Beyond Contact: a Guide to SETI

Beyond Contact is the definitive guide to human efforts at contacting alien civilizations. Sure, there have been various works that suggest the best way to make contact is to stand out in a cornfield on a dark night, but if you believe hard work and science (and maybe a *cough* data-crunching PCI card) is the way to go, this book will tell you everything you need to know. The author has been interviewed before; that will give you a starting point. Beyond Contact: A Guide to SETI and Communicating with Alien Civilizations author Brian McConnell pages 417 publisher O'Reilly rating 9/10 reviewer michael ISBN 0-596-00037-5 summary the definitive guide to SETI

Some readers may recall what Stephen Hawking said about his book, A Brief History of Time:

"Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In the end, however, I did put in one famous equation, E=mc². I hope that this will not scare off half my potential readers."

Hawking was facing the same challenge as Brian McConnell faces in this book. Both are trying to turn advanced knowledge of their field of endeavour (which requires heavy math, heavy astronomy, heavy physics, heavy programming, and so forth) into a work which can be comprehended by lesser beings. McConnell has taken a different path than Hawking - his book has plenty of advanced equations, diagrams, and concepts. McConnell does a reasonable (and often very good) job at trying to bring readers up to speed when he thinks he's going to go over their heads, but it is still not a book for the faint of heart or mathematically-challenged. There are enough equations in the book to bring its readership down to (.5)ⁿ -- oh, roughly zero, give or take.

In any case, it's a good book, but technical. You were warned.

The first couple of chapters cover the history of searching for extraterrestrial life, "are we alone?", the nature of intelligence, and similar areas. Drake's Equation is the famous set of fudge-factors that would tell us whether we were likely to find other life forms, if only we knew what the values of the variables were:

N = R * f_s * f_p * n_e * f_l * f_i * f_c * L

Fill in values for all of those and you'll be famous forever. But what it means, as our knowledge stands now, is that we have no clue at all whether there is likely to be life out there or not. Comforting, isn't it?

The next several chapters cover the technical aspects of communicating over interstellar distances. The electrical engineers in the audience will have a leg up here; everyone else has the opportunity to learn the basics of signal processing and the peculiarities specific to communication across galaxies. Pretty thorough and informative, without being overwhelming.

Finally, the latter half of the book covers the 64,000 lightyear question: what to say? How to communicate with an intelligence where you can't assume even the most basic things in common? Yes, yes, you've probably heard of the idea of starting with the periodic table or basic mathematics and working up. But that's sort of like a dot-com business plan:

1. Establish Contact
2. Send Periodic Chart
3. ....
4. Communicate!

McConnell fills in the "...." part, and it's obvious that a great amount of thought has been put into it. Pretty quickly McConnell is describing how to send entire self-executing programs (see Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep).

This book is a bit of an oddity. If we're just talking about entertainment reading, it falls short - too technical. If I was grading it as a scientific work, again it would fall short - not technical enough. :) But as far as I know, this is the only work which tries to explain what SETI really is in terms that educated, reasonably bright laymen can understand, and as such, it does a fine job.

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain. Want to see your review here? Check out the book review submisison guidelines! :)

Comments

Solution to the Drake equation

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Drake's Equation is the famous set of fudge-factors that would tell us whether we were likely to find other life forms, if only we knew what the values of the variables were: N = R * fs * fp * ne * fl * fi * fc * L

fc is the fraction of intelligent species that develop the ability and desire to communicate with other civilizations : after the aliens realize the voice of the UN secretary general of the time on the Voyager probe recording was a fucking Nazi, probably 0.

Therefore, N=0.

Me Human, You Alien

[jonathanpost]

"Me Human, You Alien: How to Talk to an Extraterrestrial" by Jonathan Vos Post (c) 1996 by Emerald City Publishing an excerpt from a book entitled MAKING CONTACT: A SERIOUS HANDBOOK FOR LOCATING AND COMMUNICATING WITH EXTRATERRESTRIALS, edited by Bill Fawcett, July 1997, New York: William Morrow & Co. http://www.magicdragon.com/EmeraldCity/extraterres trials/alien.html This has original ideas on how you, personally, should best prepare to communicate with ETs, including what to carry in your pockets. It also has the best review of Science Fiction approaches to the concept, as well as anthropology and linguistics.

my review (I wasn't that impressed)

[danny]

You might like to check out my review of Beyond Contact . I wasn't that impressed - I thought it was rather awkwardly put together.

Danny.

Re:Arms on a clock

[Xzzy]

> Where is the common reference point?

Binary. :)

If you can convery on and off somehow, up or down, in or out, there is a basis for communication. Sure it's not easy, but look at your desktop.. it's created with nothing but ons and off. If we can do that, certainly with enough patience two intelligent beings could develop a method of communication.

For a real world example suggesting that two intelligent beings will always find some way to communicate, consider Helen Keller's story.

Drake calculation

[rde]

Calculate your own values for the drake equation here

Re:Let's do some math....

[Mr. Neutron]

The Drake equation worksheet sets the lowest bound of planets per star capable of sustaining life at .33. That's absurd. Given what we know about what a planet needs to support life, it's ridiculous. Here's a small sampling of parameters needed for a planet to support life, and odds that they will be satisfied (from renound astronomer Hugh Ross):

- planetary distance from star: 0.001
- rate of change of axial tilt: 0.01
- rate of change in planetary rotation period: 0.05
- mass and distance of moon: 0.01
- surface gravity (escape velocity): 0.001
- magnetic field: 0.01
- thickness of crust: 0.01
- mass of body colliding with primordial earth: 0.002
- number & distribution of planets in solar system: 0.01
- atmospheric transparency: 0.01
- atmospheric pressure: 0.01
- carbon dioxide level in atmosphere: 0.01
- oxygen quantity in atmosphere: 0.01
- cobalt quantity in crust 0.1
- arsenic quantity in crust 0.1
- copper quantity in crust 0.1
- boron quantity in crust 0.1
- flourine quantity in crust 0.1
- iodine quantity in crust 0.1
- manganese quantity in crust 0.1
- nickel quantity in crust 0.1
- phosphorus quantity in crust 0.1
- potassium quantity in crust 0.1
- tin quantity in crust 0.1
- zinc quantity in crust 0.1
- molybdenum quantity in crust 0.05
- vanadium quantity in crust 0.1
- chromium quantity in crust 0.1
- selenium quantity in crust 0.1
- iron quantity in oceans 0.1

Multiply all of those probabilities, and you get a number that's *slightly* smaller than .33.