Do you believe in extraterrestrials?

[Israel State]

Extraterrestrials are really fallen angels and nephilim beings.

[Divair]

If aliens exist, what form of government would they have?

(Not including hivemind insectoids).

It's impossible to know. They could have invented an endless variety of government systems. Or government systems are something similar-ish among species in the universe and they adopted something similar to one of our government systems.

[Trollgaard]

In many hunter-gatherer societies there was no chieftain. There was either nothing, or perhaps what was called a big man, without any real authority. People listened to the big man's advice, but had no compulsion to follow it.

What happened if the big man was disobeyed?

Nothing, really. If people didn't like the big man they left and formed new bands.

[Israel State]

The “Aliens” demons are ruled by a dictatorial oligarchy of high level fallen angels called the Satan and Lucifer is their leader.

[Grenartia]

The “Aliens” demons are ruled by a dictatorial oligarchy of high level fallen angels called the Satan and Lucifer is their leader.

BULLSHIT! GET YOUR GRADE-A, TOP-QUALITY BULLSHIT RIGHT HERE! FINEST ON THE FORUM!

[Grave_n_idle]

Extraterrestrials are really fallen angels and nephilim beings.

Other way round, surely?

[The Four Corners Commonwealth]

As far as aliens being immortal after a certain level of progression, that does not remove the chance of genocide or some skynet uprising. The mot terrifying part of searching for alien life will not be the fear that we may be alone, it may be their intentions. If we found alien life in our are, for it to contact us in a reasonable time frame it would have to be much more advanced than us. If they really are so much more advanced technologically, what exactly is holding them back from wiping us of the earth to get the resources/land/whatever they want? We can subscribe to some "democracy" view, but remember even today democracies often are willing to pursue cloak-and-dagger operations to secure their future. It wouldn't be hard for an alien democracy's government to come up with a bioweapon, send it to earth and eradicate us, and then say they found some planet where the intelligent race died. That would satisfy their need for land/whatever while the operation would essentially have zero risk to them, and their public wouldn't know until it was far too late, if they would ever find out at all.

[Grenartia]

As far as aliens being immortal after a certain level of progression, 1. that does not remove the chance of genocide or some skynet uprising. The mot terrifying part of searching for alien life will not be the fear that we may be alone, it may be their intentions. If we found alien life in our are, for it to contact us in a reasonable time frame it would have to be much more advanced than us. 2. If they really are so much more advanced technologically, what exactly is holding them back from wiping us of the earth to get the resources/land/whatever they want? We can subscribe to some "democracy" view, but remember even today democracies often are willing to pursue cloak-and-dagger operations to secure their future. It wouldn't be hard for an alien democracy's government to come up with a bioweapon, send it to earth and eradicate us, and then say they found some planet where the intelligent race died. That would satisfy their need for land/whatever while the operation would essentially have zero risk to them, and their public wouldn't know until it was far too late, if they would ever find out at all.

1. Actually, it kind of does. Space is fucking huge. A species on the run from genocidal oppressors, could, with the right technology (really fast generation ships and the like) scatter themselves to the interstellar winds, and continue to do so almost indefinitely. In fact, their population would likely explode. As for skynet, the same thing applies.

2. What resources could POSSIBLY be on Earth that they'd need that couldn't be gotten elsewhere in the solar system for cheaper, no bioweapons required?

[Saurisisia]

I do not believe that extraterrestrials until we have firm, solid proof that there really is life on other worlds.

[Gandoor]

I believe that extraterrestrials exist.

But I doubt we'll ever come in contact with them.

[Meryuma]

They're out there somewhere. I don't think they've come to Earth though.

The “Aliens” demons are ruled by a dictatorial oligarchy of high level fallen angels called the Satan and Lucifer is their leader.

That's neither biblical nor scientific. It's just some David Icke/LaHaye shit.

[Merriwhether]

The existence of extraterrestrials is one of the few subjects where every logical answer is pessimistic and optimistic at the same time.

That being said, someone really fucked up making us the only species in the universe if that were the case.

[Fulflood]

Not particularly.
If there's anything, it's bacteria sort of stuff, but as always the burden of proof is on those making the claim, and there's no way to prove it at the moment, so I can't say I truly believe. It's a very similar situation to believing in God, or at least that's how I see it. We can't really prove it and can't really make any valid calculations or assumptions, based on the fact that we have very limited data.

Actually, extraterrestrial life is a statistical certainty. That's the one main difference between ETs and God. Statistics doesn't support or not support the existence of God, but it does support the existence of ETs.

Hence my use of 'similar' and not the same, although there's a lot of assumption involved (both ways) considering we only have one example of life to go on.

[Rolling Dead]

Yeah. They made us, and when we die we get recoded into the machine, Man.

