DoubtingThomas wrote:Our modern radio telescopes can't detect neutrino signals from space.
I'm not sure what would constitute a "neutrino signal," but LOFAR has been used to detect neutrinos.
DoubtingThomas wrote:Neutrinos and radio (electromagnetic) waves are not the same thing. Or are they?
Nope. I still don't understand what any of this has to do with your earlier insinuation that an alien civilization would abandon an entire spectrum as well as insulate all technology to prevent it from emitting that same frequency.
"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead." ~Charles Bukowski
Doctor Steuss wrote: still don't understand what any of this has to do with your earlier insinuation that an alien civilization would abandon an entire spectrum as well as insulate all technology to prevent it from emitting that same frequency.
Me neither.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Doctor Steuss wrote: still don't understand what any of this has to do with your earlier insinuation that an alien civilization would abandon an entire spectrum as well as insulate all technology to prevent it from emitting that same frequency.
Me neither.
Xenophobic paranoia?
A race like the formics from Ender's game that never need to develop a secondary means of long distance communications?
It is better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener at war.
Some of us, on the other hand, actually prefer a religion that includes some type of correlation with reality. ~Bill Hamblin
Aliens. You know. The sheer volume of nuclear weapons available for deployment to anywhere on or near the planet is mind boggling. You want to see a real force of terror? Give humanity a common enemy. There is nowhere in the solar system you could hide to escape the unholy shitstorm headed your way should your first strike fail to kill us off.
Try to imagine this. It's 40 years ago, you're 40 light years away and headed to earth with big invasion plans. You've caught some signals from 1938 broadcasts and realized there's an infant civilization that's entering a massive war with itself. All signs point to a war torn ruin of easy pickings awaiting you. You set off with a hefty army of 15,000,000 soldiers in 3 different juggernauts that are ~2 miles long a piece. What are these idiots using explosive powered blowguns even going to do to you if there are any of them left alive?
So you come out of warp just 200 miles from Earth. You've come from outside the solar system you're in the Earth's shadow. Except it's not dark. The entire continent in front of you is glowing. Almost immediately your communications are flooded by millions of incoming signals. The scanners light up like a Christmas tree with potential inbound missiles and suddenly orders follow to brace for impact. Several massive blasts ensue before anyone realizes that you're in the cross section of hundreds of satellites in orbit.
The information you had from 80 years prior about humanity entering WWII in no way suggested the species was even capable of escape velocity. Now not only do they have a space program but they've had one for so long that you're being pelted by their god damn space trash. All the sudden there's a massive crash; a roadster has slammed into the command deck of the flagship. Panic ensues as you realize you've been broadsided by a 3,500 lbs metal projectile moving at 18,000 mph that someone put there as a practical joke.
Suddenly you realize you're being hailed on all frequencies by a digital signal. The captain calls for it to be displayed on the main screen. The picture comes through crystal clear. It's Donald Trump and he's pissed, ranting about illegal alien immigration and pointing upward. Behind him bright orange plumes of fire rise into the sky. The LIDAR lock-on alarm sounds seconds later; ten, twenty...fifty missiles inbound at 15k mph and accelerating!
Engineering suddenly interrupts Trump's speech screaming about an insane radiation signature. An emergency proposal to eject the ship's drive core carries on for almost a full minute before someone points out the radiation signature isn't coming from inside the ship. It's a fertile fission signature from thousands of high yield nuclear weapons, several dozen of them rapidly closing in. You can't possibly destroy them all in time. The captain orders his comm link broadcast on all channels in all known languages in a last act of desperation:
"Please! We come in peace!"
After several terrifying moments of silence, the communications officer shouts there's been a reply. The main screen is suddenly illuminated by the unsettling orange glow of Donald Trump starring into directly into the camera, a half dozen advisors on either side of him seemingly pleading for his attention. He ignores them all and instead roars his reply;
"FAKE NEWS!"
Before anyone can even begin to interpret what the “F” that even means the entire ship is engulfed in a halo of nuclear fire. Amid the screams and explosions all you can do is wonder what happened to the primitive war torn world from the grainy videos.
