‘Wow’ indeed.

If there is something to this signal, the government may be putting a cap on it becasue of natiional security concerns. Or until the signal can be understood better.

One or two morsels of nutrition for your faceplate.

I think its funny that our own skepticism about the theoretical existence of et’s is a far more effective censor on their transmissions than the government could ever hope for. Sure, any boob can write in a newpaper or newsletter saying “we found em” and hundreds of people will believe that to the exclusion of the everything else even if the writer came forward and admitted he made it up, but the great majority of humans would disregard even a real transmission as something ~ anything else. I mean, come on, what’s your first reaction? So likely, they’re up there going “send it again, they must not have heard us.”

More likely, they intercepted our transmissions from about 69 light years away and said “turn left, they aren’t ready yet.” I mean, we don’t even know if the Centauri system has planets, and its only 4 light years away.

If an alien civilization can even see us, they saw us long before they would have come here. Would we just blindly fire an interstellar vehicle to another star hoping that it would have a habitable planet? No. They would have studied us for a long time.

Then if they did send a probe, what do you think… would it be manned or unmanned? Lets see… how many manned flights past our own moon have we made compared to unmanned flights? Very likely they would send a robotic vehicle to scope the area first.

The robotic vehicle either falls into orbit (unlikely) or observes from a safe distance, monitoring anything that the aliens think we would be capable of producing. Namely EM band wavelengths (by the way, there aren’t “other” frequencies. Quantum tunneling is not a frequency.) The robotic probe would record our tv, radio, microwave, visible light and quite possibly even audible data and beam (or “tunnel”) it back to the home base. There they would pore over this data for years (just like we would) very likely agonizing over several fundamental questions….

1) are they a threat?

2) will our presence be detrimental to their development?

3) will their microorganisms kill us?

4) If we land will we destroy their entire ecosystem with our microorganisms?

5) do they have any positive contibution to make to our culture?

6) if they end up learning our technology, will they try to purify the galaxy? (I bet that’s happened at least once)

7) how long can we study them without being detected?
Will our politicians allow us the funding to send a manned mission, and if so, how much will they give us?

Of course, these questions depend heavily on how much like us they are, although similar questions would most certainly come up no matter what they are… if they even exist and if they even know we’re here and if they even care and if they are benign and if they have any inkling that life exists on the mysterious blue grain of salt in the cluster of saltmines.

Pretty funny, really, to those of us old enough to remember a certain previous *wow* signal…

Michael

Back to Topic, I’d LOVE if this were True …

But, Science is About The Way The World is, Not The Way you Want it to be!

#-o

Meh. I’d be trying to hitch a ride. Imaginary physics defying space buggies would be damn fun.

“Burn out Zorlag! Lay some rubber!”