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Could we figure out Alien tech,..

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Golemfrost

Golemfrost

Armchair hero
hi guys,

I´ve been listening to alot of the older Paracast shows and one thing just keeps bothering me, and that would be the whole "there´s no chance in hell that we could figure out Alien tech" and the give a 1900´s man a mac, etc hypothesis.

I´d like to hear what the majority of people here think about this (sorry if it´s been posted/asked before)

I for one find it shameful that some people think we couldn´t figure it out, as i personally believe that we as a species, given the right fundings and the time can actually work miracles :)
 
You are probably correct about that; although I would say that 20th Century Man would probably be the first in history to see past calling these things "magic". This would at least help in rudimentary reverse engineering. I think if you go much further back than that in time, we humans would not have the slightest idea what the possibilities are.

In this vein; I think 20th Century Man (and onward) would be impressed, but not overwhelmed, with future technology if he were thrust forward into other centuries. Those Brits of a certain age will remember the medieval (titular) "Catweazle" and his problems with "electrickery" on the 70's British TV show.
 
I loved catweazle, i reread the book version only recently.

Our ability to reverse engineer alien technology is a J curve, we are at the best possible point to do this than we have ever been before in our history (discounting future ability of course).

Our very response would as you say be technical curiosity, not superstitious awe.

Its true a man of the 17th century would likely be unable to reverse engineer a cell phone, but we routinely do it today.

The chinese are notorious for doing this, to the point where a computer company i worked for many years ago , was bound by strict embargos, not to re export any of their equipment to russia or china for fears they would copy the technology


In debates on export administration legislation, parties often fall into two camps:
those who primarily want to liberalize controls in order to promote exports, and those
who are apprehensive that liberalization may compromise national security goals.
While it is widely agreed that exports of some goods and technologies can adversely
affect U.S. national security and foreign policy, many believe that current export
controls are detrimental to U.S. business, that the resultant loss of competitiveness,
market share, and jobs can harm the U.S. economy, and that the harm to particular​
U.S. industries and to the economy itself can negatively impact U.S. security
Click to expand...
http://www.fas.org/asmp/resources/govern/crs-RL30169.pdf

So while i conceed someone from the 17th century would be unlikely to be able to reverse engineer "alien" technology, i feel that modern scientists are better placed to do so

This technology will have to employ some form of physics, and our understanding of physics is as good as its ever been.
 
I don't think we could duplicate the alien power source. If we could isolate what makes "alien tech" work, we might be able to understand what it does. If we can't duplicate the power, or substitute some power that's similar how could we even know what this tech does? And without knowing the function how would we humans know that we've successfully reverse engineered it?
 
I would say that there's also an aspect of this alien technology that we may not be able to access. Per se, lets say the craft is controlled telepathically wherein our brain would actually be the control panel for this vehicle. That might be a lot more difficult for us to work around than simply the mere technological aspects behind it. I pose that as a possibility given all these stories of aliens speaking or communicating with "abductees" or "contactees" telepathically. Why not control their vehicles in the same manner?
 
pravvda said:
I would say that there's also an aspect of this alien technology that we may not be able to access. Per se, lets say the craft is controlled telepathically wherein our brain would actually be the control panel for this vehicle. That might be a lot more difficult for us to work around than simply the mere technological aspects behind it. I pose that as a possibility given all these stories of aliens speaking or communicating with "abductees" or "contactees" telepathically. Why not control their vehicles in the same manner?
Click to expand...


B-movie buffs may recall that Clint Eastwood used similar "brain-computer interface" technology in 1982's Firefox, named for the Soviet fighter plane whose weapons were controlled by the pilot's thoughts. (Clint was sent to steal the plane, natch.) Yet it's not as far-fetched as you might think: video gamers are eagerly awaiting a crude commercial version of brain wave technology — a $299 headset from San Francisco-based Emotiv Systems — in summer 2009. ​


Click to expand...

http://cnslab.ss.uci.edu/muri/index.html

http://artificialtelepathy.blogspot.com/2007/02/human-effects-testing-and-body.html

The link above has a list of patents in the upper left corner

Scientists to study synthetic telepathy

[SIZE=-2]Researchers get grant to develop communication system based on thoughts, not speech[/SIZE]

[SIZE=-1]Irvine, Calif., August 13, 2008 [/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]A team of UC Irvine scientists has been awarded a $4 million grant from the U.S. Army Research Office to study the neuroscientific and signal-processing foundations of synthetic telepathy.[/SIZE]
Click to expand...

http://today.uci.edu/iframe.php?p=/news/release_detail_iframe.asp?key=1808

---------- Post added at 11:53 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:33 AM ----------

Xylo said:
I don't think we could duplicate the alien power source. If we could isolate what makes "alien tech" work, we might be able to understand what it does. If we can't duplicate the power, or substitute some power that's similar how could we even know what this tech does? And without knowing the function how would we humans know that we've successfully reverse engineered it?
Click to expand...

