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Talking aliens
OPINION LETTERS Talking aliens From David Brin Stephen Battersby discussed the current debate over broadcasting messages into space with the intention of their being detected by extraterrestrial life forms (23 January, p 28). The editorial in the same issue (p 3) endorses the idea. As an astronomer who has been involved in topics relating to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) for 30 years, and as a former member of SETI advisory panels, I feel there is an arrogance in the transmission of these messages by small groups who have claimed the right to shout on behalf of Earth without consulting anybody else. Many SETI researchers and others, including the editorial board of Nature, have asked for there to be a moratorium on these messages until broad international discussions can take place. These should involve biologists, historians, ethicists and members of the public. That doesn’t seem much to ask, given the importance of the matter and our ignorance of the cosmos. However many technological species there are
out there, we are almost certainly the youngest children, suddenly shouting in an unknown forest. The daunting silence in the sky has its creepy aspects. Can’t we discuss the implications and satisfy reasonable concerns before yelling “Yoohoo”? The message zealots label as paranoid anybody who wants open discussion. With their peremptory broadcasts, they bet our future on the assumption that all technological alien species will be altruistic. In doing so they ignore all the indications from human or biological history that suggest this is highly unlikely to be the case. They deploy a host of blithe excuses, such as “aliens have already picked up our radio leakage” and “harm cannot span interstellar distances”, but they do not hold up under scientific scrutiny. Eagerness to achieve “first contact”, while laudable, should be tempered by awareness of the history of first contacts between human cultures, and between previously isolated Earthly biomes. These make a sad litany that suggests patience, caution and lengthy discussion are in order before we make our
Enigma Number 1582
Bit tricky BOB WALKER Joe thought he would test Penny’s ability to manipulate equations this week. So he asked her to find the values of the integers A, B and C in the following equation.
(A.B+1) ÷ (A.B.C+A+C) 0.138 What are the values of A, B and C?
WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Wednesday 17 March. The Editor’s decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1582, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected] (please include your postal address). Answer to 1576 The holly and the ivy and the... : Holly on red, ivy on silver, mistletoe on gold The winner Beth Morgan of Palo Alto, California, US
24 | NewScientist | 13 February 2010
presence known to the cosmos at large. Encinitas, California, US From Kevin Buckley The discussion of how to format a suitable message for transmission to an alien civilisation misses the reality of what it means to communicate with beings who probably experience the world in a different way to us. Most of the current proposals
seem to take it for granted that the recipients will be capable of receiving a message if it is in a form that we ourselves could easily pick up and interpret. But there is no reason why this should be the case. Consider, if you will, how a human civilisation of just a few thousand years ago might imagine “communications from beyond this world” would occur. Stone tablets from the sky would clearly be a good starting point. These days most proposed templates seem based on images, but how might that be interpreted by, for example, an advanced civilisation of fish? They might sense more through the skin or electronic waves than through sight and smell. Even if our target alien civilisation is sufficiently well developed that its members can receive, decode and visualise our transmission, we cannot assume they share with us the sensory mechanisms by which we understand the external world. Unless we take into account the
very different ways in which different species could build their internal “world models”, it seems that any form of communication currently under consideration has a very low likelihood of being understood. Woodcote, Berkshire, UK From David Collins I am always concerned that we assume that aliens will all look alike, come from a global village, speak the same language and share a culture. From H. G. Wells’s time traveller to Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, visitors to other worlds seem to explore only a few hundred metres from their landing point – an extremely misleading view of alien life. Suppose our visitors dropped in on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Greenland or Nevada – what impression would they get? On our own planet, aliens may have dropped in a long time ago. Prions? Archaea? Slime moulds? Cetaceans? Nematodes? Harpenden, Hertfordshire, UK From Tim Malyon I was born at a time when our own world was not yet even fully mapped. As a child I thought that landing a man on the moon would be the greatest thing that would happen in my lifetime. Now if someone could only provide definite proof of extraterrestrial life, I would feel that I had lived in humanity’s greatest ever period of discovery. Beattock, Dumfriesshire, UK From F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre The message that was transmitted from Arecibo more than three decades ago, signalling our presence to extraterrestrials, included a diagram of the solar system as perceived in 1974: nine planets of varying sizes orbiting the sun, ranging from Mercury to Pluto. Now that Pluto is no longer officially categorised as a planet, shouldn’t we transmit a correction? Glasgow, UK
