c/wikipedia · by cypherpunks@lemmy.ml · 1y

"A Message from Earth" (actually 501 messages, including a photo of George W Bush chosen by Gillian Anderson to illustrate evil) sent in 2008 to earth-like planet Gliese 581c will arrive there in 2029

https://web.archive.org/web/20081011142445/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3166709/Messages-from-Earth-sent-to-distant-planet-by-Bebo.html

80 points · 13 comments · view on lemmy.world

13 Comments

ravhall@discuss.online · 18 pts · 1y (4 replies)

Wishful thinking that intelligent life would exist at this exact point in time on that planet capable of receiving the message and decoding it… And hopefully not mistaking it for a threat

MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net · 5 pts · 1y (3 replies)

Counterpoint: intelligent life finds the wreckage a million years from now and gets the answer earth folks have been searching for: there's other life out there.

Counter-counterpoint: the planet is seeded with earth microbes that out compete native cooperative microbes, preemptively replacing a future utopia with earth's particular brand of bullshit.

KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 1y (1 reply)

Targeted transmission, not a probe.

MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net · 6 pts · 1y

Counter-counter-counterpoint: I didn't read the entry. >_>

ravhall@discuss.online · 8 pts · 1y

Counter counter counter, they get the transmission, come to take our water, find no earthlings, take back water with a bunch of microplastics and it kills them all. Humans kill the life on another planet too.

Dasus@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y (4 replies)

Okay Bush isn't exactly a boy scout, but why not have like Hitler depicting evil instead?

vala@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y (1 reply)

He was actually a cub scout https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States_involved_in_Scouting#List_of_presidents

Dasus@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y

I was gonna say that I think he literally was a boy scout, but I just let it go.

Thanks for confirming my earlier errant thought, lol

rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee · 2 pts · 1y

What if it's a planet of space hitlers and a picture of him just makes them want to conquer us for more cosmic lebensraum.

manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml · -6 pts · 1y

The message was sent using the RT-70 radar telescope of Ukraine's State Space Agency.

maybe they think hitlers alright

ThePyroPython@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y

Relevant Citation Needed

Asafum@feddit.nl · 5 pts · 1y (1 reply)

"The study of Gliese 581c by the von Bloh et al. team is quoted as concluding "The super-Earth Gl 581c is clearly outside the habitable zone, since it is too close to the star."[4] The study by Selsis et al. states that "a planet in the habitable zone is not necessarily habitable" itself, and this planet "is outside what can be considered the conservative habitable zone" of the parent star, and further that if there was any water there then it was lost when the red dwarf was a strong X-ray and EUV emitter, it could have surface temperatures ranging from 700 to 1,000 K (427 to 727 °C), like Venus today."

Oops. A message to nobody I guess. :(

Chickenstalker@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y

Our definition of "life" is very narrow. Let's broaden it to the widest possible definition: A lifeform is any self-sustaining system that takes in energy against the entropic gradient to synthesize information storage/replication-systems for the ultimate purpose of creating a new generation of lifeforms. Once we broadened the definition, then we are no longer constrained by the Earth-centric conditions.