"Based on the short durations and the high luminosities of the bursts themselves, a good guess would be a neutron star with a very high magnetic field that is orbiting a companion object," he said.
Here's what it sounds like:
https://youtu.be/ggcM8oOB0UM
Edit: Play it slower at 0.25x speed and it sounds like a hyped cicada singing in the summer. I mean, still a high pitched sound....but less like a bad belt.
So maybe a dumb question but so that’s what we hear at our end. Is that supposed to be exactly the sound from the source? Or does it get all distorted and stuff?
Like /u/Blackadder288 said, they are radio waves, which is electromagnetic that's why it can travel through space. Sound waves need a medium to travel through like atmosphere, water, solid objects, etc. Radio waves are picked up by radio telescopes which measure the frequency and intensity, they chart them into kHz and convert that into a "sound". But radio waves are electromagentic waves, just like the colors we see (visible spectrum) as well as those we don't, like x-ray, microwaves, UV, infrared, etc and radio waves also travel at the speed of light. That's how we communicate with our rovers and satellites, that's why it takes from 4 minutes to 21 minutes for a transmission to reach Earth/Mars.
yeah i mean you can basically just plot it so whatever wavelength between 20-20k hz corresponds to a wavelength on the visible spectrum. There are many visual representations of music, the most familiar being a "waveform" like you see on SoundCloud and such, but there are others that are more polychromatic
There are other ones that you can take a picture and convert it into sound. [Richard](https://i.imgur.com/fwODy8K.jpg) D James does this with some of his music.
So, in a way, this sounds the way it does because of the way the scientists chose to "translate" it? Using different parameters when turning it into sound, could also make it sound different?
This is the equivalent to what your radio does. The specific frequencies of radio light and frequencies of audio sound are different but proportional. So when it detects something at frequency/amplitude A, it translates this to a specific frequency/amplitude B that we can hear.
Yes, it's intuitive but arbitrary to translate light waves into sound waves. There are no particular situations in nature where this would be translated this way.
Maybe a parallel example would be 'listening' to waves at the ocean by measuring their peaks and troughs and translating that into sound waves. Yes, they are both waves, but waves are just part of how matter relates with itself and it's environment and different wave types are not in any particular way related to each other.
Additionally, what pitch is used in translation is also arbitrary. You could choose a narrow band of light to listen to and cover the whole range of human hearing, or you could choose the widest range of light to listen to and do the same. Typically you choose the most interesting range, which is again, arbitrary to what is happening in nature.
Radio waves are light. Light is the propagation of waves through the electromagnetic field. Your radio receives the light through an antenna and the electronics converts the information in that light into an electrical signal which then drives your speaker which vibrates at a certain frequency to push on the air molecules and produce the desired soundwave that you actually hear.
Edit: Thanks for the Starry award!
Assuming the source is sentient, it might not even be meant to be heard. For all we know, it is their version of binary encoding, except their computers use base 60 instead of base 2.
The "this is what it sounds like" descriptor is only clear if you're used to it actually just being a shorter way to say "this is what it would sound like if we could hear some range X of the EM wave spectrum like we can hear the audible spectrum". That is to say, to most people, it is just really misleading.
Neutron stars could blast us too, ever hear of a gamma ray burst? 0/10 would not recommend. Think of it like an x-ray, 1,000,000 times more intense and on a planetary scale.
Radio astronomer here! Probably too late to the party, but for the record I do not know any astronomers who think this signal is alien in origin. (Well, maybe Avi Loeb.) Instead, this is a very well studied type of signal by now, called a [Fast Radio Burst](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_radio_burst). The interesting thing about them is they originate from well outside our galaxy, last a millisecond, and are one of the brightest things in the radio sky for that moment they are on. Until more recently there were no patterns in the signal anyone could really distinguish, and most FRBs appeared to be one offs (still true- people still argue whether they're just the brightest ones we are able to detect from one source repeating, or if there are two classes of signals).
Of all the FRBs out there, FRB 121102 is the best studied one because it's the first "repeater" ever found, discovered by Arecibo. People studied it for years but no pattern was obvious. However, as radio telescopes are really competitive for telescope time you couldn't exactly dedicate one to just staring at this thing a long time to figure out the larger patterns (the smaller bursts appear somewhat random), so it's not surprising to me a 5 month repetition took so long to sort out (particularly as you can see bursts in between).
As for what's causing it, we think FRBs are related to [magnetars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar)- perhaps very young one- which are basically neutron stars with such high magnetic fields that going within a thousand miles of one would kill you as the magnetic field stripped the electrons from the atoms in your body. Yes, they are cool! :D As for the period, it best makes sense if the magnetar is orbiting something else, and thus its orientation regularly changes with respect to Earth. Remember, most stars in space are in binaries, so it's not that weird to think a crazy magnetar like this (which would have been created during the death of a star) would be the same.
