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Voyager's 'Cosmic Map' of Earth's Location Is Hopelessly Wrong

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Re: Voyager's 'Cosmic Map' of Earth's Location Is Hopelessly Wrong

#41

Post by 1001101 »

ufmace wrote: post #31
pavel_lishin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy it, at least not as stated in the book. The axioms in the book are flawed, and there are some unspoken axioms that aren't explicitly laid out. 1. Destroying a civilization isn't risk free. If you destroy a nearby star system that harbors life, you better be sure that your weapon can't be traced back to you, by either any observers, or by the survivors. (See Forge of God & The Anvil of the Stars[1] for a s…

Trying to spin up axioms and theories about the game theory of whether or not to destroy alien species seems hopeless to me. There's so many parts of it that hinge on what is or isn't possible to know and do in the first place. It could easily swing either way based on countless factors we know nothing about. I'm far from saying for sure that something like that is definitely true, or even more likely than not. But i…

It's a bit anthropocentric to ascribe human utility calculus to alien behavior motivation.

Re: Voyager's 'Cosmic Map' of Earth's Location Is Hopelessly Wrong

#42

Post by alistproducer2 »

Good. I'm not sure giving other species a map to our planet was such an awesome idea in the first place. Although, what if we just pissed them off more by giving them wrong directions? They might be like "we were going to come in peace, bu then you wasted so much of our time with those shitty directions that now all you base belong to us."

Re: Voyager's 'Cosmic Map' of Earth's Location Is Hopelessly Wrong

#43

Post by pavel_lishin »

1001101 wrote: post #41
ufmace wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to spin up axioms and theories about the game theory of whether or not to destroy alien species seems hopeless to me. There's so many parts of it that hinge on what is or isn't possible to know and do in the first place. It could easily swing either way based on countless factors we know nothing about. I'm far from saying for sure that something like that is definitely true, or even more likely than not. But i…

It's a bit anthropocentric to ascribe human utility calculus to alien behavior motivation.

That's a baby-eating attitude.

Re: Voyager's 'Cosmic Map' of Earth's Location Is Hopelessly Wrong

#44

Post by Chaebixi »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #8
godshatter wrote: post #7

Wouldn't they just look at the nearest star first? On the scale of light years, it's so close to us it's extremely obvious where it came from, and will be for many thousands of years. Just backtracking it's course should be enough for a much longer time after that. Sure, millions of years from now it might be harder to figure out, but we'll be long gone by then. They can come bother our descendents, whatever form the…

Depends on how far it goes and if any other gravitational forces act on it along the way. Sometimes I wonder if the decision to turn Voyager around to produce the photo of the "pale blue dot" will someday end up fucking with aliens who couldn't imagine another species who would launch a deep space probe backwards.

IIRC, Voyager's camera is on a movable arm. The probe itself has never "turned" and always has its antenna dish pointed at Earth.

New Horizons had a different design and works more like you describe; where the whole probe has to turn to point the camera.

Re: Voyager's 'Cosmic Map' of Earth's Location Is Hopelessly Wrong

#45

Post by ufmace »

1001101 wrote: post #41
ufmace wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to spin up axioms and theories about the game theory of whether or not to destroy alien species seems hopeless to me. There's so many parts of it that hinge on what is or isn't possible to know and do in the first place. It could easily swing either way based on countless factors we know nothing about. I'm far from saying for sure that something like that is definitely true, or even more likely than not. But i…

It's a bit anthropocentric to ascribe human utility calculus to alien behavior motivation.

Indeed, even if our "game theories" are perfectly reasoned by our logic and the technology available to us, there's no telling what kind of logic and thought patterns an alien civilization might use, and what different types of technology they might have.

Re: Voyager's 'Cosmic Map' of Earth's Location Is Hopelessly Wrong

#46

Post by logfromblammo »

bronzeage wrote: post #36

The titles is wrong. The map is still in fact accurate, and not wrong as the titles suggests. It's just that it's totally useless because it's ambiguous. A more appropriate title would be "Voyager's 'Cosmic Map' of Earth's Location Is Hopelessly Useless".

It's like burying treasure in a forest, and using a dozen or so trees as your landmarks.

If you're standing on top of your cache, sure, the map makes sense, but if you're anywhere else at all, you would need to map every tree in the forest, and run a pattern recognition algorithm on them, hoping that none of the key trees have blown down or burned since the map was made.

Re: Voyager's 'Cosmic Map' of Earth's Location Is Hopelessly Wrong

#47

Post by throwaway1X2 »

sulam wrote: post #35
throwaway1X2 wrote: post #30

I'm not anywhere near being well-versed in astronomy, so I cannot judge how hard that problem actually is, but let me present a counterpoint/food for thought: 40 years ago, we launched a probe with what we though as of then as being a nice, permanent map of our location. Since then, we learned that there are many more 'beacons' in the universe than those we have chosen and pointed out in our 'map', and they change ra…

I agree with you, completely. In fact, more than completely -- it's likely that there are a large number of signals that we didn't even think of as signals that a reasonably intelligent, resourceful alien detective could use to find us. My mind immediately jumps to the specific chemical composition of the metals, for instance. Or perhaps remnant zodiacal dust grains that will certainly be on it. Even simple orbital b…

Excellent point, in the heat of many discussions whether even a studied being of the same species [human] would get the hydrogen state reference, it never occurred that even without decoding anything nor putting any styluses anywhere, just the mere possession of the record and, for example, analyzing primordial traces could give us away... And I mentioned the C14 earth-bound analogy, damn! :)

Re: Voyager's 'Cosmic Map' of Earth's Location Is Hopelessly Wrong

#48

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

tinus_hn wrote: post #37
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how far it goes and if any other gravitational forces act on it along the way. Sometimes I wonder if the decision to turn Voyager around to produce the photo of the "pale blue dot" will someday end up fucking with aliens who couldn't imagine another species who would launch a deep space probe backwards.

Reaistically once you go far enough the only things to see that you couldn't see before are behind you. There isn't much blocking the view of the distant objects (and we're never going to get a close-up of them) once you leave the earth's atmosphere so once you reach the edge of the solar system the only things that are interesting to look at are behind you.

That's a good point. It would be nice to have an actual photograph of our Oort Cloud, after all.

Re: Voyager's 'Cosmic Map' of Earth's Location Is Hopelessly Wrong

#49

Post by iammyIP »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #18
iammyIP wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'the most logical course of action for any alien discovering another life form, is to destroy it immediately'. In that case i'd rather be destroyed than share a universe with such a species. I do not think the premise makes sense. It also makes no sense to compare it with the slaughter of native americans, since that has been done by apes in clothes. Any interstellar spacefaring civilisation should be so advanced tha…

You've got a fairly self-fulfilling wish. If we share a universe with Dark Foresters, you'll be destroyed! And if we don't, you won't!

Yes, if it would be code, pretty redundant.

But the main point was that such a zip bomb species would be a fault of the universal system. I don't think it's that stupidly designed.

Re: Voyager's 'Cosmic Map' of Earth's Location Is Hopelessly Wrong

#50

Post by iammyIP »

nkrisc wrote: post #34
iammyIP wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'the most logical course of action for any alien discovering another life form, is to destroy it immediately'. In that case i'd rather be destroyed than share a universe with such a species. I do not think the premise makes sense. It also makes no sense to compare it with the slaughter of native americans, since that has been done by apes in clothes. Any interstellar spacefaring civilisation should be so advanced tha…

> In that case i'd rather be destroyed than share a universe with such a species. Lucky for you, that's exactly what would happen if you shared the universe with such a species.

The underlying system is hopefully much better designed, so this will never occur.
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