While surfing the net, I found this article on the Telegraph by Martin Evans where he talks about a theory by Dr Frank Drake that the phasing out of analogue transmissions from television, radio and radar is making our planet electronically invisible from outer space.
In all an interesting theory and if its true then the risk of having an Alien armada drop in on us to destroy us after they see our broadcasts is slowly going down. Which is a good thing 🙂
But I don’t agree with the theory. I mean, yeah we have replaced old fashioned TV and Radio transmitters with digital transmitters but how does that reduce the strength of the signal? I would think that we are slowly becoming more and more visible as everything is getting linked to the each other and more and more stuff is transmitting some sort of electronic signal.
For example, 20 years ago the only things that communicated wirelessly in my house were the TV and Radio. Today I have: TV, Radio, Cellphone, Wireless modem, Laptop, remote access keys etc etc. There are appliances out there that connect wirelessly to the web. There are wireless video camera’s in some houses and offices. A lot of cities are launching wireless internet access for the whole city. The list goes on and on…
In a couple of years everything we have will be accessible over a wireless connection. Even today there are coffee machines out there that send an email when the coffee is done.
What do you think? Are we becoming ‘safer’ from the alien invasion?
– Suramya
Being digitally wireless might defer aliens from decrypting the data being sent due to the complexity of encryption. But what the heck… if hackers here can manage to decrypt WEP keys… An alien must have some superior intelligence than us for them to build a vehicle which can travel so many distances, so I doubt hacking into a digital piece of wireless signal will be a trouble for them.
Comment by Rishi — January 31, 2010 @ 2:27 AM
Yeah. However the ‘problem’ is not that them decrypting the signal, its them receiving it in the first place to decrypt it.
Even after they receive it, it won’t be easy for them to decrypt the signal and once they do how will they understand the content?
Just to give you an idea of how difficult it is to decipher a language, The Indus valley civilization is over 4 thousand years old and historians have been trying to understand their written language for a couple of centuries but still haven’t figured it out. So what makes it believable that a group of aliens will be able to do it faster?
Although if they watch TV and follow some of the shows it would give them an idea of how our language works and get a faster handle on the translation.
– Suramya
Comment by Suramya — January 31, 2010 @ 2:54 AM
Well, if they watch TV let’s just hope they didnt end up watching the whole “kyunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi” series. If so, I wonder what they’ll think about the human race. [[Assuming they managed to understand the language]] lol:)
Comment by Rishi — February 1, 2010 @ 1:58 AM
I wonder what they would think if they saw one of the reality shows or maybe one of those Japanese game shows?
That would really mess them up.
Comment by Suramya — February 1, 2010 @ 2:10 AM