-Caveat Lector- SETI Article on Arecibo Response Is the Latest Crop Circle a Message from E.T? http://www.seti.org/general/ao_message_crop.html Okay, I read their article so here are my responses: Weak arguments: SETI Wrote: > The aliens, if they've received this signal, would obviously be aware of our > capability to send and receive high-frequency radio. After all, they would > only know of the 1974 transmission by receiving it. And, of course, they've > made a point about radio by leaving their message next to a radio antenna. > So why would they resort to an extraordinarily crude method of "replying" - > carving simple messages in our wheat? And what was the nature of what we sent? The beef of our message sent in 1974 was just as "crude". > Why don't they use radio? The wheat graffiti only conveys a handful of > information - roughly the equivalent of a few sentences of any text. They > could convey far more, in a matter of seconds, by radio. If radio isn't > their thing, why don't they simply leave a copy of the Encyclopedia > Galactica on the doorstep of either the farmer or the radio observatory? Futhermore, they know that we SCAN the sky looking for signals and we do not have the capability to watch the entire sky for incoming signals. Ours just wanders around the sky. If aliens did receive the message we sent, then they were simply RESPONDING to us. When someone asks you a question, do you recite to them the Encyclopedia Britannica? No. You answer their question. Basically it was a game of "I'll show you my weewee, now you show me yours." That is all that happened. > After all, if they're carving wheat, they're clearly visiting. They could > leave information on paper, as a CD, or in whatever form is convenient. As if a CD or a piece of paper would be any less dubious? If the message arrived on a CD or a piece of paper, it would be far easier to (a) cover up, or (b) claim it was a hoax. Anyone with a copy of Windows Paint and a CD burner can fake a message from space far more easily than what can be done with boards and string. > Any such scheme would convey orders of magnitude more information than a > wheat carving. Surely aliens who can come to Hampshire are sophisticated > enough to offer us more information bits than one can find on a fortune in a > Chinese cookie. Again, they were RESPONDING to our message. We gave them the information we were comfortable giving them, they gave back to us the same information about themselves that we gave about ourselves. All I see in that portion of the SETI response are very weak and brittle arguments and not very imaginative, either. > How come they look like us? Hollywood aliens always look pretty humanoid, > but this is an anthropocentric conceit. Visit the local zoo, and you'll > find critters that share 3.5 billion years of evolution and a lot of your > DNA. But they don't look like you - they look like fish, or alligators, or… I can see the rotten tomatoes flying toward me as I type this, but if this pictograph represents the face of these aliens, then they could be the ones who seeded human life on Earth OR the ones who spliced our original DNA with their own in order to make us more intelligent. That could be part of the message itself. Sure, we evolved from monkeys, but not without some help from alien races. And why do monkeys still exist? Because not all monkeys had their DNA spliced. > The 1974 signal was aimed at the cluster M13, which has hundreds of > thousands of stars. Of course, M13 is 25,000 light-years distant, which > means that the message will not reach its target for another 250 centuries. > Clearly, the crop circle can't be a response from any of M13's inhabitants; > they haven't gotten the message yet. But what about a random, Milky Way > star that might be in the "beam" of the Arecibo message? Couldn't they have > overheard the transmission, and offered this clever carving in reply? No. > The Arecibo beam at 2,380 MHz is about 2 arcminutes, which is roughly 1/15th > the diameter of the full moon. That's an extremely narrow beam. Imagine > shooting an arrow through a giant room from which ping pong balls are hung > by threads from the ceiling. The ping pong balls are many thousands of feet > apart. How long would the arrow have to travel before it accidentally hit > one of these balls? This is analogous to the situation of the Arecibo > message, moving in its tightly focused beam through the spaces of the Milky > Way. The chances that it has hit another solar system in the 27 years since > its broadcast are… one in 50,000, approximately. In other words, it's > highly, highly unlikely that any star system has yet been exposed to the > Arecibo message. <Yawn> Another weak argument. They are assuming, and predictably so, that we have ALL the answers to the mysteries of the universe right here on Earth, so if "we know" that something is impossible, then it is impossible. I'm sorry, but the universe is a very old place and the Earth is fairly young in comparison to it all. It's highly likely that life has evolved somewhere else in the universe millions of years before Earth was even around. Naturally these beings, with all their extra experience in the universe, would know things about the universe and technology that we do not yet know. Evidence? We're bursting at the seams with theories and speculations, but still there are many mysteries we have yet to solve. How long will it take us to solve them? How much longer have aliens been around than us? They could well have the technology to actually SEE radio transmissions moving through space. They could then move to intercept the transmission. Even that is crude. They could have the technology to extend a field of some sort to read the information. And going back to seeing the radio transmission moving through space, how do we know they don't have a space station positioned 26 light years away--something so small that Hubble cannot detect it? They may have figured out how to travel faster than light, so even if they missed the transmission when it flew by, they could chase it down and get into position to receive it. I understand that these people want to be scientific, but when we look at what happens and apply our own primitive science to it, then what we're saying is that our own physics says it is impossible, so it is impossible. It doesn't mean it's TRULY impossible. It simply means we don't know how it could be done. > The biochemistry information in the crop circle is the same as the Arecibo > message, although the DNA seems to have an extra strand and a somewhat > different number of nucleotides. It has also been suggested that silicon is > now part of the biological construction kit, although this element, while > popular in science fiction, is rather poor at making the complex molecules > required for life. Still, it's remarkable how similar the aliens' biology > is to ours, even to the point of sporting a helical DNA molecule. The same > is true for the sugars and bases that make up human DNA, and it's remarkable > (but undoubtedly a sign of a boo-boo on the crop circle's constructor's > part) that the silicon mentioned above doesn't figure into the formulae of > any of these alien DNA components. Keep in mind that of the hundreds of > possible amino acids, only 20 are used for earthly life. Our biochemistry > is somewhat specific. How curious (and unlikely!) that theirs would match > ours so closely! Redundant. It goes back to what I suggested above. The reason we have similar biochemistry is because they may have had something to do with our evolution. > Finally, the whole matter of crop circles fails the baloney test, as Sagan > would put it. They can be easily (and quickly) made by people interested in > creating a stir, and there is never any convincing physical evidence that > anyone else has made them. You might also wonder why, despite its ample > supply of wheat fields, the U.S. is almost never the target of this type of > alien graphic: nearly two-thirds of all crop circles are in England United Nations. Aliens would want to talk to us as a planet. They would not, I don't believe, favor one nation over another one. > (only one major one has appeared in the U.S. We also note that Chilbolton > was the location of other crop circles in 1999 and 2000.) Why would aliens > resort to a signaling system that conveys so little information (as above) > and can only be used during the growing season! > > Bottom line? The crop circles are decorative, but not informative. We can > expect better from true extraterrestrial intelligence. Which is exactly why aliens don't go through SETI. They want their messages found and seen by everyone NOW, not filtered through bureaucracies. Do they honestly think that aliens are as clueless as we are? It's likely that these beings have done this thousands of times before so they know what works and what doesn't. Damaeus -- .--------------------------------------------------------------------. | AIM:Damaeus | Damaeus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | | ICQ:18405845 | Loosen Up! | |-------------------'----. | | YahooMessenger:Damaeus | | '------------------------'-------------------------------------------' <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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