[Northwest Slobovia]

Yup. The one signal the xkcd piece didn't mention was the Deep Space Network. I think transmissions to Voyager 1 are made with Arecibo -- I'll have to check, and I know who to ask to know who to ask -- and that pretty much points in the same direction all the time. So it's not a "Wow! Signal" for somebody lying along the "cone of sight" (what with parallax and such) from us to Voyager 1, but an erratically repeating simple signal with a whole lot of power behind it.

It's a simple signal because all we ever send to Voyager 1 is "Hello, Voyager, this is Earth. Please send data set X... OK, thanks! Please send data set X + 1..." It might be a little more complicated -- I'll need to look at the specs again -- if we're sending "Hello Voyager, this Earth, coming at you on a 14 hr delay on 2.583 Ghz exactly, with a fancy phase... please lock on our phase in 3...2...1...*beeeeeeeep*! Thanks. Please send..."

Sounds about right. I actually figured the same when I first read that What If?.

EDIT: Actually, something I'd thought about, after reading the article that mentioned the Oh My God Particle, is devising a method to send out similar particles to communicate technological advancement.

Yeah, I know a few folks suggested trying to listen for neutrinos from other solar systems on that basis.

Also, according to this site, Voyager 1 is in the apparent direction of Ophiuchus, and it looks like anybody home on planets orbiting κ-Oph and ι-Oph should hear us talking to Voyager 1... 90 or 234 years from now (respectively). If they wanna talk, it'll be a sloooow conversation.

[Grenartia]

Sounds about right. I actually figured the same when I first read that What If?.

EDIT: Actually, something I'd thought about, after reading the article that mentioned the Oh My God Particle, is devising a method to send out similar particles to communicate technological advancement.

Yeah, I know a few folks suggested trying to listen for neutrinos from other solar systems on that basis.

Also, according to this site, Voyager 1 is in the apparent direction of Ophiuchus, and it looks like anybody home on planets orbiting κ-Oph and ι-Oph should hear us talking to Voyager 1... 90 or 234 years from now (respectively). If they wanna talk, it'll be a sloooow conversation.

That's another good idea. But first we'd have to determine which neutrinos are artificial, and which aren't. I may be mistaken, but we don't know how to do that.

[Breadknife]

That's another good idea. But first we'd have to determine which neutrinos are artificial, and which aren't. I may be mistaken, but we don't know how to do that.

They're the ones with the post-it notes stuck onto them?

Seriously, radio waves are radio waves are radio waves, and are generally all-pervasive because of natural phenomena, but if there is enough strength through our receivers to see a pattern in them then we can consider that a signal. (Then we just need to decode it.)

What we have at the moment is a whole lot of neutrino dectors looking out for all kinds of neutrinos (some of which we're 'aiming' LHC neutrinos at, etc, to see what we can do with a known source) and trying to work out how these experiments can be made better.

We may not even be at the Crystal Radio Set stage of 'neutrino radio', and maybe just beyond the equivalent of observing a gold-leaf electroscope lose an applied charge in the presence of ionising radiation, but at some point we'll know more about what we can do regarding the detection (and generation, on demand) of neutrinos and then we'll maybe have a proper "neutrino telescope" that can do for study of natural (and artificial, if there are any) neutrino transmitters what radio and optical telescopes did (and still do) for their own respective mediums.

(re-edited for a too-late spotted typo, then forgot what it was and couldn't find it again (senior moment!), so decided to clarify a sentence instead... sheesh)

[Grenartia]

That's another good idea. But first we'd have to determine which neutrinos are artificial, and which aren't. I may be mistaken, but we don't know how to do that.

They're the ones with the post-it notes stuck onto them?

Seriously, radio waves are radio waves are radio waves, and are generally all-pervasive because of natural phenomena, but if there is enough strength through our receivers to see a pattern in them then we can consider that a signal. (Then we just need to decode it.)

What we have at the moment is a whole lot of neutrino dectors looking out for all kinds of neutrinos (some of which we're 'aiming' LHC neutrinos at, etc, to see what we can do with a known source) and trying to work out how these experiments can be made better.

We may not even be at the Crystal Radio Set stage of 'neutrino radio', and maybe just beyond the equivalent of observing a gold-leaf electroscope lose an applied charge in the presence of ionising radiation, but at some point we'll know more about what we can do regarding the detection (and generation, on demand) of neutrinos and then we'll maybe have a proper "neutrino telescope" that can do for study of natural (and artificial, if there are any) neutrino transmitters what radio and optical telescopes did (and still do) for their own respective mediums.

(re-edited for a too-late spotted typo, then forgot what it was and couldn't find it again (senior moment!), so decided to clarify a sentence instead... sheesh)

The pattern bit was what I was getting at with the natural vs. artificial bit.

Though, my main question would be how do you encode a signal into the neutrinos?

And, just a point, with our current knowledge of neutrinos, we'd have to use massive numbers of them, just to get a handful of signals at the receiving end (hell, you might not even get the whole message). So we'd be looking for truly MASSIVE bursts of neutrinos, numbers that may be comparable to ones found from supernovas. Whereas ET (if he/she/they are sufficiently advanced) may be using super-dense detectors, allowing them to gain more efficiency (on the order of what we currently obtain with radio).

tl;dr: We may be technically capable of detecting ET's neutrino transmissions, but they might blend into the background, due to small numbers.

