Space aliens know we’re here, scientist says
Photo: vice1
Richard Henry: The SETI hypothesis is that there are hundred or thousands of advanced civilizations out in our galaxy. We’d like to know the answer.
That’s astronomer Richard Henry of Johns Hopkins University. He told EarthSky something new in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.
Richard Henry: It’s the sudden realization, sudden over the last 10 years, that it isn’t just that there might be civilizations out there. It’s that if there are civilizations out there, some of them actually know that we exist. That’s the big change.
In other words, alien life might be trying to contact us, via radio signals, said Henry. And they might know we’re here because they’ve seen Earth pass in front of, or transit our sun. When this happens, our planet’s atmosphere lights up from sunlight as seen with advanced telescopes.
Richard Henry: Now, because we observe transits ourselves, we know that if they exist, they know we exist.
In order to see Earth transit the sun, alien astronomers would need to be along the ecliptic, or plane of our solar system. Henry wants to point radio dishes to where the ecliptic meets the center of our Milky Way that’s crowded with stars.
Richard Henry: If they’re out there, they know we exist. We hadn’t appreciated that before. That really changes our perspective. They know we’re here. They’ve known about us, possibly, for millions of years.
Why still consider radio technology ? If they know we’re here and they’ve known it for millions of years you think they still use radio-waves for communication ?
What if their race is a telepathic race ? They never needed radio-waves.
Radio is low-tech even for today (earth standards). Millions of years means a completly unknown technological difference.
Why try to grasp such ideas with radio.
If they know and they’re not showing themselfs or making themselfs known it will be for a good reason.
In my oppinion…Stop wasting time and start forming our race towards a better goal than our current one.
A non-existing goal.
Roel Poelwijk
The Netherlands
There’s so much absurdity in the thinking behind this article I don’t know where to begin. Ok I’ll have a go – first off SETI says there’s at least thousands of advanced civs out there, and some if not most are anywhere from thousand to millions of years older than us, right? So WHY for Pete’s sake do scientists still insist these civs are stuck on radio technology? That is so patently absurd I wonder if these scientists are brain-damaged. WE are moving out of the radio age already and we just got brains last Tuesday (well some of us did.)
And another thing: You just now realize that some of these highly advanced civs MIGHT have a clue that we are here? And this Eureka moment was brought on by OUR brand new capability of locating exoplanets? And so now you’re willing to admit that these civs who are thousands or millions of years ahead of us MAY have the ability that we just got? And that this transiting method is the only way they’d know about us?
I got news for you pal: if they wanted to contact us, we’d know about it. And they wouldn’t be using radio.
One last thing — These civs know about us, they are profoundly more advanced than us, by many orders of magnitude, yes? But here we go, you’re going to swear up & down on your scholarly degree that it’s impossible for them to get here to this planet right? And why is that Mr. Scientist? Why? Because WE can’t get THERE yet? Do you still not see the hypocrisy and illogic in your thinking on this issue?
Well, to tell you the truth, i think i prefer their current state of existence. that is if at all there are in existence. Yet still there are no sound or credible evideences as to support the existence of such creatures outside earth.
If the aliens are using radio waves, maybe they are listening to NPR. Maybe they heard this! Maybe they know we know they know!!
From our limited knowledge it is obvious there are life forms out there that are much more advanced than ours. Crunch the numbers of course there are many not as advanced and others that are much more advanced. With a little luck maybe one not to far advanced that they might be able to give us some advice in how to avoid destroying ourselves which seems to be the path we are going down. As far as the life forms that are vastly more advanced than us. Probably are but they would also have the ability to tell from a great distance that we aren’t worth the trouble to contact or visit. No doubt we are in some data bank as an insignificant object. Willie Koczynski, Lakehurst, NJ, USA
SETI is too narrow-minded to accept an answer they don’t expect. That’s why this message was sent in public: it wasn’t meant to be kept secret. Aliens know what kind of people sent the first message: High priests. They have been the same in most cultures.
The aliens that put us here know exactly where we are. :)
They know we’re here because They’ve been here for billennia. Analysis of rates of galactic colonisation mean that ETIs will have bases or colonies in the Outer Solar System, probably belonging to dozens of species. They know we’re here and have been studying us since we first evolved, just like David Attenborough and his ilk study animals today, but with even less intrusive technology. Abduction? No way They’d be so clumsy or blatant without a purpose.
Real question is: what are They expecting us to do?
Another world which supports intelligent life might have found our planet and recognized there is life here. They investigate further with whatever means they have invented. They discover many facts about Earth, including the existence of humans. They would have seen Christians and Muslims and Jews and whatever other faith based religions doing all of the strange incomprehensible things that they do, including warring among other stupid behavior, and just said to themselves “No way we are ever going there or even letting them know we exist,…in fact we will now endeavor to conceal our existence from those religious fools lest they bring their atrocities to us.”
