Friday, July 02, 2010

Greetings From Planet Earth.


Okay, so seriously, if you were chosen to create a message to send to an alien world for First Contact, what would it say?

Would you send a Goodwill message? Music(a la Close Encounters of the Third Kind)? Binary Code? A picture or photograph?
What would it be and why would you choose that particular message? How long would it be? Short and sweet? Or Long and descriptive? A simple sentence, a paragraph, a page or a 300 page declaration?

I'm thinking on it- you know, just in case I am ever assigned that particular job by the powers that be. (Yeah, I got friends in REALLY high places!!!)

To me it, sort of, smacks of the story of the man who said he wouldn't speak again until he had something momentous to say to the world......and he never spoke again.

What could we possibly say that would be momentous enough for a First Contact?? Should we be friendly? Curious? Welcoming? Peace-loving?
Or would we convey that we are ready to defend our planet from aggressors and invaders? That we want to communicate but will not welcome visitors until we know their intentions?

What would we be inviting, either way? Should we be inviting and friendly or intimidating and aggressive? Neutral/ And how would one go about conveying those ideas to a race that may not understand our intentions either way?

A mathematical code, perhaps? What set of numbers? Why?



Kinda scary to think about it, isn't it?

1 comment:

Paulius said...

In all honesty, at this point, my message to the stars would be 'run'.

If aliens landed tomorrow, 30% would claim that they were demons, 60% would want a preemptive strike or go to war over who'd get to control their technology...and the final 10% who would welcome the learning experience would be drowned out by the other 90.