On HN I would have expected more people to be super excited about the on-board computers, instruments, and particularly the RF subsystem on the voyager spacecraft (think about it - it's something like a 40 watt transmitter -- the strengh of a lightbulb -- radiating between 10 and 10000 bits a second back to earth 11 billion miles away). AND the round-trip latency is 26 hours! Recently they had to do a marathon debug session to discover a bit-error in the memory http://www.space.com/8355-problem-detected-voyager-2-spacecr...
Everyone just seems so caught up about this whole alien thing. Come on guys, there are serious things to get excited about here.
I don't understand much about it, but i am impressed how robust this thing is. Especially when you know the tech industry as it is today, these are complete different design principles.
We should focus on faster space gear, so we don't have to wait so long when anything happens to Voyager.
Does anybody know something about solar-sails, i heard they can theoretically accelerate to 1/10 light speed.
New Horizons has set the speed record for spaceflight, and is racing toward pluto and will make it in record time. However, its RTG doesn't have the longevity of Voyager's, so New Horizons won't last nearly as long. NH does have an extended mission, but nothing will match the voyagers': the stars and planets -- literally -- aligned, and it's an opportunity that will probably never come again.
What I find impressively Optimistic is that not only is there significant info on board about Humans (anatomy and such), there is a complete record of how to find us.
This reflects the belief that any Interstellar intelligence that encounters it will be benign or at least not aggressive enough to come looking for us or even worse tries to take us out with a remote hit for reasons unfathomable to us.
This is probably the Cosmic version of the belief "People are basically Good".
I really like this interpretation of the mission. Though a multimedia art project blasted into space may be a better introduction to humanity (and "human nature") than anything else.
If a civilization, by the time it develops weapons of mass distruction, is overly agressive, it will likely destroy itself and not evolve into a space traveling civilization.
Any intelligent live that manages it to not destroy itself despite having very advanced form of weaponry, is likely not overly agressive or is able to control its natural agressivity by reasoning.
But then, the chances of Voyager ever being found by any intelligent life form is practically cero anyway.
That is quite the assumption to make, given the vastness of our universe.
I wouldn't be surprised to find a civilization with incredibly deadly power, paranoia, discipline, grandeur and respect-for-one-another all rolled into one.
Just because it doesn't fit the human persona, doesn't mean it won't fit any "thing".
That is quite the assumption to make, given the vastness of our universe.
Not so much of an assumption. You also have to take into account the speed at which the Voyager satellites are traveling and how far they will get before the heat death of the universe.
I always wonder about motivation, though. I guess an alien civilization could destroy us by accident, or by not caring about us. But I still can't figure out why they'd do it on purpose. What's the point? Get our resources? If you can travel across interstellar space, you have more than enough empty rocks to mine and stars to get energy from...
Any civilization building simple space technology the aliens encounter might keep being harmless to them, or given some thousands of years to develop in peace it might both develop robust interstellar flight and go all genocidal on everything in the stellar neighborhood. If you destroy the weak alien technological civilizations you encounter right when you encounter them, you make sure that they won't be coming after you in the very long future you expect your civilization to keep sticking around. And assuming you are already thinking like this, you might also be more likely to think clever aliens will also think like this and be even more disposed to not let them stick around to develop to a level where they can actually pose a threat to you.
It also helps that if you still live on planets, anyone in space can lob really big rocks at the planet with little danger of retaliation to produce handy extinction events, so the game theory is more first strike wins than mutually assured destruction.
In addition to the (IMHO most likely) reason provided by rsaarelm, there is also the small matter of religion. We've seen on Earth what minor differences in religion can entail and there's no reason that such differences wouldn't cause war between galactic civilisations.
- They are so advanced technologically they can visit us any time they want. We have nothing of interest for them. Any resource we have, they can synthesize it. They may decide to observe us without interfering for scientific purposes or just out of curiosity.
- They are "within range" of our technological development. They could be very dangerous because they share our problems (lack of energy, lack of resources, etc.). No worries, they cannot visit us.
- They are too primitive to even understand the message.
I prefer the "desperate for gold" hypothesis in which the probe manages to safely crash in the backyard of an alien scientist who is in quick need of some gold to finish an experiment and in possession of a perfectly fine smelting pot.
There's at least another case. They are more advanced than us and realize that if we are allowed to develop, we may become a threat to them in the future. They may decide to annihilate us preemptively.
It's extremely likely that any space faring civilization would have developed weapons capable of their own destruction sooner or later. If they weighed things with such a calculus, then it's extremely likely that they would have wiped themselves out. I think that if we extrapolate from our own development then it's quite clear that high technology without the insight to use it is extinguishing in nature. After all look at us, we've scarcely scratched the surface of what technology can do and our lack of insight is already killing us. However, there is an alternative around that too, if they are ant-like in their social structure, peaceful for their colony and hostile towards alien beings, then their inclination towards violence could survive the curse of high technology. However on the whole, I think that if we ever do manage to make contact with sentient beings then it is extremely likely the contact will be peaceful.