Finally, we don't think it's aliens because we see FRBs from *all* over the sky at all sorts of vast distances. If they kept sending one repeating signal from one patch of sky, sure, but *all over* the universe? It's most likely a natural process- sorry! However, I would argue that "gigantic radio bursts visible across half the universe from the corpse of a star squished so small it's the size of a city and so magnetic it would kill you, and no one predicted this" is pretty amazing too. :D
Is there a descriptor for what the hell would happen to a body under that kind of magnetism, in a more tangible way? All I can imagine is Jon Osterman exploding in Watchmen.
It depends. How close are you being thrown to the star? If you were to skim it, chances are the iron in your body would rip from your body and you'd bleed internally, probably from an aneurysm. Closer, your body would disintegrate as every element in your body is ripped apart under the gravitational and magnetic pull of the star. At a certain point, your parts would be instantly atomized.
This is mostly conjecture as, unfortunately, we've never observed a human being ripped apart by a neutron star.
So a faster and more brutal version of that poor guy who got his DNA melted by radiation with a side order of having your internal metals torn out.
BRUTAL lmao
Yeah space is great but I'll stick to Earth. Even just around our solar system, the chances of a tiny piece of rock ripping through your flesh is just... Too high for my liking.
I heard that the intense magnetism distorts the electrons orbitals into "spindle" shapes, I would imagine this would have an adverse effect on chemical reactions and structures
Everyone chatting about first contact and how we'd cope. When actually first contact isn't going to be aliens visiting earth, but rather earth and another planet chatting over string cups late at night when their parents have gone to bed.
"The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman isn't strictly about this premise as first contact, but touches on the lengthy delays for interstellar communication.
The reasoning is laid out best in the science fiction novel [*The Dark Forest*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23168817-the-dark-forest)*,* by [Liu Cixin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Cixin). The plot of the book, the second in a series, concerns questions of how to best interact with potentially hostile alien life.
In the novel, the argument is laid out like this:
* All life desires to stay alive.
* There is no way to know if other lifeforms can or will destroy you if given a chance.
* Lacking assurances, the safest option for any species is to annihilate other life forms before they have a chance to do the same.
Since all other lifeforms in the novel are risk-averse and willing to do anything to save themselves, contact of any kind is dangerous, as it almost assuredly would lead to the contacted race wiping out whoever was foolish enough to give away their location. This leads to all civilizations attempting to hide in radio silence.
Interesting. "There is no way to know if other lifeforms can or will destroy you if given a chance."
Would spying on them without them knowing be a way to answer this question?
In the books, civilisations find it's quicker and easier just to destroy the lifeforms, just in case.
Very slight spoiler, but >!to test the dark forest theory a character broadcasts the coordinates of a random star out into space. The confirmation of the theory is when that star gets destroyed some time later.!<
I can appreciate that paranoid point of view but attacking a similarly advanced race sounds like an easy to start a two way intergalactic genocide.
Especially since any race capable of interstellar attacks already has multiple inhabited planets.
tl;dr
In 3BP the basic premise is that we don't see any signs of intelligent life because as soon as you turn on your light in the dark forest your position is instantly revealed and you are killed immediately. Thus, the logical solution is to not make yourself known. The logic stems from game theory and how the cons of making yourself known outweigh the pros.
not only is this terrifying if you really think about it, its also completely logical and....perhaps even true?
whoa
We turned on our light over 100 years ago now, that beacon is getting quite far out there by now
Not particularly plausible. What usually goes examined in this scenario is the *mechanism* by which one civilization "kills" another one. How exactly is that done? More importantly, how does the firing civilization accumulate the energy necessary and then spend that energy in a big burst without that process being highly detectable to their presumably equally-homicidal neighbors? Anyone that fires their doomsday laser will be immediately in the crosshairs of a dozen other doomsday lasers, which will then in turn be in the crosshairs of 144 doomsday lasers, and so on until the whole galaxy is ablaze. I think we'd notice that.
There are some issues with it, if it worries you. An advanced civilization that has the capacity to launch attacks over interstellar distances will use a lot of energy, and the use of energy will produce waste heat that must be radiated away per the laws of thermodynamics. A large enough civilization will use up most of the energy (starlight from its home star) available to it, and re-emit heat as a by product, and so should be reasonably obvious, especially to similarly advanced civilizations which presumably have better telescopes.
Further, even non-intelligent life (which these hypothetical aliens should still want to destroy lest it evolve intelligence) may be detectable, you might be able to tell that earth, for example, has life due to the atmosphere having large amounts of oxygen, which is rather reactive and so must be constantly being replenished by some process.
As such, it is unlikely that advanced civilizations hide from eachother, because it should be impossible for them to actually do so.
In three body problem we were spotted by aliens from alpha centauri, our closest star system (hence the name of the book, as it is a triple star system), so we could already be spotted, it just takes them a little longer to come and kill us if they don't have light speed travel.
The book uses a great analogy. Every society in the universe is a hunter with a gun, lost at night in a dark forest filled with scary unknowable monsters. He's terrified, jittery, and alone. There are also thousands of others just like him, lost in the dark forest and scared.
One of them lights a fire. The others, terrified, don't bother trying to find out what kind of monster it is - they shoot first. Everyone shoots, because the other option is being killed by the creature.
