WTF? A serious news story about 50-foot tall humans on a planet??

[superboyac]

Is there a joke I'm not getting here?
http://guardianlv.com/2013/06/european-southern-observatory-found-super-earth-with-super-humans/

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has discovered over 50 new alien planets (Sept 12), which includes 16 so-called “super-Earths” and a Super Earth with Super Humans. The newly found alien planets consist 16 Super Earths with one called HD85512 which is apparently dominated by more than a dozen 50 feet tall Super Humans.

“This is the lowest-mass confirmed planet discovered by the radial velocity method that potentially lies in the habitable zone of its star, and the second low-mass planet discovered by HARPS inside the habitable zone,” said exoplanet habitability expert Wendy Waldman of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany and Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Boston.  “It’s the only one we’ve seen with outsized human beings.”

[TaoPhoenix]

Well, yes, here is half of the joke:

http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/38344/super-earth-found-with-super-humans/

It's based on a Weekly World News (heh!) "story". (I didn't know they were Online!)

The next question is why the Guardian has it.

Could that be the next step of Vulnerability Reporting?

Today:
"Dear Guardian. I have found a security hole which could allow an attacker to compromise your systems. See attached concept notes."
"Dear Researcher: We appreciate your report, and we will work on it." (aka "Go away".)

Tomorrow:
"Dear Guardian. Because you failed to take my vulnerability report seriously, I posted a WWN tabloid item to your main web site. Regards, Researcher"
(Heard in Guardian CEO office) "RED ALERT! Get IT to fix this NOW!!"

[Tinman57]

  It's really not that funny of a joke, real dry humor IMO.  It has always bothered me that we have massive radio telescopes (SETI), that for years has sent out messages into the cosmos telling any possible life-forms where we are in the universe with hopes they would send messages back.  The U.S. gov't stopped funding SETI in 1995, and now it's still being run with civilian grants and funds.
  So why does it bother me?  What makes us think that any intelligent lifeforms out there somewhere are friendly?  If they are advanced enough to speed of light travel, we would most likely be like ants for them to study and/or conquer.  Yeah, just like the series Falling Skies.  We have a plethora of resources here that would make for a nice pit-stop for any conquering entities looking to expand into the cosmos.  Hell, we may even be a food source ourselves!

[superboyac]

  It's really not that funny of a joke, real dry humor IMO.  It has always bothered me that we have massive radio telescopes (SETI), that for years has sent out messages into the cosmos telling any possible life-forms where we are in the universe with hopes they would send messages back.  The U.S. gov't stopped funding SETI in 1995, and now it's still being run with civilian grants and funds.
  So why does it bother me?  What makes us think that any intelligent lifeforms out there somewhere are friendly?  If they are advanced enough to speed of light travel, we would most likely be like ants for them to study and/or conquer.  Yeah, just like the series Falling Skies.  We have a plethora of resources here that would make for a nice pit-stop for any conquering entities looking to expand into the cosmos.  Hell, we may even be a food source ourselves!

I think more along the lines of the Marvel comic epics, where some kind of cosmic egg is being incubated in the center of the earth, and the job of humans is to protect the egg until it hatches.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_X

[Tinman57]

I think more along the lines of the Marvel comic epics, where some kind of cosmic egg is being incubated in the center of the earth, and the job of humans is to protect the egg until it hatches.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_X

  We're doing a pretty sorry job of it then, look what we have already done to our planet.....

[TaoPhoenix]

 It's really not that funny of a joke, real dry humor IMO.  It has always bothered me that we have massive radio telescopes (SETI), that for years has sent out messages into the cosmos telling any possible life-forms where we are in the universe with hopes they would send messages back.  The U.S. gov't stopped funding SETI in 1995, and now it's still being run with civilian grants and funds.
 So why does it bother me?  What makes us think that any intelligent lifeforms out there somewhere are friendly?  If they are advanced enough to speed of light travel, we would most likely be like ants for them to study and/or conquer.  Yeah, just like the series Falling Skies.  We have a plethora of resources here that would make for a nice pit-stop for any conquering entities looking to expand into the cosmos.  Hell, we may even be a food source ourselves!

Hmm, I'd put it 50-50 that super aliens are "nice". The basic theory is that aggression isn't sustainable etc etc. I'd put it more likely that we'd be considered "cute pets" or maybe an anthropology lab world. But more basically the timeline is just so tight - I'm not at all certain we'll still be "this race" 500 years from now. We could end up in a resource scarce dystopia not from WWIII, but just really maxxing out the "easy resources" and then when a glass of water is $12, a big bad epidemic of Bird Flu Six will spiral us down into the dark ages again via brain drain by losing 500 million people in a too-specialized world. So then when the aliens get here, we'd be back in twilight again.

[Tinman57]

Hmm, I'd put it 50-50 that super aliens are "nice". The basic theory is that aggression isn't sustainable etc etc. I'd put it more likely that we'd be considered "cute pets" or maybe an anthropology lab world. But more basically the timeline is just so tight - I'm not at all certain we'll still be "this race" 500 years from now. We could end up in a resource scarce dystopia not from WWIII, but just really maxxing out the "easy resources" and then when a glass of water is $12, a big bad epidemic of Bird Flu Six will spiral us down into the dark ages again via brain drain by losing 500 million people in a too-specialized world. So then when the aliens get here, we'd be back in twilight again.