[Breadknife]

tl;dr: We may be technically capable of detecting ET's neutrino transmissions, but they might blend into the background, due to small numbers.

TL;DR; that was my gist, too. ("...small numbers detected", at least.)

How to encode? Modulate the sending to give bunches that are anything from ET's equivalent of Morse to binary (some neutrinos vs few neutrinos). Or if they know more about their mass and the possible neutrino oscillating issues (probable, if they're working with them so seriously) do something with the different 'flavours' they come in (Tau, Muon, Electron, or whatever they actually are if we've so far got it completely wrong).

But neutrinos sound to me like narrowcast rather than broadcast, so unless they're specifically 'pinging' us to see if we're listening/able to respond, I don't know how likely it is that we could hear their attempts. (If they do, however, now that we're listening, we'd probably work out that something is up, even if it's mistaken (or already been mistaken) as something extraordinarily large from the natural world at first.)

[Grenartia]

tl;dr: We may be technically capable of detecting ET's neutrino transmissions, but they might blend into the background, due to small numbers.

TL;DR; that was my gist, too. ("...small numbers detected", at least.)

How to encode? Modulate the sending to give bunches that are anything from ET's equivalent of Morse to binary (some neutrinos vs few neutrinos). Or if they know more about their mass and the possible neutrino oscillating issues (probable, if they're working with them so seriously) do something with the different 'flavours' they come in (Tau, Muon, Electron, or whatever they actually are if we've so far got it completely wrong).

But neutrinos sound to me like narrowcast rather than broadcast, so unless they're specifically 'pinging' us to see if we're listening/able to respond, I don't know how likely it is that we could hear their attempts. (If they do, however, now that we're listening, we'd probably work out that something is up, even if it's mistaken (or already been mistaken) as something extraordinarily large from the natural world at first.)

Indeed.

[Grave_n_idle]

Yeah, I know a few folks suggested trying to listen for neutrinos from other solar systems on that basis.

Also, according to this site, Voyager 1 is in the apparent direction of Ophiuchus, and it looks like anybody home on planets orbiting κ-Oph and ι-Oph should hear us talking to Voyager 1... 90 or 234 years from now (respectively). If they wanna talk, it'll be a sloooow conversation.

That's another good idea. But first we'd have to determine which neutrinos are artificial, and which aren't. I may be mistaken, but we don't know how to do that.

Consistent signals tend to suggest method, but could just be periodicity. Pattern signals suggest artificial origin.

i.e. if we started getting a pulse of neutrinos from the same source every minute, it might be a natural phenomenon or it might be an intelligence. It would be worth the investigation either way.

But if we got a cycle of primes that increased once a minute, over an hour, and then repeated the whole pattern - there's a pretty good chance we just found someone using neutrinos as a signal.

[EnragedMaldivians]

I do not believe that extraterrestrials until we have firm, solid proof that there really is life on other worlds.

Well, we have proof that given the right conditions life can arise on a planet. Earth itself is evidence that life could exist on other planets.

[Grenartia]

That's another good idea. But first we'd have to determine which neutrinos are artificial, and which aren't. I may be mistaken, but we don't know how to do that.

Consistent signals tend to suggest method, but could just be periodicity. Pattern signals suggest artificial origin.

1. i.e. if we started getting a pulse of neutrinos from the same source every minute, it might be a natural phenomenon or it might be an intelligence. It would be worth the investigation either way.

2. But if we got a cycle of primes that increased once a minute, over an hour, and then repeated the whole pattern - there's a pretty good chance we just found someone using neutrinos as a signal.

1. True.

2. Well, yes, if they were actively signalling us. However, we won't get that if they're signalling to each other, and we get caught in the stream, as it were.

[Uieurnthlaal]

I do not believe that extraterrestrials until we have firm, solid proof that there really is life on other worlds.

Well, we have proof that given the right conditions life can arise on a planet. Earth itself is evidence that life could exist on other planets.

Well, we have solid proof that at least under infinitely perfect scenarios, life can form. However, it might just be that the probability of a planet arising capable of supporting life to arise sometime in our Universe within the past 10B years, is just around 0,1 to 0,6. On the other hand, the universe might be teeming with life.
But, all Earth really proves is that the existence of life, in and of itself, does not violate the laws of physics.

[Grenartia]

Well, we have proof that given the right conditions life can arise on a planet. Earth itself is evidence that life could exist on other planets.

Well, we have solid proof that at least under infinitely perfect scenarios, life can form. However, it might just be that the probability of a planet arising capable of supporting life to arise sometime in our Universe within the past 10B years, is just around 0,1 to 0,6. On the other hand, the universe might be teeming with life.
But, all Earth really proves is that the existence of life, in and of itself, does not violate the laws of physics.

Everything violates the laws of physics.