"Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication"

"Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication" By Douglas A. Vakoch

"Addressing a field that has been dominated by astronomers, physicists, engineers, and computer scientists, the contributors to this collection raise questions that may have been overlooked by physical scientists about the ease of establishing meaningful communication with an extraterrestrial intelligence. These scholars are grappling with some of the enormous challenges that will face humanity if an information-rich signal emanating from another world is detected. By drawing on issues at the core of contemporary archaeology and anthropology, we can be much better prepared for contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, should that day ever come."

How to Make a Neutrino Beam

Hey why not get an animated view of the reasons how? It is from an Symmetry Magazine article on November of 2012. It is information worth remembering in the scheme of particle reductionism..

Neutrinos are elusive particles that are difficult to study, yet they may help explain some of the biggest mysteries of our universe. Using accelerators to make neutrino beams, scientists are unveiling the neutrinos’ secrets. See: How to make a neutrino beam

You might be interested in what they have been doing while us lay people have been pondering what this particle reductionism is all about.  I mean sure there must be benefits from the work that goes on right?

DEMONSTRATION OF COMMUNICATION USING NEUTRINOS

 See Also:

• The Crown of the Creation Syndrome

The Interspecies Internet

The Interspecies Internet: An Idea in Progress......Posted by Alexandra Manoliu

What kind of technologies will have to be developed for such a process to unfold. I find this to be an interesting angle with which we may approach the question of how alien contact would and could immediately be responded too.

Is it True: Are we Alone?

 So the question for me would have be on how sensory meters would and could be correlated to the other species that such integration could be accomplished across all levels of communication regarding those species.

 Lincos

Lincos (an abbreviation of the Latin phrase lingua cosmica) is an artificial language first described in 1960 by Dr. Hans Freudenthal and described in his book Lincos: Design of a Language for Cosmic Intercourse, Part 1. It is a language designed to be understandable by any possible intelligent extraterrestrial life form, for use in interstellar radio transmissions.

In a sense then we would have to go beyond the language and the list here of cultural differences across the planet again serve as illustrative example of such a diversity of communication in our own human species. So the complexity of the problem is indeed a deep look into the way in which we could move beyond the condensate result of communication, other then,  by the languages we would use. We would have to look underneath this to the frequencies that have been established?

So the communicative result is a vast area with which such signals can become important? We can electronically emulate,  and such a agreement between the species,  would ask a correlative result to sound and it's use,  to show images of the differences of those same species,  as a basis to their language??

So in recognition of a consciousness of a type specific to any species mean that it is awake to the reality with which all are in agreement to the meeting point that is taking place.  Special emphasis on meeting point should be noted.

Interspecies-Internet

We are a non-profit organization that facilitates interspecies communication, by connecting like-minded artistic and scientific projects and developing technologies to support them. Our work assists with education and the protection and conservation of all the species with whom we are involved.

The search for cosmic company goes on

One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye of another than human. Loren Eiseley

Cross-posted on Huffington Post When 2009 TED Prize winner Jill Tarter wished to “empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company,” we looked to the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array (ATA).

With this telescope, Jill’s vision, and the power of open-source initiatives, we were able to globalize the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Because we don’t know what a new signal will look like, it’s hard to create an algorithm to find it, and our own eyes actually work better than computers.See:The search for cosmic company goes on

Is it True: Are we Alone?

DR. HAWKING: If there is a government conspiracy to suppress the reports and keep for itself the scientific knowledge the aliens bring, it seems to have been a singularly ineffective policy so far.

Furthermore, despite an extensive search by the SETI project, we haven't heard any alien television quiz shows. This probably indicates that there are no alien civilizations at our stage of development within the radius of a few hundred lightyears. Issuing an insurance policy against abduction by aliens seems a pretty safe bet.

Why haven't we heard from anyone out there? One view is expressed in this Calvin cartoon. The caption reads: "Sometimes I think that the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

More seriously, there could be three possible explanations of why we haven't heard from aliens. First, it may be that the probability of primitive life appearing on a suitable planet is very low. See: NASA's 50th Anniversary Lecture By Professor Stephen Hawking

Intelligent Life in the Universe?

