Ten questions to ask an alien

JLam

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JLam
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In Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World", he was writing about frustrations he encountered when corresponding with people who claimed to be in contact with aliens from advanced civilizations. He never was able to get satisfactory answers to questions that are unanswered by our civilization. He writes:

It's a stimulating exercise to think of questions to which no human today knows the answers, but where a correct answer would immediately be recognized as such. It's even more challenging to formulate such questions in fields other than mathematics. Perhaps we should hold a contest and collect the best resonses in "Ten Questions to Ask an Alien"
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So, who wants to start?
 
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jlam said:
In Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World", he was writing about frustrations he encountered when corresponding with people who claimed to be in contact with aliens from advanced civilizations. He never was able to get satisfactory answers to questions that are unanswered by our civilization. He writes:



So, who wants to start?
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10: What's the deal with cattle mutilations? You really like beef that much?
9: Were the guys that crashed at Roswell drunk? I mean, really...you don't have these things designed so that they're crash-proof?
8: Why are you always picking up...um..."rural types"? Don't you like city folk?
7: Do they have weed where you come from?
6: Ummm...where...are...um...where are your...uh...parts?
5: You didn't come here for our TV programs, did you?
4: Can you guys tell the future? If so, can you give me some stock picks?
3: I bet your doctors are a lot better than ours, right? Well, see, I've had this pain for a while...
2: Can I drive that thing?
1: If you abduct me...can we please skip the anal probe?

OK...I'll think about it and put up a serious list at a later time. :) That one's going to take more thought. :)
 
Imagine a contact with an alien race that were completly atheistic. Imagine they had no cultural 'network' on which to hang the idea of God.

Now imagine trying to explain the concept to them.

I think we have a sit-com in the making.....

(Or did Mork and Mindy cover this one?)
 
I read the book, and I often find myself thinking on possible questions of that kind. But I've been unable to come up with simple and satisfactory questions meeting the requirements. I think the hard part is the "immediatly recognized" aspect.

In 1955, say, a good question could've been: "Please provide me with a detailed topographic map of the other side of the moon".

Today, perhaps: "Please tell your alien friend to provide me with a complete topographic map of the surface of Venus"
 
jlam said:
In Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World", he was writing about frustrations he encountered when corresponding with people who claimed to be in contact with aliens from advanced civilizations. He never was able to get satisfactory answers to questions that are unanswered by our civilization. He writes:



So, who wants to start?
Click to expand...

Where, precisely, are you from?
Anyone who travelled here should be able to give an answer that we'd readily understand and could check.

Is there a way we, as a species or nation, planet, community or whatever, could be in touch after you've left?
I mean, they must have an e-mail address, right? Or at least an aliene equvalent to hubble or some such things wich with it should be possible to at least communicate rudemntarily.

See, we don't really want to bother you all that much, but we have a slight problem here with [AIDS, ebola, world hunger, limited energy resources, Geroge Bush]. Any pointers?
On the grounds that it won't harm to ask and see what they can up with. Chnaces are that in order to advance to interstellar space flight they might have been around long enough to have seen and coped with one or two similar situations.

Why us? Why now?
Inquiring minds want to know! There must be other interesting planets and I doubt that they just gt lost on their way to somewhere else. Or have they really been everywhere else yet and we're last in line?

Would you care to talk about God with us?
I was going to be just funny and just slip in a jehova's witnesses refernce or something; but I honestly would like to know how their society works and what exactly it is that made the mas advanced as they appear to be.

Rasmus.
 
Rasmus said:
Where, precisely, are you from?
Anyone who travelled here should be able to give an answer that we'd readily understand and could check.
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"He" can name any star, and describe in any detail his home planet, but how can you recognize it as a "correct" answer?
 
jlam said:
In Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World", he was writing about frustrations he encountered when corresponding with people who claimed to be in contact with aliens from advanced civilizations. He never was able to get satisfactory answers to questions that are unanswered by our civilization. He writes:



So, who wants to start?
Click to expand...


When this happened on this forum I went for mersenne primes:

http://206.225.95.123/forumlive/showthread.php?t=29096

Asside from maths the problem becomes more difficult.

In chemistry I would probably go for asking for the recipy for a high tempreture superconductor,

In phyisics I'd look ask what disscoveries the large hadron positron colider will make.