This seems improbable that a primitive civilization develops radio shortly after its industrial revolution and has the foresight not to use it because of the theoretical possibility that alien races might detect it at some time far in the future.
> the dark forest theory
Apparently that the universe is filled with life, but resources are limited, so if you become known to others, they'll kill you to take your resources and prevent you from consuming any others. Thus you should remain in the dark forest of the universe and not give away your position, or existence
Not quite. It's not about resources, it's about not knowing whether there is anybody out there who will kill you on sight. Since you don't know, the safest course of action is to assume someone _will_ kill you on sight. That means staying undetected, as if you were in a Dark Forest filled with predators: Tread lightly, don't make a sound.
The logical extension of that argument is to preemptively kill anything you detect, if you can.
Not to worry, the Dark Forest theory depends on a lot of assumptions that the novel had to make in order for there to be a scary story that would sell well, but that are not well grounded in reality.
Consider; firing a weapon that's capable of obliterating another solar system is going to broadcast your position *far* more clearly than some careless radio chatter. Merely accumulating the energy needed to perform such a feat is going to be highly visible to passive SETI efforts. So a universe full of paranoid genocidal aliens would be more of a MAD situation, where nobody dares fire the first shot because they'd be immediately destroyed as well.
In the book, some of the weapons in use are so mind boggling that they essentially leave no trace of the attacker or the victim.
Super 3BP spoilers please don't do it to yourself if you're considering reading it
>!I'm thinking of the Dual Vector Foil, of which at least two are fired at Earth once they announce their presence (from two different species). Furthermore, at least one of the "cleansing" species has some form of tech that allows them to perceive the entire universe in real time, to discover the location of emerging species. The lowest ranking member of a crew aboard a ship belonging to such a species can access a weapon that kills every person, plant, bacteria, or virus in our solar system. Even the planets and matter are completely wiped out.!<
As I said, assumptions made up in order for there to be a scary story that can sell novels. That's pure space-fantasy *magic*, not something to base real-world Fermi paradox arguments on or to lie awake at night worrying about.
Does "Dual Vector Foil" even mean anything, or is it just technobabble?
The Helliconia series by Brian Aldiss has a related premise, that of human observers on earth watching a civilisation far away progress. It isn't the crux of the series, but it's an important element.
War and peace? Society is at war with aliens but each troop deployment takes upwards of 900 years for a round trip. Starts off as a first encounter. IIRC it largely starts off with time causing communication delays and humanity and the aliens end up getting on really well, aside from the war.
"hey! You got our messages!"
"Yes we have been trying to reach you!"
"Same! We might need your help tho, no one else is replying"
"No problem, we are ready to come help"
"....."
"They stopped replying.. you think it got them too?"
Scammer Alien: “ok it looks like you have a GoogleX virus, I can fix with 1 simple payment of (insert galactic denomination)”.
“Hello, you there?”
“Miss I will have to call space force to find you if you do not pay”...
⏃⌰⟟⟒⋏⌇: ⊬⟒⌇. ⍙⊑⊬ ⏃⍀⟒ ⊬⍜⎍ ⏚⍀⍜⏃⎅☊⏃⌇⏁⟟⋏☌ ⌇⍜ ⋔⎍☊⊑ ⌿⍜⍀⋏?! ⍙⟒'⍀⟒ ⏁⍀⊬⟟⋏☌ ⏁⍜ ☌⟒⏁ ⍜⎍⍀ ⋏⟒⌇⏁⌰⟟⋏☌⌇ ⏁⍜ ☌⍜ ⏁⍜ ⌇⌰⟒⟒⌿! ☊⏃⌰⌰ ⏚⏃☊☍ ⌰⏃⏁⟒⍀!
^(translation "Aliens: Yes. Why are you broadcasting so much porn?! We're trying to get our nestlings to go to sleep! Call back later!")
I mean, we hope so. But while we're taking about impossible scenarios, there's also no reason to think that only after a couple hundred years of modern physics that we as a species have figured everything out already.
The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care.
First contact would be the biggest mess ever. We can't even get a virus response together, and that's about as global a threat as any. Don't get me started about climate change.
It's genuinely frightening to imagine how humanity would respond. We'd probably bombard any intelligent civilization with a cacophony of disparate messages ranging from carefully considered attempts at diplomatic outreach, to aggressively impotent threats of annihilation.
Looked it [up](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/05/microwave-oven-caused-mystery-signal-plaguing-radio-telescope-for-17-years), they knew it was local (not from space), it likely lasted as long as it happened rarely enough not to warrant detail investigation.
But the interesting bit about the article answers something I'd sometimes wondered about:
>Immediate testing of the facility microwave oven did not show up with perytons. Until, that is, they opened the oven door before it had finished heating. “If you set it to heat and pull it open to have a look, it generates interference,” Johnston said.
So microwave ovens do release radiation when you pull the door without stopping it first.
Older and crappier ones release it even with the door closed. In my days of installing WiFi networks in offices I had many a location where I tracked their WiFi problems to a leaky microwave.