While Drake's equation is a good basis for systematic investigations of signals from extraterrestrial intelligences, I care little about the admittedly scarce possibility that we ever receive positive news from our SETI searches. I care more about the fact that, if we consider the whole universe instead than restricting to our small galaxy, and if we omit to require that other civilizations exist at present (whatever this means over billion-light-year distance scales), the probability becomes a certainty.Tommaso Dorigo

I was over at Tommaso Dorigo's Blog, Quantum Diaries Survivor" reading his take on Extraterrestrials: A Dime A Dozen and the opening with Stephen Hawkings Lecture. I cut out the section of my interest as well to see what Dr. Hawking was talking about, besides reading Tommaso's take.

Qualitatively, I have come to realize,  given the framework for consideration of such possibilities,  these equations mean an inductive/deductive self evident constraint  how are we ever to consider the possibility( You have to give yourself permission to entertain).

I mean can we ever know the framework of that Extraterrestrial Intelligence given the parameters for our own belief structures? We do not even know what is possible "not having the framework" to properly question how this can be so?

So what I found in Dr.Hawkings lecture was the generalities of consensus across the industry of science and no new ways in which to possibly perceive the" right questions concerning the framework for possible new intelligences" that we would perceive as Extraterrestrials.

***

NASA's 50th Anniversary Lecture By Professor Stephen Hawking

...........DR. HAWKING: What will we find when we go into space? Is there alien life out there, or are we alone in the universe?

We believe that life arose spontaneously on the Earth. So it must be possible for life to appear on othersuitable planets, of which there seem to be a large number in the galaxy.

But we don't know how life first appeared. The probability of something as complicated as a DNA molecule being formed by random collisions of atoms in ocean is incredibly small. However, there might have been some simpler macro molecule which can build up the DNA or some other macro molecule capable of reproducing itself. Still, even if the probability of life appearing on a suitable planet is very small, since the universe is infinite, life would have appeared somewhere. If the probability is very low, the distance between two independent occurrences of life would be very large.

However, there is a possibility known as panspermia that life could spread from planet to planet or from stellar system to stellar system carried on meteors. We know that Earth has been hit by meteors that came from Mars, and others may have come from further afield. We have no evidence that any meteors carried life, but it remains a possibility.

An important feature of life spread by panspermia is that it would have the same basis which would be DNA for life in the neighborhood of the Earth.

On the other hand, an independent occurrence of life would be extremely unlikely to be DNA based. So watch out if you meet an alien. You could be infected with a disease against which you have no resistance.

One piece of observational evidence on the probability of life appearing is that we have fossils from 3.5 billion years ago. The Earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago and was probably too hot for about the first half billion years. So life appeared on Earth within half-a-billion years of it being possible, which is short compared to the 10-billion-year lifetime of an Earth-like planet.

This would suggest either panspermia or that the probability of life appearing independently is reasonably high. If it was very low, one would have expected it to take most of the 10 billion years available. If it is panspermia, any life in the solar system or in nearby stellar systems will also be DNA based.

While there may be primitive life in another region of the galaxy, there don't seem to be any advanced intelligent beings. We don't appear to have been visited by aliens. I am discounting reports of UFOs. Why would they appear only to cranks and weirdos?

[Laughter.]

DR. HAWKING: If there is a government conspiracy to suppress the reports and keep for itself the scientific knowledge the aliens bring, it seems to have been a singularly ineffective policy so far.

Furthermore, despite an extensive search by the SETI project, we haven't heard any alien television quiz shows. This probably indicates that there are no alien civilizations at our stage of development within the radius of a few hundred lightyears. Issuing an insurance policy against abduction by aliens seems a pretty safe bet.

Why haven't we heard from anyone out there? One view is expressed in this Calvin cartoon. The caption reads: "Sometimes I think that the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

More seriously, there could be three possible explanations of why we haven't heard from aliens. First, it may be that the probability of primitive life appearing on a suitable planet is very low.

Second, the probability of primitive life appearing may be reasonably high, but the probability of that life developing intelligence like ours may be very low. Just because evolution led to intelligence in our case, we shouldn't assume that intelligence is an inevitable consequence of Darwinian natural selection.