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
You’ve described why the rational thing for an advanced species to do is to preemptively destroy any sign of life it finds. Can’t remember if you’ve read The Three Body Problem.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Res Ipsa wrote:You’ve described why the rational thing for an advanced species to do is to preemptively destroy any sign of life it finds. Can’t remember if you’ve read The Three Body Problem.
And surely any group capable of faster than light travel (i.e. capable to doing what currently appears to be impossible) would send a dinky little probe to see what the inhabitants were up to before committing themselves to any contact?
I mean, remember the lesson in the manual 'Time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted'.
Oh, back to the OP ...
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Aliens. You know. The sheer volume of nuclear weapons available for deployment to anywhere on or near the planet is mind boggling. You want to see a real force of terror? Give humanity a common enemy. There is nowhere in the solar system you could hide to escape the unholy ____ headed your way should your first strike fail to kill us off.
Try to imagine this. It's 40 years ago, you're 40 light years away and headed to earth with big invasion plans. You've caught some signals from 1938 broadcasts and realized there's an infant civilization that's entering a massive war with itself. All signs point to a war torn ruin of easy pickings awaiting you. You set off with a hefty army of 15,000,000 soldiers in 3 different juggernauts that are ~2 miles long a piece. What are these idiots using explosive powered blowguns even going to do to you if there are any of them left alive?
So you come out of warp just 200 miles from Earth. You've come from outside the solar system you're in the Earth's shadow. Except it's not dark. The entire continent in front of you is glowing. Almost immediately your communications are flooded by millions of incoming signals. The scanners light up like a Christmas tree with potential inbound missiles and suddenly orders follow to brace for impact. Several massive blasts ensue before anyone realizes that you're in the cross section of hundreds of satellites in orbit.
The information you had from 80 years prior about humanity entering WWII in no way suggested the species was even capable of escape velocity. Now not only do they have a space program but they've had one for so long that you're being pelted by their god damn space trash. All the sudden there's a massive crash; a roadster has slammed into the command deck of the flagship. Panic ensues as you realize you've been broadsided by a 3,500 lbs metal projectile moving at 18,000 mph that someone put there as a practical joke.
Suddenly you realize you're being hailed on all frequencies by a digital signal. The captain calls for it to be displayed on the main screen. The picture comes through crystal clear. It's Donald Trump and he's pissed, ranting about illegal alien immigration and pointing upward. Behind him bright orange plumes of fire rise into the sky. The LIDAR lock-on alarm sounds seconds later; ten, twenty...fifty missiles inbound at 15k mph and accelerating!
Engineering suddenly interrupts Trump's speech screaming about an insane radiation signature. An emergency proposal to eject the ship's drive core carries on for almost a full minute before someone points out the radiation signature isn't coming from inside the ship. It's a fertile fission signature from thousands of high yield nuclear weapons, several dozen of them rapidly closing in. You can't possibly destroy them all in time. The captain orders his comm link broadcast on all channels in all known languages in a last act of desperation:
"Please! We come in peace!"
After several terrifying moments of silence, the communications officer shouts there's been a reply. The main screen is suddenly illuminated by the unsettling orange glow of Donald Trump starring into directly into the camera, a half dozen advisors on either side of him seemingly pleading for his attention. He ignores them all and instead roars his reply;
"FAKE NEWS!"
Before anyone can even begin to interpret what the ____ that even means the entire ship is engulfed in a halo of nuclear fire. Amid the screams and explosions all you can do is wonder what happened to the primitive war torn world from the grainy videos.
Sounds like the plot to half the pulp sci fi written. My favorite (sarcasm) was the one that had Vampires save the humans from the aliens, in a Deus Ex Machina plot twist. Just replace Trump with Vlad the Impaler and you basically have this book. I usually like Weber's stuff, but this one - just couldn't parse the vampires at the end.
"The great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization." - Will Durant "We've kept more promises than we've even made" - Donald Trump "Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist." - Edwin Land
