Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?

Re:Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work? by drhayes9 on Thursday January 19, 2017 @06:05PM (#13440302)

I just recently learned the term "Bracewell probe" for this kind of device: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracewell_probe

Instead of sending radio signals or etching words or pictures in matter, you send a software agent that is reasonably intelligent in a hardware device into space seeking ETIs. The intelligence aboard the probe can have a conversation with the ETIs and communicate back to home the results.

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Re:Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work? by TeMPOraL on Friday January 20, 2017 @06:40AM (#13443091)

Or you can just send a freezed brain of a volunteer, hoping that alien civilization will be advanced enough to give it means of communication.

(Yes, there was a book with exactly such a plot point.)

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Re:Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work? by euyyn on Thursday January 19, 2017 @08:41PM (#13441124)

We can't even make bots have a reasonable conversation with us in our own language :)

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Re:Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work? by fuhrysteve on Thursday January 19, 2017 @09:17PM (#13441277)

15 yrs ago we were impressed that an apple computer could turn text into audio. Imagine giving us another 10,000yrs (blink of an eye to a blink of an eye in terms of the scale of the galaxy) before deciding how much we're really capable of there

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