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"A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content."
- Theodore Sturgeon
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| Communicate with Extraterrestrials | ||
| Early plan to communicate with life on planets removed from the earth. |
This effort preceded SETI by over a century. As far as I know, this is the first proposal to communicate with life not of this earth.
| I am bound to add that some practical geniuses have attempted to
establish actual communication with her. Thus, a few days ago,
a German geometrician proposed to send a scientific expedition
to the steppes of Siberia. There, on those vast plains, they
were to describe enormous geometric figures, drawn in characters
of reflecting luminosity, among which was the proposition
regarding the `square of the hypotenuse,' commonly called the
`Ass's Bridge' by the French.
`Every intelligent being,' said the geometrician, `must understand the scientific meaning of that figure. The Selenites, do they exist, will respond by a similar figure; and, a communication being thus once established, it will be easy to form an alphabet which shall enable us to converse with the inhabitants of the moon.' So spoke the German geometrician; but his project was never put into practice, and up to the present day there is no bond in existence between the Earth and her satellite. It is reserved for the practical genius of Americans to establish a communication with the sidereal world. |
| Technovelgy from From the Earth to the Moon,
by Jules Verne. Published by Pierre-Jules Hetzel in 1867 Additional resources -
|
How prophetic can you be? It was indeed reserved for Americans to establish communication with other bodies in the solar system.
Frank Drake - a young radio astronomer working in West Virginia - independently fashioned an experiment to search for signals from extraterrestrial intelligence. On April 8, 1960, he aimed a 26-meter radio telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank at two nearby stars. Sweeping his single-channel receiver up and down the microwave band, Drake spent several weeks listening for extraterrestrial signals. Known as Project Ozma, this was the first modern SETI search.
It's probable that this method was put forward by Carl Fredrich Gauss (1777-1855) who in 1820 apparently suggested drawing an enormous pythagorean triangle on the Siberian tundra. In 1840, the Vienna Observatory's Joseph von Littrow suggested digging great trenches to form geometric shapes. The trenches would be filled with kerosene, and lit on fire at night. Gauss eventually went so far as to suggest 100 heliotropic mirrors synchronized to beam light at the moon.
Compare to planetary telegraphing from In the Deep of Time (1879) by George Parsons Lathrop, the ether-traffic from The Duel on the Asteroid (1932) by P. Schuyler Miller (w/D. McDermott), the Interplanetary Communications Center from QRM - Interplanetary (1942) by George O. Smith and the Quantum Communications Hub from Defeated (2004) by Sean McKee.
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Tech news articles related to works by Jules Verne
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'What would you do,' Eric asked the robot cabdriver, 'if your wife had turned to stone, your best friend were a toad, and you had lost your job?'
'those suits they wear -- call them 'stillsuits' -- that reclaim the body's own water...'
'Now, except for weight and heat, the same conditions prevail in this chamber as in space.'
'there were so many worms and counterworms loose in the data-net...'
'Now, look, let's start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics...'
'..the synthetic intellects at the Place of Knowledge had far outstripped the minds of men.'
'But after washing and drying clothes had to be smooth - free from fine lines and wrinkles ...'
