Summary: As preparations near completion for the return of the Olympics Games to their ancestral home in Athens, the time is ripe to revisit whether the Olympics has been our diplomatic calling card in other places beyond the home planet.
Let the Games Begin
by Astrobiology Magazine staffwriter
As the world prepares for the 2004 Olympics in Athens, one can ask the question: Are we on Earth the only ones who will watch the games?
Recall that a key story point in the Carl Sagan novel, "Contact", relies on the unique premise that we are not the only onlookers. Sagan's scenario depends on the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin as symbolically transmitting our existence beyond the solar system. Earth inhabitants showed their interest in contests for national pride and athletic skills to a listening audience on the nearby star Vega. In the novel and screenplay based on the book, our own message in a bottle then boomerangs back to us, as a greeting from another world that they have heard us.
The plot device that the Earth leaks intelligent signals has appeared in many science fiction stories of first contact. Broadcasting early radio shows or even reruns of "I Love Lucy" to another culture on the home world, much less another planet, has long been a source of potential bemusement. How would such a randomly selected reflection of our culture be interpreted?
Perhaps Sagan chose to single out first transmission as the 1936 Berlin Games because the content is so antithetical to what we might have hoped for. Or in an ideal case, a warlike contest of brawn and nationalism seems less than what one might have planned as a friendly greeting. What as a species could show us as less prepared for greeting another civilization than the way we greet each other? After all the '36 Games advertised the politics of a nationalistic Germany, on the precipice of the bloodiest war in human history, when virtually no part of our globe could remain untouched by battle and conflict. Even the notion of competitive games or a contest to rank national and individual power, while oftentimes used historically to trigger truces or peace talks, also represents a metaphor for unabashed cultural ambitions and seemingly arbitrary or artificial borders that simply disappear when viewed from space.
In that context, what maturity can humans portray to species even more unlike ourselves, not just athletically but intellectually, culturally or morally? As David Grinspoon noted on this dilemma in his book, "Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life", an advanced civilization observing happenings on Earth might easily reply to our first signal: "Humans of the planet Earth, you want to encounter other beings? First you have to learn to live with your different people?" Was this challenge encapsulated by the 1936 Berlin Olympics?
The first TV transmission from Earth, the 1936 Berlin games, and now the farthest strong signal from an electromagnetically-leaking planet. Because of the Second World War these were to be the last Olympics until 1948. "These are not great examples of our civilization." -Woody Sullivan
Credit: National Archives, USHMM Photo Archives
From his years in designing SETI strategies, University of Washington Professor, Woody Sullivan thinks what Hollywood did with Dr. Carl Sagan 's book, Contact, listen at the Sound
particularly the first half, is about as close as a popular film can get to what it's like to do real SETI research. Much of the opening sequence owes a debt to Sullivan, since he spearheaded the scientific understanding that the Earth is leaking electromagnetic signals all the time, mainly from TV and some military radars. Twenty-five years ago, "most SETI was set up mainly to look at beacons from another civilization. But we don't have a devoted beacon broadcasting from Earth even. A priori, we don't know that a civilization would set up a beacon. But we Earthlings are leaking all the time, just from our daily activities."
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Carl Sagan and his wife Ann Druyan
read the Full and interesting Story Eavesdropping on Olympus
Sir Ulli
Let the Games Begin
by Astrobiology Magazine staffwriter
As the world prepares for the 2004 Olympics in Athens, one can ask the question: Are we on Earth the only ones who will watch the games?
Recall that a key story point in the Carl Sagan novel, "Contact", relies on the unique premise that we are not the only onlookers. Sagan's scenario depends on the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin as symbolically transmitting our existence beyond the solar system. Earth inhabitants showed their interest in contests for national pride and athletic skills to a listening audience on the nearby star Vega. In the novel and screenplay based on the book, our own message in a bottle then boomerangs back to us, as a greeting from another world that they have heard us.
The plot device that the Earth leaks intelligent signals has appeared in many science fiction stories of first contact. Broadcasting early radio shows or even reruns of "I Love Lucy" to another culture on the home world, much less another planet, has long been a source of potential bemusement. How would such a randomly selected reflection of our culture be interpreted?
Perhaps Sagan chose to single out first transmission as the 1936 Berlin Games because the content is so antithetical to what we might have hoped for. Or in an ideal case, a warlike contest of brawn and nationalism seems less than what one might have planned as a friendly greeting. What as a species could show us as less prepared for greeting another civilization than the way we greet each other? After all the '36 Games advertised the politics of a nationalistic Germany, on the precipice of the bloodiest war in human history, when virtually no part of our globe could remain untouched by battle and conflict. Even the notion of competitive games or a contest to rank national and individual power, while oftentimes used historically to trigger truces or peace talks, also represents a metaphor for unabashed cultural ambitions and seemingly arbitrary or artificial borders that simply disappear when viewed from space.
In that context, what maturity can humans portray to species even more unlike ourselves, not just athletically but intellectually, culturally or morally? As David Grinspoon noted on this dilemma in his book, "Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life", an advanced civilization observing happenings on Earth might easily reply to our first signal: "Humans of the planet Earth, you want to encounter other beings? First you have to learn to live with your different people?" Was this challenge encapsulated by the 1936 Berlin Olympics?
The first TV transmission from Earth, the 1936 Berlin games, and now the farthest strong signal from an electromagnetically-leaking planet. Because of the Second World War these were to be the last Olympics until 1948. "These are not great examples of our civilization." -Woody Sullivan
Credit: National Archives, USHMM Photo Archives
From his years in designing SETI strategies, University of Washington Professor, Woody Sullivan thinks what Hollywood did with Dr. Carl Sagan 's book, Contact, listen at the Sound
particularly the first half, is about as close as a popular film can get to what it's like to do real SETI research. Much of the opening sequence owes a debt to Sullivan, since he spearheaded the scientific understanding that the Earth is leaking electromagnetic signals all the time, mainly from TV and some military radars. Twenty-five years ago, "most SETI was set up mainly to look at beacons from another civilization. But we don't have a devoted beacon broadcasting from Earth even. A priori, we don't know that a civilization would set up a beacon. But we Earthlings are leaking all the time, just from our daily activities."...
Carl Sagan and his wife Ann Druyan
read the Full and interesting Story Eavesdropping on Olympus
Sir Ulli