Any power source (unless its magic lol) will have a basis in physics, that is there will be a physical mechanism/principle on which is operates.
And while there may indeed be types of power sources, outside our current body of knowledge for example zero point energy, we are in the best position weve ever been to reverse engineer it.
Thats the point im making here, not that we could reverse engineer it, but that we have the best tools to do so, in all our scientific history

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab recently turned on a $27 million electron microscope. Its ability to make images to a resolution half the width of a hydrogen atom made it the most powerful microscope in the world.
Click to expand...

We can see at the atomic scale, we have devices that can measure electromagnetic and gravitic fields, detectors that can measure radiation in its intensity and type.

Comparing a 17th century scientists ability to reverse engineer a cell phone and a modern day scientists ability to reverse engineer "alien" technology is not an equivalence, its apples and oranges in comparison of the tools both physical equipment and actual knowledge, that can be brought to bear on the question
 
Alien technology might be based on physics that we don't have a clue about. We really can't guess what discoveries will be made in the next 10 years, much less 100, 1000, 10000, 1 million...

On the other hand, we might be able to make use of alien technology even if we don't understand its basis, through observation and experimentation. An ancient Greek philosopher given a digital watch could figure out it was a time-measuring device, learn something about our system of chronology and numbers, might even learn how to manipulate it. But there's no way he could duplicate it.
 
NTS said:
Alien technology might be based on physics that we don't have a clue about. We really can't guess what discoveries will be made in the next 10 years, much less 100, 1000, 10000, 1 million...

On the other hand, we might be able to make use of alien technology even if we don't understand its basis, through observation and experimentation. An ancient Greek philosopher given a digital watch could figure out it was a time-measuring device, learn something about our system of chronology and numbers, might even learn how to manipulate it. But there's no way he could duplicate it.
Click to expand...

But again the comparison is not equivalent.
Technology is a physical thing
I can see where people might think the two examples are a match, but imo they are not.
The ancient greek philosopher does not have the same understanding of the physical universe modern science does, for example

Spectrometry and spectrography are terms used to refer to the measurement of radiation intensity as a function of wavelength and are often used to describe experimental spectroscopic methods. Spectral measurement devices are referred to as spectrometers, spectrophotometers, spectrographs or spectral analyzers.

Spectroscopic studies were central to the development of quantum mechanics and included Max Planck's explanation of blackbody radiation, Albert Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect and Niels Bohr's explanation of atomic structure and spectra. Spectroscopy is used in physical and analytical chemistry because atoms and molecules have unique spectra. These spectra can be interpreted to derive information about the atoms and molecules, and they can also be used to detect, identify and quantify chemicals. Spectroscopy is also used in astronomy and remote sensing.
Click to expand...



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectroscopy

Both a digital watch and our hypothetical ET craft are physical objects employing a mechanism/s

The ability of modern science to reverse engineer and understand either example the watch or the craft, cant be compared to an ancient greek philosopher.
Regardless of the mechanism, it will function as an expression of the basic laws of matter, functions which we understand better now than at anytime in our history.
Our greek could not reverse engineer the watch, but we can, that difference is significant.
Again its just my opinion, im not claiming to be right here, but i think that we posess the diagnostic tools and knowledge to eventually reverse engineer anything of a physical nature.

Do we "know it all ", i doubt it. Can we know it all, judging by the advances made already id say the trend indicates a yes answer

When you look at the rapid advances made in the last 50-100 years in both our understanding and application as expressed by the technology we see today, clearly we as a species have recently developed quite a talent for this stuff.
Our ability to understand and exploit the physics that define our universe, is remarkable.
Part of the problem with this question is that the average joe isnt much of a cut above our greek philospher, for most of us the following would elicit an "its all greek to me" response

