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The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
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Communicating with Aliens
May 26th, 2009
It’s the time of the year when I start thinking about the schedule of activities for the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for Writers. Most of the things we’ve done have been very popular and successful, but there was one controversial thing last year that I probably won’t repeat, at least not in the same form.
I had Jeffrey Lockwood, former biologist and current philosopher, author, and creator of a University of Wyoming SETI course come in for a couple of hours. I had chatted with him before the course and suggested some books about SETI and related topics, both fiction and nonfiction. (If I recall correctly, Jeff loved The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell and hated Contact by Carl Sagan, so maybe you see this coming.) Jeff’s course had gotten a lot of attention, and I thought since he was very up on SETI it might be a great opportunity for Launch Pad participants to learn something about the program. There are a lot of astronomical issues associated with SETI that are important for science fiction writers to consider.
Well, Jeff is more of a philosopher these days and never was a physical scientist, and I knew his course was focused more on the issue of communicating with alien minds (whether they are here on Earth in the form of other species or out in space), so I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised when he skipped all the technical details and went in for the communication issue big time.
Some of the participants were not happy about being asked to repeat writing exercises he’d given University students (we are talking about award winning writers and teachers of writing themselves) when they were at Launch Pad for the science, the stuff they didn’t know. Still, some took to the exercises with energy and produced some impressive work.
The session devolved later, however, as science collided with philosophy. Science is about getting at practical truths and is rarely absolute, but has an excellent track record. Philosophy seems to be more about questioning everything and never reaching any truths at all, except under certain assumptions. So, when the class went with science and Jeff went devlish philosophy weenie, it got ugly for a while.
What was the issue?
It was whether or not we could expect SETI to work if communication was based on math and physics. Folks who do SETI, and most mathemeticians and physical scientists, would argue that there are certain universal truths. Mathematics is discovered, not created, for instance. Stars are made out of hydrogen, with some helium, too, and other trace elements. The laws of physics work the same on Earth and on other planets. Any civilization with the technology to broadcast messages to us, say in the radio, could be expected to know math and physics and this we could expect to have in common. Right?
Jeff persisted in repeating, ad nauseum, that this was an assumption, much to his delight and to the dismay of the participants. I’m not sure he gave an inch.
I’d say it’s not much of an assumption, and persisting in making that argument, suggesting that basing comminucation with technologically savvy aliens on something entirely different like smells or ink blots or whatever is silly. Math, physics, chemistry, same on Earth as everywhere else. Little else could be expected to be in common. Moreover, the math, physics, and chemistry would be necessary to build equipment to broadcast to humans on Earth.
What do you think?
Loading ...Feel free to comment more about this. Personally while I think that it may strictly speaking be an assumption to expect aliens with radio communications to know math and physics, I think you’d be an idiot to assume they don’t.
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Sounds like an exercise I’d enjoy!
Wouldn’t they have to know math and physics to get here? Seems to me that the question is more about would they understand our way of representing and thinking about math and physics?
Well, Jeff had the exercises designed to use English words to write about something, and to also encode the meaning of the words in the pattern of the message (e.g., primes or Fibonacci numbers). I think it’s smart to include redundancy and multiple ways of encoding information into a signal (something that I thought was well done in Contact).
If I were to play Devil’s advocate, about the only way I can imagine I could agree with Jeff is if you had life that communicated via radio, and they had enough power to broadcast and receive over interstellar distances. Humans were capable of that feat in principle shortly after inventing radio. Imagining life that had evolved to talk this way would be interesting, and perhaps vaguely plausible.
I think overall SETI has it right. For me personally, I have an issue with finding a planet in the ‘Goldilocks Zone’ which if you study life on this planet it is extremely diverse and can live in many extreme climates. Granted what we have discovered is considered primitive but if they were giving the same amount of time to evolve as humans who knows what kind of intelligence could come from that. I suppose it would be only right to look in that sort of area in a solar system because that is our frame of reference and we really don’t know what to expect out there.
Sorry for the bit of off topic there, I pretty much agree with what SETI is doing and I honestly don’t know enough to even conceive how other life forms would communicate, especially long distances.
I agree with you that it seems virtually certain that any aliens we’d be communicating with across interstellar distances would know mathematics, physics, etc, and that their knowledge would fundamentally be congruent with ours, even though they may well represent it quite differently. But ultimately 0+1=1 on all planets, yep.
I selected the “both answers” poll option (which was a bit ambiguous) because I think that it is ALSO worth sending some other kinds of communication: art, literature, music, etc. But I wouldn’t suppose them to be so easily understood or appreciated; I would merely hope that they would be, and I think that it would at least be valuable to show that we humans are more multidimensional, and that we are not 100% about math/science, but merely that math/science is one of many activities or fields of knowledge that interest us – math/science just also happens to be the one that is most likely to be usable as a universally shared communication mechanism with aliens (at least at the start).
