[frickfrock999]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/russian-billionaire-spend-100million-biggest-6102427
Quote:

A Russian billionaire has vowed to spend a huge chunk of his fortune on funding the search for alien life.

Investor Yuri Milner appeared alongside Professor Hawking at London's Royal Society today to announce the beginning of the "biggest ever" attempt to locate extraterrestrial civilisations.

The one million stars closest to Earth will be examined in unprecedented detail and telescopes will peer deep into the centre of the Milky Way. He will fund the rejuvenated quest to find life on other planets through his Breakthrough Initiatives project, which will hand over $100 million (£64 million)

This pioneering quest will cover a 10 times larger patch of space than any other search, whilst zeroing in on areas of interest with a resolution 50 times greater than anything achieved before.

The trouble is, there's one MAJOR problem nobody is talking about.

The one thing that would cause us serious issues.

How do we communicate with species that have no idea about human communication?

 

[iARDAs]



 

[Masked]

Quote:

Originally Posted by frickfrock999

The trouble is, there's one MAJOR problem nobody is talking about.

The one issue that would cause us serious problems.

How do we communicate with species that have no idea about human communication?

Math is universal. Physics are physics.

There are ways to communicate through mathematics that are universal.

I remember reading an article about it a while ago, I'll see if I can find it but, we actually have a system in place already that basically surrounds itself around mathematics being used to communicate.

 

[huzzug]

Quote:

Originally Posted by frickfrock999

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/russian-billionaire-spend-100million-biggest-6102427
Quote:

A Russian billionaire has vowed to spend a huge chunk of his fortune on funding the search for alien life.

Investor Yuri Milner appeared alongside Professor Hawking at London's Royal Society today to announce the beginning of the "biggest ever" attempt to locate extraterrestrial civilisations.

The one million stars closest to Earth will be examined in unprecedented detail and telescopes will peer deep into the centre of the Milky Way. He will fund the rejuvenated quest to find life on other planets through his Breakthrough Initiatives project, which will hand over $100 million (£64 million)

This pioneering quest will cover a 10 times larger patch of space than any other search, whilst zeroing in on areas of interest with a resolution 50 times greater than anything achieved before.

The trouble is, there's one MAJOR problem nobody is talking about.

The one thing that would cause us serious issues.

How do we communicate with species that have no idea about human communication?

And the real twist would be when they find @frickfrock999 pewning aliens in Doom 3 wearing naught but his sneakers glued to his couch.

 

[majin662]

I'd rather see people spend their money on getting us closer to the merger of man/machine as well as sustainable living but it's dude's money not mine. I always wonder about people who are so intent on finding aliens.

Do they not realize aliens would more than likely dismiss us outright for how infantile we are as a whole species. I'm not saying invasion type stuff, but I am not super hopeful that E.T. will understand how stupid we are and offer to help.

Better to chase E.T. imo once you've solved your own mortality and weak fleshy suit issues (relative to living long enough to see E.T. or travel in space)

 

[HeavyUser]

Honestly, why would we want to communicate with them? All the signals they send out into space, what if extra terrestrial life picks up on that? What if there are aliens searching for other earth like planets so they can mine resources totally obliterating worlds as they go along? What if they are just like us but more advanced in every way?

We are playing with fire here......

 

[frickfrock999]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Masked

Math is universal. Physics are physics.

There are ways to communicate through mathematics that are universal.

How do we know they're universal though? All of our understanding of it comes from a purely human viewpoint.

We have no way or knowing how other species would interpret "2 x 2" or anything like what we take for granted.

 

[BradleyW]

No need to spend that money, just ask NASA for the unedited images.

 

[Masked]

Quote:

Originally Posted by frickfrock999

How do we know they're universal though? All of our understanding of it comes from a purely human viewpoint.

We have no way or knowing how other species would interpret "2 x 2" or anything like what we take for granted.

Regardless of the symbols used, the core principals remain the same.

2 objects plus 2 objects, is 4. - I'm fairly certain that's universal...In that there are "4" total objects.

Physics don't change because we're in another galaxy...Yes, gravity is different, yes perhaps they've surpassed laws that we have yet to but, the core development, remains the same.

Pythagorean theorem is still a theorem regardless of who among the other species discovered it for example...

Found the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_extraterrestrial_intelligence

 

[Takla]

when ever that much money is paid you will be sure that most of it will be wasted.

the smarter approach would be to pay bit by bit and extend your team of researcher over time.

 

[Wishmaker]

Glad to see people helping humanity

!

 

[Alatar]

If someone wants to find aliens the best way to achieve it is to fund 2 telescopes:

1) A widefield exoplanet detection telescope, has to be able to map pretty much the entire sky, but only make observations about stars in the few hundred LY range, all this one has to do is catalog the earth size-ish planets in habitable zones in the given LY range

2) Huge (10-20m) space based optical wavelength telescope (or even better an optical inferometer with maybe few km diameter) paired up with a coronograph or a star shade that will then one by one go through the planets that the 1st telescope cataloged doing spectroscopy of each one. Obviously followed by scientists going over the data and looking for water, methane, molecular oxygen etc. Once you've got a planet with molecular oxygen + water + bunch of other life markers you're pretty much set.

Of course combined these things will probably cost $20 billion.

The good news is that both of these are quite likely to fly in the next 20 years with or without any billionaire funding.

 

[revro]

i dont want aliens to come to earth, we would have to give them housing and social help, and my country is already at 60% gdp debt

 

[StormX2]

Quote:

Originally Posted by frickfrock999

The trouble is, there's one MAJOR problem nobody is talking about.

