Alien Encounters

I'm a documentary junkie and I absolutely LOVED this series.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to see all episodes, so if you have suggestions on how I can re-watch it from the jump, let me hear from you.

Michael...

What if another species, alien to us, contacts us and says they are on their way? Assuming that the secret gets out to the general public, how would we react? What would you do? What would your neighbor do? What would your government do?

Based on a theory of "if" aliens do arrive and what events might take place, we are shown how we humans might react given the current technology that we have.

It's a great look (alone) into the future of what our own science and technology could be.

Could an alien species bring order? Or chaos?

I look forward to seeing a completion of this series.

The plot lines are reasonably entertaining in this miniseries, but the overpowering ignorance of the "scientist" and "sci-fi author" contributors is, to me, extremely disappointing. I shall provide several examples that hail from but a single episode, to wit, the one that aired this week detailing the American attack on the alien Quincy computer.

1. We were told that lasers can be "converted" into electricity. While this is not strictly correct, I'll accept the terminological laxity as a generalization. However, the "scientist" contributor indicated that the key was recognizing and receiving the proper "frequency" of the laser. This is utter nonsense. Laser light is laser light because of its collimation, not because of its frequency (= color).

2. A sci-fi author told us that electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons disable systems by "overcharging electrons." I guess this gentleman never took junior high school science, where we learn that the charge on an electron is fixed at approximately 1.6 x 10^-19 Coulomb. It is the electromagnetic waves impressed into the conductors by the EMP that fries the circuits, which has zero to do with the charge on the electron.

3. The DoD's "Queen" computer displayed statistics indicating that an EMP of so many amperes was to be transmitted. Amperes are a measure of current. EMP would be measured in transmitted power (viz., watts) or energy (viz., joules); the current induced in this medium or that is a function of its electrical resistivity and magnetic permittivity.

4. Orbiting debris lines up along the "magnetic field lines" surrounding the earth, sweeping from north to south. This is utterly nonsensical, looking more like a high-school text's depiction of magnetic field lines. In actuality, the "field" (no such thing, by the way: it's merely a mathematical abstraction) is EVERYWHERE, and nothing would line up along particular north-south lines, which would be basically indistinguishable from neighboring (=1 cm to the east, or what-have-you) lines.

5. We learn that we can protect things from EMP by disconnecting antennas. Is that so? Antennas are irrelevant to the susceptibility of electronic systems to EMP.

I get so frustrated by this pseudoscience that it makes it almost painful to watch the show. Next, when these clowns get into "quantum entanglement" and describe "verifying experiments" that are themselves riddled with errors and oversights, I want to head for the hills . . .

There are as many opinions about what First Contact will be like as there are people pondering it, so approach this as ONE opinion, but it's a good one. Many of us prefer to imagine Them landing on the White House lawn, without any advance brouhaha, but this one goes the SETI route (SETI could well have produced it - they've accepted a lot of funds for a lot of years and yielded ZILCH, leading many to wonder why they exist, so if you swallow this saga, it means they're needed). They receive The Message: We're On The Way! We fuss, we bother, we freak. They arrive. That's all the detail you'll wrestle out of me. It runs on The Science Channel in two episodes, usually run back-to-back, and since The Science Channel creates all of about twelve new hours of programming a year, chances are excellent that a rerun of this is on now as we speak. It's a good watch. And by the way, when first contact happens, whether it's White House lawn, a 'We're On The Way' message, or something else...DON'T freak. First impressions are EVERYTHING.