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| Personal background |
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| System Administrator with 18 years in the biz. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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In the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," the benevolent aliens communicate with humans using mind control and a funky synthesizer/light organ the size of a small town. I was amused at the film's dialog when the linguist directs the musician on the human's organ to play intervals from the diatonic musical scale I wondered why aliens would communicate using a human derived musical system. The diatonic scale is by no means universal, even among human cultures. Later I learned a little about the physics of sound, and realized the idea wasn't as silly as I thought.
Nonetheless, I think we take ourselves too seriously when we imagine that alien beings might adopt modes of communication based on our conception and perception of the Universe. Scientists have composed messages for hypothetical aliens using binary math and the spectrum of diatomic hydrogen. They argue that mathematics is embedded in physical reality, and that physical law is the same everywhere in the universe. Although I'm not sure how one could do human science without those assumptions, I doubt that we have scratched the surface of reality with 500 years of modern scientific inquiry. We certainly don't know enough to assume that our view of reality is the only valid one.
I prefer the vision of alien life given in Solaris by Stanislaw Lem Here is a presence so mysterious, that it's impossible to tell if it's "conscious." Here is a form of communication so ambiguous, yet so powerful, that its purpose and nature are baffling puzzles. No heart lights. No interstellar boogie-woogie.
I don't know if alien intelligence exists or not. There are good scientific arguments on both sides of the issue. What I do know is that the SETI@home project is one of the coolest things to come along during the rather cool 1990s. I just had to get involved.
One last thought. If the E.T.s really dig music, it's got to be Mozart or Jimi Hendrix that makes 'em do the space warp shuffle, not some stupid major chord!
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