If We Discover Aliens, What's Our Protocol for Making Contact?

conceivable that humans could someday discover aliens. We scour the cosmos looking for their radio signals, and though we're not capable of interstellar space travel, it is remotely possible that we could find what we're looking for right here in our solar system.

Life could theoretically exist on Mars, or on Europa, a moon of Jupiter, which appears to have an underground ocean. It's even possible (though highly unlikely) that these nearby life forms could be sentient. "It is consistent with current human exploration of the solar system that intelligent beings could have evolved in the deep oceans of Europa," said Jacob Haqq-Misra, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University.

Another possibility, Haqq-Misra said, is that "intelligent extraterrestrial beings have traveled from a distant star system and taken up residence in the solar system. They might be living in an underground base on Mars or the moon, or they could be residing in the asteroid belt (or any number of other plausible, albeit unlikely, options)."Considering these scenarios, what would we do if we encountered an alien race? As it turns out, the question has garnered considerable academic thought since the first reported flying saucer sighting in 1947, not just as an inquiry in human psychology, but also as a way of contemplating what aliens might do if they ever found us. From astronomers to ufologists to anthropologists, scholars who have contemplated the various "contact scenarios" believe our course of action would strongly depend on the relative intelligence level of the newfound beings. Here, we outline what would happen if we encountered primitive, humanlike, and godlike aliens.

Voyage of discovery

According to Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., the most likely contact scenario is that the alien race we discover will be extremely primitive. This assumption is based on reality, given that the habitable worlds we're capable of exploring — such as Mars and Europa — show no signs of harboring advanced beings. But it also makes sense philosophically: Judging by how long inhabitants of Earth spent in the insectlike trilobite stage compared with how long humans have been around, there's a better chance that life found anywhere in the universe will be primitive.

Furthermore, in light of the immense difficulty of space exploration, it is thought that explorers will typically be far more advanced than the creatures they discover. This makes it easy to set the protocol for a first encounter: If we landed on Mars or Europa and discovered the alien equivalents of trilobites, "you would do what Darwin did — collect samples and take them back home," Shostak told Life's Little Mysteries.

Seven steps

Despite the tendency of Hollywood films and sci-fi novels to depict malevolent encounters between evenly matched space adversaries, Shostak says the size of the universe and the rarity of life makes it extremely unlikely that two races of roughly equal intelligence will encounter one another in the cosmos. That said, reports of UFO sightings led some scholars to develop theories about this scenario. They asked: what would we do if we were aliens discovering us? [Science Fact or Fiction: ET Will Look Like Us]

According to Robert Freitas, author of several books outlining possible alien contact scenarios, in 1950 the U.S. military developed a procedure called "Seven Steps to Contact," laying out the logical steps we would take upon discovering creatures with roughly human-level sentience. According to the steps, we would begin with remote surveillance and data gathering, and would eventually move on to covert visitations with the goal of gauging the performance characteristics of the aliens' vehicles and weaponry.

If we judged our technological capabilities to be superior to those of the other race, we would attempt near approaches to the planet to determine whether the alien beings were hostile, and if so, by what means. If all went well, we would then make brief touchdowns in isolated areas, securing specimens of plants, animals, and of the intelligent beings themselves. In other words, this phase would involve non-harmful abductions similar to those reported by some Americans. (Interestingly, the "Seven Steps to Contact" plan predated the first reported alien abduction incident in 1957, suggesting the theory could have influenced such reports.) [Alien Abductions May Be Vivid Dreams, Study Finds]

Next, we would make our presence known, making low-level approaches where our craft and its operators could be seen, but not reached. We would try to be witnessed by the greatest possible number of inhabitants, and would demonstrate our existence and our nonhostile nature. Lastly, if all went well and there was no reason to think that contact would be disastrous for the two races involved, we would land and attempt to communicate face-to-alien-face.

Half a century since that military report was penned, we'd still follow much the same procedure. "Let's say that a near-future mission to Europa reveals indisputable evidence of intelligent beings/civilization, Haqq-Misra said. "Continued remote exploration would probably be the most likely progression, with attempts at remote communication with the subterranean intelligent beings included as part of the missions. Eventually humans would want to land and make contact (wearing astro-scuba suits?), but a 'precautionary principle' might delay human exploration until robotic exploration has confirmed that Europa's inhabitants are safe."

