Thursday, May 04, 2006

I happened across this surprisingly well-rounded post via Rudy Rucker's blog. Titled "Top 10 Evidence for Extraterrestrial Intelligence," it contains items not commonly found in sanitized mainstream texts on ETI.

For example:

Pulsars have a strong frequency and also fine grain modulations within that frequency. It has been postulated that these modulations may encode information. The possibility remains that pulsars may be artificially created communication beacons. In his book, The Talk of the Galaxy, Dr. Paul LaViolette shows how new high-resolution recordings of pulsar signals reveal features that are inconsistent with the long-standing "neutron star lighthouse" pulsar model. He has even proposed that the position of certain powerful pulsars may encode the mathematical constant Pi, indicating that pulsars have been created by super-advanced ETIs.


Such possibilities are not, of course, in the best interests of the reigning cult of "alien experts."





Here's another notion worth considering:

Some fungi is know to produce states where we can directly communicate with seemingly alien intelligences (for example the 'self-transforming machine elves' associated with DMT). Terence McKenna has proposed that hallucinogenic fungi may be an alien technology, "seeded" on Earth by non-human intelligence, as part of a "biological communication strategy", in order to alter the perceptive processes of the human mind so that it may receive messages being transmitted to us. It is also conceivable that fungi is in itself intelligent, meaning that ETIs are living among us undetected right now.


The methods nonhuman intelligences -- indigenous or otherworldly -- might use to contact us constitute nothing less than forbidden knowledge. I maintain that the next generation of alien-hunters should expand SETI's dogmatic approach to include all scientifically testable scenarios. In effect, we need to reclaim SETI, as the effort is as likely to tell us as much about our heritage as it promises to invent new ways of perceiving our long-term future.

1 comment:

Mac said...

this is more like it...

My reaction exactly. It occurred to me that the SETI drones are essentially looking for Klingons and Romulans...