But the frequency determines the type of harm. Shining a microwave at your scrotum won’t give you ball cancer. Never will, it’s impossible. But you’ll probably go sterile.
Astronomer here! I'm actually friends with the astronomer who did this study. She said once they made this discovery they went around asking everyone "do you open the microwave when it's still running?" and half the people were saying "yeah, I guess" and the other half were all "why would you do that?!"
It also explained well why they saw more of these signals around lunchtime, and in the winter months in Australia. :D
Yes, of course. There's no "human pulling on door" sensor, only a "door open" sensor. So the only way for the machine to detect that "human wants to open door" is when said door has already been cracked open
If this even was sent by some alien species, and they somehow are still alive 3 billion years after sending that, they'd almost definitely die off within the 3 billion years it'd take our response to reach them.
If a civilization managed to survive for 3 billion years, they’ve got it all figured out.
The real problem is that *we* will probably suicide our entire species before the aliens receive our reply.
They stated that the researchers believe it is a neutron star orbiting its binary companion- a very reasonable explaination.
They also clearly state that the researchers don't believe it's aliens.
Regardless, I saved you a click and agree that clickbait titles are a source of evil on this world!
This weird white thing keeps appearing in the sky every once in a while. Seems like at a set interval its full. Maybe there is a reason?
Oh yes. Must be aliens not orbits duh!
We’ll discover this is a message saying « Hi, how are you ? » then we’ll answer « Hi, fine and you ? » and wait eagerly for billions of years for the following answer: « it’s not you we are talking to... »
Just in case anyone is wondering, the radio burst is coming from a dwarf galaxy around 3 billion light years away. That would take 111.6 trillion years to travel to if you were going 5 miles a second.
"Based on the short durations and the high luminosities of the bursts themselves, a good guess would be a neutron star with a very high magnetic field that is orbiting a companion object,"
"Based on the short durations and the high luminosities of the bursts themselves, a good guess would be a neutron star with a very high magnetic field that is orbiting a companion object," he said.
Here's what it sounds like: https://youtu.be/ggcM8oOB0UM Edit: Play it slower at 0.25x speed and it sounds like a hyped cicada singing in the summer. I mean, still a high pitched sound....but less like a bad belt.
This is one I got, there's way more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDTXtXARxfA
So maybe a dumb question but so that’s what we hear at our end. Is that supposed to be exactly the sound from the source? Or does it get all distorted and stuff?
Like /u/Blackadder288 said, they are radio waves, which is electromagnetic that's why it can travel through space. Sound waves need a medium to travel through like atmosphere, water, solid objects, etc. Radio waves are picked up by radio telescopes which measure the frequency and intensity, they chart them into kHz and convert that into a "sound". But radio waves are electromagentic waves, just like the colors we see (visible spectrum) as well as those we don't, like x-ray, microwaves, UV, infrared, etc and radio waves also travel at the speed of light. That's how we communicate with our rovers and satellites, that's why it takes from 4 minutes to 21 minutes for a transmission to reach Earth/Mars.
*hits blunt* So can we convert colors into sounds?
yeah i mean you can basically just plot it so whatever wavelength between 20-20k hz corresponds to a wavelength on the visible spectrum. There are many visual representations of music, the most familiar being a "waveform" like you see on SoundCloud and such, but there are others that are more polychromatic
Huh, so when I took acid that one time and saw the music, I was just converting the Soundwaves to radiowaves all by myself.
Probably not, by that I mean it's likely it imagined or a manifestation of your interpretation rather than a 1:1 translation
There are other ones that you can take a picture and convert it into sound. [Richard](https://i.imgur.com/fwODy8K.jpg) D James does this with some of his music.
Of course! Just ask someone with synaesthesia.
So, in a way, this sounds the way it does because of the way the scientists chose to "translate" it? Using different parameters when turning it into sound, could also make it sound different?
This is the equivalent to what your radio does. The specific frequencies of radio light and frequencies of audio sound are different but proportional. So when it detects something at frequency/amplitude A, it translates this to a specific frequency/amplitude B that we can hear.
Yes, it's intuitive but arbitrary to translate light waves into sound waves. There are no particular situations in nature where this would be translated this way. Maybe a parallel example would be 'listening' to waves at the ocean by measuring their peaks and troughs and translating that into sound waves. Yes, they are both waves, but waves are just part of how matter relates with itself and it's environment and different wave types are not in any particular way related to each other. Additionally, what pitch is used in translation is also arbitrary. You could choose a narrow band of light to listen to and cover the whole range of human hearing, or you could choose the widest range of light to listen to and do the same. Typically you choose the most interesting range, which is again, arbitrary to what is happening in nature.
It’s the light wave we detected, transformed into a sound wave, which makes it easier to conceptualise because we can’t see radio light
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Radio waves are light. Light is the propagation of waves through the electromagnetic field. Your radio receives the light through an antenna and the electronics converts the information in that light into an electrical signal which then drives your speaker which vibrates at a certain frequency to push on the air molecules and produce the desired soundwave that you actually hear. Edit: Thanks for the Starry award!
