Nasa's Golden Record may baffle alien life, say researchers - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/may/26/nasas-golden-record-may-baffle-alien-life-say-researchers What if we sent one with all of Lmao pics thread Maybe they understand shitposts?

"sees beauty in flowers that roar like chainsaws" is giving me the shakes from laughing so hard

Well, better bring it back and start again

No, just quickly send out another probe with a second record "woops haha accidentally hit send"

We need to show aliens this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUIcCyPOA30

You have to make sure you record it in all the same languages to make sure they understand.

"Oh, how nice, they've given us a map, now we know where to point the dish! Establish the connection!" *days later* "What the FUCK is wrong with these people?!"

"goddamnit, those terrans are audio-shitposting again"

Imagine if the first thing they came across is shadman

I have no idea what that is but I'm pretty confident I don't want it anywhere near my search history.

The golden record has had alot of criticism in the past due to the obtuseness of some of the symbols (especially arrows to point) used on the record. Vsauce did a solid video explaining the short comings of it. https://youtu.be/GDrBIKOR01c

And here I was thinking it's "main" purpose was to JUST make aliens realise that there are more sentient beings I didn't know it had audio on it too.

I think it's naive to try to communicate with a species we don't know exists. The chance that we'd share any symbols -- or even senses -- is so low. Wherever aliens are, they very likely don't use light for their primary sense. At least, probably not in the wavelengths we do.

We can make some pretty good assumptions tbh. Most planets that are capable of sustaining life for as long as its needed to evolve, as going to have a star providing them with energy - this means there is going to be a source of light for these plants. Once you get multi-cellular organisms, detecting light is a very beneficial trait, and would likely evolve in at least some organisms. As for wavelength, assuming again similar-ish chemistry, then only certain wavelengths of light are high enough energy to interact with molecules in any meaningful way, and other so high they obliterate molecules (gamma, X-ray). With that, we can assume fairly that sapient species are likely sighted (even if not their primary sensory mode), and can probably see at least one "color" of our common visible spectrum.

Dude, were you that nerd that got your head dunked in the toilet bowl at school?

No, I'm a poster on Facepunch. The fuck are you even talking about?

Based upon what? Because from what I understand life is only expected to exist under very specific conditions and under those conditions you would probably expect convergent evolution to occur. Symbols are one thing. If aliens ever found works we have created they obviously wouldn't be able to just read it, but what on earth makes you so confident that aliens 'very likely don't use light for their primary sense'?

There is a point about sense to be made, that other species may see a different part of the spectrum that us and so may not be as able to make sense of the images for that reason, same with audio. But they'll likely develop mostly similar ones. The problem is the images, which aren't going to necessarily mean as much. Depicting basic geometric shapes is a pretty surefire way to communicate. Squares, circles, triangles, those are pretty solid and reliable. Similarly you can at least convey basic language with number patterns. Depicting zero through nine with a collection of shapes or symbols to represent the value, as well as the word, that can establish those. Depict the alphabet as well and show that connected with the words for the numbers. Trying to use audio is stupid because unless they have a way to play it, it's useless. And even if they play it and it plays exactly as it was recorded, which also isn't likely, it's going to be nonsense to them as well. The most you might get away with is, again, numbers. Count from zero to nine. Eventually they likely can make the connection between them. Assuming they can get it to play at all.

There is a 0.0000000000001% chance that human DNA could've landed on another galaxy and produced similar life forms to ours (Like in Star Wars) but that is very unlikely and Aliens won't have the same senses as ours, so using symbols, sounds, etc to communicate is literally impossible if said species isn't adaptable to any kind of circumstance. Hell, there could be aliens already existing, probably in black holes or asteroids fields and we can't even see them yet.

I believe the entire point of the record is to display to any extraterrestrials potentially out there that something intelligent created it, not some natural phenomena. It is doubtful that they will be able to decipher the symbols or even be able to play the record, either because they just can't understand the instructions or the record is damaged beyond repair. Though beyond the record, there is things to be learned. Assuming extraterrestrials discovered the craft while still traveling through space, they can use the RTGs on-board to date the spacecraft, take into account its trajectory and speed and roughly figure out the direction it came. Of course, this is assuming that space-faring extraterrestrials have an understanding of Chemistry and other sciences AND that nothing has hit the craft in a way that it greatly changes in course.

Just to nerd out and slightly change your point, if we were to communicate with aliens via numbers, it would be in the most basic form; binary. Base 10 is extremely arbitrary. If aliens had even vaguely similar number theory (eg they might not even have a concept of zero) they would be more likely to communicate in base 12, which is objectively better in every way.

What on earth would make base 12 better?

Well for starters, it has significantly better factors. Base 10 only has tenths, fifths, halves and whole. Base 12 has twelfths, sixths, quarters, thirds, halves and whole.

AFAIK, Voyager 1 has passed the Oort Cloud at this point and is technically in insterstellar space, but I highly doubt it is going to picked up by another star, let alone one with a star-faring civilisation, anytime soon. It was a neat little thing to do, but whilst I believe sentient alien life has an incredibly high probability of existing, it's probably so spread out that this was nothing more than a test-case. To be honest, if they did find Voyager 1, I imagine that they'd probably get the fuck out of dodge as soon as they saw that we elected Trump as president. SETI is by far our best hope for finding intelligent civilisations, but we're limited by the speed of light, and we've unfortunately not found anything concrete yet. One imagines that there would be a great deal of information flying between the stars if there are other sentient species, but it is also possible that radio waves are seen as a primitive form of communication, with them potentially having mastered quantum entanglement in a way we think is impossible. There's a game called Star Citizen, and there's some really interesting writing in it that I think could be applied to reality. The basic premise is that there's a law called 'The Fair Chance Act,' and it says that primitive life should not be disturbed in any way, lest it be influenced negatively. Perhaps this is the case for other aliens? Maybe we're seen as so primitive that we're left alone out of fear for showing us something that we don't yet have the intelligence to use in a respectful way.

That's assuming they view that in the same way we do. If they have four digits to a hand they could go off base 8, or base 20 if they have five digits and four hands, or whatever. But the point isn't to try to appeal to whatever they use, but to demonstrate a numeric system, and using our own familiar one is better to begin with because any future attempts to communicate from our end will be almost absolutely using base 10 because that is what we use for just about everything. Base 10 is the human default and trying to communicate in a different way with an entirely foreign body is just making the process needlessly complicated.

It's significantly more natural. Base 10 only rose because we have 10 fingers. Base 10 is actually pretty crappy, all things considered.

Sounds like a metal gear boss tbh

This article really does seem to miss the core point. If they were able to understand that the greetings were speech at all, the plate would have served its function.

the 70s were a very optimistic time

Some of the coments are funny too like "Hope they know how to use a record player...[somethingaboutkidsthesedays]..." The probe includes a record player and instructions on how to use it. The other thing is, this was the best they could come up with back when they built the probe, and the voyagers were built on a shoe string budget under a cosmic deadline to launch, its a miricle they even got it all together to begin with.