out there, we are almost certainly the youngest children, suddenly shouting in an unknown forest. The daunting silence in the sky has its creepy aspects. Can’t we discuss the implications and satisfy reasonable concerns before yelling “Yoohoo”? The message zealots label as paranoid anybody who wants open discussion. With their peremptory broadcasts, they bet our future on the assumption that all technological alien species will be altruistic. In doing so they ignore all the indications from human or biological history that suggest this is highly unlikely to be the case. They deploy a host of blithe excuses, such as “aliens have already picked up our radio leakage” and “harm cannot span interstellar distances”, but they do not hold up under scientific scrutiny. Eagerness to achieve “first contact”, while laudable, should be tempered by awareness of the history of first contacts between human cultures, and between previously isolated Earthly biomes. These make a sad litany that suggests patience, caution and lengthy discussion are in order before we make our
Enigma Number 1582
Bit tricky BOB WALKER Joe thought he would test Penny’s ability to manipulate equations this week. So he asked her to find the values of the integers A, B and C in the following equation.
(A.B+1) ÷ (A.B.C+A+C) 0.138 What are the values of A, B and C?
WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Wednesday 17 March. The Editor’s decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1582, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected] (please include your postal address). Answer to 1576 The holly and the ivy and the... : Holly on red, ivy on silver, mistletoe on gold The winner Beth Morgan of Palo Alto, California, US
24 | NewScientist | 13 February 2010
presence known to the cosmos at large. Encinitas, California, US From Kevin Buckley The discussion of how to format a suitable message for transmission to an alien civilisation misses the reality of what it means to communicate with beings who probably experience the world in a different way to us. Most of the current proposals
seem to take it for granted that the recipients will be capable of receiving a message if it is in a form that we ourselves could easily pick up and interpret. But there is no reason why this should be the case. Consider, if you will, how a human civilisation of just a few thousand years ago might imagine “communications from beyond this world” would occur. Stone tablets from the sky would clearly be a good starting point. These days most proposed templates seem based on images, but how might that be interpreted by, for example, an advanced civilisation of fish? They might sense more through the skin or electronic waves than through sight and smell. Even if our target alien civilisation is sufficiently well developed that its members can receive, decode and visualise our transmission, we cannot assume they share with us the sensory mechanisms by which we understand the external world. Unless we take into account the
very different ways in which different species could build their internal “world models”, it seems that any form of communication currently under consideration has a very low likelihood of being understood. Woodcote, Berkshire, UK From David Collins I am always concerned that we assume that aliens will all look alike, come from a global village, speak the same language and share a culture. From H. G. Wells’s time traveller to Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, visitors to other worlds seem to explore only a few hundred metres from their landing point – an extremely misleading view of alien life. Suppose our visitors dropped in on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Greenland or Nevada – what impression would they get? On our own planet, aliens may have dropped in a long time ago. Prions? Archaea? Slime moulds? Cetaceans? Nematodes? Harpenden, Hertfordshire, UK From Tim Malyon I was born at a time when our own world was not yet even fully mapped. As a child I thought that landing a man on the moon would be the greatest thing that would happen in my lifetime. Now if someone could only provide definite proof of extraterrestrial life, I would feel that I had lived in humanity’s greatest ever period of discovery. Beattock, Dumfriesshire, UK From F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre The message that was transmitted from Arecibo more than three decades ago, signalling our presence to extraterrestrials, included a diagram of the solar system as perceived in 1974: nine planets of varying sizes orbiting the sun, ranging from Mercury to Pluto. Now that Pluto is no longer officially categorised as a planet, shouldn’t we transmit a correction? Glasgow, UK