What do you think the mass media will use as their headlines the day we find a signal?

My personal guess is that it'll be any combination of ET puns, such as "ET Finally Phones Home"

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"What do you think the mass media will use as their headlines the day we find a signal? My personal guess is that it'll be any combination of ET puns, such as "ET Finally Phones Home" - shawn

No need to speculate. It has already happened. The 08/27/1911 edition of the New York Times ran a full-page story with this headline: “Martians Build Immense Canals in Two Years.”

The article reported on the work of astronomer Percival Lowell's observations and contention that Martian engineers might still be at work.

Reference is from the epilogue of this article.

Another interesting quote from the same article:

"During the 1920s electrical experts such a Guglielmo Marconi and Nicholas Tesla speculated that intelligent life on Mars might be a possibility, and that if so, we might be able to pick up their radio transmissions (Douglas, 1987). We can surmise that in 1938 belief in the likelihood of intelligent life on Mars perhaps equalled today’s belief that there is intelligent life on other solar systems in our vast universe..."

Belief. A word used often in this community. " I believe..."

One wonders about whether there is any difference in the pervasive belief in Extraterrestrials among this community as opposed to Angels and Demons in a Baptist Church or even Witches in Salem?

Definition of Belief:
n 1: any cognitive content held as true 2: a vague idea in which some confidence is placed

Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University

Vague indeed.

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- Skeptic - "... and there is no intelligent life in Washington D.C. either."