I’m reminded by a quote supposedly said by Edward Lasker: “While the Baroque rules of Chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of Go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play Go.” I would (in all seriousness) also want to send a series of Go positions to aliens. (And why not Chess, too?) Homo ludens is also part of being human, after all.
I’m voting for a bit of both as well, but for somewhat different reasons.
Yes, apart from math/phys/chem then “little else could be expected to be in common”. And math/phys/chem should work roughly the same wherever you are.
But a lot of the way in which we understand and describe the universe is essentially arbitrary; our descriptions of the universe are subjective approximations rather than ultimate truths. The way that we do things isn’t necessarily the only way to do things, and the example from human diversity (of the variable nature of seemingly “objective” things like colour and phoneme boundaries) argues for caution in assumptions about how simple the task of ET comms is going to be.
I think that math/chem/phys is likely our best chance of communication if ever required; but also that it may not be enough.
Yikes! So far I’m the only “assumption†vote. I’d like to think they would “know†math and physics and more importantly would “understand†them in the way that we do. But Jeff makes a good point based on the idea that something truly alien might have no knowledge of the forces they are harnessing to do whatever it is that they are doing. For all we know there could be alien minds analyzing our transmissions now and fighting about whether it is random noise generated naturally or whether it is signs of intelligence.
It’s possible that certain forces we have spent years studying are as natural to them as breathing and never merited in depth study, or that their alien culture has forbidden the study of certain things and they would turn their minds from our messages as blasphemy from the devil. Frankly we have no idea, just lots of hopeful thoughts.
There was this famous short story, by James Blish I think, about a Jesuit priest called in by SETI. After contact had been made, using math and science to establish a common language, all the aliens sent thereafter was religious in nature trying to convert us. The Jesuit’s job was to respond with questions to poke holes in their belief system, at least enough to get them to talk about anything else. The result ended up with a revolution on the alien planet and a less religiously minded government gaining control over the radio dishes. Story spanned decades, of course.
Anyone remember the title?
And I guess I’d summarize my position like this. If it is an assumption that we would share an understanding of math and physics with aliens communicating with us over interstellar distances using technological means, it is a worse assumption that we’d have anything else in common. The philosopher and the fantasy writer may continue thinking about it, or the extremely creative science fiction writer, but science and SETI need not any time soon.
maybe advanced alien civilizations dont even use radio waves (or any electromagnetic frequency) for communication anymore.
Rogerio, that’s possible. So far from outside our own solar system we’ve only detected light, a handful of neutrinos, and observed cosmic rays.
SETI typically assumes a more advanced civilization than ours that wants to talk to us. Radio waves and optical light are the only wavelengths that easily go through our atmosphere, so that’s what aliens with a biology/environment like ours could be expected to do to communicate with us. I will grant that these are assumptions for sure.
maybe advanced alien civilizations dont even use radio waves (or any electromagnetic frequency) for communication anymore.
My hope (a vain one, in all likelihood) is that we haven’t detected alien radio signals because they all use the ansible (FTL communication device) and when we invent one we’ll find ourselves part of an enormous interstellar community.
if I was 100% sure that the discovery of extraterrestrials would shatter religious fundamentalism on Earth, I would be more supportive of searching for them (and broadcasting). Obviously, we cant even be sure there arent some advanced religious fundamentalist aliens out there. Social and tech dont always advance side by side.
its quite a gamble to suppose a 50 million years old civilization will be “goody”. Not much they can find on Earth that they cant find elsewhere, but who knoew, humans themselves have hundreds of reasons to kill. Maybe they will think our smooth skin repulsive, or our voices irritating.
Maybe they will kill us for having grotesquely rough skins, or find our voices so soothing and seductive that we can never be trusted…
(Unless they watch the early episodes of American Idol!)
One well-known secret to writing is to turn expectations upside down.
we have the right to explain the question to all human being,what is UFO? how to “speak with them”. because we are the only brother and sister can “communicate” with ET by brain consciousness wave..you can think we are talented scientists at interdisciplinary researcher even though we don’t work in any company,we are unemployed, but we are “special two” of the human beings
i and my brother are the creator of the universe justice mind big alliance and the organizer of new human group all over the world.
we are the proud of all human beings, because only my brother can tell how to communicate with ET and how to make our top-level aerospacecraft and its work theory,these question may get an answer in <>,soon i will register the book in my blog http://completelovepeace.ddhw.cn, i already offer my successful project how to cure thoroughtly AIDS and make vaccine to Luc Montagnier (president of the world foundation for AIDS research and prevention)
is it possible to chat with aliens
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