Alien overlords

What if, as in the second scenario proposed by Haqq-Misra, we happened upon a race of aliens who were orders of magnitude smarter than us — beings capable of interstellar spaceflight who had established a base somewhere in our solar system? Just as ants can't make sense of human behavior, it's difficult or impossible for us to understand how this advanced race would react to us. "[The renowned astronomer] Carl Sagan figured any aliens that might be able to travel between the stars would be so advanced that they would be beyond all this business of aggression and war and so forth," Shostak said. "But that may just be a projection of what he hopes humans would do eventually."

Shostak tends to think differently. Aggression, he says, evolved as a trait among Earthlings because it helps us obtain and protect resources. Though aliens would probably have evolved under totally different conditions, pressure to secure finite resources would probably have molded their behavior, too. "I suspect resources would be finite anywhere in the universe."

If Sagan is right, then the wise race we encountered would treat us with immense consideration and respect, while having the technology to ensure that we treat them similarly. If Shostak is right, and the incredibly advanced aliens we stumbled upon were also as aggressive as we are, we'd probably be toast.

Well, not toast exactly. In Haqq-Misra's opinion, "A society capable of interstellar travel should have solved their development issues such that they do not need humans for food."

World Without a Web: What Will Happen if the Internet Dies?

The recent attack on Chinese dissidents’ Gmail accounts that was purportedly carried out by the Chinese government isn’t the first time the security of the Internet has been called into question. But it did get people talking again about a possible “digital Pearl Harbor.” This phrase is meant to describe a crippling and amorphous offensive on a country’s digital infrastructure. The maxim has become a meme at best, and a scare tactic at worst.

By most accounts, such an attack is thankfully improbable. The very question of such a strike appears to annoy noted security expert Bruce Schneier, author of Applied Cryptography—among other books on the subject—and a source for Congressional hearings on security several times over. He claims that it’s not in our enemies’ best interest to cut off the Internet. For one, eavesdropping would be harder for them. And how would an adversary know it had won? “If we attacked Russia and disabled their communications system, there’s no way they could surrender,” he said

Nokia releases Nokia X Android phone, runs all existing apps, costs just $120 off-contract

Here at Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona, Nokia has surprised everyone by actually releasing the Android-powered Nokia X smartphone. It is available today, in Europe, for €90 (about $120) off-contract. The Nokia X (codenamed Normandy) is a mid-range phone that runs the Finnish phone maker’s own flavor of Android — but, don’t worry, it runs all existing Android apps. It appears Nokia is handling it in almost exactly the same way as Amazon’s Kindle Fire (which also runs Android): Developers will be able to add their Android apps to the Nokia Store — or users can use third-party app store or sideload apps directly.

The Nokia X is a mid-range smartphone that’s oriented towards emerging markets in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. I wouldn’t be surprised if it never comes to the US. It is a dual-SIM phone with a mediocre 4-inch 800×480 screen. There’s a 3-megapixel shooter on the back, an unspecified 1GHz Qualcomm SoC, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB of internal storage (upgradable via Micro SD). The phone looks a bit like a Nokia Lumia, and has roughly the same dimensions (10.4mm thick, 115mm long, 129 grams). As you can see in the images throughout this story, the Nokia X comes in a range of lurid colors (via removable backplates).

Biology of the mind: Is consciousness merely the result of evolution, or something more? (Live video)

At 2:30pm (eastern time) today, some of the world’s preeminent psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers will discuss the biology of the mind. The discussion, which takes place at The Helix Center in New York, will focus on whether the very humanconcepts of the mind, consciousness, and self-awareness are merely a function of the mammalian brain’s structure, or whether there’s more to it. By the same measure, the researchers will discuss whether the mind is purely the reserve of humans, or whether it also exists further down the evolutionary scale (does a dog have a mind? how about a bird, or a crocodile?) These questions, of course, will then lead into another topic that’s particularly close to our hearts at ExtremeTech: If the mind exists purely in the morphology (form, structure) of the brain, and doesn’t contain some kind of weird, unquantifiable, magical quality, will we one day be able to engineer an artificial mind?

Biology of Mind is a roundtable discussion being held by The Helix Center, a relatively new foundation that is tasked with the “unhurried search for wisdom” through interdisciplinary investigation. “Philosophically, we stand against the trivialization of thought and the balkanization within and between the sciences and the arts.” Most of this investigation seems to revolve around a series of roundtable discussions, where the Center puts a bunch of bright people in a room together, gives them a topic for discussion, and then sits back to enjoy whatever emerges. Fortunately for us, the discussions are webcast live on YouTube.

