What would happen if SETI recieved an actual ALIEN signal??????

[The Wildcard]

First, we'd have the millitary spooks saying it's a declaration of war.

Then, the consiparcy spooks would either be saying that the government already knew it was a declaration of war and has already been begun to secretly evacuate key officals to a secret moon base; OR that it's really not a declaration of war and that the millitary has made a pact with the aliens to allow them to colonize EARTH!!!

The scientists would be divided with some saying it's a message of peace and others saying more research is needed and so this would be a great example of why we need billions of dollars of funding.

Finally, the media would eat this all up and basically the world would blow up in chaos!!!!!

Well, okay, maybe not, lol. So what you guys think?

 

[Soybomb]

This is like asking what would happen if bill gates gives me all his money........its just impossible to fathom

 

[BigToque]

I think that WHEN we first make contact with another race, the world as we know it will change forever.

I see us finding out that we (humans) were basically planted on this planet, and when we are ready, the 'Aliens' will come back and tell us everything we ever wanted to know. We will learn new technologys, about traveling through space, traveling through worm holes. We will be exposed to races that are spread throughout the universe and that we are only a very small piece of everything.

That or they blow us up

 

[3615buck]

We'll probably never meet any other lifeform. I do not say there is none, but think of the following :
- Since how long does man exist ? Compare this to the age of the universe... Maybe there were other lifeforms billions years ago... or maybe there will be in billion years, when man has dissapeared. Man has been searching for other lifeforms for a few centuries. Compare these centuries with a few billion years... Why should these 'aliens' exist exactly at the same time as we do ?
- The universe is so big... Even if we could travel at light speed, we would need years to reach the closest star... How long to go to another galaxy ? And the signal we would get could have been sent million years ago, these aliens may have disappeared in the meantime !
- In all movies, 'aliens' are technologically more advanced... There ios 1 chance out of 2, but they may also be very primitive and unable to travel into space. This reduces the chances to meet them by another 50%

 

[BigToque]

Who is to say that we wont be able to travel faster then light?

Say an alien sends a signal at the speed of light, and was 100 light years away. That signal would take 100 years to get here. If we could travel at 10x the speed of light, we could get to the source of the signal only 10 years after the signal was sent out.

Also another thing, who is to say that there are not hundreds of other races at any one time?

Think about the ocean, when life was first starting in say the pacific ocean, would you not think its also possible that the same conditions could have existed in the atlantic ocean? or the arctic ocean?

Now think about space, when life was first starting on earth, is it not possible that in the billions of other planets in the universe that the same conditions required for life could have existed?

I believe the first life in the universe was basically just fluke. I also believe that this fluke happened in many other places as well.

 

[3615buck]

>> Who is to say that we wont be able to travel faster then light? <<

In SF movies, maybe.
Do you think man will still exist in, let's say, 500 years ?
With the growing population, the planet will soon be overcrowded, in less than 50 years, gas reserves will be dried up. If we do not reduce pollution, the climate will go completely crazy.
Let's stop dreaming, man will not be able to live on another planet in 100 years, we'll still be on earth, but how many billions ? 10 ? 15 ?
I think man will have disappeared long before being able to travel at light speed.

Maybe that's pessimistic,
Maybe not.

 

[BigToque]

<< Do you think man will still exist in, let's say, 500 years ? >>



Yes man will still exist in 500 years.



<< With the growing population, the planet will soon be overcrowded, in less than 50 years, gas reserves will be dried up. If we do not reduce pollution, the climate will go completely crazy. >>



Do you have any idea how fast our technology is growing? In 50 years we will have no need for things like gas. When we need to, we will move off the planet. We evolved into the most intelligent beings on this planet, and we will not let the race die because of pollution or overcrowding of the planet. We will find solutions for all our problems.

We have basically reached the limits as to what our current space travel technology can do. Soon we will no longer have the wish to have a new technology, we will NEED a new technology, and this is where humans shine. When something is absolutely needed, it will get done.

 

[Double Trouble]

The debate as to whether there is life out there or not can go on forever, but I do know this: if there is life out there, the odds of it getting to us, or us getting to them are so incredibly remote that's it's about equally likely that Bill Gates will donate all his assets to me tomorrow.

In geological (or cosmological) terms, 'intelligent life' on earth has been here but for a fraction of a blip of a second. I would guess that the same holds true for any potential life on other planets. That would mean you'd have to have some form of life somewhere out there that was advanced enough to travel through the stars to come find our little marble, and they'd have to do it at the EXACT right time (that little time blip). Ugh, not good odds.

 

[CoolTechie]

hahaha.. wow.. i dunno .. maybe im just crazy.. but i think its pretty obvious that there are definitely people out there right now that can prove aliens have been visiting us for ages. this is something the govt intends to keep secret until they have no choice.. its pretty easy to find information if u do a little searching, there is even some stuff out there that mentions some pretty interesting stuff on our very own moon

one thing that always got me was all these deathbed testamonies.. there are quite a few.. i donno.. for some reason i find it hard to belieave that someone with less than a day to live is gonna waste time lying about cover ups.. its obvious that corporations (cigaretts, auto industry etc) perform coverups quite frequently, so i nkow that the govt is quite capeable and prone to the same thing

but anyways... I remember watching either discovery or the learnign chaneel talk about SETI.. i guess there technology for investigating abnormal frequencies is wicked obsolete.. supposedly they have mass amounts of interesting SETI reports that continue to pile up quite frequently, but they dont have the manpower or technology to investigate much at all... i think they said something like, if they stopped now and just whent through all the abnormal data theyve collected, it would take 2 years

 

[Double Trouble]

Cooltechie: Yeah, there's lots of &quot;information&quot; out there on this kind of stuff, but there's still not 1 single bit of undisputable evidence. There's lots of stories and things people say etc etc, but nothing, not even one single piece of verifyable evidence. I don't believe all the governments of the world are somehow managing to conspire together to keep a huge perfect secret for years. Just doesn't seem possible considering governments can't even work together on simple little things, let alone a huge world-wide coverup.

 

[CoolTechie]

yeah thats true... i agree... but i dunno, i really think that there is alot more that is known out there.. plus.. when it comes down to it.. i dont think it has to do with the govt anymore, but most likely some classified group obv specialized for this.

Here take a look at this.. obv its just speculation, but its one of the many things i've read that really makes me quesition things
Mars

 

[pen^2]

so would i become a celebrity if for some god-who-knows reason my SETI@home happens to pick up some alien signal?

 

[CoolTechie]

yeah thats funny.. imagine that

 

[Mday]

we would have verification up the wazzzzzzooooo, and then continue monitoring... with a reply at that.. ;-)

 

[WombatWoman]

Been there, done that, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt with twelve arm-holes.

In Space, No One Can Hear You Spam

 

[RossMAN]

I'm moving my files from my current PC over to my new Dell Dimension 4100/866, I also want to copy over my SETI settings, preferences, etc.

Where exactly is all that information located?