It is not clear that intelligence confers a long-term survival advantage. Bacteria and insects will survive quite happily even if our so-called intelligence leads us to destroy ourselves.

This is the third possibility. Life appears and in some cases develops into intelligent beings, but when it reaches a stage of sending radio signals, it will also have the technology to make nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction. It will, therefore, be in danger of destroying itself before long.

Let's hope this is not the reason we have not heard from anyone. Personally, I favor the second possibility that primitive life is relatively common, but that intelligent life is very rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.

[Laughter.]

DR. HAWKING: Can we exist for a long time away from the Earth? Our experience with the ISS, the International Space Station, shows that it is possible for human beings to survive for many months away from Planet Earth. However, the zero gravity aboard it causes a number of undesirable physiological changes and weakening of the bones, as well as creating practical problems with liquids, et cetera.

One would, therefore, want any long-term base for human beings to be on a planet or moon. By digging into the surface, one would get thermal insulation and protection from meteors and cosmic rays. The planet or moon could also serve as a source of the raw materials that would be needed if the extraterrestrial community was to be self-sustaining independently of Earth.

What are the possible sites of a human colony in the solar system? The most obvious is the Moon. It is close by and relatively easy to reach. We have already landed on it and driven across it in a buggy.

On the other hand, the Moon is small and without atmosphere or a magnetic field to deflect the solar radiation particles, like on Earth. There is no liquid water, but there may be ice in the craters at the north and south poles. A colony on the Moon could use this as a source of oxygen with power provided by nuclear energy or solar panels. The Moon could be a base for travel to the rest of the solar system.

Mars is the obvious next target. It is half as far, again, as the Earth from the Sun and so receives half the warmth. It once had a magnetic field, but it decayed 4 billion years ago, leaving Mars without protection from solar radiation. It stripped Mars of most of its atmosphere, leaving it with only 1 percent of the pressure of the Earth's atmosphere.

However, the pressure must have been higher in the past because we see what appear to be runoff channels and dried-up lakes. Liquid water cannot exist on Mars now.

It would vaporize in the near-vacuum. This suggests that Mars had a warm wet period during which life might have appeared either spontaneously or through panspermia. There is no sign of life on Mars now, but if we found evidence that life had once existed, it would indicate that the probability of life developing on a suitable planet was fairly high.

NASA has sent a large number of spacecraft to Mars, starting with Mariner 4 in 1964. It has surveyed the planet with a number of orbiters, the latest being the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. These orbiters have revealed deep gullies and the highest mountains in the solar system.

NASA has also landed a number of probes on the surface of Mars, most recently the two Mars Rovers. These have sent back pictures of a dry desert landscape. However, there is a large quantity of water in the form of ice in the polar regions. A colony on Mars could use this as a source of oxygen.

There has been volcanic activity on Mars. This would have brought minerals and metals to the surface which a colony could use.

The Moon and Mars are the most suitable sites for space colonies in the solar system. Mercury and Venus are too hot, while Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants with no solid surface.

The moons of Mars are very small and have no advantages over Mars itself.

Some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn might be possible. In particular, Titan, a moon of Saturn, is larger and more massive than other moons and has a dense atmosphere.

The Cassini-Huygens Mission of NASA and ESA has landed a probe on Titan which has sent back pictures of the surface. However, it is very cold, being so far from the sun, and I wouldn't fancy living next to a lake of liquid methane.

What about beyond the solar system? Our observations indicate that a significant fraction of stars have planets around them. So far, we can detect only giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn, but it is reasonable to assume that they will be accompanied by smaller Earth-like planets. Some of these will lay in the [inaudible] zone where the distance from the stars is the right range for liquid water to exist on their surface.

There are around a thousand stars within 30 lightyears of Earth. If 1 percent of each had Earth-size planets in the [inaudible] zone, we would have 10 candidate new worlds. We can revisit it with current technology, but we should make interstellar a long-term aim. By long term, I mean over the next 200 to 500 years. The human race has existed as a separate species for about 2 million years.