Types of spectroscopy can also be distinguished by the nature of the interaction between the energy and the material. These interactions include:
  • Absorption occurs when energy from the radiative source is absorbed by the material. Absorption is often determined by measuring the fraction of energy transmitted through the material; absorption will decrease the transmitted portion.
  • Emission indicates that radiative energy is released by the material. A material's blackbody spectrum is a spontaneous emission spectrum determined by its temperature. Emission can also be induced by other sources of energy such as a flames or sparks or electromagnetic radiation in the case of fluorescence.
  • Elastic scattering and reflection spectroscopy determine how incident radiation is reflected or scattered by a material. Crystallography employs the scattering of high energy radiation, such as x-rays and electrons, to examine the arrangement of atoms in proteins and solid crystals.
  • Impedance spectroscopy studies the ability of a medium to impede or slow the transmittance of energy. For optical applications, this is characterized by the index of refraction.
  • Inelastic scattering phenomena involve an exchange of energy between the radiation and the matter that shifts the wavelength of the scattered radiation. These include Raman and Compton scattering.
  • Coherent or resonance spectroscopy are techniques where the radiative energy couples two quantum states of the material in a coherent interaction that is sustained by the radiating field. The coherence can be disrupted by other interactions, such as particle collisions and energy transfer, and so often require high intensity radiation to be sustained. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is a widely used resonance method and ultrafast laser methods are also now possible in the infrared and visible spectral regions.
Click to expand...

Ask the bloke down the pub what he thinks of the suggestion Coherent or resonance spectroscopy are techniques where the radiative energy couples two quantum states of the material in a coherent interaction that is sustained by the radiating field............

Would he be able to reverse engineer ET tech ? , no more so than our greek philospher methinks.

But i wouldnt put it past someome for whom that concept makes sense, to have a damn good crack at it
 
"Regardless of the mechanism, it [alien technology] will function as an expression of the basic laws of matter, functions which we understand better now than at anytime in our history."

I'm not arguing that we (at least specialists) don't understand the basic laws of matter better than ancient Greek philosophers did. But compared to the aliens we may be ancient Greeks. In fact we'd be lucky if that was the intellectual distance between us. It's quite possible that in their terms we're apes, ants, or amoebas.
 
NTS said:
"Regardless of the mechanism, it [alien technology] will function as an expression of the basic laws of matter, functions which we understand better now than at anytime in our history."

I'm not arguing that we (at least specialists) don't understand the basic laws of matter better than ancient Greek philosophers did. But compared to the aliens we may be ancient Greeks. In fact we'd be lucky if that was the intellectual distance between us. It's quite possible that in their terms we're apes, ants, or amoebas.
Click to expand...

But again thats the very point i want to make, we re not ancient greeks , apes,ants or amoebas, we are technology using sentients.
The real question then is what is the gap between us and alleged aliens, and again even if they were 10 thousand years in advance of us, that doesnt by proxy, mean we could not dismantle and learn how their technology works.
If its made of physical matter, we now have the means to analyse it at a molecular level.

years ago i memorised the periodic table of elements, only to find reciting it in order

Hydrogen, helium lithium ,beryllium ,boron ,carbon , nitrogen ,oxygen ,fluorine, neon..... etc etc was a party trick that was lost on most people at a given party, by the time i got to cobalt people were bored.
But even then i figured the period table of elements, would eventually be renamed the terrestrial table of elements.

I could be wrong, but i still have faith we can reverse engineer and understand anything we lay our hands, and more importantly our minds on.

Im of the mind there is a lowest common denominator here, that being the molecular/atomic level
we have the tools and understanding to analyse things at this level, which our ancient greeks, apes and ants dont.
I get the associative comparrison being made, but am convinced that when you dig into the detailed differences between the tools available, that comparrison is only skin deep, and superficial, the devil is in the detail and its the difference
our ancient greek didnt have the ability to analyse the digital watch to the molecular/nano level, we do.
If the object in question is made of matter, we have a massive advantage, and i think this ability is of a threshold nature, its a tipping point
And this is my genuine belief, that while someone from 300 years ago, could not reverse engineer technology from today, i believe we could today reverse engineer technology from 300 years in the future.
Because we have the ability to look at something at the molecular and indeed the sub atomic level.
When we are talking about technology made of solid matter, its the lowest denominator
 
I've always had an issue with people thinking we could figure out alien technology but some of the postings in this thread have made me re-evaluate. We human beings are a pretty arrogant lot; from claims that "Everything that could be invented has been invented" to "We're more technologically advanced than ever so we can figure anything out given enough time." Even claims such as the fact that we can measure material at an atomic level, or can see smaller/larger than we ever have before in the history of our species are pretty pale in comparison to what a truly alien technology may be able to do. All of this is boils down to the same problem we have, psychologically, as a species anyway; we take a completely alien principle and we apply our own ways of thinking, our own situation as a species, to that principle.

