Defending the Truth

There is always the theory of quantum physics that says a leap in time is possible. Of course the key word is theory.
If it could be manipulated by an intelligent life form it really comes down to how advanced and intelligent that life form might be and the accuracy of said theory.

Don't know where you got your info, but it's incorrect. A radio wave is light. Or, to be exact, the labels radio and light are used to distinguish between different bands of electromagnetic radiation, but apart from differing wavelengths, they're all the same thing and they all travel at the same speed, roughly 300 million metres a second.

The problem with establishing contact with other sentient species isn't time, or distance; it's all the bad assumptions we make along with it.

We assume, for example, that alien life-forms would be substantially different from ourselves; yet we simultaneously assume that their technology would develop along a similar path to our own.

We assume that we'd be able to talk to a species following a similar technological direction, even if they were more advanced than ourselves, or less so.

We assume that species which have expanded past a certain point in colonization must be peaceful.

None of those are valid assumptions.

Our own example indicates that technological advancement can be spurred by violence as well as by peace; there is no logical reason to expect that a technologically advanced species must be peaceable.

Our own technologies are designed around our biological development, as would be those for any lifeform. We possess vision, and thus send video; we possess hearing, and thus send audio. To do this, we modulate radio waves in certain non-naturally-occurring ways, which translate - by an agreement we made arbitrarily with ourselves - into data, which we then read as video or audio.

None of that would do anything for a sentient creature lacking sight or sound, for example, or perhaps merely seeing in a different realm of the spectrum. Our video feeds would be useless to a creature which sees in the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, even if it could decode our arbitrary data standard into a meaningful signal.

There is no evidence to suggest that we would be able to initiate contact with a species - even with a similar biological makeup and technological track - that is more than 60 years away from us, technologically, in either direction.

Why?

We don't still listen for telegraph messages, that's why. Even if we're biologically similar, and the folks on the other end are magnificent codebreakers, able to decipher our data traffic into something meaningful to them, communication depends on their detecting our attempts to communicate.

If they're 100 years behind us technologically, they wouldn't be able to receive, or interpret, the directed-wave radio traffic we use for communications now. If they're 100 years more advanced, and following the same technological track as ourselves, they will most likely be using lasers (or a similar device in their spectrum,) to communicate; there's no reason to believe they'd even hear us.

The most likely candidate for extraterrestrial contact at this point in time is a race that's biologically similar to the point of having auditory communications and binocular vision, at our same relative level of technology, with a similarly structured society, using similar means of communications.

If there's one thing we've learned in our technological track, it's that the types of technology we've developed have largely been developed due to violence, and violent applications. Most of our communications and materials technology springs directly from military laboratories.

So, if we DO get in touch with E.T., the most likely thing that'll happen is that we'll get in a great big fight.

I don't agree. Time and distance are indeed far bigger problems than any erroneous assumptions we may make about aliens.

Do we?

That is a reasonable assumption. If they don't have long distance communication and/or space travel, we're not going to meet them. Long distance communication can't be done by smoke signals and spaceships can't get very far on steam engines.

No, we wouldn't be able to talk to them if they were less advanced because they wouldn't have radio. If they were more advanced, they would attempt the simplest form of communication that an alien (we) could receive, i.e. radio.

Really? There is a school of thought that says any civilization that is advanced enough for interstellar travel must have had the potential for self-destruction and avoided it, but I haven't heard any consensus based on that in regard to how colonists would behave towards the inhabitants of worlds they wanted. Some people think they'd be peaceful, some think they'd be dangerous.

Actually, most of them are quite reasonable.

Neither is there any particular reason to assume they will be hostile.

Doesn't matter. SETI does not assume that ET's visible spectrum is the same as ours and it wouldn't make any difference if they did. Their methods are based on simple principles which would be obvious to any creature intelligent enough to embark on a similar project.

