{"id":301,"date":"2011-09-02T23:31:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-02T13:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2011\/09\/02\/carl-sagan-on-ham-radio-and-extraterrestrial-communication\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T12:55:32","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T02:55:32","slug":"carl-sagan-on-ham-radio-and-extraterrestrial-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2011\/09\/02\/carl-sagan-on-ham-radio-and-extraterrestrial-communication\/","title":{"rendered":"Carl Sagan on Ham Radio and Extraterrestrial Communication"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/stars.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 326px; height: 400px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/stars.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5647911712662812370\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">&#8220;Stars&#8221; by M.C. Escher<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:130%;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">I read this on the train this morning and immediately wanted to share it with my fellow radio amateurs: <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And what if we receive a message? Is there any reason to think that the transmitting beings &#8212; evolved over billions of years of geological time in an environment vastly different from our own &#8212; would be sufficiently similar to us for the message to be understood? I think the answer must be yes. A civilization transmitting radio messages must at least know about radio. The frequency, time constant, and bandpass of the message are common to transmitting and receiving civilizations. The situation may be a little like that of amateur or ham radio operators. Except for occasional emergencies, their conversations seem almost exclusively concerned with the mechanics of their instruments: it is the one aspect of their lives they are certain to have in common.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">From &#8220;The Dragons of Eden&#8221; by Carl Sagan.<\/span> <br \/><\/span> <br \/>Our book: &#8220;SolderSmoke &#8212; Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics&#8221;<a href=\"http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm\">http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm<\/a>Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke\">http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke<\/a>Our Book Store: <a href=\"http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20\">http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Stars&#8221; by M.C. Escher I read this on the train this morning and immediately wanted to share it with my fellow radio amateurs: &#8220;And what if we receive a message? Is there any reason to think that the transmitting beings &#8212; evolved over billions of years of geological time in an environment vastly different from &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2011\/09\/02\/carl-sagan-on-ham-radio-and-extraterrestrial-communication\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Carl Sagan on Ham Radio and Extraterrestrial Communication&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,30,111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-astronomy","category-radio-astronomy","category-seti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":303,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions\/303"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}