Why no interception of alien communication...?

I agree with you on that assumption hh. I feel that abductions are just something in our minds that get's stimulated so we think we are being abducted when it's just a dream, vision, or hallucinogen etc. But in reality i feel that all spirits and aliens aren't bad, they are friendly and are willing to help. So as long as we take this offer and give them our hand.

Hmm, what about the WOW signal in 1975/6. I think that caused a bit of a stir at the time but could never be verified as it only happened once and never reoccured. I have to agree that if the Govts of the world are hiding things from the Human Race, then it is entirely feasible that any incomming transmission would be blocked/jammed. I bet they have the capacity to jam Jodrell Bank in the UK if they really wanted to.

A depressing thought, but then again we live in a depressing world.

The next time you visit Whitley Streiber's Unknown Country website, go to the site search page and do a search using the proper name Fermi:

www.unknowncountry.com...

Currently, five stories are posted there with different perspectives on the question you raise about alien communication. Fermi's Paradox (proposed by the scientist Enrico Fermi) asks "If there is intelligent life in the universe, why haven't we found it?"

Of those five articles, my favorite is the interview with Jill Tarter, the SETI Director -- she explains changes she made at SETI about the development of new communication methods due to advances in string theory, etc.

Hey Gazrok, I agree that #s 1-3 are key to all of this, but #4 in your example zeroes right in on why it seems improbable (to me) that we would detect nothing at all *if* the UFO activity reported around the globe in the last 50+ years were actually due to bonafide 'alien' visitors (instead of something else pretending to be).

If 'aliens' orbit earth all the time (as some would believe), then it is reasonable that --just as NASA is in constant contact with astronauts orbiting in a shuttle or space station-- similar communicative activity would be occurring between the near-earth and far-away 'aliens' in real time... i.e., in the present while they are in orbit around earth.

In other words, the 'alien' signal *must* reach us/earth at the same time it reaches the 'alien'... if they are on or near earth, visiting.

Of course, assuming that 'aliens' might employ some form of transmission which we do not yet understand and/or do not have the technology to capture is indeed one way to answer to my question... and surely is easily accepted if you give 'aliens' the upper hand.

However, given the many *visible* sightings and otherwise observed encounters that have been reported over the years, the technical ability of 'aliens' to cover their tracks and remain incognito would appear to be not quite as advanced as many assume is the case. Which seems a little uncharacteristic of a civilization capable of traveling at warp speed and communicating telepathically (or otherwise).

Analogy: Why would ET feel it necessary to hide a phone call home, but then not think anything about hovering over human dwellings with beacon lights on, etc.??

So, again, this discrepancy makes most 'alien' interaction with humans (at least as known & reported) seems less Trek-ish and more propagand-ish to me... which is why I believe lack of intercepted communication pushes more towards the "aliens are not what we think" side of the argument than towards the "we don't know what aliens are doing" side.

And this makes me curious: why is it that alien civilizations are assumed to be older, smarter, and more advanced than ours anyway? Is that the truth, or is it what the 'aliens' WANT us to believe, hmm?

Btw, nice link, FutureLibrarian.

That same idea had occurred to me as well as a variant thereof.

One possibility is that there in fact exists no form of useful faster-than-light communication,
even if ET civilizations are able to make FTL craft with super-advanced technologies.

Messages would have to be literally carried by ships, in the same way that human civilization
worked before 1850, or so.

One consequence would be that it would be difficult to hold together any kind of highly homogeneous galactic civilization for a very long time; the Romans did do pretty well but they didn't have provinces over transcontinental distances.


My issue on the other hand regards EM waves which are "waste" from the planets. Our current planet probably emits plenty of EM due to terrestrial usage (e.g. radio, TV and most importantly powerful search radar).

Even though we have fiber optic cables, the EM spectrum is still useful sometimes, and I would imagine it would remain useful to ETs for cheap planetary communication.

We haven't seen any "waste leakage" from ET civilizations, which I would have expected would have colonized most of the inhabitable galaxy if FTL travel were physically possible.