Qualcomm announces new 64-bit, eight-core SoCs with DX11 graphics

At Mobile World Congress today, Qualcomm announced that it’s building a pair of new Snapdragon 600 devices to target the 64-bit market. The first chip, the Snapdragon 610, is a quad-core design based on ARM’s Cortex-A53, while the second chip is an octa-core product based around the same ARM core. This is something of a departure for Qualcomm’s usual MO. In the past, the firm was openly scornful of MediaTek’s octa-core claims, and it typically leads with its own architectures as opposed to a standard ARM CPU core.

Like the standard members of the Snapdragon 800 and 600 family, these devices will rely on Qualcomm’s 28nm LTE modem for communication, but they’ll also include a new GPU variant based on the Adreno 420 GPU. Right now, the highest-end Snapdragon 800 devices currently on the market ship with an Adreno 330 GPU. While capable, the Adreno family has generally been an extension of the work AMD did back in 2006 – 2008, with the highest-end parts topping out with DirectX 9.0c or feature level DirectX 9_3 support. Now, Qualcomm is taking the plunge into DirectX 11 territory.

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WhatsApp Is Offline In Many Countries!

This has got to be one of the worst times to go down. WhatsApp has been down for the last hour or so for many countries around the world. Check out the details regarding WhatsAppbeing offline in many countries below.

If you have tried to use WhatsApp in the last hour or so you would have noticed that your smartphone keeps trying to connect to WhatsApp servers but it fails. The “connecting” word keeps appearing to no avail. If you are seeing this problem then you are not alone, a huge portion of WhatsApp users are facing this issue right now.

WhatsApp has issued so statement regarding why it is down, or none from Facebook – the parent company of WhatsApp.

WhatsApp was recently acquired by Facebook for a staggering $19 billion, one of the largest tech acquisitions of recent times. Facebook is going to pay $4 billion in cash and $12 billion in stocks. Another $3 billion is going to go to the employees of WhatsApp.

This has got to be one of the worst timings for being offline, as many people are questioning the huge amount Facebook has paid for buying WhatsApp.

Steve Jobs may appear on U.S. postage stamp

The likeness of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs may appear on a commemorative U.S. postage stamp in 2015, only four years after his death.
Jobs' name appeared on a list of approved postage-stamp subjects obtained by The Washington Post. Other notable Americans expected to appear on forthcoming stamps include pop icon Michael Jackson, singer James Brown, rocker Jimi Hendrix, talk-show host Johnny Carson, hoops star Wilt Chamberlain, actor Charlton Heston and gay-rights leader Harvey Milk.

The document from the U.S. Postal Service's Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee names "approved subjects" and says that design work on most of them has already begun. But a USPS spokesman told CNN that the list, dated January 7, is still subject to change.

The new subjects are part of an effort by the cash-strapped postal agency to raise revenues by issuing more stamps of pop-culture figures, which are popular with collectors. In November, the USPS released 20 postage stamps honoring Harry Potter, the fictional boy wizard.

"The postal service is looking to bring more timely, relevant, contemporary subjects to stamps ... pop-culture subjects appealing to younger audiences," USPS spokesman Roy Betts said. "It creates excitement."
Next year, the agency also is expected to reissue a stamp of singer Elvis Presley, which became its all-time top seller -- at 29 cents -- when it debuted in 1993. (A first-class stamp now costs 49 cents.)

The Postal Service says it issues some stamps to "honor men and women who have made extraordinary contributions to American society and culture." It used to be that someone had to be dead for at least five years before they could appear on a stamp, but the USPS ended that rule in 2011 and announced that even living people could be featured.

Jobs, who died in 2011, would be the first person from America's computer industry to be honored on a stamp.
"Steve Jobs made major contributions and is worthy of this recognition," Betts said.
On social media, many Friday were noting the irony of the postal service honoring someone whose products helped marginalize snail mail.

Other subjects approved for stamps in the coming years, according to the committee's list: actress Elizabeth Taylor, characters from TV's "Sesame Street" and the "Peanuts" comic strip, and slain Beatle John Lennon.
U.S. stamps typically honor only Americans, but the USPS has begun making exceptions, such as its 2010 stamp celebrating humanitarian Mother Teresa.
But Betts cautioned that the list of subjects, which was published Thursday by the Post and widely replicated online, is not final.

The names on the list "still may not appear on a postage stamp," he said. "There are no guarantees."
The 12-member Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee considers about 50,000 ideas a year, mostly from the public. It recommends about 35 new subjects for commemorative stamps each year to the postmaster general, who makes the final decision.