Biology is even more difficult though I supose I could as for the structure of a protene that we have got the structure for yet.
 
Beatles or Stones?

Or...

How long have you guys been watching us and do you have it all on DVD?
 
Patricio Elicer said:
"He" can name any star, and describe in any detail his home planet, but how can you recognize it as a "correct" answer?
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People do look for signs of life out there, analysing data from radiotelescopes and what not. (what would I know about this? I barely got my seti@home installed) I suspect that knowing where exactly we should look; possibly even what we ought to be looking for precisely, might help?

I didn't so much realize that those questions ought to be designed to verify that the answers are supplied by actual aliens, though. (Hey, you got a cure for Aids, I won't give a rule8 where you're from...)

Also, I did ignore the "immediately"-part of the correct answer.

If one day a greenis, intelligent slime oozes into my house and manages to talk to me - despite my heartatack, panic, screaming, attmepting to run away and whatnot - my first concern would not be to be able to prove the experience to others afterwards.

Also, what good would it do if they did give me the answer to some mathematical problem? Besides my not being able to follow their explanantions, it would jsut show that a certain question can actually be solved. How does that prove they are aliens? It proves they're good at math. If I could answer any of these questions, would you think I was good at math, or belive that I was an alien provided I made the claim?

Rasmus.
 
Rasmus said:
People do look for signs of life out there, analysing data from radiotelescopes and what not. (what would I know about this? I barely got my seti@home installed) I suspect that knowing where exactly we should look; possibly even what we ought to be looking for precisely, might help?
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With current telescopes? Not really.



Also, what good would it do if they did give me the answer to some mathematical problem? Besides my not being able to follow their explanantions, it would jsut show that a certain question can actually be solved. How does that prove they are aliens? It proves they're good at math. If I could answer any of these questions, would you think I was good at math, or belive that I was an alien provided I made the claim?

Rasmus.
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This is why I went for mersenne primes.
 
geni said:
With current telescopes? Not really.
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Like I said, I am rather clueless. So it wouldn't help the nice peolpe at seti@home if they were told where to look?

This is why I went for mersenne primes.
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So if someone did tell you the 42nd Mersenne Prime, what would that tell you? (GIMPS found a 42nd Mersenne Prime earlier this year, btw, or so tells me Wikipedia. Again, I am too ignorant to know if there would be any potential gaps in the list.)

ETA: Reading the other thread I realize oyu probably were aware that they got a little further by now ...)

Rasmus.
 
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Rasmus said:
Like I said, I am rather clueless. So it wouldn't help the nice peolpe at seti@home if they were told where to look?
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only if the aliens were broadcasting quite a powerful signal and if we allow for FTL travel even that would not be enough.

So if someone did tell you the 42nd Mersenne Prime, what would that tell you? (GIMPS found a 42nd Mersenne Prime earlier this year, btw, or so tells me Wikipedia. Again, I am too ignorant to know if there would be any potential gaps in the list.)

ETA: Reading the other thread I realize oyu probably were aware that they got a little further by now ...)

Rasmus.
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There may be gaps in the list so the question properly phrased is "can you tell me a mersenne prime not currently know to the human race?". Once you have a number it is mearly a matter of brute force computeing power to see if they are right.
 
To prove a life form is not of Planet Earth all what is needed is to produce a tissue sample. The DNA (or what they use for DNA) will be a lot different from ours.

Almost any advanced technology will also do. Imagine being given parts from a computer from a more advanced civilization.
 
rjh01 said:
To prove a life form is not of Planet Earth all what is needed is to produce a tissue sample. The DNA (or what they use for DNA) will be a lot different from ours.
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Is was thinking along these lines as well. There ought to be something about their biology that marks them als "not from this world".

Or at least a sufficiently detailed overview of the lifeforms of their homeworld - detailed enough to make sure no human amateur could have made it up.
 
10. Where do you hide the new agers?
9. Can I borrow that ray gun?
8. What's the deal with those thingies on the ends of your shoelaces?
7. Do you have a visa?
6. Want a beer?
5. Got a light?
4. What's your best probe story?
3. Can I fly the saucer for a minute?
2. What kind of music do you listen to?
1. Where did I put that camera?
 
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