The one thing that would cause us serious issues.

How do we communicate with species that have no idea about human communication?

don't skip a step, finding is first, communication second, travel 3rd.

How your comment about Communication being a major issue only a slight issue, not in the fact that we wont be able to talk to eachother (depending the level of Life that is foudn of course), we know how we can communicate, the real problem is the distances involved.

so I only know of one Unconfirmed K Warm Terran that would truly be worth taking a look at in the tau Ceti system. Its only 12 ly and thats do able on a human timescale but obviously waiting 24+ years for a reply can be an obnoxious venture. Unfortunately for the Russian guy, he will be dead before there is Meaningful Conversation between ours and a habitable planet.

Other planets are not very similar to earth and a bit further out, only a handful that I know of within 50 ly

 

[Alatar]

Cleaned and unlocked.

Things that this thread is about:

-The search for alien life
-This russian billionaire's attempt to further the search for alien life

Things that this is not about:

-What specific charity you personally think the man should have put his money into
-AMD/Nvidia and consumers

If the thread still goes as blatantly off topic as it did before warnings will be handed out.

Thanks.

 

[Dhoulmagus]

What if they are hostile!!!!

I'm glad to see somebody putting in a little effort, exploration has been the innate drive of humans for as long as we've had thinking minds. The story isn't shocking, what's shocking is that more people aren't ponying up that kind of dough to further exploration!

It's not about the fact that it's only $100,000,000, that's an incredible amount of money for one person to give, now if every billionaire donated that kind of money we could one day see a slew of giant diameter telescopes strategically spread throughout the Milky way able to coordinate into a single galaxy sized telescope capable of seeing the gods themselves

 

[Ganf]

Give me 10 million and I will get massive amounts of reconstructive surgery done, catch one of the space tourists flights then take a selfie of myself in 0g.

Done.

Edit: Oh, and he's not going to find anything in the closest million stars. That's like going to the Gobi desert to find buried treasure, scooping a thimbleful of sand and examining it closely, then giving up.

Gotta start somewhere though.....

 

[RagingCain]

The Arecibo Message

Dr. Frank Drake, then at Cornell University and creator of the Drake equation, wrote the message with help from Carl Sagan, among others.[1] The message consists of seven parts that encode the following (from the top down):[4]

• The numbers one (1) to ten (10)
• The atomic numbers of the elements hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus, which make up deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
• The formulas for the sugars and bases in the nucleotides of DNA
• The number of nucleotides in DNA, and a graphic of the double helix structure of DNA
• A graphic figure of a human, the dimension (physical height) of an average man, and the human population of Earth
• A graphic of the Solar System indicating which of the planets the message is coming from
• A graphic of the Arecibo radio telescope and the dimension (the physical diameter) of the transmitting antenna dish

The numbers one to ten indicate increase in denomination, which indicates a pattern, which indicates intelligence. It also sets the basis for our counting system.

Two and four, is more advanced, but on the assumption that all life has DNA, since on Earth that is true.

Three is more about the number of elements, while not necessarily translated well into Klingon individually by noun, the individual amounts should match a very common molecular structure.

Six, us.

Seven, our general location.

Eight, how to communicate back with us.

Welcome to SETI @ Home everyone

 

[Dhoulmagus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RagingCain

The Arecibo Message

Dr. Frank Drake, then at Cornell University and creator of the Drake equation, wrote the message with help from Carl Sagan, among others.[1] The message consists of seven parts that encode the following (from the top down):[4]

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

• The numbers one (1) to ten (10)
• The atomic numbers of the elements hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus, which make up deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
• The formulas for the sugars and bases in the nucleotides of DNA
• The number of nucleotides in DNA, and a graphic of the double helix structure of DNA
• A graphic figure of a human, the dimension (physical height) of an average man, and the human population of Earth
• A graphic of the Solar System indicating which of the planets the message is coming from
• A graphic of the Arecibo radio telescope and the dimension (the physical diameter) of the transmitting antenna dish

The numbers one to ten indicate increase in denomination, which indicates a pattern, which indicates intelligence.

Two, three, and four, is more advanced, but on the assumption that all life has DNA, since on Earth that is true.

Five is the number of elements, while not necessarily translated well into Klingon individually, the individual amounts should match a very common molecular structure.

Six, us.

Seven, our general location.

Eight, how to communicate back with us.

Welcome to SETI @ Home everyone

This is totally cool but I must say.

Imagine a general sending his enemy a detailed specification of their soldiers physical capabilities, their count, their location, as well as the local geography so they can optimize their attack.

It's like that movie Signs all over again!!!!

I'll settle for us spotting them as the OP wishes to do, before they spot us!! :::horror music:::

 

[Alatar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ganf

Edit: Oh, and he's not going to find anything in the closest million stars. That's like going to the Gobi desert to find buried treasure, scooping a thimbleful of sand and examining it closely, then giving up.

Why?

How do we know what the likelihood of life actually is around other stars?

Our sample size at the moment is 1 planet. Or maybe 3 if you want to be really generous with the habitable zone.

The only way to answer the "how likely" question is to start looking with some expensive telescopes. If something like the HDST (look it up everyone, that's the proposal for the next flagship mission) surveyed ~100 earth sized planets in the habitable zone of stars and found nothing then we'd have a pretty good case for saying that life (if it exists anywhere else) is extremely rare.