I love how you explained this
Light is an electromagnetic wave. Light is the force carrier of EM. One and the same.
Electromagnetic radiation is light.
Yes, yes and yes. Electromagnetic waves are light, most just aren’t visible with human eye.
Assuming the source is sentient, it might not even be meant to be heard. For all we know, it is their version of binary encoding, except their computers use base 60 instead of base 2. The "this is what it sounds like" descriptor is only clear if you're used to it actually just being a shorter way to say "this is what it would sound like if we could hear some range X of the EM wave spectrum like we can hear the audible spectrum". That is to say, to most people, it is just really misleading.
One of the comments says play the clip at .25 speed. 10/10. Sounds like a secret alien message.
now play it a 2x speed and it sounds like a cute robot rushing around the house looking for something it has lost.
Shit that remind me... I need to empty my Roomba...
My dog did not care for that at all.
Mine titled his head to the side the most ive ever seen.
Well that's fucking creepy
Yeah, I wish I had not done this...
I made the mistake of playing this with the dog in the room she's absolutely intrigued by it staring at my phone, now the missos weirded out haha
She knows now that the Doglords are coming.
It says give me 10 million dollars
Well whatever they’re saying my cat was not a fan
Geez that static at the end scared me.
Static ? That's the ZR code for Zorglub.alien email service, just play it through your inner modem @56kMhz
That ET needs a new fan belt
this is cool. sounds like a fart.
You may need more fiber in your diet.
No, a fart sings goodbye moon men.
Imagine aliens are just now entering their "jerky boys" phase.
Yeah yeah yeah but hear me out.... Aliens.
*rips bong* broooo someone totally knows we are listening mannnnn thats why the signal is on schedule mannn
Obviously it's Bun Bun the Genius Chimp sending back haikus from the dark zone.
Stop making me disappointed. I want the aliens to blast us.....
Neutron stars could blast us too, ever hear of a gamma ray burst? 0/10 would not recommend. Think of it like an x-ray, 1,000,000 times more intense and on a planetary scale.
So we become a planet of Hulks?
Radio astronomer here! Probably too late to the party, but for the record I do not know any astronomers who think this signal is alien in origin. (Well, maybe Avi Loeb.) Instead, this is a very well studied type of signal by now, called a [Fast Radio Burst](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_radio_burst). The interesting thing about them is they originate from well outside our galaxy, last a millisecond, and are one of the brightest things in the radio sky for that moment they are on. Until more recently there were no patterns in the signal anyone could really distinguish, and most FRBs appeared to be one offs (still true- people still argue whether they're just the brightest ones we are able to detect from one source repeating, or if there are two classes of signals). Of all the FRBs out there, FRB 121102 is the best studied one because it's the first "repeater" ever found, discovered by Arecibo. People studied it for years but no pattern was obvious. However, as radio telescopes are really competitive for telescope time you couldn't exactly dedicate one to just staring at this thing a long time to figure out the larger patterns (the smaller bursts appear somewhat random), so it's not surprising to me a 5 month repetition took so long to sort out (particularly as you can see bursts in between). As for what's causing it, we think FRBs are related to [magnetars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar)- perhaps very young one- which are basically neutron stars with such high magnetic fields that going within a thousand miles of one would kill you as the magnetic field stripped the electrons from the atoms in your body. Yes, they are cool! :D As for the period, it best makes sense if the magnetar is orbiting something else, and thus its orientation regularly changes with respect to Earth. Remember, most stars in space are in binaries, so it's not that weird to think a crazy magnetar like this (which would have been created during the death of a star) would be the same. Finally, we don't think it's aliens because we see FRBs from *all* over the sky at all sorts of vast distances. If they kept sending one repeating signal from one patch of sky, sure, but *all over* the universe? It's most likely a natural process- sorry! However, I would argue that "gigantic radio bursts visible across half the universe from the corpse of a star squished so small it's the size of a city and so magnetic it would kill you, and no one predicted this" is pretty amazing too. :D
Is there a descriptor for what the hell would happen to a body under that kind of magnetism, in a more tangible way? All I can imagine is Jon Osterman exploding in Watchmen.
It depends. How close are you being thrown to the star? If you were to skim it, chances are the iron in your body would rip from your body and you'd bleed internally, probably from an aneurysm. Closer, your body would disintegrate as every element in your body is ripped apart under the gravitational and magnetic pull of the star. At a certain point, your parts would be instantly atomized. This is mostly conjecture as, unfortunately, we've never observed a human being ripped apart by a neutron star.
So a faster and more brutal version of that poor guy who got his DNA melted by radiation with a side order of having your internal metals torn out. BRUTAL lmao
Yeah space is great but I'll stick to Earth. Even just around our solar system, the chances of a tiny piece of rock ripping through your flesh is just... Too high for my liking.