  Hmmmm, I'll have some of what he's having....     I think your right about the resources, but one thing you omitted was the population of the earth eating up all the resources.  Geeze, we're already past 12 BILLION people when the earth can only safely support 2 billion, or so the scientist say....

[TaoPhoenix]

 It's really not that funny of a joke, real dry humor IMO.  

Well, it's quite funny if you take it at the original source of Weekly World News. I was then wondering why it ended up in the Guardian - am I missing something or is that a grade B but "real" paper?

Meanwhile, has no one else noticed that Moore's Law never seemed to hit the Space Age? The calculations should be cake by now. Shouldn't the manufacturing have gotten cheaper too?

Or did we get lucky exactly once to barely squeak through the edge of impossible through a bit of national delusion obscuring how dangerous it really was?

Instead, in a way, notice how "cheap" modern tech is. All this modern War on Terror junk is really kinda cheap, just guys sitting at computers listening to / reading our online chatter, but it's all modular - let's say $50k and poof, you have another analyst at work on it for a year. Whereas the costs to do the next stage of space flight, which is a Moonbase, are colossal, and in our current penny pinch pound foolish mode, we're squeezing ourselves out of the window to make it happen. I'd say it would take 100 years to do right, because that takes SERIOUS infrastructure to make it legit, not a 1 shot publicity stunt.

And if you think we're having fun hunting "terrorists" NOW, just wait when you risk blowing out the entire air reserves with a $100 bomb.

[tsaint]

It has always bothered me that we have massive radio telescopes (SETI), that for years has sent out messages into the cosmos

I was under the impression that radio telescopes received rather than emitted and that the SETI  program searched for signals

[4wd]

What makes us think that any intelligent lifeforms out there somewhere are friendly?

I always did enjoy the Twilight Zone episode, To Serve Man^w.

[mahesh2k]

Guardian == FOX ?

[x16wda]

What makes us think that any intelligent lifeforms out there somewhere are friendly?

I always did enjoy the Twilight Zone episode, To Serve Man^w.

Yeah, enjoyed the remake too:

[Tinman57]

It has always bothered me that we have massive radio telescopes (SETI), that for years has sent out messages into the cosmos

I was under the impression that radio telescopes received rather than emitted and that the SETI  program searched for signals

Realized Interstellar Radio Message projects - In 1974, a largely symbolic attempt was made at the Arecibo Observatory to send a message to other worlds. It was sent towards the globular star cluster M13, which is 25,000 light years from Earth. The first Interstellar Radio Message (IRM), the "Arecibo Message", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Message was transmitted in November 1974 from Arecibo Radar Telescope. Further IRMs Cosmic Call, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Call Teen Age Message, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teen_Age_Message Cosmic Call 2, and A Message From Earth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Message_From_Earth were transmitted in 1999, 2001, 2003 and 2008 from Evpatoria Planetary Radar.

Additional information on messages sent outward from Earth at: Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_Extraterrestrial_Intelligence Active SETI, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_SETI List of interstellar radio messages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_interstellar_radio_messages

Paper projects - A large number of paper projects also exist. For example, directed by Douglas Vakoch at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, the Interstellar Message Composition Project is charged with designing messages that could presumably be sent to extraterrestrials that convey basic scientific or mathematical principles, as well as human altruism. Vackoch's idea is to send a message of reciprocal altruism because hopefully any extraterrestrials would reciprocate with a reply back.

Vakoch has founded "Encoding Altruism", a workshop that started in 2003 in Paris that brings together anthropologists, philosophers, physicists, astronomers, theologians, musicians, and artists to address the challenge of communicating with extraterrestrials in a language and syntax that would be intelligible to an alien civilization. Vakoch's most recent research is highlighted through the Greater Good Science Center, University of California, Berkeley.

  And then there were the satellites we launched with all of Earths info and messages from everyone from scientist to presidents, and the new optical (laser) signals we're now sending....

[tsaint]

It has always bothered me that we have massive radio telescopes (SETI), that for years has sent out messages

"The science known as SETI deals with searching for messages from aliens. METI (aka "active-SETI) science deals with the creation of messages to aliens. Thus, SETI and METI proponents have quite different perspectives."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_SETI

[tomos]

late reaction to op:

But is it a serious news site?
- it's not from the Manchester Guardian in case anyone thinks it is...

[Tinman57]

It has always bothered me that we have massive radio telescopes (SETI), that for years has sent out messages

"The science known as SETI deals with searching for messages from aliens. METI (aka "active-SETI) science deals with the creation of messages to aliens. Thus, SETI and METI proponents have quite different perspectives."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_SETI

  I guess you missed this part: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_SETI

[TaoPhoenix]

That distinction bothers me - it's like they both suffer from spiraled twines of the same flaws.

The big flaw is the distance problem. So it's almost/more useless to craft messages to aliens, because you then even get a distance-aim problem! Again we're waiting for one of Star Trek's breakthroughs (really, brilliant in 1966 from a fiction perspective!) So we need Subspace. Except it's gonna have to be an alien to tell us how to do it. Or by chance we do it ourselves, then hope the alien picks up on the "Weird protocol", then fires back a message.

[tsaint]

  I guess you missed this part: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_SETI

err .... that was the link I supplied   
Maybe you missed the difference between "SETI" and "ACTIVE_SETI"?