Now this struck me a bit odd frankly. According to the BBC, scientists have beamed images and messages to a planet some 20 light years from Earth in an attempt to illicit a response should life exist there. Fine. I’m sure it’s all very technical and let’s be honest, you don’t know unless you try.
But with all that manpower and effort, not to mention any cost involved, isn’t it just a tad short-sighted to think that, if the messages do arrive, and ET is at least semi-intelligent and not crawling around on it’s stomach sucking up sand, that the alien beings can speak English? So let’s assume for a moment they can, and they reply. How are we going to decipher their reply? Might take years to find it was something like “Not bad ta. Weather’s not great. Oh and by the way, the invasion launches tomorrow.” They can’t be imagining much resistance.
Let’s just hope they don’t have the adage “a picture says more than a thousand words”!
It reminded me of that episode a few years back when Nasa launched a Mars probe at great expense. Waiting with baited breath, they watched as it veered off into the planet’s atmosphere and consigned itself to what will probably become the Universe’s largest dustbin. And why was this? Turned out someone at Lockheed had plotted it’s route in English units rather than metric. D’oh.