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Sunday, November 28, 2004
If aliens really are watching our TV . . . What happens when we switch over to another format? I mean, SETI is based on the idea that we can read signals from alien civilizations in the radio signals, and it's been a longstanding sci-fi standby that aliens watch our TV shows. So, picture this: 2006, all television stations have been changed over to use a HDTV signal. Also by that time, Sirius satellite radio has taken a serious hold over international radio, and is offering a satellite HDTV service. By 2009, cable television, in an attempt to keep dominance over media transfer, sets up a grid of wireless repeaters with 75 miles distance (latitude and longitude) between each node. Each node is tied to the others by buried fiber optic cable. Each node has a wi-fi signal strength of about fifty miles, thus covering Japan, Eastern China, Europe, Belarus, Northern Africa, Australia, India, Middle America, the US and Canada. 2010, the last transmission by CBS is made using our high power, low frequency message system. By this time, all news agencies have been moved over to the wifi messaging system, and only hobbyists still watch "broadcast" TV. Since no one is watching for news, the "majors" do not bother explaining why it is shutting off. The last message is, "This concludes our broadcast era." 2014, Alpha Centauri, which has been monitoring the signals coming from earth notices that there is a sudden, unexplained cutoff in the Earth broadcasts. For the last few millennia, Earth has been considered off limits as a neutral zone between the warring people of Wolf 359 and Proxima Centauri. Alpha Centauri was tasked with maintaining the border between the two factions, and has maintained peace for eons. However, Alpha Centauri is unable to pick up the messages from the WiFi repeaters. Since they are made to send messages only fifty miles away, the signal from the repeaters is very weak, and high frequency. Since there are millions of them, all sending different patterns of data, they garble the signal coming off of Earth; and since they are all encrypted and compressed, any message that could be received is considered trash. Alpha Centauri announces that Earth has been neutralized, and since neither faction will admit responsibility for it, they both assume that the other has taken over Earth as a staging point in renewed conflict. The war begins anew, with both sides using Earth as their first target. So, in order to save the human race, support SETI, and keep sending out those broadcast messages. The planet you save might be your own. - posted by BrandG @ 2:36 AM  
Comments:
(This is Dave, hello from Canada!)
Couple of points that come to mind... First, I imagine ham radio people will still keep doing what they're doing, and those signals will still make it out into the cosmos. Second, any highly-advanced civilization monitoring our transmissions would recognise a shut-off (especially if it ended with "here ends our broadcast era") as exactly what it is, as they would have done the same thing an eon or two ago. Hopefully they would then recognise that we were only a few years away from a technology singularity (read "Marooned in Realtime" by Vernor Vinge) and send emissaries to give us cures for cancer, messages of galactic peace etc. and invite us into the Federation of Planets. Dave # posted by
 : 11:29 AM
Okay, well, half of writing sci-fi is making impossible stuff sound plausible, so let me try to explain these away.
If the people on Alpha Centauri treat HAM radio operators the way other humans do, they would assume that every transmission they receive is another "War of the Worlds" hoax. Also, wouldn't those transmissions be drowned out by the interference pattern created by the millions of Wi-Fi hubs? And when I say, "monitoring the signals coming from Earth", I meant monitoring in the same sense that we use to monitor a signal. One guy sitting in a booth with an oscilliscope, who occasionally looks up at the meter and says, "Yup. We've still got a signal coming in." I mean, it's not like they're really going to be waiting in anticipation to see the upcoming reunion of the "OC". :) I like to think that my aliens are somewhere between the 2001 aliens, who pretty much ignore us unless we push their buttons (the 1x4x9 button), and "The Explorers" aliens, who totally enveloped our culture through our TV signals.
sounds incredibly possible to me.. but i think the alpha centauri would have missed his favourite news wrap one night and sent out a nuke tracer just in case..
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how did he miss it ? the console was unmanned for the 4 days of re-runs while the broadcast networks quickly recap everything before they are finally told to unplug it. always did hate re-runs. (except for Seinfeld.) cheerz SEV << Home 
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