Carl Sagan's questions for aliens. (1996)

2 points by qndreoi 5 years ago | 4 comments

"The Demon Haunted World" (1996) Chapter six has this passage "Occasionally, I get a letter from someone who is in 'contact' with extraterrestrials. I am invited to 'ask them anything.' And so over the years I've prepared a little list of questions. The extraterrestrials are very advanced, remember. So I ask things like, 'Please provide a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.' Or the Goldbach Conjecture. And then I have to explain what those are, because extraterrestrials will not call it Fermat's Last Theorem. So I write the simple equation with the exponents. I never get an answer.

So, what question would you ask, mathematical or other, to determine if the aliens are more advanced than humans?

Or, what question would be most useful to know the answer to?

qndreoi 5 years ago |

Inertial confinement or magnetic confinement? Which is a dead end? Which is the more promising path forward in 2021? Why?

AnimalMuppet 5 years ago | |

I'd rather ask someone "in contact with aliens" a math question, where we could check the answer, than a question about the direction of technology which 1) gives them a binary choice (easier to fake), and 2) could result in some labs burning years of time, even if they don't blow themselves up.

qndreoi 5 years ago | | |

Hence the last part of the question, "Why?"

I doubt even someone with a PhD in an unrelated field could bullshit the experts in fusion research.