes on to basic math and by looking at the numbers you can figure out what the operator is and its symbol. I make the first one out to be 1+1=2 and the second one (going down) is 1+2=3. Then comes geometry, atoms, spectral lines (?), etc.
The idea of these messages (they really need to be much longer to be useful) is that, by the end, you have an entire working language and can then start telling them stuff. I have a problem with this message because it wastes lots of space on pictures that have meaning to us but probably aren't very interesting to the aliens (case in point: the map of earth). These messages should be long and focus on text (symbols) and diagrams when necessary (the atoms).
For a *decent* article on these messages read Let's learn Lincos [newscientist.com] on the New Scientist website.
Note: I'm no linguist so If I can read it so can you. Give it another shot!
Re:How can they understand the pictures? (Score:2)
Then there's a map of the solar system.
A fold-up map of earth. There seems to be a symbol in Asia.
A bit of a primer on cellular biology & DNA, etc. It looks like we have some (bio?)chemistry in there too.
Maybe the common atmospheric gasses.
Some mathematics, maybe the pythagorean theorem there. Probably the value of pi with that circle / radian thing.
Interstellar Contact Service (Score:4, Funny)
lets hope... (Score:2)
The 'decoded' image. (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, making sense out of the resulting image could take a while. At the top they're counting in binary, and seem to be assigning an arbitrary symbol for each number. The symbols seem to have been chosen in an attempt to make them out even when partially garbled. Those symbols and certain pictures are then used throughout the rest of the image. Heh, and check out the naked ppl!
Re:The 'decoded' image. (Score:2)
-Russ
Re:The 'decoded' image. (Score:2)
Re:The 'decoded' image. (Score:2)
Re:The 'decoded' image. (Score:2, Funny)
On another note, it was recently discovered that when Hilary Rosen found out about this message, she sent one from RIAA soon thereafter. The message contained a complete copy of the DMCA and a legal warning that any attempt to "crack" the message would be in violation of the law and would be strictly prosecuted. Tomorrow, Ms Rosen plans to argue in front of the House judiciary committee that such attempts to send hidden messages to aliens are outside of RIAA's direct control and, could therefore potentially be used as tools for illegal activities such as transferring copyrighted content to aliens.
No wonder there has been no response... (Score:5, Funny)
A/S/L?
Supries that the planet hasn't been kick/banned already.
the message: (Score:2)
Is this really such a good idea? (Score:2, Insightful)
Partial crack. (Score:2)
I've got it partly deciphered.
It starts: "Make Money Fast!"
I'll work on the rest tommorrow.
Almost cracked it (Score:2)
If you open the file in a hex editor and get rid of all the line breaks, and replace the 1s with a hex value of FF, and the 0's with a hex value of 0, then open it as a raw image with a width of 64 in Photoshop, you can see the image.
I didn't quite get it right, the image is shifted one pixel per line. But it looks like it contains a picture of earth, and some human figures, among other things.
I just hope the aliens have Photoshop.
They were a year late... (Score:2)
Re:They were a year late... (Score:2)
What?? (Score:2, Insightful)
*TERRESTRIAL* intelligence?!?!?!?!?! (Score:3, Funny)
hey! (Score:2, Interesting)
its all cut up and the things are in odd places, but thats cool that they used his map.
The important question is... (Score:2)
Weird things in the message. (Score:2, Funny)
This seems a little suspicious. Are they suggesting that the aliens dump their weapons or land their ship in China?
2) The people in the picture have no pubic hair, and the guy has a small wang.
3) Both Earth and Jupiter are marked on the map. Why Jupiter? Is this a 2001 thing? Is Jupiter going to turn into a second sun as predicted by Arthur C Clarke?
4) Why does this message look like the average instruction manual you get with motherboards nowadays?
Don't bother, here is the message: (Score:2)
Spam ?! (Score:2, Funny)
If we ever get some message back it'll probably be:
DON'T SEND ANY MORE UNSOLLICITED MESSAGES
Failing to do so will result in legal action.
Skylarov? (Score:3, Funny)
Apes, porpoises, parrats, velociraptors ... (Score:2)
They call this noise? (Score:2, Interesting)
Except this appears to be in the form of removing 1s and replacing them by 0s only. If every 1 in 10 characters were inverted that would be more representative, but I don't really understand why they think that adding the noise demonstrates anything.
In practice this message should be broadcast repeatedly, eventually by averaging you should be able to remove most of the noise.
Frankly, I find the whole thing overly complex and obscure, as others have stated. If we have such a problem understanding it, what chance have any non-human intelligences? They are almost certainly to be totally unlike us, alien to be exact.
I DECODED IT! (Score:2)
FIRST POST!
A good idea? (Score:2)
haha (Score:2)
think about it.
Decoder Big Improvement (Score:2, Informative)
Re:intel or motorola (Score:2)
Re:intel or motorola (Score:2)
Re:Please... (Score:2)
The idea for cutting down the noise is so that whatever has a chance of picking up the message won't just ignore as more noise. This message will stand out, and if anyone happens to hear a bit of it, they'll stop and think, "Wait a second... I don't know what that is, but that's definitely SOMETHING". It's like putting their message in large, bold print on a billboard instead of putting it in small, italic print on a flyer. It makes whatever has a chance of seeing it actually notice it, rather than pass it over.
And remember, this is the sort of message that even we can receive. Many people assume that aliens will be energy-based lifeforms millions of years ahead of us in development like the Vorlons or the Taelons, but the reality is that this sort of message could be picked up by aliens that haven't even mastered space travel, and may even be in their own unique technological equivalent to the late 19th or early 20th century. I always wonder why so many people are convinced that whatever we come across could actually be a little bit behind us in development... maybe it's humility, or maybe it's just too much science fiction TV shows.
Re:Please... (Score:2)
Actually, I believe the idea is that they're trying to make the message available to even the most basic of intelligent life
I know about some marketing executives they could test it on...
Relative age of civilization, radiotelescopes (Score:2)
Given that, the odds seem reasonable that any civilization that spots us has likely got more advanced technology (at least in terms of radio astronomy) than us, and has probably been around for a lot longer.
Re:Earth's location (Score:2)