• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Strange messages coming from the stars are ‘probably’ from aliens, scientists say

justabubba said:
and then we would face the dilemma whether to reach out
or not
Click to expand...

That question is like blasting out Muslim calls to prayer on a megaphone for the last ninety-six years and then wondering if you should introduce your neighbors to the greatness of Allah.
 
faithful_servant said:
No. We're on the brink of a whole new line of excuses to continue paying people lots of money to do something utterly and completely meaningless.
Click to expand...

If the act was without value, there wouldn't be anyone paying to do it.
 
MaggieD said:
I'm skeptical. You would think, if aliens were trying to communicate with other aliens, it would instantly be recognizable. Wishful thinking's my guess. Fun to think about though.
Click to expand...

And we might not want to answer, come to think about it.
 
justabubba said:
and then we would face the dilemma whether to reach out
or not
Click to expand...

It would be tough to say. In reality whatever signals we are picking up could hundreds of thousands of years old (or nothing at all of course). A civilization or species that was there may not be. IF we did determine that there is currently a civilization somewhere, and IF we did have a method to contact them, I'd say HELL YA once we have a decent representative to put forward as the "face of Earth".

But knowing Earth we'd attempt to spread our beliefs and culture there and exploit them financially in some way.
 
Kreton said:
It would be tough to say. In reality whatever signals we are picking up could hundreds of thousands of years old (or nothing at all of course). A civilization or species that was there may not be. IF we did determine that there is currently a civilization somewhere, and IF we did have a method to contact them, I'd say HELL YA
once we have a decent representative to put forward as the "face of Earth"
Click to expand...
.

But knowing Earth we'd attempt to spread our beliefs and culture there and exploit them financially in some way.
Click to expand...

Dennis Rodman. We wouldn't miss him, and they might like him. After all, NK, the closest thing to alien life we know of, seemed to like him.
 
I just hope that Trump is president when we meet the aliens. He can ask, "Do they have p+ssies, and are they grabbable?"

If Hillary is president, then she'll get out ambassador killed and then send them some foreign aid.
 
Kelfuma said:
Strange messages coming from the stars are ?probably? from aliens, scientists say | The Independent



We are on the brink of a new major discovery!!!
Click to expand...

Or probably not. I am part of the SETI at Home Project being run by The Berkeley SETI Research Team, My computer is one of many that has been analysing what is called the Breakthrough Signal. It looks very interesting, but more than likely can be explained by a natural phenomenon. Are aliens talking to us? Probably not, but just maybe, and that's what makes it interesting.

If you are interested, you can also be part of SETI at Home. Just go to this link and download their software, called BOINC. In addition to SETI there are a number of other very interesting distributional computing projects you can attach to. I have been active in SETI for more than 10 years, and both my computers at home, as well as 2 computers at work are involved in this, as well as 3 other projects. If you run windows there is a really nice screen saver which shows the fast Fourier transform computations being done in real time. However, they don't have a screen saver for Linux, which is what I run at home, so I just have to be content that it works. LOL. Enjoy.
 
Last edited:
Kreton said:
Exploration, research and understanding are things that are never meaningless.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. We haven't found what we're looking for yet, but the interim effort has produced many benefits that improve our understanding of the universe.
 
danarhea said:
Or probably not. I am part of the SETI at Home Project being run by The Berkeley SETI Research Team, My computer is one of many that has been analysing what is called the Breakthrough Signal. It looks very interesting, but more than likely can be explained by a natural phenomenon. Are aliens talking to us? Probably not, but just maybe, and that's what makes it interesting.

If you are interested, you can also be part of SETI at Home. Just go to this link and download their software, called BOINC. In addition to SETI there are a number of other very interesting distributional computing projects you can attach to. I have been active in SETI for more than 10 years, and both my computers at home, as well as 2 computers at work are involved in this, as well as 3 other projects. If you run windows there is a really nice screen saver which shows the fast Fourier transform computations being done in real time. However, they don't have a screen saver for Linux, which is what I run at home, so I just have to be content that it works. LOL. Enjoy.
Click to expand...

What is the software doing or for? Its not clear to me from the webpage
 
it's probably extraterrestrial TV shows. i hope that they are smart enough to have more cable competition than we do, and that their walking dead season premier didn't resort to gratuitous violence porn instead of plot.
 
Kreton said:
What is the software doing or for? Its not clear to me from the webpage
Click to expand...

The software analyses signals from the various radio telescopes for evidence of intelligence. This is the project the OP's link is based on.
 
Helix said:
it's probably extraterrestrial TV shows. i hope that they are smart enough to have more cable competition than we do, and that their walking dead season premier didn't resort to gratuitous violence porn instead of plot.
Click to expand...

In the movie Contact, I thought it funny when the signal we received was a copy of Hitler's broadcast for the Munich Olympic Games. Makes you wonder. After seeing episodes of My Mother the Car, Cop Rock, and Dancing With the Stars, they probably think we are a planet full of dumbasses. LOL.
 
danarhea said:
In the movie Contact, I thought it funny when the signal we received was a copy of Hitler's broadcast for the Munich Olympic Games. Makes you wonder. After seeing episodes of My Mother the Car, Cop Rock, and Dancing With the Stars, they probably think we are a planet full of dumbasses. LOL.
Click to expand...

cop rock. man.

:lol:
 
Kreton said:
What is the software doing or for? Its not clear to me from the webpage
Click to expand...

It basically leverages the computational power of your device to analyze packets of data for researchers and communicates the results to them. There are a lot of different projects that you can choose to receive packets from including medical research, climatology, astrophysics, etc. One of those projects is SETI. Its a pretty cool thing in my opinion :)
 
Gathomas88 said:
Yeah. I've really got my fingers crossed for either that, or the Alcubierre "warp drive" NASA was researching, working out.

I doubt we'll find out one way or the other in my life time, however.
Click to expand...

Sadly, the "warp drive" would require the existence of a sort of matter with negative mass, something we don't have any particular reason to think does exist or can exist. It makes the math equations work out, but is negative mass a meaningful concept?

I hope so, but doubt it.
 
danarhea said:
The software analyses signals from the various radio telescopes for evidence of intelligence. This is the project the OP's link is based on.
Click to expand...

To expand a bit, there's a crapload of data that comes in. The satellite array for SETI receives background radio noise from all over the universe. Mostly, it's just normal background static, and lots of it. Looking for patterns in that much data requires a lot of computing power, so projects like this one distribute that pattern-checking to thousands of home users. The software just does its thing in the background when your CPU is idle. It stays on the lowest priority so if you start doing something intensive again it will stop so as to not slow down the user experience.
 
Trump is going to build a wall around the earth and make the aliens pay for it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom