The Fine Structure Constant includes three fundamental constants, e, h and c. What is missing is G, the Newton gravitation constant. Now all units of the International Systems are being built using these constants, not a piece of metal such as the kg being held as the mass unit at the Bureau International des Poids et des Mesures in Paris.
Tullio

---

The Kilogram was defined at one time by the mass at sea level of 1000 cc's (one liter) of water at a particular temperture.

Now then the meter (centimeter) was based on an earlier estimate of 1 ten millionth of the distance from the north pole to the equator. This was also marked in France's standards bureau as the distance between two scratches on an Iridium (Inconel ?) bar

I think it would be sometime long after E.T.'s initial contact, they would show interest, if any, in a nations past history. :-)

Chris:

Music Player, somebody needs to say something to help you here. For some considerable time now you have tried to contribute to these threads. I don't know what your nationality is, but unfortunately English seems not to be your first language, and any language translator isn't working very well. That is a shame because you clearly want to contribute, have a lot to say , and spend much time at the keyboard in that endeavour. But it is extremely difficult for any of us to interpret the gist of what you are trying to say......
.......

and

Stargate (S.A.):

As always MP kills a thread.

I do think that ultra long posts and ramblings (dialogue not focused on the listeners \ readers needs) are a problem in forums.

They are hard to understand.

There are many reasons why people ramble. (Age, lack of focus on the reader, alcohol, confidence.. et ad..)

It is always important to type as if we are talking to a real person we wish to have a two sided conversation with or discover thoughts from.

Anyway their are moments in which Music Player has an alternative voice.

@ Music Player

Do you see the world from a religious or spiritual perspective or do you just play devils advocate?

Rambling is a great thing but is a personal journey. We as readers need the shortened and considered version.

Music Player I look forward to your perspectives. (Just a little more reader orientated.)

I too have been reminded by the community once or twice in my time to stay on track and fit in.

As Chris said: "because you clearly want to contribute, have a lot to say"

It's a community thing and it's a sign of value in those who want or try to belong. ...

It is a reason I like SETI.

Now I'm rambling :)

Stay with us Music Player...

If SETI@home found I signal, would it end up being 'closed indefinitely' like the National Solar Observatory and these here...

AXIS 232D Network Dome Camera located in Sydney Australia

Webcams located at SOAR Observatory – The Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope located in Chile

BRT Tenerife Telescope Webcam located in Spain

Webcam located at Mauna Kea observatory at the University of Hawaii Hilo

Webcam from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope observatory in Hawaii

Webcam at JAT OBservatory in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania


Sometimes a tinfoil hat is just a hat!

BTW just found this.

Aliens exist

I wonder what convinces him aliens are somewhere in the universe unless he's seen evidence of their technology here on earth?

---

The mind is a weird and mysterious place

But I imagine that the NSA is far reaching, and they would encourage the UFO brigade to report what they do as a smoke screen for the real top secret testing going on. As for this sort of stuff I just don't know.

That's crossed my mind, too. Red herrings.

Whatever, people are earning good money writing and publishing it to eager readers.

No doubt!

---

The mind is a weird and mysterious place

BTW just found this.
Aliens exist

I wonder what convinces him aliens are somewhere in the universe unless he's seen evidence of their technology here on earth?

Maybe you can find some answers here:)
http://www.nickpope.net/
Nick Pope is a frequent guest in the TV show "Ancient Aliens" on History and has a lot of conspiracy theories.
No evidences though!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Pope_(journalist)

Firstly, if what they say is true and there is a cover up, how come they are allowed to spill the beans? Secondly, if they were "let go" because they've lost the plot, how many madmen have we got still there, able to press buttons?

I hear what you're saying, Chris. I've kind of wondered the same thing, sometimes.

---

The mind is a weird and mysterious place

No cover-up is, or could be made, perfect. Throughout the history of modern UFOology, there has always been a faction inside the government that wanted to do disclosure. They have done what they could, sometimes with civilian help.

Retired military personnel seem to stand a good chance of not being interfered with, when they reveal what they have learned about UFOs. If they were persecuted after revealing something, this would only draw further attention and add credibility to their accounts; that's the last thing the government would want.

The information any one person could offer would be fragmentary, due to the compartmentalization of knowledge and 'need-to-know ' restrictions practiced in the government and the military.

Actually there is a Boinc project that are trying to decipher Enigma messages from WWII.

The M4 Project is an effort to break 3 original Enigma messages with the help of distributed computing. The signals were intercepted in the North Atlantic in 1942 and are believed to be unbroken. Ralph Erskine has presented the intercepts in a letter to the journal Cryptologia. The signals were presumably enciphered with the four rotor Enigma M4 - hence the name of the project.

http://www.enigmaathome.net/
The project officially started in 2006.
The two first Enigma messages was deciphered in the same year.
Apparently the third message was deciphered in 2013.
https://enigma.hoerenberg.com/index.php?cat=M4%20Project%202006&page=Rasch%20Message
Why did they deciphered the two so "fast"?
The German submariners didn't RTFM:)
Don't use the same key when transmitting messages
Bletchley Park find that out that already when they analysed messages during the war.
They noticed there were similary patterns in the messages,
Boom:)

On "Nature Briefings", which I read daily there is an article about a group of Polish codebreakers, that broke a good part of the Enigma code and later cooperated with the French Secret Service. When the Germans invaded Poland they fled to France or joined the Polish resistance. A book on them has been written by a member of the Turing family.
Tullio
Here is the book's title: "X,Y&Z: The Real Story of how Enigma was broken". Dermot Turing, The History Press (2018)
I made a hard copy of the "Nature" article titled "Forgotten heroes of the Enigma story" because I cancel the Nature Briefings after a while, since they come daily.