Alien technology is just that, alien. It may be comprised of compounds beyond our understanding of basic material. Our so-called advanced knowledge of the atomic nature of matter may not prepare us for designs of machines (for lack of a better word) that an alien species may employ. Despite our so-called advances, we may not have the tools to penetrate alien materials, devices, or implements to even figure out what they might do much less how they work. Alien technology may employ utltra-advanced quantum mechanics which, so far, we have so little understanding of that we're stuck scribbling quantum theories on paper or shooting basic particles at one another just to try to get something to happen.

A big part of our chances come down to the sourcing of aliens, too. If the aliens are here, in a "closed network" as O'Brien likes to coin the phrase, then our odds of figuring out alien technology increase greatly since the purpose of their technology may not need-be that advanced. An actual off-planet alien species, however, will most likely have technology we cannot breach, nor comprehend as the purpose of that technology would be to defeat the environment (space/time, etc...) on a level we've only dreamed of. Off-world technology would be the least likely type of alien technology to yield it's secrets.
 
Sandanfire said:
An actual off-planet alien species, however, will most likely have technology we cannot breach, nor comprehend as the purpose of that technology would be to defeat the environment (space/time, etc...) on a level we've only dreamed of. Off-world technology would be the least likely type of alien technology to yield it's secrets.
Click to expand...

Another aspect that of any actual off-planet technology suffers is the fact that it would have been developed by non-human minds. Minds that don't necessarily share anything whatsoever. Having a bit it of it could possibly motivate and inspire human developments certainly, but it really depends on how alien the aliens are. Imagine the technology intelligent insect minds might dream up. Ha! Fooled you. You can't!

I puzzle over why we would have anything like that anyway. Why would they leave technology laying around unless it just doesn't really matter one way or the other that we have it? In the cases of supposed recovered living or dead occupants, "Why would they abandon their own to capture, interrogation, and imprisonment?" It makes sense in one way if they just don't care. Either because we don't have a chance of making sense of any of it or if we did it wouldn't matter to them anyway. It could be that by the time we figure it out it will be last centuries model or something and not even a nuisance.
 
Thinking about it more, an ancient Greek might be able to figure out most of the technology we had up until about 1880 or so. Much of it would be recognizable to him, if maybe more complicated and precise than anything he would have seen before. Even steam engines wouldn't be completely unfamiliar. But starting with electricity and certainly with electronics, chips, etc. our technology would rapidly become incomprehensible to him. Rather than based on visible mechanisms it has become "blackbox" and works on principles he would have no idea of.

So moderating my view, as Mike and others have suggested we might be able to make some sense of alien technology if it was based on known physics. But I still think there could be levels of physics that are entirely unknown to us, and of course if the aliens are vastly different/superior they might create things we can't begin to understand.
 
NTS said:
Thinking about it more, an ancient Greek might be able to figure out most of the technology we had up until about 1880 or so. Much of it would be recognizable to him, if maybe more complicated and precise than anything he would have seen before. Even steam engines wouldn't be completely unfamiliar. But starting with electricity and certainly with electronics, chips, etc. our technology would rapidly become incomprehensible to him. Rather than based on visible mechanisms it has become "blackbox" and works on principles he would have no idea of.

So moderating my view, as Mike and others have suggested we might be able to make some sense of alien technology if it was based on known physics. But I still think there could be levels of physics that are entirely unknown to us, and of course if the aliens are vastly different/superior they might create things we can't begin to understand.
Click to expand...

I wonder if it is more important to know the question rather than have the answer. Maybe we can't reverse engineer the technology left by aliens, but what if just the existence and abilities the object provides sparks a new direction of thinking? Before man flew it was impossible to conceive in fact we may have believed the only way to do it was to flap our wings. The someone saw something, maybe an animal or maybe something else and they thought I might be able to fly without flapping my wings. Did they reverse engineer it, not really but they saw new possibility not recognized before.
 
Just off-the-cuff, wasn't it implied somewhere that (assuming it's true) the reason we were able to reverse-engineer ET-Tech was because we had an interpreter...an alien that communicated with us and helped us figure it all out? Throwing in the belief that one of our space-brothers walked us through the reverse-engineering process is a plot point that increases book sales, right?

ET-Tech is an awesome catch-phrase, by the way. It sounds like a community college here in Indiana.
 
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