{"id":18498,"date":"2018-05-27T22:24:35","date_gmt":"2018-05-27T14:24:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/how-do-we-get-our-message-across-to-the-extraterrestrials-the-answers-are-evolving\/"},"modified":"2018-05-27T22:24:35","modified_gmt":"2018-05-27T14:24:35","slug":"how-do-we-get-our-message-across-to-the-extraterrestrials-the-answers-are-evolving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/how-do-we-get-our-message-across-to-the-extraterrestrials-the-answers-are-evolving\/","title":{"rendered":"How do we get our message across to the extraterrestrials? The answers are evolving"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_377432\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-377432\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-377432\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/171115-seti-signal-630x378.jpeg\" alt=\"GJ273 star system with radio transmission\" width=\"630\" height=\"378\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/171115-seti-signal-630x378.jpeg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/171115-seti-signal-768x461.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/171115-seti-signal-1260x756.jpeg 1260w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/171115-seti-signal.jpeg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-377432\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Astronomers and artists sent a binary-coded radio transmission in the direction of an extrasolar planet known as GJ273 b in 2017. (METI International Illustration \/ Danielle Futselaar)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>LOS ANGELES \u2014 Last year, scientists sent a binary-coded message telling the aliens what time it was. Next year, it\u2019ll be the periodic table of the elements. And someday, they hope to transmit a universal language that even extraterrestrials might relate to.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think we should treat this as a multigenerational, true experiment as opposed to an observational exercise, like archaeology,\u201d said Doug Vakoch, a veteran of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence who is now president of METI International.<\/p>\n<p>Vakoch and other researchers, including linguists, gathered here this weekend at the National Space Society\u2019s International Space Development Conference to consider the content for future messages to E.T.<\/p>\n<p>In the process, they considered the meaning of language as well.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe ideal is, we get a reply back to the experiment,\u201d Vakoch, who has his Ph.D. in clinical psychology, told GeekWire. \u201cBut I also think there\u2019s a social value.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Vakoch has spent almost two decades thinking about how to design messages for the aliens, first as director of interstellar message composition at the SETI Institute, and since 2016 as METI\u2019s president. (You can probably guess that METI stands for \u201cmessaging extraterrestrial intelligence.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>Some deep thinkers, including the late physicist Stephen Hawking, have said sending signals to an unknown alien civilization out there is just asking for trouble.&nbsp;\u201cMeeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus,\u201d Hawking once said. \u201cThat didn\u2019t turn out so well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Vakoch argues that it\u2019s already too late, because for decades we\u2019ve been sending out signals that could be detected by civilizations more advanced than ours.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wish I could tell people that somehow we are going to be safer if we don\u2019t transmit, but in good conscience, I can\u2019t,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Should Humans Try to Contact Alien Civilizations?\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VRIeuuXIhxw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>So, he and his fellow METI advocates figure that we might as well be intentional about what we send, and&nbsp; let any alien civilizations know that we\u2019re ready to engage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a way of testing the zoo hypothesis,\u201d Vakoch explains. \u201cWhat happens if a zebra at the zoo turns toward us and starts pounding out prime numbers? That radically changes the dynamic. Now we\u2019ve got to figure out how to communicate back with it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>People have been sending messages to the aliens every few years, ranging from the digitally encoded pictograms transmitted by the Arecibo radio telescope in 1974, to the Cosmic Call radio blasts in 1999 and 2003, to the Beatles song that NASA beamed out in Polaris\u2019 direction in 2008.<\/p>\n<p>Last year Vakoch\u2019s group worked with other scientists and artists to send out the time-code message, plus a selection of 33 short musical tunes.<\/p>\n<p>This weekend, researchers delved into the nitty-gritty of linguistics to lay the groundwork for the next METI message, which Vakoch said is due to be sent by the end of 2019. Like past messages, this one will be based on scientific and mathematical concepts that the aliens are likely to understand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAny mathematical systems are going to have to be functionally equivalent to each other, or they\u2019re going to be so complicated that they won\u2019t be useful,\u201d Vakoch said.<\/p>\n<p>The Arecibo message tried to keep it simple, by sending the atomic numbers for the chemical constituents of DNA: hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus. But what if alien life isn\u2019t based on DNA?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis next round, we\u2019ll be unpacking it,\u201d Vakoch said. \u201cWe\u2019ll unpack it and describe the periodic table.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The METI team will also be trying to incorporate principles that appear to be common to most if not all earthly languages&nbsp;\u2014 for example, the way words are put together to form sentences, or the recursive structure of complex expressions. The papers presented this weekend include a study that has famed linguist Noam Chomsky as author.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis opens us up to new rounds of messages,\u201d Vakoch said.<\/p>\n<p>He doesn\u2019t expect the message that\u2019s readied for next year to be the perfect pitch to the aliens. And he\u2019s not sure the world\u2019s linguists would be as ready to respond to an alien message as the character played by Amy Adams was in the movie \u201cArrival.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am so jealous of Amy Adams, because the aliens come to her,\u201d Vakoch said.<\/p>\n<p>But even if humans don\u2019t hear back from faraway civilizations for 1,000 years, that\u2019d be OK with Vakoch. The way he sees it, the important thing is that humans see the value of communicating with the cosmos, and continue to keep up the conversation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo me, that would be a tremendous success,\u201d Vakoch said. \u201cSometimes, we become what we\u2019re looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Astronomers and artists sent a binary-coded radio transmission in the direction of an extrasolar planet known as GJ273 b in 2017. (METI International Illustration \/ Danielle Futselaar) LOS ANGELES \u2014 Last year, scientists sent a binary-coded message telling the aliens what time it was. Next year, it\u2019ll be the periodic table of the elements. And [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4409,1874,5220,5231,3754],"class_list":["post-18498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-aliens","tag-astrobiology","tag-isdc","tag-meti","tag-seti"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18498"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}