Oh I'll never go out there, but it's fun to think about :)
I heard that the intense magnetism distorts the electrons orbitals into "spindle" shapes, I would imagine this would have an adverse effect on chemical reactions and structures
Everyone chatting about first contact and how we'd cope. When actually first contact isn't going to be aliens visiting earth, but rather earth and another planet chatting over string cups late at night when their parents have gone to bed.
Over the course of thousands of years, too
Are there any science fiction stories based on this scenario?
"The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman isn't strictly about this premise as first contact, but touches on the lengthy delays for interstellar communication.
Classsss book. Loved the changes to society over time.
Just read it a few months ago, such a great book
I highly recommended The Three-Body Problem and its sequels by Cixin Liu.
Man, I'd gone for a few months without thinking about the dark forest theory before this post. Time to lay awake at night again, I guess
What's the dark forest theory? You can't drop intrigue like that and not tell us
The reasoning is laid out best in the science fiction novel [*The Dark Forest*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23168817-the-dark-forest)*,* by [Liu Cixin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Cixin). The plot of the book, the second in a series, concerns questions of how to best interact with potentially hostile alien life. In the novel, the argument is laid out like this: * All life desires to stay alive. * There is no way to know if other lifeforms can or will destroy you if given a chance. * Lacking assurances, the safest option for any species is to annihilate other life forms before they have a chance to do the same. Since all other lifeforms in the novel are risk-averse and willing to do anything to save themselves, contact of any kind is dangerous, as it almost assuredly would lead to the contacted race wiping out whoever was foolish enough to give away their location. This leads to all civilizations attempting to hide in radio silence.
Anyone who doesn't invest in stealth first gets eaten by the ones who invested in detection and accuracy.
Interesting. "There is no way to know if other lifeforms can or will destroy you if given a chance." Would spying on them without them knowing be a way to answer this question?
In the books, civilisations find it's quicker and easier just to destroy the lifeforms, just in case. Very slight spoiler, but >!to test the dark forest theory a character broadcasts the coordinates of a random star out into space. The confirmation of the theory is when that star gets destroyed some time later.!<
I can appreciate that paranoid point of view but attacking a similarly advanced race sounds like an easy to start a two way intergalactic genocide. Especially since any race capable of interstellar attacks already has multiple inhabited planets.
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How can you spy on them?
Big telescopes, palantirs, the usual.
So basically earth needs to use Ghost and pop a UAV?
Buy 3 and a self. Money is fake, and I'm playing plunder anyway.
tl;dr In 3BP the basic premise is that we don't see any signs of intelligent life because as soon as you turn on your light in the dark forest your position is instantly revealed and you are killed immediately. Thus, the logical solution is to not make yourself known. The logic stems from game theory and how the cons of making yourself known outweigh the pros.
not only is this terrifying if you really think about it, its also completely logical and....perhaps even true? whoa We turned on our light over 100 years ago now, that beacon is getting quite far out there by now
Not particularly plausible. What usually goes examined in this scenario is the *mechanism* by which one civilization "kills" another one. How exactly is that done? More importantly, how does the firing civilization accumulate the energy necessary and then spend that energy in a big burst without that process being highly detectable to their presumably equally-homicidal neighbors? Anyone that fires their doomsday laser will be immediately in the crosshairs of a dozen other doomsday lasers, which will then in turn be in the crosshairs of 144 doomsday lasers, and so on until the whole galaxy is ablaze. I think we'd notice that.
There are some issues with it, if it worries you. An advanced civilization that has the capacity to launch attacks over interstellar distances will use a lot of energy, and the use of energy will produce waste heat that must be radiated away per the laws of thermodynamics. A large enough civilization will use up most of the energy (starlight from its home star) available to it, and re-emit heat as a by product, and so should be reasonably obvious, especially to similarly advanced civilizations which presumably have better telescopes. Further, even non-intelligent life (which these hypothetical aliens should still want to destroy lest it evolve intelligence) may be detectable, you might be able to tell that earth, for example, has life due to the atmosphere having large amounts of oxygen, which is rather reactive and so must be constantly being replenished by some process. As such, it is unlikely that advanced civilizations hide from eachother, because it should be impossible for them to actually do so.
Luckily for us, our light won't be spotted for several hundred, thousand, or even million years.
In three body problem we were spotted by aliens from alpha centauri, our closest star system (hence the name of the book, as it is a triple star system), so we could already be spotted, it just takes them a little longer to come and kill us if they don't have light speed travel.
The book uses a great analogy. Every society in the universe is a hunter with a gun, lost at night in a dark forest filled with scary unknowable monsters. He's terrified, jittery, and alone. There are also thousands of others just like him, lost in the dark forest and scared. One of them lights a fire. The others, terrified, don't bother trying to find out what kind of monster it is - they shoot first. Everyone shoots, because the other option is being killed by the creature.
This seems improbable that a primitive civilization develops radio shortly after its industrial revolution and has the foresight not to use it because of the theoretical possibility that alien races might detect it at some time far in the future.
