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/sci/ - Science & Math

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5035207 No.5035207 [Reply] [Original]

SETI finally discovers an extraterrestrial signal from a system that's relatively nearby.

How does humanity react, what do we do? Send a signal? Is a decision made in the UN or something?

>> No.5035208

Explain! Explain!
Specify!

>> No.5035220

Fuck you OP, I don't know why I thought that you were confirming that SETI found aliens.

>How does humanity react?
Probably panicking and saying non-sense shit.

>What do we do?
Why would we do something? Leave the aliens alone, Jesus fuck.

>Send a signal?
Yes, but leaving the government aside from this.

>> No.5035225

>>5035220
>leaving the government aside from this
you chose democracy, you will pay for it until the end.

>> No.5035236

>How does humanity react?
About half maybe more wouldn't believe it.

>What do we do?
Send a signal back. Anything else is pure guesswork, it's difficult to know what science missions will be selected in 10 years never mind a hundred or more.

>Send a signal?
Yes and no It would be done before the UN had a chance to form an opinion.

>> No.5035279

>>5035207
>humanity react,
Exactly the same why they reacted to the first man landing on the moon. I saw a video of carl sagan saying that tribesmen in the amazon who had little contact with outside world, knew that a man had walked on the moon.

>what do we do?
Nothing.

>Send a signal?
No. A lot of prominent scientists have already voiced their opinions about this. Including Hawking.

>Is a decision made in the UN or something?
nop

>> No.5035422

>>5035207

Isn't that picture wrong? It should be a circle, not a square.

>> No.5035430

>>5035279
>>Exactly the same why they reacted to the first man landing on the moon. I saw a video of carl sagan saying that tribesmen in the amazon who had little contact with outside world, knew that a man had walked on the moon

Imagine a sci fi scenario in which a group of humans already left the earth and went to settle in the galaxies, and the earth humans (us) were the Amazonian tribes who were left in the dark

>> No.5035452

First there would be a press conference by whoever discovered it. Then the data would be distributed among other experts in the field to confirm it. This will take a few weeks.

Once confirmed a special UN meeting will take place with science agencies speaking to the various leaders on what it means and what we should do.

The media will greatly exaggerate whatever is found and turn it into a circus. Some outlets will go as far as to bring in "expert" artists to draw what the aliens will look like despite nobody being able to know from a simple radio signal. Some will deny it and be overly critical. But you can bet it would be THE news story 24/7 for about six months straight. Slowly turning into a meta analysis on the coverage thus far.

The governments will probably specialize a defense and intelligence program based around the signal. It won't be a secret because they'll get to say they're keeping us safe so we will vote for them. But other than that, nobody will do anything. We'll just wait for another signal.

Parts of the public will deny it outright. They'll claim to be skeptics and real scientists. There will be youtube debates and all. Other parts will embrace it fully and go alien crazy. In a short time we'll have alien tshirts and posters and floor wax.

4chan would be unbearable. Faggots on /sci/ would make some sort of silly drawing or infographic and discuss how they're crying because Sagan's dream has been finally realized.

The end.

>> No.5035466

>>5035422
>he never heard of the square law

>> No.5035470

How hard would it be for a group of citizens to make a radio transmitter powerful enough to produce a detectable signal for the aliens? Let's say they are 15 lightyears away since there are some extrasolar planets at about that distance. If it can be done, people might try to send signals to them against the wishes of governments.

>> No.5035480

Theres no point, by this point that civilisation is dead and gone. We cant reach them any way. Anything we attempt to send them would take far too long to reply to anyway.

>> No.5035493

>>5035480
>"relatively nearby star"
>they are long dead and gone
no. I think post-industrial civilizations last longer than 30 years.

>> No.5035518

How the fuck do we know our exact position in the galaxy?

>> No.5035522

>>5035518
and who took OP's photo?

>> No.5035531

>>5035518
Because we fucking look at the sky. Parallax rangefinding, dust extinction, density of stars along the galactic plane, observation of all wavelengths of light, etc.

>> No.5035536

>>5035522
It's an artists impression. We can estimate what the galaxy looks like with surveys but this is just a picture.

>> No.5035543

How many stars are within 200 light years of Earth, anyways?

>Send a signal back
There might be an alien civilization capable of building an extremely sensitive instrument that already received our radio waves.

Maybe they already had a debate, and decided not to beam anything back. Maybe they never beamed anything at all - perhaps they've discovered alternate methods to radio waves to transmit information, perhaps they've discovered a power source other than electricity to power their machines. Shit we don't know about. We didn't even know about nuclear power until the early 1900s.

I think humanity would react by devoting a shitload of resources to deciphering the signal, if possible. What is the lifespan of these aliens? How would we even measure if they don't know what an Earth year is and we can't determine their planet's orbit?

I think we've already determined that we wouldn't send anything back. It's possible that aliens have completely different biology and a single organism could live thousands of years - a two-hundred year journey to Earth to attempt to enslave the population wouldn't be that bad.

I think advances in physics will enable us to travel close to light speed soon enough. The FIRST thing we should build are Galactic Nukes that can be launched from Earth, fly at the speed of light to their target in the Galaxy, and blow the fuck out of any planet sending a signal just to be secure.

>> No.5035567

>>5035543
Coming to earth to enslave us would be like you trying to enslave ants in your backyard. You're so far ahead of them, nothing the ants could do would possibly be of any use to you. I think the more likely scenario would be for you to go dump a bag of pesticides on the ant pile. Same with the aliens. They're more likely to just shoot earth with a relativistic bomb and suck all the volatiles out of our gas giants, then leave. Or ignore us completely.

>> No.5035757

There's a few second or third page news stories about it, it trends on twitter for a week, and then people go back to watching television and forget all about it.

>> No.5035761

I think there are specific procedures set up in the event that such a thing actually happens. They involve double checking the data, contacting the world powers, etc.