Every Signal We've Ever Sent Into Space

Comments

• sbeak@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I wonder how extraterrestrials would react to the moon landing. Could it be possible that a species on another planet happened to develop the radio technology required to pick up the relatively weak signals and watched the moon landing as well? Probably not, but it’s fun to think about.

  Vega deserves a special mention. Carl Sagan chose it deliberately in his novel Contact as the source of the first alien signal because at 25 light-years away, Vega would have received our first powerful broadcasts in the 1920s and could theoretically be sending a reply that arrives around now. It is a beautiful piece of narrative physics, even if the probability of anyone actually being there to receive us remains unknown.

  Dang, I did not know that. That’s very interesting!

  original

  • Siegfried@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I bet they would have been more interested in URSS’s tries on getting info out of venus surface. Moon landing is pretty meh in comparison.

    original

    • sbeak@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I feel like the Voyager probes and the Mars rovers, having been working for so many years yet being so far away from Earth, would probably look incredible for extraterrestrials as well. Maybe they’d feel proud. Who knows? I’m not an extraterrestrial, what do it know.

      original

      • -> View More Comments
  • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I wonder how extraterrestrials would react to the moon landing.

    If they’re technologically advanced enough to build radio telescope of sufficient size to detect such weak signals, they’d probably think we were cute. Like how we feel when we observe a crow or a squirrel solve a puzzle or navigate an obstacle course.

    original

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Or they might see it as the infection is spreading and it might be safest to eliminate it now.

      original
    • sbeak@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Maybe the extraterrestrials don’t want to disturb the silly little humans figuring out space travel? But to be fair, some of us humans don’t really care for other animals, so what’s to say the extraterrestrials care about us? Or maybe, to achieve technological feats such as building a dish to pick up faint signals many times larger than us humans, the extraterrestrials had to cooperate and not fight amongst each other (and just be kinder and more caring in general). The ISS, our species’ greatest engineering marvel, was only possible due to the cooperation of people from all over the world! Something to think about.

      original

      • -> View More Comments