Existing laser tech could be used for “porch light” to attract alien astronomers
news.mit.edu
news.mit.edu
If anything, we should be thinking about how to emit less radiation that can be traced back to Earth into space.
Best case: aliens send us technology via morse code.
Worst case: relativistic projectile from advanced civilization destroys Earth.
I watched a short movie (an episode from the Outer Limits? It was ~20 years ago) about some army rangers who stumble upon, track and ultimately kill an alien.
When observing it closely afterwards, they realized it was an alien child sent to Earth on some kind of children camp.
The primitive livings on that planet killed the child. The parents were not happy, blew up the camp (and our planet).
So yes, I also favor the Dark Forest approach
Even in that universe, we know they could easily send probes out to the galaxy and it would solve the whole "chain of suspicion" thing that makes destroying alien civilizations the best option.
> Like hunters in a "dark forest" ... where any two civilizations cannot communicate well enough to relieve mistrust, making conflict inevitable. Therefore, it is in every civilization's best interest to preemptively strike and destroy any developing civilization before it can become a threat, but without revealing their own location, thus explaining the Fermi paradox.
I think we are before the gap, that might also be because I'm pessimistic about the current state of the world.
That said, if I'm wrong I would rather have any aliens find us. If you're advanced, you probably resolved various issues regarding limited resources, so why would you kill us as being primitive species?
“If we were to successfully close a handshake and start to communicate, we could flash a message, at a data rate of about a few hundred bits per second, which would get there in just a few years,”
40 light years in "just a few years"? So this laser beam travels faster than the speed of light?
In any case, I don't open my front door and flash my lights to invite strangers off the street, and I don't think we should be doing the same thing to strangers from outer space, you never know if it's an interstellar axe murderer and if they meet us at our planet, then they are already known to be far more technologically advanced than we are so there's nothing we can do to stop them.
Are you simply assuming they have advanced signal detection technologies that match their space fairing capability?
Heck maybe in the long run aliens have more to fear from humans than humans have to fear from aliens. But it's not going to end well for one of them in the long run.
Who says they'll see us as pets? Humans also gather horseshoe crabs by the thousands and suck the blood out of them ("only" killing 10 - 30% of them)
https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/how-horseshoe-...
Let's hope human blood isn't useful to the aliens.
That sounds like a hope/belief, not a fact.
There may be levels of regard for intelligence that are below pets. See, for example, "To Serve Man". [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man
edit for misspelling
Intentionally signaling to aliens is one of the stupidest ideas I can think of. The Killing Star by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski has a good analogy (longer quote here: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/aliencontact.ph... ), describing a thought experiment of surviving the night in a crime-ridden Central Park:
"How do you survive the night? The last thing you want to do is shout, "I'm here!" The next to last thing you want to do is reply to someone who shouts, "I'm a friend!"
What you would like to do is find a policeman, or get out of the park. But you don't want to make noise or move towards a light where you might be spotted, and it is difficult to find either a policeman or your way out without making yourself known. Your safest option is to hunker down and wait for daylight, then safely walk out.
There are, of course, a few obvious differences between Central Park and the universe.
There is no policeman.
There is no way out.
And the night never ends."
[0] https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/fish-feel-pain-now-wh...
There's no obvious reason why aliens should perceive humans as either a threat or a resource. There may be non-obvious reasons, or they may be irrational about it. But unless interstellar travel is a lot easier than we think it is, it's unlikely that aliens would assume visitation is likely in either direction.
In the US, we got rich and powerful enough around the 1880's that nature was basically conquered and we wanted to start preserving places for their natural beauty. By the 1970's we had set aside huge amounts of land for National Parks, State Parks and wilderness areas. Wilderness areas alone in the lower 48 is about 64.4 million acres, or about the same as cities and towns (urban areas are 69.4 million acres)[1].
I don't think they are asserting that the laser beam travels faster than the speed of light. I think they are referring to Proxima Centauri being about 4 light-years away from Earth [0].
You don't say "It took the settlers 180 days to ride a wagon across the country, but today it only takes a few hours to drive across the country" when you meant "40 hours".
If you want to use "few", you'd use a different unit like "and now it only takes a few days". Or "And you can send a signal to that star system in a few decades".
There are a few words in English the meaning of which is absolute, regardless of context. "Few" is not among those words.
You could take a handful of sand from a sand dune and say "I took only a few grains of sand home with me"
You could say "only a few of the thousands of visible stars are close enough to send a signal to" even if that means hundreds.
But you wouldn't say "it takes 40 light years to reach the star, so the laser can reach it in a few years". You might say "It would take 1000 years for a spaceship to reach the planet, but a laser can do it in a few years" even if a "few" meant 40.
NB: The light-year is a measure of distance, not of time.
especially if those astronomers live in nearby systems, such as around Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Earth, or TRAPPIST-1, a star about 40 light-years away that hosts seven exoplanets, three of which are potentially habitable. If the signal is spotted from either of these nearby systems, the study finds, the same megawatt laser could be used to send a brief message in the form of pulses similar to Morse code.....“If we were to successfully close a handshake and start to communicate, we could flash a message, at a data rate of about a few hundred bits per second, which would get there in just a few years,”
And you'll see my point that you wouldn't say you can reach a star that's 40 light years away in "just a few years" when "just a few years" is 40.
Note that the starting number was 40, and the "to be compared with" number was 40. 40 is not "a few" of 40.
And yeah, I was a little sloppy in using "light years" as time.
Though it's disingenuous to reply multiple times to a HackerNews post to make a trivial point and then complain about wasted time -- you choose how to spend your time.
Our first encounter with space faring aliens will probably go about as well as native Americans first encounter with Europeans.
Mere geological resources can be gathered from asteroids or other planets with lesser gravity wells.
The Alien species would have to determine if Human technology, economy and culture holds any value to them. If it does, they will conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the various billions of humans inhabiting the planet, and eliminate the least-productive in order to improve average genetic quality and bring the overall species back to within the carrying capacity of the planet.
For example, 56% of the Earth's population from the least-productive countries could be eliminated, for only a 6% decrease in scientific output, and 17% decrease in GDP. Doing so would also result in a 23% decrease in carbon emissions.
Of course, if they find that humanity holds negative value, they will simply eliminate all humans, and turn the planet into a giant nature park.
Implying these beings would likely have any need to worry about 'decreasing' carbon emissions is ludicrous. It's like humans going to a beehive and worrying about killing some bees to stop honey wastage when the humans poke a hole in the hive to collect honey- no, they'll just completely reconstitute the hive. There's a chance it's some first-interstellar-travel thing we might do right now, but it's more likely it's from the time a civilisation is kardashev-2, given that time would be longer. Fermi paradox's still a problem, though.
Is this practical given the vastness of space and the directionaality of this laser?
Maybe we should be aiming the big laser at Oumuamua. With a big HEY COME BACK HERE message.
If nothing else, you can draw simple two-color pictures by sending pixels in a NxM grid, where N and M are both primes. Enough minds thinking about the problem will eventually figure it out.