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Since it hasn't come up yet: whenever a new astronomical phenomenon is detected, people think "Aliens!" as the reason. In fact, when the first pulsar was disco
by perlgeek 6y ago
Since it hasn't come up yet: whenever a new astronomical phenomenon is detected, people think "Aliens!" as the reason.
In fact, when the first pulsar was discovered, it was (somewhat jokingly) called LGM-1 for "little green men".
I'm sure the news hype cycle will come up with similar ideas this time, and I'm just as sure that we'll find a perfectly reasonable explanation not involving intelligent, extraterrestrial life forms.
- abc_lisper 6y agoUntil one day when it becomes true ..
- zoomablemind 6y agoWe should beam back our commercials at them... they may just change their mind and switch to ads-free alternative.
- JJMcJ 6y ago"Earth Peoples, we come for the secret of the ShamWow"
- biesnecker 6y agoWe have searched the galaxy and discovered that it indeed cannot be found in stores.
- Jestar342 6y agoSome of the earliest radio broadcasts are Hitler's speeches, as well as other world leaders preparing their nations for global conflict. So there's that.
- dogma1138 6y agoThat would be TV broadcasts as I’m guessing everyone here seen Contact. Ironically in 1948 when FM was standardized and countries were assigned spectrums Germany wasn’t really invited as it wasn’t a state for that short period and wasn’t assigned a spectrum so they started broadcasting in VHF because that wasn’t covered by the Copenhagen Agreement. A few years later people realized that VHF was supper efficient for FM unlike AM and (W)Germany ended up holding all the cards. This is why (primarily older) VHF FM radio compatible receivers in Europe will have UKW FM or UKW option in the turner which stands for Ultrakurzwelle (Ultra short wave) that was before UHF was standardized above the VHF spectrum.
- huntermeyer 6y agoThis is why I come to HN! Thanks for sharing this.
- PoachedSausage 6y agoYou may be interested in a history of Philips TV Tuners: https://www.maximus-randd.com/tv-tuner-history-pt1.html https://www.maximus-randd.com/tv-tuner-history-pt1.html
- egfx 6y ago> I’m guessing everyone here seen Contact. More than once
- goatlover 6y agoAlien dad goes windsurfing with SETI daughter, but the only evidence he leaves that it's not the hoax of some rich bald dude is 18 hours of static, so the audience can have both their faith and science, but no blackhole for Matthew McConaughey.
- perl4ever 6y agoThere's a story in which aliens unexpectedly destroy nearly everything in the solar system and when asked why, they explain that they received transmissions of Star Trek episodes and people singing "We Are The World" and so they put together the fantasies of galactic domination with the idea that humans might be close to global unification, and decided it was time to apply a bug bomb to Earth. In other words, the things we see as negative might not bother aliens much, if they mostly indicate we might destroy ourselves.
- sergeykish 6y agoOh no, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel)
- distantaidenn 6y agoJust finished reading this yesterday. Such interesting concepts! Highly recommended for fans of hard sci-fi.
- Intermernet 6y agoAvailable under Creative Commons! https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
- heavyset_go 6y ago> Since it hasn't come up yet: whenever a new astronomical phenomenon is detected, people think "Aliens!" as the reason. Same thing with UFOs, despite the fact that there's been decades of R&D into weaponizing and developing novel UAVs.
- dreamcompiler 6y agoThere was a time when people thought a ball of fire moving across the sky every day must be alive. The universe is full of strange phenomena perfectly explainable by physics. This is no different.
- rhacker 6y agoIt's really not "perfectly" explainable by physics since we don't understand all aspects of physics yet. If you said "mostly" explainable by physics I would believe you. Also, if an alien happens to be shining a beam at us rhythmically, that's also "explained" by physics but we won't actually know if the source is a natural phenomena or an alien shining his super flashlight at us.
- spenczar5 6y agoNo, that was the right phrasing. It isn’t perfectly explained, but its perfectly explainable.
- jfkebwjsbx 6y agoIt is not perfectly explainable by us, though. And it may not actually perfectly explainable ever. Nothing guarantees we can get a perfect understanding of physics.
- mrmonkeyman 6y agoIt's just calling it by a different name though. Nothing of the magic has been altered.
- odyssey7 6y agoEventually physicists are going to end up trying to explain signs of intelligent life as new Physics and calibrate their models according to it. "Greetings from ___." "Oh, hello... uhh, so those signals were your house and not a trefoil of two black holes and a quasar?
- 6y ago