---

Unbreakable codes

& they're man made codes. Therefore, who here thinks that a signal from E.T. will be that easy to decipher?

Edit: @Tullio

Turing completed what these guys started

As seen with Enigma, politics got in the way. Instead of finding ways to end a war, allies deceived each other, so who is to say it can't happen again?

The British were still trying to use linguists to break codes of this nature. However, the Poles realized it was imperative to use mathematics to determine code patterns. This is how they had successfully broken some of the earlier German codes before the war even started. Building some electro-mechanical machines to make calculation for solutions (called “bombes”) helped them greatly.

Who here can say that our mathematics is up to the task of deciphering E.T's signal? What if their mathematics is of a higher level?

Once I had a HP handheld calculator that used Reverse Polish Notation. This before I had a PC. I gave it to my daughter when she entered the University. I don't know if she has used it.
Tullio

---

Here is the book's title: "X,Y&Z: The Real Story of how Enigma was broken". Dermot Turing, The History Press (2018)
I made a hard copy of the "Nature" article titled "Forgotten heroes of the Enigma story" because I cancel the Nature Briefings after a while, since they come daily.

Thanks, I was about to ask you for the title. :-)

Once I had a HP handheld calculator that used Reverse Polish Notation.
Tullio

I remember those.
Entering operands and operators is different to what we are used to.
Normaly you enter for example 3 + 4.
Instead you enter + 3 4.
That notation works very well with computers so there are several computer languages based on that.
For instance Forth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language)

Unbreakable codes

& they're man made codes. Therefore, who here thinks that a signal from E.T. will be that easy to decipher?

....

It made me think.

The Russians had a variety of simplistic but heavy mechanisms that aided them in going into space.

There has been proposals to send vast space ships into space using small nuclear explosives.

There is nothing to say that so called aliens are more advanced than us.

They may just be more willing to traverse the cosmos in heavy crafts (probably better) using hideous methods?

The problem with the Western (USA?) perspective on Aliens is that they must be in advance of us.

... some ways yes.. some ways we don't know.

We assume space travel is hi tech but in reality most of what will protect you from radiation and particles or rocks will be just plain old solid and thick walls.


What if one day a steam punk alien generational ship parked itself in orbit.

.. and what if they knew nothing about our stuck on earth ciphers but just wanted to say hi?

Or even worse wanted to migrate here...

It's a possibility?

Once I had a HP handheld calculator that used Reverse Polish Notation.
Tullio

I remember those.
Entering operands and operators is different to what we are used to.
Normaly you enter for example 3 + 4.
Instead you enter + 3 4.
That notation works very well with computers so there are several computer languages based on that.
For instance Forth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language)

It's actually 3(enter) 4 +. You hit the enter key after the 1st number. I used the HP 41 CV for 20 years during my civil engineering career. It used rpn (reverse polish notation). I switched to a Texas Instruments calculator for a while and due to the fact that it used standard notation I made several mistakes.

---

Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

As far as we know today, we are the most advanced civilization in our area of the Milky Way. I hate to remind all of you one very significant term in the Drake equation is how long the civilization stays technologically advanced. We have global warming, we should expect that as a consequence of becoming an advanced civilization. That may limit the lifespan of ET's civilizations as well. If they found a way to beat it, then we do want to talk to them.

If ET wants to talk to us, presumably they will send simple signals so dolts like humans can understand them.

If ET doesn't want to talk to us, there won't be a signal headed our way except by happenstance and that may be beyond our ability to pick out of the noise.

First though before we attempt to understand a message, we have to receive the message!

Believing there is a correlation between technological superiority and moral/ethical superiority.

Has not been the case with us humans and may not be the case with aliens.

I'm not sure there is a correlation between technology, morality or ethics. (Or whatever is meant by superiority,) (Sounds like a manifesto for the Uber Race..)

Star Trek would have us believe that there is as long as it us as humans that possess all these attributes but come to the aliens it often shows them as often lacking even if so called more advanced.

"Morality and Ethics" we can only describe in our own terms so there is no point in talking about them until we meet an alien who can tell us their values.

It takes us a massive amount of resources and finances to send a person into space. (It would probably cost the same for an alien race to do the same.)

In fact the whole package of sending and maintaining a person in space probably costs the same as feeding a 100 families for a life time or educating 10,000 to degree level or giving a sure start to 100,000 kids lives.

A little exploration is OK but it would cost aliens as much as it costs us to reach the skys even with any supposed technological advantages.

Any aliens that turn up on our doorstep would probably be knacked and desperate.

That is assuming that in the millions of years of the universe any local aliens still exist or that will exist when we throw ourselves out into the void.

Lets not assume that because we are overpopulated on this blue orb that life at our level exists anywhere else.

The universe might just be having a complete and utter lull in alien races at the moment.

Now I sound really negative :)

... On a more up beat note all of your neighbours probably think you are alien ;)))~