That said, all such postulations are futile, because any such species will be smarter than me and beyond my means to understand.
I recall reading somewhere (Ringworld, perhaps?) that the explanation to the Fermi Paradox is that anyone who sticks their head up over the wall gets it shot off.
Fact is, the Universe would be a terribly lonely place if we were all alone. I suppose we're willing to risk destruction/enslavement by a superior or hostile alien civilization just to not have to exist all alone.
The "beserker equilibrium" hypothesis is a fun thought experiment, but it seems unlikely to me. Robin Hanson did a particularly good job writing about this here:
My hypothesis is that we are alone and the creation of sapient life is a very very rare thing.
The chance of life appearing, on top of the chance of the life being capable of getting more complex (multi-cellular), on top of the chance of life getting sapient, without counting the chances of the uncountable iterations between these steps...
There are too many stars, too many galaxies, too many galaxy clusters, and we've been here too short a time for me to believe that we're the only life in the universe.
Even on this one planet there are more ways to be alive than one can imagine, and those ways, once embodied, are very, very persistent.
Even forgoing the other comments on the number of universes/galaxies/stars/planets in existence, how do you reach this hypothesis given that you have only one example of evolution to draw inferences from. The entire train of thought is derailed that the only reliable information we have on evolutionary systems is our own system and, using this information, we can only conclude that every planet on which we have found microbial life we have also found sapient life.
Divide the known history of the Earth into ten million year increments, and the fraction of them with life is quite high compared to the fraction with intelligence.
It's a compelling idea. It takes someone with enough technology to accelerate an asteroid to a reasonably percentage of C, and aim it accurately enough. If a single expansionist civilization that is xenophobic enough reaches that technology level, anyone else could expect to suddenly find an incoming planetkiller at a speed that'd make it really hard to do anything about it other than try to get as many as possible off-planet. If the victims manage to save enough people to remain viable, presumably they'd be rather shy next time out.
More like the rather obvious fact that we will almost certainly be extinct long before anything non-human ever finds it. Assuming that anything ever does, which is unlikely in the extreme.
Really, by far the most likely case of it ever getting found by intelligent life forms is humans going out and retrieving it someday.
Any civilisation advanced enough to find us & say hello would probably be surviving well on their own planet. If they are looking for more space, who knows if they need a place like earth. We don't know if an alien civilisation would even need water in the first place.
I hope you're right. But consider also the possibility that any advanced race may have also developed/discovered religion. And trying to predict what their god(s) will think of humans is a hopeless exercise.
When you read about astrophysics it sounds like we already have everything all figured out. It's kind of astounding that no man made object has ever actually left the Solar System yet.
> And in Amoy, a language from eastern China, the records carry this message: "Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time."
When I was in Thailand, I was always a bit befuddled when people would greet me and say "Hi! Did you eat?", but not actually invite me to eat or something.
"Have you eaten/did you eat?" seems to be the east-asian equivalent of "hi, what's up?". i.e., an apparent question in which your response is just a formality.
a few questions about Voyager 1- Is it designed to withstand re-entry into an "earth-like" planet? It just seems like the odds are astronomically low that this thing would find its way to intelligent life. I understand that it makes sense to put some information about our existence on it, but it seems that worrying that someone will come hunt us down and take our resources is not even worth thinking about.
No, its extended mission was designed to measure energetic particles at large distances from the sun (plus a few other field sensors). That's it. The whole "golden record" thing is just a monument to ourselves.
You know what blows my mind but everyone takes for granted?
Inertia. Sure, gravity is an amazing, mysterious force, but inertia in a vacuum boggles my comprehension. Why does something with physical mass keep going without any additional energy applied to it - forever?
Think about Voyager - if no other force got in its way, it could literally keep cruising for 50 billion light-years and maybe "bounce" off the wall of the universe like something out of The Truman Show. (of course since the universe keeps expanding it might have to go more than 50 billion light-years)
When you throw a ball, you are converting the potential energy in your body to a kinetic energy stored in the ball. In order for the ball to slow down, something has to get that energy out of it. Since energy can't be destroyed, the ball is forced to keep going forever until the kinetic energy is taken away.
Oh I understand the physics of it and why it's harder to grasp the concept on earth with gravity and friction.
But stop and think about it - the universe is like some kind of infinite iced-over pond where something will keep going and going and going once given momentum.
I mean in space it's sliding endlessly across "nothingness" - doesn't that kinda freak you out when you really think about it?
It makes sense if you accept that there is no concept of absolute rest. The state of "moving" is really the natural state...when you apply force to something, you are just changing the parameters of that state.
Everyone just seems so caught up about this whole alien thing. Come on guys, there are serious things to get excited about here.