The question about the motives of extraterrestrial visitors is a good one. I hope that we will have the opportunity to ask it of them in circumstances permitting a calm and measured tone. Michael

How do you greet an extraterrestrial? Very carefully! Sorry, just my way of getting on the message board.

Hi Trevor.
You look just like my uncle Ben who used to live in Liverpool.
They say we all have a double somewhere :)

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*** Those who know, don't speak,
those who speak, don't know ***

Concerning the Voyager plaque I don't think they should have had the male holding his hand up. That might be the same as one of us sticking their middle finger up on earth. And could perhaps cause an invasion.

Sending mathematics, a string of primes for example. If the response was a continuation of primes - that could be a good start...

Eventually it would get to "motive" (just wanted to say hello, thought we were alone out here). Being an optimist - I'll leave the motive at that.

How did we greet each other here on earth, when first contact was made in years gone by - how do we greet each other now?

A different but related example might be how do we communicate with intelligent non-human species on earth. Dolphins, for example, whales, even ants (water a lawn enough they get the message to go visit the neighbors).

If the shoe was on the other foot - picking up a signal from out there, how would we respond? if we received a signal of primes, and replied in kind, and this "math" went on a time - have we reached ET(s) that we'd like to meet, a surviving AI system from an advanced society long gone, or something else (?)

Got to start somewhere tho, and I think the best first message is just "hello".

This is all a bit subjective and situational tho - if ET's reply to our hello by rampaging across the planet, water the lawn!

(I really think we have to fix problems at home, and understand "here" first, tho I support SETI and related efforts because they may be an expedient method of doing that).

When they come, if they offer us TRINKETS & BEADS, what do we do? They may have seen the 1996 documentary film by Christopher Walker -- what goes around...

When they come, if they offer us TRINKETS & BEADS, what do we do? They may have seen the 1996 documentary film by Christopher Walker -- what goes around...

Hope they appreciate TV and films for what they are, but on the other hand...

If they interpreted our sci-fi and other fiction as reality... and sent an armada 50 light years to find only an aging space station about to be decommissioned around a squabbling planet with the only weapons of consequence pointed at each other...

in their leader's shoes, I don't know whether I'd laugh, cry, or sacrifice a few 'experts' as cover, and bypass earth totally, avoiding the whole political mess.

Either might kinda make cool movies, or at least good shorts.

Thinking about pictures... In the Arecibo message we tried to make clear how the dimensions of the picture is meant by choosing 2 prime numbers. We could as well try to encode a high resolution 3 dimensional image by choosing 3 high prime numbers.

ill call their to my house, ill find the biggest bottle of our national drink slivovica - in English plum brandy (52 percent of alcohol)- that i get from my trees in my garden and we will drink it all ... by this "nectar for gods" we will perfectly understood ....
i hope they are not allergic to the ethanol or is not deadly for them ...

and if they would don't drink, i shoot em all with my two barreled shotgun

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dada