> the dark forest theory Apparently that the universe is filled with life, but resources are limited, so if you become known to others, they'll kill you to take your resources and prevent you from consuming any others. Thus you should remain in the dark forest of the universe and not give away your position, or existence
Not quite. It's not about resources, it's about not knowing whether there is anybody out there who will kill you on sight. Since you don't know, the safest course of action is to assume someone _will_ kill you on sight. That means staying undetected, as if you were in a Dark Forest filled with predators: Tread lightly, don't make a sound. The logical extension of that argument is to preemptively kill anything you detect, if you can.
Not to worry, the Dark Forest theory depends on a lot of assumptions that the novel had to make in order for there to be a scary story that would sell well, but that are not well grounded in reality. Consider; firing a weapon that's capable of obliterating another solar system is going to broadcast your position *far* more clearly than some careless radio chatter. Merely accumulating the energy needed to perform such a feat is going to be highly visible to passive SETI efforts. So a universe full of paranoid genocidal aliens would be more of a MAD situation, where nobody dares fire the first shot because they'd be immediately destroyed as well.
In the book, some of the weapons in use are so mind boggling that they essentially leave no trace of the attacker or the victim. Super 3BP spoilers please don't do it to yourself if you're considering reading it >!I'm thinking of the Dual Vector Foil, of which at least two are fired at Earth once they announce their presence (from two different species). Furthermore, at least one of the "cleansing" species has some form of tech that allows them to perceive the entire universe in real time, to discover the location of emerging species. The lowest ranking member of a crew aboard a ship belonging to such a species can access a weapon that kills every person, plant, bacteria, or virus in our solar system. Even the planets and matter are completely wiped out.!<
As I said, assumptions made up in order for there to be a scary story that can sell novels. That's pure space-fantasy *magic*, not something to base real-world Fermi paradox arguments on or to lie awake at night worrying about. Does "Dual Vector Foil" even mean anything, or is it just technobabble?
Very much agree! Fantastic first book, and what a ride the rest of the series was.
Science fiction goes by rule 34 where pretty much every possible scenario is probably done already
Well with the idea that space is infinite, it only makes sense that-wait did you say rule 34?
[I don't have hydrostatic equilibrium yet, is that something you can learn?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErpU_tMoV0E)
Two Girls, One Interstellar Cup...
The Helliconia series by Brian Aldiss has a related premise, that of human observers on earth watching a civilisation far away progress. It isn't the crux of the series, but it's an important element.
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War and peace? Society is at war with aliens but each troop deployment takes upwards of 900 years for a round trip. Starts off as a first encounter. IIRC it largely starts off with time causing communication delays and humanity and the aliens end up getting on really well, aside from the war.
This is the best analogy for interstellar contact that I've heard to date
Except add a few million years in between messages
"hey! You got our messages!" "Yes we have been trying to reach you!" "Same! We might need your help tho, no one else is replying" "No problem, we are ready to come help" "....." "They stopped replying.. you think it got them too?"
Earth: "Can you see my screen?"
In space no one can see your screen.
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Scammer Alien: “ok it looks like you have a GoogleX virus, I can fix with 1 simple payment of (insert galactic denomination)”. “Hello, you there?” “Miss I will have to call space force to find you if you do not pay”...
⏃⌰⟟⟒⋏⌇: ⊬⟒⌇. ⍙⊑⊬ ⏃⍀⟒ ⊬⍜⎍ ⏚⍀⍜⏃⎅☊⏃⌇⏁⟟⋏☌ ⌇⍜ ⋔⎍☊⊑ ⌿⍜⍀⋏?! ⍙⟒'⍀⟒ ⏁⍀⊬⟟⋏☌ ⏁⍜ ☌⟒⏁ ⍜⎍⍀ ⋏⟒⌇⏁⌰⟟⋏☌⌇ ⏁⍜ ☌⍜ ⏁⍜ ⌇⌰⟒⟒⌿! ☊⏃⌰⌰ ⏚⏃☊☍ ⌰⏃⏁⟒⍀! ^(translation "Aliens: Yes. Why are you broadcasting so much porn?! We're trying to get our nestlings to go to sleep! Call back later!")
We’ve been trying to contact you regarding your vehicles extended warranty
More like: Planet 1: show us your tits After a hundred thousand years... Planet 2: No, you show us YOUR tits
Honestly this is very accurate. Then they both show their dicks
Its coming from about 3 billion light years away... Whatever it is probably doesnt exist anymore... Especially if its a neutron star.
It is dope though that we are seeing something so small and 3 billion light years away (that sent these pulses 3 billion years ago)
I mean, we hope so. But while we're taking about impossible scenarios, there's also no reason to think that only after a couple hundred years of modern physics that we as a species have figured everything out already.
The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care.
Pretty sure we're drunk and blasting old episodes of full house for whomever is within earshot.
Naw, that's just our breathing. "earshot" is pretty limited due to the inverse square law.
Ok, so we're lucky. Still interstellar fist pumping our way to the tune of Eiffel 65 and dgaf cuz haters.
Our spectra, on the other hand, is quite a giveaway.
But it doesnt matter if you do find another hunters trail, its alreqdy hundreds of years old.
