If SETI detects another civilization, and I believe it will, what then?

Answer 1

Will be a heck of a shock to everyone.
Because of the distances involved, the number of solar systems with the right conditions, the time frames involved....
I helped with the SETI project since 1999 and processed about 12,000 work units. I don't see it as something very likely.
Whenever we sent anything through the Arecibo telescope, which has a transmission range of 40,000 light years, we only had it on for less than a day, transmitting in one direction.
Also, don't forget the skew introduced by the rotation of the Earth. Our dew (distant early warning) system which put out high power radar for years, would never be pointed at the same spot in the sky very long. And that was just one frequency, no modulation. No intelligence to be gotten from that even if received light years from here.
If other civilizations do similar things, as spotty as that, what are the chances of anyone seeing anything at just the right moment.
And if they do, and they are 10,000 light years away, by the time they get it we may not be here for conversation anymore. Plus pauses of 20,000 years kind of kill the thread of the conversation.
I'd like it to happen, I just don't see it
There was one point where someone actually received something that looked like the real thing. They could never get it back. Maybe it was the right thing, but just a short burst like we sent out once. Never repeated. Sad...

Answer 2

Yes, Heinz.....that was the "WOW" signal that they picked up in 1979 (I think). I've always wondered what it could've been, given if it was the real deal. Being a one-off, as it was, I kind of thought that maybe it could've been the side leak from a navigation beacon or an alien equ' of an SOS, or an ID transmission from a starship somewhere in the vicinity of the galaxy's bulge (where the signal originated). Who knows?.....but it's fun to speculate:):)


Now, for the question.......if you goto the SETI site (www.seti.org) you can get a copy of the actual protocols of contact between Earth and an extraterrestrial civilisation sending signals. The document is an official U.N. document that a group of scientists and others drafted a number of years back. It sets out the precise methods of going about (once detection occurs) verifying signals, reporting of, and release to the public......of any signal(s) they may detect. And, what our response(s) should or shouldn't be.

Answer 3

Some religions will be displeased but will cope with it as they have with every scientific finding that threatens them. Certainly, it will create huge headlines and excitement but little else of real substance. Daily life on our planet will be still unchanged, we probably won't be able to communicate with them. Given the speed of light and the vast distances of space by the time their signal has reaches us it could have been thousands of years in their past that the signal was generated. All we many ever know is that there was someone out there long in the past. Incidentally SETI may never detect a signal. Let's consider our planet. As technology improves the power of our broadcasts reduces and is more pinpoint. Satellites broadcast toward earth, TV broadcast stations will disappear as more homes are outfitted with high-speed fiber or efficent low power transmission. Radio broadcasters will replaced by satellite radio. Each new cell phone generation uses less power than the last. As energy becomes more expensive efficiency techniques will improve faster yet. The window of detection in an advanced civilizations technology climb may be but a tiny span of it’s existence.

Answer 4

Well, the first determination will be to see how far away the orginating sun is. If its 500 light years away, obviously it will take us 3 to 6 years to formulate a response, then to figure out a way to send it, then it will take 500 years for it to arrive.

Or, we could understand the message, build a starship or a starship torpedo of some kind to deliver some kind of answer. Its a toss up on this- torpedos or missles don't have the ability to reason and think their way out of problems. Human lifespans arn't that long either.

Another answer which the US Government is working on is the REAL "Stargate" system of interdimensional transportation- but, once again this is experimental and unreliable at this time.

Answer 5

The answer to that is completely dependent on how far away they are.
If they are greater than 1,000 light years away, I don't believe we would do anything. Any signal we send to them wouldn't be answered from 2,000 years after we send it. (round trip)
In fact, even the rudimentary signals we are broadcasting to each other all over the globe are less than 100 years old. They have traveled less than 100 light yeas into space.
To take matters even further, any signals we receive from another planet will have been sent hundreds of not thousands of years ago. What intelligent life form is going to wait around to hear our return signal.
And can you imagine trying to correspond using radio signals - even 500 light years away?
Impossible.
No, if we detect another life form, we have no choice but to merely listen and record it, an hope that there is something we can learn from it. It is a one way communication.

and for that matter, perhaps we should begin sending our own signal - about us - into space, so that an alien race will know our story, up until the time that we annihilate ourselves and the transmission stops.

Answer 6

If SETI works it should go out and return to say that it has found us out there among the search for signals, it should have found ours and belived it to be entirely newly discovered.
A civilization is lived out on one's own, and when it ends, it disappears, leaving behind life, usually said to be ended in some horrible disaster that befell them. Fossils, biological systems fill the void and appear to seamlessly explain the picture but fail to explain the universe.

Answer 7

If SETI did encounter a message, the message would have taken so long to get here that any message we send could not get a response until well after we at "answers" have been long gone.

Answer 8

First we'd have to decode their message as best we could. If they communicated mathematical concepts in order to get our attention, we could then respond with similar codes. Not unlike what was done in "Close Encounters" with musical tones. Music is highly mathematical, you know. So I suppose the two civilizations would play one another's music!

Answer 9

Time to break out the de-coder rings, and have the NSA build us a new super-computer in order to translate this alien civ.

Answer 10

The explorer in me says try to respond to the signal and see what happens.