Consider that humans (polynesians) colonized the smallest and most remote of Pacific islands using wooden canoes over huge oceanic distances back 1000 to 2000 years ago, with pretty meager resources. If it were physically possible it would have been done during the billions of years of the age of the galaxy.

Even if the probability per planet of detection was small at any time, the huge number of stars in the galaxy should have made SOME ET planets somewhere light up in EM. Galactic civilization should have been obvious the first moment we turned on the radiotelescope, the same way that some hypothetical Easter Islander native (assuming fully isolated civilization) first invented radio and heard the BBC on shortwave.

I agree with the posters who suggest we are not thinking 'alien' enough (as if we could.) But Gazrok sums it up.

See, I'm the woman with no lap, if you ever read "Ratner's Star"

For example, a colony of tubule intelligent plant-like things could encircle a planet, and build up a network of chemical message pathways, and never feel a need to understand or use EM radiation. Hell, maybe they live several million years and don't think fast enough for EM to mean anything to them. Wait a few years for a chemical protein to circle a globe? Maybe to them that is instantaneous. Worse still, maybe fluctuating EM fields kill them. Maybe they are atemporal. God help us if that's the case.

I'm afraid that SETI begs the question: Why do we assume aliens communicate using what we would describe as 'information'?

I mean no disrepespect, but I think our scientists forget how relative science is to the mind. Either that, or they want to believe science is a rigid framework of reality outside the mind. That is HUBRIS, in my opinion. Go ahead and look for information bearing signals, if you want, but I personally believe that the only responders would be human like, and very very very far away, at the wrong time, if they exist at all in observable space time.

That is assuming panspermia is not true. If it is, then SETI is a good idea.
[edit on 21-3-2006 by Ectoterrestrial]

[edit on 21-3-2006 by Ectoterrestrial]

Here is this week's journal entry from the author Whitley Streiber. It is right on topic for this ATS thread:

www.unknowncountry.com...

"The Grays" is Streiber's forthcoming book, currently scheduled for publication in August 2006. The IMDB web site also lists a movie version which is now under development.

Streiber reports that he decided to write a fictional treatment of his communication experiences with the Grays since he claims that the novel form is the best way of exploring the possibilities of communication with them.

After reading the above journal entry, however, my first question about the Grays is, if they have taken eggs and sperm from humankind, what are they doing with those children of ours?

[edit on 8-6-2006 by FutureLibrarian]

[edit on 8-6-2006 by FutureLibrarian]

Their long term breeding program appears to be aimed to cultivate a large Hybrid race to have assimilated into our society in order to smoothly transition our official autonomy into their official domination

Unfortunately, it's very hard for us to think like an alien, because we're Earth-based animals that evolved a particular way to live in a particular environment. Had we evolved with the capability to sense and conceptualize in more than 3 or 4 dimensions, maybe we'd have a better chance at communication with aliens, if there are any out there. Which is at this point very likely, since we have zero proof to suggest there is life anywhere but here.

Electromagnetic anything, has little to nothing to do with either their propulsion or communication I feel.

So far as communications, I believe their using light as a form communications' carrier wave, and within it is their signal wave.

Dallas

I hate when I watch shows about contacting aliens, we think we are so smart at it. The Scientist are like they should receive our radio waves, and send radio waves back to us. Radio waves would be so out dated to an advanced civilization. That would be like us sending smoke signals in Washington DC, and hoping that some on in Russia could see them, its nonsense. By the time the radio waves ever reach them, and we get it back would be a decade or two. If we are trying to contact Aliens, its obvious we are not the most intelligent spices and we require a better form for communication in the future.

In compiling data on evidence for EBEs, I found the following story:

"Evidence Description:
Bizarre Audio Transmissions From Saturn!
This one is direct from NASA, and were recorded by the Cassini Spacecraft... This post is probably another that could be cross-posted into a Compilation thread regarding existential evidence, but also (if an alien signal) would fill the requirements for this thread."

The source is here:
www.nasa.gov...

And you can read the compilation thread here:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

The report on this signal (and referencing info) is midway down that thread...

-WitnessFromAfar

p.s. there was also the WOW signal...