Since we're not going to attempt to open a discussion with ET using sound or visible light, the point is moot. The frequencies used are chosen for a glaringly obvious reason that applies equally to any sufficiently advanced person in the known universe who wishes to communicate. I'll spare you the details, but there are some very convenient and very obvious (to any race with some knowledge of the radio sky) "holes" in the radio noise of the galaxy. Using the so-called "water-hole" wavelengths would be so obvious to anyone wishing to search for intelligent signals, it wouldn't occur to them to use anything else.

Which is why we wouldn't attempt to open communications with a television picture. First contact has to be a simple message that only tells the receiver "I am intelligent and I want to communicate" and there is a very easy way to do that.

We're not going to be able to talk to, or even find, anyone who hasn't developed radio; that's a no-brainer. As for talking to someone more advanced, they can't possibly miss us if they happen to look in the right direction at the right time. Whether they still routinely use radio for communication or not, we'll stick out like a sore thumb to an alien astronomer and it'll take him about two seconds to realise that the source of the radio anomoly (we are the brightest radio object in the sky for several thousand light years) is artificial.

You have been misinformed.

They don't have to be great codebreakers because we're not going to attempt to communicate in English. There is a universal language that any receiver will recognise as unmistakably intelligent and that language is mathematics. As I said earlier, the initial contact only has to inform the listener that someone wants to communicate, and that can be done by simply transmitting a repeating series of prime numbers - something that can't possibly be accidental. After that, you don't have to be a great cryptologist to understand someone who wants to be understood and the next thing you send, or listen for, because it's obvious and logical, is a set of numbers defining the two dimensional matrix on which you will draw simple pictures. It's not as difficult as trying to break the code of someone who is trying to transmit secrets, it's a two way development process between people who want to be understood and keep the logic simple.

Nobody is looking for pre-industrial races and nobody has suggested that anyone should.

You are assuming that someone who doesn't use radio for communication won't use it for anything else. If "they" are interested in outer space, they most definitely will have use of radio technology because the entire electromagnetic spectrum is, and always will be, essential to astronomy and any signal that is designed to be interpreted as artificial will instantly be recognised as such by anyone who receives it.

Agreed, but not for the reasons you think. Sound and light didn't develop to be of use to life forms, life forms developed to take advantage of sound and light. Life on other worlds will develop to take advantage of conditions, and if we assume that a nearby star and some kind of atmosphere are minumum requirements for life, then they will be able to see and hear. But it's irrelevant, becaise we're not going to try to make first contact by means of sight or sound, we're going to do it by numbers on the radio.

What? How does their social structure have any bearing? Either they're astronomers or they're not. If they're not, we've got no chance. If they are, their social structure is completely beside the point - if they look in the right direction at the right time, they'll see us. Their level of technology is irrelevant provided they are least capable of radio astronomy.

The motives of technology do not alter the fact that the methodologies are determined by the laws of physics, which are universal for at least as far as we can see.

No, the most likely outcome is that we'll have a lot of very slow two way conversations with someone who doesn't know how to travel hundreds of light years in a reasonable time.

I actually replied in kind, but ran over the character limit, and since it's now 2 AM here, and I have to work, you'll have to wait until tomorrow night for my reply to that string of unfounded assumptions, and your incredibly persistent clinging to radio as the only form of communication valid for sentient life.

I'm sure you're just all broken up about that, lmao.

I'm greatly looking forward to you trying to find where I said any such thing. You won't find it because I didn't say it.

As you become more familiar with me, you will, if you have the capacity, learn that I take a dim view of people who respond to what they wanted me to say rather than to what I actually did say.

On the strength of your performance so far, I have you marked down as yet another sarcastic know-it-all who can't respond to a point of view that differs from his own in an intelligent fashion, and with me, first impressions last - usually forever.

Lucky for me I had better things to do than wait, wasn't it?

Here here.

There is one phenomena in quantum physics that baffles scientists. The quantum states of two different particles can sometimes be entangled. Meaning that if the state of one of the particles is altered (say to a positive charge), then the other particle will change its state automatically (in this case to a negative charge). This happens seemingly instantly, faster than the speed of light c. And, as you know, its thought of to be impossible for information to travel faster than the speed of light.

Many theories of why this happens are stranger than the phenomena; such as the information going back in time, etc.