"Indefual" <indefual@canada.com> wrote in message
news:PXgQa.486$eP6.81625@news20.bellglobal.com...

Communication with Extra Terrestrial Intelligence

the alt.sci.seti FAQ got me thinking: if SETI is based on the idea that

ETs

are trying to contact us, we may never find them (if they exists) if they
are searching for their ETs (ie. us).

So what would a signal to space be comprised of?  What should it be
comprised of.  As I recall, several years back we did send out a signal to
some star that seemed like it may be similar to our own, thus hopefully
contains planets, et cetera.  What was it made of?

I believe it was in 1972. It contained a digital pattern which from a
certain perspective would give stuff like celestial location, a carbon atom,
a human figure and other stuff. However, I believe I read somewhere it would
take someone of an IQ of around 200 to decipher it.
It was a publicity stunt rather than a serious contact attempt.

Would a Call to Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (CETI) be digital, or

analog?

Voice, picture, both?  Stereo, mono?

You forgot it may have Dolby Noise Reduction.  You had best ask them when
you find them.
 I assume it would be digital or a digital signal over a analogue carrier to
make it propagate further and not be confused with natural sources.

A ST:Voyager episode comes to mind: Voyager is transported to 1996, where
someone in an observatory finds them and sends them a standards (I dare
say) CETI message.  This message was comprised with (IIRC) "Welcome, from
the people of Earth" in several (hundred?) languagues.  It had a visual
with it that put the 'Welcome' text in many languages, shows a Leonardo da
Vinci style diagram of the human body (male and female), and included some
binary at the bottom, as I recall.

That's Star Trek for you. I think they borrowed that from the disk on the
Voyager spaceprobe.

What data /should/ be contained?  I think Contact (book or movie) and the
use of a 'primer'.  It, however, contained data that needs no language
(other than science).

Contact (during which, the first theories of spacial wormholes were formed)
probably depicted the best scenario for initial interstellar contact. It
would be logical to transmit numerical data in universal constants, such as
Pi, natural logarithms and prime numbers. Even if we recieved a load of
numbers, it would be enough.

What would a possible CETI transmission that we send (or receive) be
comprised of.  What do you think would be in it, what would you prefer be
in it.

We send all the time in leaked radio broadcasts.

Graham

It is in this way that I coined the term CETI but a few days ago.  A quick
search on the net informed me that CETI already exists and is short for
'Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence'.

Sigh.

I still think it's a neat idea.

-Shawn P. 'Indefual' Conroy
--
"When I die, I'm donating my body to science fiction."
-Steven Wright

http://www.Indefual.Net/