Why Netflix streaming is getting slower, and probably won’t get better any time soon

Over the last few months, many Netflix users in the US and around the world have noticed a steady decline instreaming video quality. For some subscribers, it’s got to the point where the video is constantly buffering and heavily pixelated. This is particularly irksome, because a high-quality video feed should be possible with just 1 or 2 megabits per second of sustained bandwidth — and almost every Netflix subscriber now has a connection that’s theoretically capable of 10Mbps or more. What’s going on? Why is your Netflix slow and low quality?

The short answer is that Netflix is a victim of its own success. The long answer is that Netflix has outgrown its allotted bandwidth, and thus Netflix traffic is now being throttled by ISPs and core network operators. To explain why Netflix is being throttled, we need to discuss a topic called peering.

YouTube's Redesign Smells a Lot Like Mobile

YouTube took the wraps off a site redesign on Friday, one that borrows heavily from the service's mobile apps. Its new site is better designed to display on any size screen and has more of an emphasis on playlists.

Now when you Like a playlist, it will appear in the left sidebar. Playlists you create will be listed in the sidebar, too, just one click away from anywhere on the site. A simplified editing page makes creating playlists easier as well.

YouTube's website is also now center-aligned with a more card-like appearance, just like its mobile apps. The front page is simple, with just two views: What to Watch and Your Subscriptions. If you want things even more austere, you can also hide the left sidebar with a toggle button right beside the YouTube logo. The sidebar automatically disappears when the browser window gets too thin (though you can get it back by clicking the toggle).

In a blog post describing the change, YouTube reveals its users experience "almost half" of their time on the service through mobile apps — clearly the primary factor guiding the changes.

Overall, the site looks indisputably cleaner and, not coincidentally, is more in line with the most recent redesign of Google services.

Via: Mashable

Acer unveils Liquid range

Both phones are part of Acer’s new Liquid range. Both phones will be shown off in public for the first time at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The Liquid E3 will come with a 4.7-inch high definition IPS screen inside a unibody phone. The body itself is only 8.9mm thick.

As for internals, it will be powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core processor and come with 1GB RAM. The company behind the processor hasn’t been named yet. Storage wise, it has 4GB of storage and Android 4.2.2.

The E3 will come with a 13 megapixel rear facing camera and a two megapixel front facing camera. The rear camera will come with a f/1.8 aperture lens with an ultra-fast focus.

As for the Liquid Z4, it will come with a four-inch screen and is backed by a 1.3GHz processor, 4GB of storage, Android 4.2.2 and five megapixel rear camera.

There is no word on how much RAM it will come with, but we’d be surprised if it is more than 1GB. Indeed, it’s much more likely bearing in mind the price to be 512MB.

Both phones will go on sale in the UK in April. The Acer Liquid E3 will cost around £165, while the Liquid Z4 will be priced at around £85.

Samsung Galaxy S5 to be waterproof?

At the event, we should find out the Samsung Galaxy S5’s launch date, price and its specifications.

Rumours have already given us a good idea of what to expect. But with just days before Mobile World Congress opens its doors, one more rumour has found its way on to the internet.

According to ZDNet Korea, the Samsung Galaxy S5 will be both waterproof and dustproof. The site did not reveal the source of the quote. However, it has demonstrated that it has close contacts in Samsung in the past.

The flagship version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 isn’t waterproof. However, Samsung did produce a waterproof version of the phone in the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active.

We’ve also heard suggestions over the last couple of months that Samsung may include waterproofing and dustproofing as standard in the Galaxy S5.

Rival Sony already includes waterproofing and dustproofing as standard in its Xperia range of smartphones.

Stream TV expects Ultra-D glasses-free 3D TVs to hit later this year

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, new media company Stream TV Networks revealed its proprietary glasses-free 3D format called Ultra-D.

The company then partnered with the Natural History Museum to show it off to the public and has now said we can expect to see it in our TVs later this year.

Ultra-D uses a 4K display to produce glasses-free 3D at a 2160p resolution. It works without the need for glasses, and doesn't rely on a "sweet spot" for viewing. In fact, you can have multiple people in front of a display with each person experiencing the 3D footage.

A conversion algorithm uses the extra pixels on a 4K panel to give the depth illusion required for 3D, with Stream TV Networks planning to have consumer-ready devices available in late Q2 2014.

The company is discussing the technology with several manufacturers and already has a deal in place with Toshiba. During a demo held with T3.com, a spokesperson confirmed meetings with LG and Samsung.

A vote of confidence was also handed to the company by Sky and the Natural History Museum. The museum, in partnership with Sky 3D, put up two screens running the technology for public viewing as part of David Attenborough's Alive 3D exhibit.

