[extropy-chat] Fw: [atlantis_II] Re: fermi's paradox: m/d approach

[Spike]

> Harvey Newstrom

> 
> This is based on the earliest possible signals when Marconi 
> transmitted wireless telegraph just before 1900.    But it now occurs
to 
> me that they bounced such radio waves off the ionosphere to get around
the 
> curve of the earth.  I am not sure when radio waves started going out
into 
> space, or when they became numerous or interesting enough to be
detectable.  
> The first radio network was NBC starting in 1926.  The first big or
powerful
> transmitters were built by RCA after 1934.  We may have only 
> about 65 years of transmitting to space...  Harvey


Understatement.

Some Morse code would leak past the ionosphere, but consider this: to an
alien civilization, the meaning of Morse code is out of reach.  They
could deduce that a meaningful signal is being sent, but the
transmission of 30 characters presupposes an *enormous* amount of
information in order to interpret.  We could transmit language in
arbitrary quantities, yet it could never be interpreted in the absence
of other information.

Take the next step: radio waves.  Even if highly intelligent aliens
somehow managed to translate them into sounds, they would be no further
along in interpreting these sounds than is humanity in understanding
whale speech.

Can we take it further?  Are our television signals inherently
uninterpretable?  I speculate they are.  If so, the only signal ever
sent from earth that has a chance of being interpreted is that SETI
thing with the stick figures.  Even that is not a very informative
message.

If aliens are listening, about the only thing they could determine is
that some form of intelligence is creating the message.

spike