Earth Speaks. But Is Anybody Listening?
The Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence wants to know what to say when ET phones home, so it’s asking the world for suggestions. This is a very very bad idea.
Apparently it wasn’t enough to run that silly screensaver, donating precious clock cycles to parsing the distant farting of stars seeking signs of alien intelligence. Now SETI is asking for our help in case they actually find something Out There.
Like an awkward teenager at a middle school dance, SETI doesn’t want to find itself stuck with nothing to say when some alien hottie slips them a wet tentacle. So it’s set up a Web site called Earth Speaks where the citizens of Earth can suggest appropriate responses when the Thermians come a knockin’.
Frankly, I’m not sure this is such a good idea. Just imagine if the 4chan guys got hold of this. Remember the movie Independence Day where scary aliens came down and blew the shit out of everything? Like that, only less warm and fuzzy.
So far, hundreds of people from dozens of countries have weighed in. A few just posted photos (see fat fluffy squirrel, right). Others offered up their hopes, fears, dreams, prayers, wishes, sales pitches, paranoid delusions, obsure mathematical formulae, and can’t-miss pick-up lines.
Here are just a few of the actual suggestions, along with our erudite interpretations.
i think, we should from now on always keep a paper and pencil steady so we can draw our eyes (human eyes) and a simple smile, not too big, maybe they’ll think we’re laughing at them, but a simple, polite, smile and I think, cus they’re probarly a lot smarter than us, they might speak just a bit we can understand (don’t forget we’re a piece in all of this so their must be a way at all).I think we could start by saying. Welcome, can I help you.
Translation: We are simple creatures who work hard, eat little, and breed like bunnies. Please come enslave us.
Hello this is earth. Please ignore the crap we transmit via our television stations. We are really very intelligent.
Clearly this person didn’t read the previous message.
We should send back the same message we received in a loop. This establishes that we are listening, what area of the universe we are in, and have the ability to transmit back. But it’s careful and non-descriptive. It’s basically the very first ping between intelligent life. They might see our signal as random noise or as an insult. But bouncing their signal back is much safer. This will gain their attention and focus more on first contact signals after that. First contact should be a ping, not a hello.
Somebody seems to be taking this question very seriously. How about a simple “Dave’s not here, man”?
Word up, yo?
If they’re visitors from Planet Funkytown, we’re golden.
We wish to love you. Dont leave us all alone in this universe once again! Please dont run away…
Aliens to Earth: “Hey, you’re a swell planet, we like you, really we do. It’s just, well, we’ve got a lot of galaxies to visit and we’re not really in a good space to commit to any solar systems right now. We’ll call you right after we get back from Alpha Centauri – we swear.”
Besides the obvious, like getting to know you the best we can (we have a feeling you already know more about us than we may know about ourselves), we would like to say the following. I, as a private citizen, absolutely love hugs. I am sure this stands true for many others like me. So please, if you ever decide to visit us publicly and if your culture and etiquette would allow so, please be generous with your hugs!
Hugs, got it. Would you be interested in a one-armed back-thumping make-no-mistake-we’re-totally-straight guy hug, the full-body ‘I’m not wearing a bra and yes I have had a boob job thanks for asking’ hug, or something involving multiple appendages?
“In the beginning there was the word.” The word was God”. A common simplistic belief that we are all are of one creator and created equal. Trust us as your neighbor. Spiritualy and cosmically. We may never meet in this life but we will be brothers in the next. Travel well and go with the belief that there is hope.
Also, we have this timeshare we’re trying to unload. Would you be interested?
Use a LED or a laser or any light source to transmit a prime numbers sequence in binary code. Send the first 10 prime numbers, then repeat the sequence all over again. Do this acoustically also, with tones selected from different frequency interval (20 Hz, 200 Hz, 2 KHz and 20 Khz)…. I assumed that the alien is intelligent enough so that it can know and understand mathematics and it has sensors for light and/or sound.
Hey, is Jerry Garcia up there with you? Jerrrrrrry, duuuude, que pasa! Oh yeah: Avoid the blue acid, man. It’s a bad trip. Repeat: Avoid the blue acid.
We are still strongly lost in the fear of loneliness, from violence, to prostration, to apathy, to always more destruction. We however recently reached enough diversity, and the entire ideal is now clearly visible to some. Our knowledge is enough to start the transition. Still a few more years to spread the reason fully. For now, your appearance would lead to various strong reactions and risks of recuperation. Technological help will be welcomed in a decade. Thank you for any kind of help and protection.
And I seem to have misplaced my medication. It’s a brown bottle with green and white capsules. Have you seen it?
Do you have a sister?
Because what good is greeting an alien civilization that has reached across millions of light years to contact us if you can’t hit on them?
Tweet
Get fresh geek humor delivered daily: RSS | E-Mail | Twitter | Widgets