Civilization began about 10,000 years ago, and the rate of development has been steadily increasing.

If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.

***

This same perspective about which I have involved myself with the issues of gravity has been at the forefront of my journey with regards to understanding gravity, and what we have come to know of it on Earth, is that it is not as it is in heaven?:)

Thoughts have this forming effect too, and in the world of Physical constants, how are such thoughts to be measured? "Particulate expressions" in such reductionist modes which lead to a inductive/deductive self evidential state of a ever forming Higg's field?? What thought has traversed the room, to arrive on the other side of the room with consensus?

Not as if, we can defy it's hold on us, while taking plane flights to experience this sensation of dropping fast to earth and leaving ourselves suspended for a time. That it is a consensus borne in mind that such an idea is limited to the framework for which all ideas about it are limited too.

The net result is that the meager N=2.1 becomes over 20 trillions! This means that there are presently 20 trillion civilizations around. 20 trillions. Okay, we might have dropped or added one factor of a hundred too many here or there, but the number is still enormous, no escape!

Is that not a sobering thought ? To me, that is both awesome and saddening. As far as awe is concerned, of course there is no need to explain it. But there is sadness too: for imagine the incredible, unfathomable number of things that we will never be able to know, constrained in our tiny planet, during our insignificant lives. Masterpieces, inventions, acts of bravery, adventures. But also wars, atrocities, catastrophes. The history of the universe will never be written - but it would be quite a read, I am sure.Tommaso Dorigo

So as with the idea of Intelligences in the universe, I place gravity along side of it, as in the context of formulating the right questions. In Tommaso's blog the entry is the deciphering in context of the Drake Equation yet not bound by it in belief. This does not make Tommaso irresponsible to me in shirking the basis of that determination by using the equation.

So of course along the way in my endeavors with those who I have conversed, or left trail bytes for consideration, is the idea that the world as we see it is not always as it seems and that by consensus, the framework is establish is one which limits our views according too.

A "synopsis of the events" can lead us too, and as has been extrapolated according to the world of science. The thoughts that are left to me have been the idea of how scientists can ever introduce new formulations outside of that structure consensus without first taking a new baby step(how so?). They have had to all come to agreement on the latest version of that consensus.

Then there are, the Physical Constants. It is as if in relation to the formulation to a mathematical consistency as a correlative function of the Drake equation in the process of.

This does not mean we sanction irresponsibility to the quest of discovering new worlds of thought, be it in context of Extraterrestrial Intelligences, or even about gravity and the quantum world in which it shall work.

I still visit those scientists who have placed "Outreach" even amidst the data and scientific endeavors they are pursuing. I look for the glimmer of hope that such baby steps are borne out of such minds.

Having defined all the parameters of your science what would be the next question that would lead you to new insights? What new science beyond the experiments that you are working on?

Lingua Cosmica

It looks as though primes tend to concentrate in certain curves that swoop away to the northwest and southwest, like the curve marked by the blue arrow. (The numbers on that curve are of the form x(x+1) + 41, the famous prime-generating formula discovered by Euler in 1774.). See more info on Mersenne Prime.

I always find it interesting that the ability of the mind to do it's gymnastics, had to have some "background information" with which we could assign "the acrobatics of thinking" to special sequences. Thus create some commonality of exchange.

Might we think the computerized world will give us an "human emotive side of being."

See here for Against Symmetry explanation.

So born from it's "original position" what asymmetry was produced to have the universe have it's special way with which it will deal with it's inhabitants? Any "point source" has a greater potential and from a "perfect symmetry" you had to know where this existed?

Lee Smolin will then lead you away from perfect symmetry and explain why?

G -> H -> ... -> SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1) -> SU(3) x U(1)

Here, each arrow represents a symmetry breaking phase transition where matter changes form and the groups - G, H, SU(3), etc. - represent the different types of matter, specifically the symmetries that the matter exhibits and they are associated with the different fundamental forces of nature

So why not think for a minute that if you had "crossed wires" how might you see the world and think, how strange a Synesthesist to have such "emotive reactions instantaneously" bring forth perceived coloured responses. Colours perhaps, as diverse as the Colour of Gravity?

