Line #4 Headscratchers/Contact


1	!! Headscratchers for the book Literature/{{Contact}}
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3	* The alien signal contains a video rendition of UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler's speech at the opening of the 1936 Olympics, because this was the first artificial video signal strong enough to be picked up from Vega. The theory is that, although the aliens were able to view the video signal, they "could not possibly" know or understand what any of the contents of the video meant. But if you look at a black-and-white TV signal, it's not at all obvious that it's even supposed to ''be'' video information. It's an amplitude-modulated analog of the voltage level to send to an electron gun as it sweeps from left-to-right across a scan line. At the end of every scan line there's a "flyback" indication, which tells the electron gun to return to the beginning of the next scan line. At longer intervals there's another indication which tells the receiver that the field is complete and it should start in on the next field. Oh -- and the fields are interlaced: first the odd-numbered scan lines making up the picture are sent, then when that field is finished, the even-numbered scan lines making up the picture are sent. At the time of the 1936 Olympic broadcast, the 525-scan-line frame standard of NTSC had not yet been adopted, and each frame was 180 scan lines high. The only reason the TV sets of the time could decode such a signal is that they were made by the same people that came up with the signal standard in the first place, and contain sophisticated hardware that's intimately aware of what a black-and-white TV signal is supposed to look like. The Vegans would have had no way to know ''any'' of these things. What would have made plausible sense would have been for them to send the AM analog back to us in exactly the same format they'd received it. But instead, they send it back as a ''monochrome digital image'', with a bit depth of 1 bit per pixel, arranged into an array whose dimensions are the product of 3 primes. Not only would they ''have'' to have interpreted that black-and-white TV transmission -- garbled as it doubtlessly was after having travelled 26 light-years -- as a video signal, they also guessed correctly that we humans see pixelated images as grayscale!
4	** If you want to get ''REALLY'' technical, the TV signal should have been static by the time it reached Vega, and thus impossible to put back together. Some science had to be nudged to allow this plot point, [[AnthropicPrinciple or even to allow there to be a movie]].
5	** The Analysis page for Analysis/AliensStealCable also goes into detail as to why receiving TV signals in another star system is problematic at best and impossible at worst -- including the above arguments about format and signal-to-noise ratio.
6	** Which is why, in the film, it's implied to be a strict retransmission of the original signal—the pulses of the "beacon" signal the array first detects are just highly distorted "Sieg Heil"s which could have been recognized as being an artificial pattern on first reception, primes notwithstanding. (It's worth noting that Ellie first heard the signal presumably during a later part of the transmission, where there were so many pulses, you might not have noticed the pattern of primes unless you expected them.) There is still the problem of converting an pre-NTSC television format to be re-read in the modern day, though. Maybe this can be chalked up to the VLA having a large database of known terrestrial transmission formats (for distinguishing ET signals from Earth-based immediately), and the necessary conversion was performed by the computer before output to the TV monitor. They still had to do a significant amount of processing on-screen—edge sharpening, noise reduction, color inversion, zoom/rotate/pan—to get a clear image.
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8	* The discovery about the fundamental nature of the universe that Ellie makes at the very end of the book: [[spoiler:That pi contains a message. The implication is that intelligent creatures could manipulate the very laws of the universe, possibly before the universe even existed, to leave a message to any intelligent creatures that emerge within it. The problem is, pi isn't just a physical constant. It's a consequence of basic geometry. Worse, it can be calculated by adding up the terms in a simple, 100% predictable infinite series. To leave a message starting out in the 10^20 digit of pi, you'd have to manipulate the ''laws of mathematics'' in such a way that 4 - 1 + 1/4 - 1/(4^2) + 1/(4^3) - 1/(4^4) ... produces this message pattern. Tweaking the physical constants of the universe, such as Planck's constant or the speed of light or Newton's gravitational constant, in such a way that ''they'' would produce such a digit pattern might be possible, if you were the architect of universes. Tweaking the value of an infinite series? That should be impossible, no matter ''how'' omnipotent you are.]]
9	** [[spoiler:The constant Ellie investigates is not implicitly stated to be pi. One of the aliens makes references to light and gravitational constants. They also give away a pretty major hint; the "God Message(s)" are stated to only be readable in base 11, which enables them to be interpreted as binary code - the simplest way for machines to operate. As for omnipotence, Sagan is stating that it would take such outstanding proof such as this - a repeatable experiment that demonstrates obvious omnipotence - to connect religion with science.]]
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11	* What was with that ending? [[spoiler: Did Ellie make contact or not? I couldn't tell. Or is it supposed to be ambiguous?]]
12	** Ellie did make contact but the US government covered it up. It's confirmed when Kitz and Constantine video chat and Constantine brings up the 18 hours of static recorded by Ellie's camera. Kitz merely calls it interesting.
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14	!! Headscratchers for the film Film/{{Contact}}
15	* While Ellie's "they should have sent a poet" scene was well done, why was she so shocked? She says she had no idea, but she's been staring into telescopes at celestial events her whole life.
16	** There's interpreting a celestial event through radio signals, telescopic photographs and computers, and then there's ''seeing one happen a few hundred meters away from you with your own two eyes''. She's not a robot, I think we have to allow her ''some'' license to get emotionally overwhelmed at being thrust into a situation where she gets to witness first-hand the kind of event she's only been able to view through a telescope at extreme distances.
17	* While from the authorities viewpoint it seemed like the wormhole generator didn't work since the pod seemingly just fell through, why are they also disregarding other obvious effects? I'm not talking about the 18 hours of static. I'm talking about how the vortex' attractive force actually caused a tidal wave strong enough to rock the entire military vessel overseeing the operation. Obviously the device did work, but they decided to deny it nevertheless because they didn't understand how.
18	** To quote Mr. Sagan himself: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Without the 18 hours of static recording (which is being suppressed for reasons), all they have to go on is verbal testimony and that while the Machine did indeed generate a lot of energy and intense radio and light transmissions (it's possible such tech might be spun-off into a power source in-universe), all apparent evidence from outside sources is that it was a pretty light and EM show, but there was no disappearance. Granted, if the IPV did travel through interplanetary space and the intense environment of a stable wormhole big enough to support such a vessel, one would figure the pod itself would carry some evidence (radiation exposure unexplained by the Machine's EM environment, supercooled exterior, cold welding of components, exotic particles if any could survive, etc.).
19	* Regarding [[spoiler:the suicide bombing]], how did security allow the guy to get into the machine structure in the first place? Was it an especially naïve belief in the lack of belligerent intent (mirroring Ellie's own belief in the benign nature of the Vega transmission), or did the guy have a sympathizer in NASA's ranks, who was able to grant him access?

Context Headscratchers / Contact