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What do we do if SETI is successful?

(www.universetoday.com)
174 points leephillips | 1 comments | 20 Oct 25 17:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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kyledrake ◴[22 Oct 25 06:03 UTC] No.45665378[source]▶
> Even Carl Sagan (a general believer that any civilization advanced enough for interstellar travel would be altruistic, not hostile) called the practice of METI “deeply unwise and immature,” and recommended that “the newest children in a strange and uncertain cosmos should listen quietly for a long time, patiently learning about the universe and comparing notes, before shouting into an unknown jungle that we do not understand.

https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

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jcarrano ◴[22 Oct 25 08:13 UTC] No.45666171[source]▶
Carl Sagan doxxed the Earth with the Voyager disk.
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Cthulhu_ ◴[22 Oct 25 11:32 UTC] No.45667522[source]▶
The probe (and disc) are infintesmally small in the grand scheme of things, if there's anything that would reveal the position of Earth it's our own signal emissions, which are well ahead of the Voyager probes (the first radio signals are now ~125 light years away. No idea if they can still be detected among background radiation though)
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1. narag ◴[22 Oct 25 17:28 UTC] No.45672366[source]▶
There's a joke about a speeding BMW that crashes into the back of a hay cart. The driver complains that the cart should had a red rag to signal its presence. The carter responds "you didn't see the cart, would have you seen the rag?"

The info in Voyager is just a vanity plate... or a time capsule. Nothing wrong with that anyway. Some time in the future, humans will locate it and put it back in a museum.