LG G Flex Coming Soon So get Ready

The first thing to point out here is that the G Flex is not the first curved screen smartphone ever made. Cast your mind back to 2011 and you’ll remember the launch of a certain Samsung Galaxy Nexus, that had a curved screen.

It was barely noticeable but it was curved alright and after a few weeks of using it you started to realise that actually, this could catch on. Move five years on and curved screens are now becoming the new ‘3D’, not only are the curves bigger but companies have started using ‘science’ to back up their reasoning as well.

The LG G Flex is the first of this new wave, boasting a huge 6-inch curved display and unlike its counterpart, the Samsung Galaxy Round, the curve is slightly more conventional, giving it a crescent moon-like appearance.

Going up against big-screened beasts like the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Sony Xperia Z Ultra and the Nokia Lumia 1520 and cheaper Nokia Lumia 1320, the LG G Flex is designed to make it easier to use that enourmous 6-inch screen

Facebook buys WhatsApp messaging service for $19bn

Facebook has bought WhatsApp for approximately £11.4bn or $19bn making it one of the largest acquisitions in tech history. To give you some idea it's over double the amount spent by Microsoft buying Nokia last year.

The app, which is available for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 8 has over 450m users and counting. If the deal goes ahead Facebook will be buying one of the largest independent messaging services in the world, beating the likes of ChatOn and Line both of whom have also been seeing steady growth.

In a statement made last night Mark Zuckerberg said, "WhatsApp is on a path to connect 1 billion people. The services that reach that milestone are all incredibly valuable, I've known Jan for a long time and I'm excited to partner with him and his team to make the world more open and connected."

For those of you wondering if WhatsApp will become integrated into Facebook's own messaging service fear not. According to the company it'll be employing the same approach it took with Instagram, leaving the company to remain separate whilst sharing expertise across the brands.

First image of the All New HTC One (M8) 2014 leaked

The first image of the new HTC One 2014 has been leaked showing off a new design along with the addition of what appears to be dual-cameras and a larger display.

Appearing courtesy of @evleaks the image shows a gold version of the new smartphone and claims that it'll be called the All New HTC One rather than HTC One 2 or HTC One+ as some had suggested.

Set to take on the soon-to-be-released Samsung Galaxy S5 as well as Sony's new Xperia Z2 the new HTC One appears to boast dual-cameras on the back allowing the user to shift focus after the image has been taken.

As well as new cameras it appears to come with a new larger display which integrates the buttons into the screen as well as a new version of HTC Sense and BlinkFeed, the company's UI which it places over Android.

Unsurprisingly HTC has been silent over the leak and until the HTC One's official launch date of 25th March it's important to still take these images with a pinch of salt.

Wolfenstein: The New Order and Doom 4 beta get release date

Bethesda has today announced that Wolfenstein: The New Order has a UK release date of 23rd May on Xbox One, PS4, PC and older consoles.

The company has also revealed that those who pre-order the game will get exclusive access to Doom beta, seemingly confirming that Doom 4 is very much in development.

Little else is mentioned about the as yet unannounced Doom game except that those who pre-order Wolfenstein will be given a key code which when entered will then give them access to Doom beta when it launches.

Wolfenstein: The New Order is set in a fantasy version of our world where Nazi Germany won the Second World War using mysteriously advanced technology.

The game takes place in the 60s just as the resistance movement is beginning to gain pace. Your mission is to travel across Europe taking down the Nazi regime, of course how will be revealed in the game.

Artemis pCell promises perfect phone signal

Artemis pCell is a new technology that, according to the company, would give 4G smartphones like thei Phone 5s and the Samsung Galaxy S4 a perfect connection, no matter how many people were around you.

Whereas conventional networks rely on large cell towers to broadcast the mobile phone signal, pCell uses numerous smaller pWave transmitters dotted around a location, they then work together to cut through the noise and give each smartphone its own personal cell.

What this means then is that rather than sharing a cell with hundreds, or even thousands of other people your phone would be getting the full signal possible, and along with it, the fastest speed.

The pWave is still in development at the moment but the company's founder and ex-OnLive CEO Steve Perlman has already given a demonstration in New York showing how with the pWave he can stream four 1080p Netflix shows and two 4K trailers all over the same 4G network.

Whilst for the moment this may not be an essential purchase for consumers it certainly seems to solve the common problem of phone signal dropping drastically in crowded areas like stadiums, shopping malls and city centres.

Tomorrow’s world: A guide to the next 150 years