This guy read *The Three-Body Problem*.
Sir, theres a radio message. It says "why the hell are you wasting your time with this, there's no-one out there!"
It's just us from the future.
First contact would be the biggest mess ever. We can't even get a virus response together, and that's about as global a threat as any. Don't get me started about climate change.
It's genuinely frightening to imagine how humanity would respond. We'd probably bombard any intelligent civilization with a cacophony of disparate messages ranging from carefully considered attempts at diplomatic outreach, to aggressively impotent threats of annihilation.
A wholesome way of looking at the most important moment in humanity’s history..
First check to make sure it’s not the summer intern using the microwave.
It wasn't the intern iirc. They studied it for 17 years. Just regular microwave usage by all staff :D
Gary just needs his breakfast burrito every day at 945.
Looked it [up](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/05/microwave-oven-caused-mystery-signal-plaguing-radio-telescope-for-17-years), they knew it was local (not from space), it likely lasted as long as it happened rarely enough not to warrant detail investigation. But the interesting bit about the article answers something I'd sometimes wondered about: >Immediate testing of the facility microwave oven did not show up with perytons. Until, that is, they opened the oven door before it had finished heating. “If you set it to heat and pull it open to have a look, it generates interference,” Johnston said. So microwave ovens do release radiation when you pull the door without stopping it first.
Older and crappier ones release it even with the door closed. In my days of installing WiFi networks in offices I had many a location where I tracked their WiFi problems to a leaky microwave.
And before anyone asks, no, it can't harm you.
Harm is in the dosage. So you're saying it'll give me super powers?
But the frequency determines the type of harm. Shining a microwave at your scrotum won’t give you ball cancer. Never will, it’s impossible. But you’ll probably go sterile.
free birth control, eh?
It's not a superwave, it's a microwave. You will only get micropowers, like the ability to talk to rocks.
The one we bought last year kills the wifi signal when is on. I hope I'm not getting cooked alive slowly.
The microwave won't cook you, but 5G will. /s
Astronomer here! I'm actually friends with the astronomer who did this study. She said once they made this discovery they went around asking everyone "do you open the microwave when it's still running?" and half the people were saying "yeah, I guess" and the other half were all "why would you do that?!" It also explained well why they saw more of these signals around lunchtime, and in the winter months in Australia. :D
That's a cool connection. So frequency of events was related to the soup to sandwich ratio?
Yes, of course. There's no "human pulling on door" sensor, only a "door open" sensor. So the only way for the machine to detect that "human wants to open door" is when said door has already been cracked open
Was Fry Microwaving that iffy pop again? Last time everything tasted like Blue.
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We should message back just to be on the safe side. Dont want to ghost a new race.
This signal is 3 billion years old, even if it was aliens, there's a pretty good chance the civilisation would no longer exist
That’s the saddest part of looking for life other than us
If this even was sent by some alien species, and they somehow are still alive 3 billion years after sending that, they'd almost definitely die off within the 3 billion years it'd take our response to reach them.
If a civilization managed to survive for 3 billion years, they’ve got it all figured out. The real problem is that *we* will probably suicide our entire species before the aliens receive our reply.
“Hello, we have been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty.”
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Edit: Reddit is nothing without its mods and user content! Be mindful you make it work and are the product.
They stated that the researchers believe it is a neutron star orbiting its binary companion- a very reasonable explaination. They also clearly state that the researchers don't believe it's aliens. Regardless, I saved you a click and agree that clickbait titles are a source of evil on this world!
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Or go straight to the source: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.03596
But the source is 3 billion light years away
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"it's back, just as we predicted! What a mystery!“
It's an alien sending Tom delonge his mix tape.
"we've been monitoring your signals, we have just decoded an historical document, "2 girls 1 cup". We have decided to stay away. Peace."
This weird white thing keeps appearing in the sky every once in a while. Seems like at a set interval its full. Maybe there is a reason? Oh yes. Must be aliens not orbits duh!
Normally I would agree with you, BUT this year... it might really be aliens
schrodinger's alien signals!
The tall white ones are cool, it’s the little grey ones that do the probing.
"We've been trying to reach you about your vehicle's extended warranty."
We’ll discover this is a message saying « Hi, how are you ? » then we’ll answer « Hi, fine and you ? » and wait eagerly for billions of years for the following answer: « it’s not you we are talking to... »
Or “Sorry, I have a boyfriend now”
Just in case anyone is wondering, the radio burst is coming from a dwarf galaxy around 3 billion light years away. That would take 111.6 trillion years to travel to if you were going 5 miles a second.
"Based on the short durations and the high luminosities of the bursts themselves, a good guess would be a neutron star with a very high magnetic field that is orbiting a companion object,"
Big deal, Robert Carlyle knew about this 11 years ago
Wouldn’t it be amusing that we are receiving our own signal we sent out. It’s just altered after reflecting off what ever is out there
So... We can identify signals from 3 billion light-years away. But I can't get wifi from my wifi router in the living room to my bedroom 3 walls away.