How much of a joke shall I play with peoples minds to think the choice of the observer has consequences? That those consequences are indeed coloured. If this is to much for you, and you say, "oh what a flowery pot I am with such a proposal," then think about "the concept" being used.

The struggle for the emotive language to be explained to the everyday person, as if, the Synesthesist was being simple in their explanation? A "one inch" equation perhaps? They should be so lucky that they could explain themself while they toy with the world and try and make sense of it. That is how different it can be in finding some result of clarification.

That is how foreign I would lead you to believe, that if I wish to communicate, that any language developed, was speaking directly to the source of all expressions, as if they had a geometrical explanation to it. Use of Riemann is understood i this way. It did not divorce him from his teacher, but added vitality tthe way in which we seen Gaussian Arcs and all.

The Magic Square

Hans_Freudenthal

Hans Freudenthal (September 17, 1905 – October 13, 1990) was a Dutch mathematician born in Luckenwalde in Germany into a Jewish family. He made substantial contributions to algebraic topology and also took an interest in literature, philosophy, history and mathematics education.

I had to think sometimes that what was common knowledge can sometimes be wrapped in up the language we use. So imagine for a time that you will go out and change the way we see the world and add this particular model of String theory just to confuse the heck out of us all.

Lincos

Lincos (an abbreviation of the Latin phrase lingua cosmica) is an artificial language first described in 1960 by Dr. Hans Freudenthal and described in his book Lincos: Design of a Language for Cosmic Intercourse, Part 1. It is a language designed to be understandable by any possible intelligent extraterrestrial life form, for use in interstellar radio transmissions.

Do you want to take the time and consult with the aliens we have on this earth? :) Now surely you know I jest, because of the way in which this model asks a us to look at the world. What use you say?

Please don't confuse this language adaptation to the "ignorance and arrogance" of the "Lincos," a being something other then the human beings who are trying to get a GRIP ON OUR PERSPECTIVES. ASKING US TO SEE IN WAY THAT WE ARE NOT TO ACCUSTOM Too.

Were it Perfect, Would it Work Better?-Bruno Bassi

5.1. Communication vs Formalization

The idea of applying achievements from symbolic logic to the design of a complete language is deeply linked to a strong criticism towards the dominant 20th century trend of considering formal languages as a subject matter in themselves and of using them almost exclusively for inquiries about the foundations of mathematics. "In spite of Peano's original idea, logistical language has never been used as a means of communication ... The bounds with reality were cut. It was held that language should be treated and handled as if its expressions were meaningless. Thanks to a reinterpretation, 'meaning' became an intrinsic linguistic relation, not an extrinsic one that could link language to reality" (p. 12).

In order to rescue the original intent of formal languages, Lincos is bound to be a language whose purpose is to work as a medium of communication between people, rather than serve as a formal instrument for computing. It should allow anything to be said, nonsense included. In Lincos, "we cannot decide in a mechanical way or on purely syntactic grounds whether certain expressions are meaningful or not. But this is no disadvantage. Lincos has been designed for the purpose of being used by people who know what they say, and who endeavor to utter meaningful speech" (p. 71).

As a consequence, Lincos as a language is intentionally far from being fully formalized, and it has to be that way in order to work as a communication tool. It looks as though the two issues of communication and formalization radically tend to exclude each other. What Lincos seems to tell us is that formalization in the structure of a language can hardly generate straightforward understanding.

Our Dr. Freudenthal saw very well this point. "there are different levels of formalization and ... in every single case you have to adopt the one that is most adaptable to the particular communication problem; if there is no communication problem, if nothing has to be communicated in the language, you can choose full formalization" (Freudenthal 1974:1039).

But then, how can the solution of a specific communication problem ever bring us closer to the universal resolution of them all? Even in case the Lincos language should effectively work with ETs, how could it be considered as a step towards the design of a characteristica universalis? Maybe Dr. Freudenthal felt that his project needed some philosophical justification. But why bother Leibniz?

Lincos is there. In spite of its somewhat ephimeral 'cosmic intercourse' purpose it remains a fascinating linguistic and educational construction, deserving existence as another Toy of Man's Designing.