• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Interstellar Spies???

First paragraph in the linked-to article:
Have aliens sent mechanical emissaries to our solar system -- robotic probes on a snoopy mission to reconnoiter Earth?
Click to expand...
If they're on a snoopy mission, I hope they don't mistake the Earth for the Red Baron!
 
Cheebus , Mary and Josepus,
This isn't even woo-woo it's BWA-HAHAHAAH!
From the article:"
So probes are a possibility. And maybe one was launched our way, sometime in the last two billion years."

We and our most distant relatives didn't even exist 2B yrs ago. The premise that some advanced civilization would send out life seeking probes our way in particular is laughable and involves an intellectual jump that involves some sort of prescient knowledge of life producing systems, a dedicated program that spans ( possibly ) generations and a commitment to the project and possibly FTL communication.

I'm still wrestling with the non-existance of Santa Clause.
 
TillEulenspiegel said:
Cheebus , Mary and Josepus,
This isn't even woo-woo it's BWA-HAHAHAAH!
From the article:"
So probes are a possibility. And maybe one was launched our way, sometime in the last two billion years."

We and our most distant relatives didn't even exist 2B yrs ago. The premise that some advanced civilization would send out life seeking probes our way in particular is laughable and involves an intellectual jump that involves some sort of prescient knowledge of life producing systems, a dedicated program that spans ( possibly ) generations and a commitment to the project and possibly FTL communication.

I'm still wrestling with the non-existance of Santa Clause.
Click to expand...
I strongly disagree. Building a probe that detects signs of life (or even planets with suitable composition) is not that hard. Mass produce a million of them and send them out at 0.1c to every star within 10,000 light years. In 110,000 years, you'll have information coming back on a million star systems.

I forsee us undertaking such a project (though maybe not on quite such a large scale) within the next 1000 years.
 
Could this possibly be the case ?

Well a bunch of stuff could happen.

Is a society willing to wait that long for the signals to start coming back ?

Well that's one flaw in the theory, by the time the signals start coming back they'd have forgotten the things were sent in the first place. Also keeping anything working for a sufficiently long period of time in such a hostile environment is tricky. You'd have to send a lot of probes to be sure of one working (ask NASA).

Would we be able to detect the transmissions ?

About the only thing WE could detect at that range would have to be pretty powerful (even in the master/slave (I know you're not supposed to say that in California these says) configuration) surely some of that radiation would have been scattered back to Earth and we would have detected it.


Space.com does have some pretty wacky articles and SETI does have a stake in ensuring that there is continuing interest in extra terrestrial intelligence
 
Yes, an armada of alien unmanned probes could have landed or orbited our planet in the past. Alien rovers may have been snooping around and taking pictures of dinosaurs, trilobites *add prehistoric creature name of the period you want here*. But, untill there's evidence for it, its just that- a possibility.

We would need some preserved wheel tracks on an ancient dune or muddy lake bottom, or perhaps a preserved parts of *add number of million years*-old alien malfunctioning rover.
 
The Don said:
Is a society willing to wait that long for the signals to start coming back ?

Well that's one flaw in the theory, by the time the signals start coming back they'd have forgotten the things were sent in the first place. Also keeping anything working for a sufficiently long period of time in such a hostile environment is tricky. You'd have to send a lot of probes to be sure of one working (ask NASA).

Would we be able to detect the transmissions ?

About the only thing WE could detect at that range would have to be pretty powerful (even in the master/slave (I know you're not supposed to say that in California these says) configuration) surely some of that radiation would have been scattered back to Earth and we would have detected it.


Space.com does have some pretty wacky articles and SETI does have a stake in ensuring that there is continuing interest in extra terrestrial intelligence
Click to expand...
In our case, we'd start getting signals back within 50 years (from Alpha Centauri), and we'd have data on ~15 stars in 100 years.

I'm not sure how powerful the signal would have to be in order for us to detect it, but we don't need to broadcast a signal; only direct it back at Earth.

I'm not saying it's at all likely that there's an alien probe in our star system, only that it's possible.
 
space.com sometimes veers towards sensationalism, unfortunately. (spaceflightnow.com is a better source of info, IMO)

All through this piece I kept thinking about that X-Files episode with the dung-eating cockroaches where Mulder thinks said cockroaches are alien probes. Please tell me, am I the only one?
 
Von Neumann machines.... A more sinister scenario was presented by Greg Bear in Forge of God and Anvil of Stars.

An advanced but paranoid civilization might develop self-replicating weapons to seek out and destroy other emergent civilizations, on the basis that they "might" prove to be a menace at some point.

Also the Berserker series....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom