Do scientists invite total strangers to their home?

Long ago, I read one of the books of Carl Sagan. I remember that I was reading it intently, and after that, I saw a movie that was made based on Carl Sagan's book "Contact" on TV. In that movie, my favorite actress Jodie Foster plays the main character and I recorded it and saw it again and again. Since then, I came to like seeing science fiction movies often. My favorite movies are "Interstellar", "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Contact", "The Martian", "Moon", "Inception" and so on. These movies gave me lots of simulations of science and I started to pay attention to the real world's science more than before.

I heard the Voyager was loaded with the Golden Record and was launched in 1977. The Golden Record contains greetings in 55 languages, music and more than 100 images.

Firstly, I thought that was amazing. It made me feel that the world I had seen in the science fiction movies had arrived. I simply thought it was a good idea to send messages into space, but gradually my opinion has changed. The reason I have changed my idea was I have seen one image, a solar location map. The question I have got in my mind was very simple.

Do you tell a stranger your home address?

In the movie "Contact", an extraterrestrial who has a gentle mind and who is thoughtful of human beings appeared. On the other hand, in "Star Wars" there is a war the same as the title and a massacre is taking place. The extraterrestrials in these two movies are different types and I think, in the real world, these two types of extraterrestrials can exist.
Yes, I believe that there is intelligent life in the universe somewhere.

I have seen pictures of so-called UFOs, but that isn't the reason I believe in the existence of intelligent life. The universe is huge, far beyond our imaginations and I think the possibility of existing intelligent life is high, but they are not close, I don't think they are our neighbors, somewhere far far away.

History proves that human nature may not be better even if we become intellectual. In the old days, there were uneducated people who had a warm heart and were kind everywhere in the world. On the other hand, there are more educated people in our society now, but there are still people who are brutal and selfish. As you can see in the news, there are still wars and massacres occurring in the world. I think creatures like extraterrestrials might be the same as us. I hope that they have sense and a thoughtful heart, plus the same feelings of value and morality. This is very important. I don't think that it will come true, but for example, if extraterrestrials came to the earth and found that there are many natural resource that they wanted to get on the earth, they can get it by force. To speak of extremes, if they thought that human beings seemed delicious to eat, what could we do? The only thing we can say is we don't know what extraterrestrials think of.

Sending messages to unknown creatures that might have been higher civilizations and dropping a bottle into the ocean containing a letter, can expect very different results. Sending messages and the location map into somewhere in the universe seems to be risky. We don't know what kind of creatures they are. If my memory is correct, the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa once displayed a doll of the creature "Dinosauroid" that the reptiles evolved. They might be like that doll. The doll didn't look well-disposed.

In the time period that current people are alive, I don't think it will happen, but if extraterrestrials visit the earth in the future, there are lots of things that we have to consider. How about quarantine? They might have an extraterrestrial virus. This reminds me that many Aboriginal people died because the Europeans brought viruses long ago. The same things might happen too. Am I too pessimistic?

If it's possible I would like to take Voyager's solar location map back. Where is it now? Oh, no, it may be outside of the solar system already! The feeling I have got now is similar to when I sent an email to the wrong person. It's too late!

I know that the scientists who prepared the Voyager Golden Record had certain reasons and they thought it's good for humanity's future. I think they are very smart people, and I know I'm just a pessimistic ordinary person who doesn't have any special knowledge of space science but let me ask them a question.

Do you send an invitation card to total strangers to your home party?

Looking at a story through a graph

I love movies and I see movies partly for English practice and partly for pleasure. Everyone has their own favorite tastes of movie. My favorite types of movies are ones that have a story that is related to science or complicated stories including mysteries. So, I tend to give a good evaluation to a movie that contains my favorite elements unconsciously. I don't know how winners of the Academy Award are chosen but I think it is a very difficult job for people with the right to vote.

I was wondering what are the elements of the movie that most people think are good. I think the basis of the movie is the most important, it's a story. So, I tried to analyze stories but I'm not a specialist, I don't know how to analyze stories. I contemplated it and what I have done was draw a polygonal line graph.

I draw a dot on the zero line first, then if something bad has happened in a story, I draw a dot under the zero line. For example, the childhood age of a main character of batman was on zero point in the beginning, then his parents got killed, so I drew a dot at the point of minus ten, like that.

It is obvious that any story has its ups and downs. I just wanted to know if there are some constant tendencies of a story that has got a good rating. But the points I draw are based on my subject so it's not the same as the world in general, so maybe this is not a good method.

I guess that there are people who think that art cannot be analyzed by figures but I thought that using a polygonal line graph could roughly show some tendencies and characteristics of a story that can attract people.

For instance, a happy ending story has lots of dots in minus just before the story ends. If there are not dots in minus before the end, people don't feel much like it's a happy ending story. The same as you feel like a nice taste of coffee after you ate very sweet cake, to feel happiness, some unhappy situation helps make you feel happier. Backing from the brink of defeat is one of the most exciting situations of stories.

Let me think of one of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption.
In that story, the main character Andy was arrested on a false charge of murder and sent to jail. From the beginning, Andy's situation is shown as minus on a polygonal line graph and sometimes something good has happened in the story, but he still has been in jail, so the dots don't have a chance to go up the line of zero. Before I got the idea of drawing a graph, I thought the story that attracts people's mind has up and down dots and describes a graph such as the blade of the saw, but it does not seem to have possibilities to be so. People are attracted by the story even if a gloomy talk continues.

How about an utter happy story? I cannot remember a story that is happy from the beginning to the end. Are there any stories that are all happy? I wondered why there are no (maybe there are some?) stories that are utter happy stories or movies, can't they attract people? I have heard the phrase "Other people's misfortunes have a taste of honey", but I don't think people select a book or see a movie for the reason of this state of mind. Do people want to learn something from someone's bad situation? Probably not.

I wondered if a story that has no ups and downs on the graph can attract people? Is there any story that has no ups and downs? No ups and downs means nothing has happened and it might be boring.

Probably, studying psychology would be a little help to understand this. However, I haven't heard that a psychologist becomes a better novelist. There may be someone who is a psychologist and also a writer, but when I think about it from probability, it's not so many. Isn't it difficult to analyze what a good story and movie are?

Thank you for reading my messy blog that has no ups and downs in the writing.