Desiring Machine

Recently watched an interesting documentary on the history of the telescope. One little side comment came from a SETI scientist who described their project as a matter of looking for broadcast signals from space that reflect a comparable intelligence or “cleverness” similar to our own. This lead me to a hypothetical thought. What if eventually we do stumble across such a signal? What meaning do we make of it? Is there any significance of the very fact that we are able to find such a signal? What does it mean to have an “intelligent” signal beamed in our direction? Would this imply some expectation or presumption of a dialog? A two way communication? Assume for a minute that there is in fact a similarly evolved alien intelligence out there, how astronomically unlikely that we would be so fortunate for them to actually beam a comprehensible signal in our very direction? Of course if one understands anything about radio technology, one certainly understands that we as a civilization have been beaming signal indiscriminately into space for well over a century now. TV, radio, various satellite link ups etc. We are a leaky, noisy planet, abundant with signal just waiting to be heard by an extra terrestrial species.

But here is the somewhat wild thought experiment. Now assume that we knew, at least conceptually, of a similar intelligence to our own, and that they lived in a specific corner of the sky, specific coordinates of the universe and our galaxy. Which such knowledge how would we most effectively go about ensuring that they received our signal? We would concentrate our signal in such a way as to maximize its likelihood of being received. We would develop high powered radio transmission and a light emitting signal apparatus. A sufficiently technologically advanced species would perhaps even figure out how to harness a nearby star in the creation of such a signal. Depending on the distance needed to be traversed it would require massive amounts of energy and adept technological capacity. Combine that with the likelihood of knowing where to beam the signal and we can easily surmise the profoundly unlikely nature of such a communicative event happening. Now imagine that such an event does in fact occur in the future. What exactly would this be evidence of? Would it be evidence of a distant alien species knowing of our existence? Or would it be merely evidence of a similarly curious species taking a “shot in the dark”, as it were, and beaming a signal that many, many, light years later happens to fall upon our attentive SETI ears and eyes.

The really, far out thought. If such an event occurred, might it not be evidence of us talking to ourselves? The thought goes as follows:

Some time in the future an advanced, earth bound group of humans figures out a way to travel the far reaches of space. But the technique requires much sacrifice and by its very nature multi-generational existence to cover the distance. Perhaps thousands or millions of generations must live and die on the journey, bound to the spaceship, before we humans could arrive at some distant stellar destination. Assume further that we do in fact possess the means to traverse through space, and through some quirk of space/time our intrepid explorers enter into some time bending mode of travel. And having arrived their destination this group of humans find themselves from our future, now in their past and separated from the home planet by an immense vastness of space and time. After many generations, perhaps thousands of years of parallel development, they have settled a distance planet and are ready to communicate back to us. Wouldn’t it be convenient that such a group would in fact know where home was and therefore able to direct a signal in our precise direction, confident that there was in fact an ancestor species nearly on the verge of being able to detect and make meaning of such a signal? Perhaps, the first signals from SETI, will not be evidence of some cold and distant alien race communicating with us, but rather our other selves communicating back home. A human to human collect call across the vastness of space telling us that we will arrive someday at a distant place, heretofore unknown.