We take this pointy thingy here and send out a message..
From the Home page:
"The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe.
The SETI Institute is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to scientific research, education and public outreach. "
A very noble enterprise..I wish them all the best..
"Our current understanding of life’s origin on Earth suggests that given a suitable environment and sufficient time, life will develop on other planets. Whether evolution will give rise to intelligent, technological civilizations is open to speculation. However, such a civilization could be detected across interstellar distances, and may actually offer our best opportunity for discovering extraterrestrial life in the near future."
A good,safe (agnostic) scientific statement...
"In 1974, a largely symbolic attempt was made to send a message to other worlds. To celebrate a substantial upgrading of the 305 metre Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico, a coded message (http://www.seti.org/science/a-message.html) of 1,679 bits was transmitted towards the Globular Cluster M13, some 25,000 light years away.
The pattern of 0s and 1s contained in the message defined a 23 × 73 grid which when plotted revealed some data about our location in the Solar System, a stylised figure of a human being, chemical formulae and an outline of the radio telescope itself.
The 23 by 73 grid was chosen because both 23 and 73 are prime numbers and it was thought that this could aid any hypothetical alien listener to recognize the grid representation."
Hold on a bloody minute!..let me get this straight..so we point this thing at M13 and (In case) some alien picks it up we (may) convey some information..As per the rules laid down by the illustrious Aristotle some 2000 years ago the following follows :
* 0's and 1's are universally "out there"..all intelligent life forms know and understand this
* Other life forms understand the concept of "Number" of "ZERO" "Nothing" "True" "False"
* They know how to convert "1011100011100100011111010" to "24234234"
* They know the concept of a Prime Number so Prime Numbers are "out there".we humans just stumbled on it
* Aliens have "eyes"..they can "see" the figures
* They will be able to infer that what they decoded is a "being" or "other" "intelligent" "life-forms"
Marvin the martian whips out his own pointy thing(of course they will be more advanced than us..hollywood tells us this..) and lo and behold he transmits in 0's and 1's and we pick it up...
Once we have initiated contact of course,we can ask him more questions.
* Did u'all see God?how is he like?is he a she?or a thing?
* Do you guys fuck?..doggie style??..do the females of your species give blowjobs??
* Can u give us the co-ordinates to Hell and Heaven?
yada yada..
The truth is out there Scully....