Religions of faith are the stupidest most absurd thing I can think of humans doing,…and they’re doing it in the millions,…and fighting over ridiculous notions. I’m not surprised that although the math indicates the probability for otherworldly life is a very high probability,…no indications have ever been found to support their existence. This proves to me that they are indeed very intelligent.
has anyone considered the frank drake equasion, I mean ok the chances are that there are primative life forms but the chances are that there are %70 more likely to be planets with primative rather then intelligent life.now this said intelligent is going to have to have water oxegeon methane hydrogen sofa and hyro meanick acids. its got to have an apnosheare and a stable star.In the stages of evolotion if they were going to turn out intelligent and a catastrophey occoured to wipe out all life and yet allow mamels to survive like us the probibility is that its going to be millions of light years away. the claim on radio vaves might be a load of rubbish due to the fact that there so far away might mean that their so called comunications might get cancelled out. weve forggoten all the obsticals ;black holes nuetrons stellar colappsations all obstacals but still theres a possibility.
yeah, what he said:
Listen, “they” not only know we are here, “they” come and visit, look, listen, watch us evolve and sadly allow us to continue this absurd destruction of one another over non-existent god or gods. Ricky said it well and pretty much hit the nail on the head. Until we learn to live together and spend our short little lives improving and supporting other life on this planet, we will be left alone. We must stop this wasteful expenditure of time and treasure on death, destruction and religion and show some semblance of intelligence and compassion or be doomed to wallow in this mess we’ve made. My thought is if we can’t accomplish an intelligent society in a few tens of thousands of years, we might look appealing as a food source. You know, the way we look at the “lower” animals on this planet. As we live, the planet dies.
1. The assumption that a significantly advanced non-terrestrial civilization would seek to contact us directly is wrong! They would know, from obvious theoretical research based on actual experiences and experiments within their own history and intellectual evolution, that very significant socio-psychological harm would be caused to any relatively insecure species that would obviously feel inferior, subservient and totally vulnerable! Part of that harm would be in the form of Severe Mass Irreality Syndrome! Almost everyone on Earth would surely lose their ability to trust themselves and their senses as things got to be too much like hyper-fiction experienced in movies! No advanced species would want to have to be responsible for caring for a socio-psychologically crippled species; one which would eventually threaten to destroy the senior civilization!
2. The assumption that non-terrestrial species travel at super-luminal speeds or by somehow entering into Wormholes or by Hyperdimensional Parametric Travel is naive! The most likely thing is that a seriously advanced species would have discovered the need to create artificial self-enclosed inverse planetary worlds, that can reduce their own species’ exposure to the lethally harmful radiation waves that currently pass through us and tend to trigger cancer and other immunologic dysfunctionality, and that can also serve as massive multi-generational spacecraft to travel from one fertile system to another! Such inverse artificial world’s would appear to be natural moons or planets to us, and would self-contain all their basic needs, including entire oceans and landmasses with flora and fauna! And their Crust and other layers would serve to keep out all the seriously harmful, genetic-altering and damaging radiation waves that exist in any given star system!
more at mhy web-site
If they are aware of us and have been studying us they would see that we have a long way to go before we have a mature civilization: We are overpopulating our planet and killing each other based upon belief in delusion. They are not going to contact us. To assist us with technology would not make it better. Our Alpha people take advantage of the rest for their personal gain: obscene wealth and power. To help us cure disease would accelerate the overpopulation problem. If they are wise they will stay clear of us. Maybe they’ll wait until we have destroyed this planet then they will fix it and populate it with a more deserving life form. We won’t be here. Maybe cockroaches. Maybe we are two-legged cockroaches.
Of course our radio technology would be primitive to an advance civilization, however they still would monitor RF signals for emerging technological civilisations. Seti would do the same if there was an lower technology that could penetrate space like RF, but there isnt that we know of. But in space time our civilization is growing in an instant and the mass of RF transmission we have produced over 60 years would appear as an explosion if someone were monitoring us. That would trigger a sign of the very dangerous stage of our growth be are currently in. If the kid down the street discovered a box of grenades wouldn’t you hesitate to go near him?
E & S: please come up with something a little more intelligent than this. Transits? That would only work for stars that are in the plane of our orbit, and they would have to be looking at us on the one day of the year that Earth would transit Sol. And our modest little star isn’t even visible for more than 70 light years,so we would not attract much attention from from anything beyond a couple hundred light years; not to mention the obscuring dust in the plane of the galaxy. Radio transmissions? Let’s take a look at our own radio transmissions since for most of the galaxy, that is the only way they’d know we’re here. Although wireless radio was invented in the 1880’s by Marconi, we only began continuous, high powered transmission around 1920, or 88 years ago. That means only stars within 88 light years have recieved our signals. Now take this tiny marble of radio waves 176 light years in diameter and locate it in the Milky Way galaxy, which is 100,000 light years across. Thats about .0176 per cent. And that assumes they are looking for communication in the form of radio waves- not a foregone conclusion. Therefore, it is very unlikely they know “we” are here at all.
I have a question for those of you who seem to think that we are moving away from radio, (assumedly as our primary means of long-haul communication). To what, are we moving toward? I also have a question for those people who responded to the article with comments about our faiths and religions here on Earth: Are you sure?…
If ET life sees the image of our Earth passes in front of our sun, they will know that Earth exist, but they will not know if there is actual life on Earth. Also this image will take anywhere from thousands to millions of years to reach other planets, which means they would be looking at Earth’s past where humans may not even exist on Earth yet. If they tune-in to our radio waves they will hear nothing because we didn’t utilize radio waves until a century ago.
Our faiths and religions here on Earth are a man made hoax perpetrated to control. Devils were dreamed up, literately, as well as spirits I am sure. A Convenient invention for ignorant people to follow and a scapegoat so we don’t have to take responsibility for our own actions.
That was an alien ship I saw moving over Stephenville TX with my own eyes, I am sure. How “THEY” move intergalactic or extragalactic I do not know, but they know we are here. A good guess is these are robot ships.
I want to be abducted by the aliens