9 ms·

I just throw some gasoline on the "It must be Aliens!" theory (to which I do not subscribe!) and point out that heavily compressed data looks random...

menybuvico 6y ago
As does encrypted data.
- beamatronic 6y ago
  That’s why somebody needs to send out a sequence of prime numbers
  - lumost 6y ago
    What protocol do you use to represent the sequence? Bytes, Morse, Amplitude modulation, frequency modulation? All of these combinations may appear random to one without the right codec.
    - 0-_-0 6y ago
      1 is 1 blip, 2 is 2 blips, etc. just like in the movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unary_numeral_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unary_numeral_system
    - beamatronic 6y ago
      I wonder if this could be accomplished with a train of satellites. All in the same orbit. Just spaced out like this: xx xxx xxxxx xxxxxxx So they just go around and around, including the light, from the point of view of a far away perspective
      - cgriswald 6y ago
        You would need to set up the satellites in such a way that anyone receiving your message is viewing their orbits edge on. Your satellites would also have to be extremely large and fairly close to your host star. And there’d have to be no dust between your star and the receiver. As a method to communicate with people you don’t know exist, it’s not very good because chances are they won’t be viewing your satellites edge on. For people you know are there, it’s needlessly complicated and expensive. If you’re going to go to the trouble, you’d be better off making a Dyson swarm and cloaking your star completely. You’d get energy back and be just as detectable for a civilization that thought to compare visible and IR sources (which some Earth scientists have done, with negative results).
  - namarie 6y ago
    It would take 500 million years to get there, if the signal was strong enough in the first place.
  - anoniuyiu33412 6y ago
    Maybe is encrypted because we are not the intended receiver.
- elwell 6y ago
  Compression is just a bad encryption algorithm. Encryption is just a bad compression algorithm.

menybuvico 6y ago

As does encrypted data.

beamatronic 6y ago
That’s why somebody needs to send out a sequence of prime numbers
- lumost 6y ago
  What protocol do you use to represent the sequence? Bytes, Morse, Amplitude modulation, frequency modulation? All of these combinations may appear random to one without the right codec.
  - 0-_-0 6y ago
    1 is 1 blip, 2 is 2 blips, etc. just like in the movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unary_numeral_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unary_numeral_system
  - beamatronic 6y ago
    I wonder if this could be accomplished with a train of satellites. All in the same orbit. Just spaced out like this: xx xxx xxxxx xxxxxxx So they just go around and around, including the light, from the point of view of a far away perspective
    - cgriswald 6y ago
      You would need to set up the satellites in such a way that anyone receiving your message is viewing their orbits edge on. Your satellites would also have to be extremely large and fairly close to your host star. And there’d have to be no dust between your star and the receiver. As a method to communicate with people you don’t know exist, it’s not very good because chances are they won’t be viewing your satellites edge on. For people you know are there, it’s needlessly complicated and expensive. If you’re going to go to the trouble, you’d be better off making a Dyson swarm and cloaking your star completely. You’d get energy back and be just as detectable for a civilization that thought to compare visible and IR sources (which some Earth scientists have done, with negative results).
- namarie 6y ago
  It would take 500 million years to get there, if the signal was strong enough in the first place.
- anoniuyiu33412 6y ago
  Maybe is encrypted because we are not the intended receiver.
elwell 6y ago
Compression is just a bad encryption algorithm. Encryption is just a bad compression algorithm.