How To Make Messages Easy For an Alien Race To Understand (hackaday.com)

szczys writes: The screen on that new cellphone has amazing pixel density, color vibrance, and refresh rate. The high-end headphones you just picked up do an amazing job reproducing sound. These devices interface extremely well with humans but might not be very good modes of communication for an Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Sure, we haven't made contact with alien life yet. Even if they did pick up our broadcasts or space probes the relatively narrow-range of audio (narrow and low frequency), visual (slow refresh rate), and data transmission methods are likely to make no sense to non-human entities. The Voyager Golden Record took a fascinating approach to making some data available to new civilizations; it's interesting to think of other ways we might communicate with beings of fundamentally different biology.

Comments

...uhh

[JMJimmy]

Don't bother. If they have the ability to pick up the signal, they'll have the ability to decipher the message.

Re:...uhh

[CaptQuark]

Every signal that we have sent out requires them to be visually oriented. Do you think the TV signals we beam into space will make any sense to beings that communicate ultrasonically? An encoded 2D image interlaced with alternate lines 30 times a second won't be of much use to intelligent vampire bats.

What about beings from an ice planet that communicate with different temperatures of liquid methane? Or beings that communicate using pheromones? Or interference patterns of UV radiation? Or any other sensory stimuli that we haven't even imagined yet.

We also try sending out mathematical sequences we assume they will recognize, like Pi. Except many mathematicians think Tau is a better constant to broadcast. (Tau is 2 x Pi. Tau fits many mathematical equations much better than Pi.) Pi and Tau are great constants for plane geometry, but what about beings that live in water or other liquid media. Circles are very rare in water. Spheres are much more common and the use of Pi may or may not be instantly recognizable. What about a constant that describes the relationship of the volume of a sphere to its radius/diameter?

There have been many studies that show that one method of communication that covers long distances is artificial gravity waves. Until we can send or receive these signals, we might be looked at like newborns clapping their hands and thinking they are communicating.

--

Re: ...uhh

[fyngyrz]

Pretty sure we'd recognize any constant you've mentioned, likewise any math-savvy aliens. For that matter I think we, and the putative "they", would recognize any number .

Re:...uhh

[Rei]

Every signal that we have sent out requires them to be visually oriented. Do you think the TV signals we beam into space will make any sense to beings that communicate ultrasonically? An encoded 2D image interlaced with alternate lines 30 times a second won't be of much use to intelligent vampire bats.

Okay, first off...

1) Vampire bats do not work that way.

2) Humans take information that our senses can't perceive all the time and turn in into forms that we can. That's what false-color images and the like are.

3) A species that can pick up the signal (as the GP posited) is most definitely able to transform signals between mediums. It's pretty much a fundamental part of any receiver technology - you take a propagating signal, turn it into data, then turn the data into a form that you can perceive.

Obviously no species is going to inherently have the recipe for demodulating the signal just handed to them - they'll have to figure it out, even if their senses are precisely the same as ours. They'll have to recognize, "hey there's a signal here, and by its pattern it doesn't appear to be naturally generated and seems to be storing data in some manner". They'll then have to reverse engineer how to pull the data out of the signal. Then they'll have to figure out how the data is structured (probably the hardest part, esp. with modern compressed digital formats). All of these apply to all beings. But once you've figured all of that out, turning it into a form that you can perceive is the easy part.

Say there's a species with no vision that can only experiences the world through ultrasound echolocation, as in what you probably intended to be your example? Once you understand that the signal is, say, periodic frames representing an array of triplet values (what we know to be RGB) and know how to decode it to that, the species may play it back by, say, an "ultrasound screen" that creates the perception of a 3-dimensional surface, with the height representing pixel intensity. Maybe they might combine all three RGB values into one height, maybe they might present them as side by side heightfields, maybe they might use one value to represent height, another to represent surface roughness, another to represent sound absorptive properties of the surface, or somesuch. They'll pick whatever is most convenient for them.

I'm not going to humour your "liquid methane temperature" communication concept because that's far too low bandwidth for a sentient species to practically use. Pheromones also. And "interference patterns of UV radiation", that depends on what you mean by "interference patterns" - you're either talking about a UV equivalent of echolocation, as above, or just visible data shifted into the UV, which is just a frequency shift on the RGB image into their visual range. We as humans do frequency shifts of astronomical data all the time, that's what every image made from a UV, X-ray, IR, radio, etc telescope is.

For any species to be able to get to the phase of being able to receive and demodulate communications, it must have at least the concept and ability to perceive 2D orientation (if not 3D), because it has to be able to align receivers with the right patch of sky. That perception can be of some unthinkably bizarre form by our standards, but it has to exist. Whatever perception of 2D it has, 2d images can be presented in that form.

Your Pi/Tau example is clearly pointless. We as humans clearly know of both constants. Sure, Pi "stands out" more to us at first glance, but if we received something that appeared to be of non-natural origin, you really think nobody would notice if the data was Tau?

Circles are no more "rare in water" than on land. The cross section of a sphere is a circle. What do you think bubbles are? Rounded rocks? Round sea life? Heck, lava underwater, unlike on land, tends to produce round structures called pillow lava. And again, if this to the point of being able to isolate faint radio

Re:...uhh

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, from a discovery standpoint, I don't think we could care any less about those species.

We, ideally, WANT to discover an alien species that CAN communicate back, a species that have developed external intelligence rather than internally.
We want a species that has worked their world, has developed similarly to ours.

Sure, it would be fantastic to find ANY life out there, but the priority is those that can send us a "piss off ya wanker" back to us.
All of those other lifeforms that can't communicate back would be no different to bacteria, in the end. They could be as intelligent as they want, still doesn't change the fact they can't communicate for shit.

Look at Dolphins, incredibly intelligent creatures, but due to the fact they live in the water, they haven't really developed much externally simply because they can't.
A water life is anti-external-development. You can't do anything in water. All they can do is develop internally.
It'd be great to learn about the cultures of other species like this, and as we speak, we have been attempting to create bridging languages with dolphins for many years now, and it is fairly successful. But like any species, there are different dialects, different languages.

Re:...uhh

[DarkOx]

My thoughts would be that any intelligence we could ever recognize and have any communication with would have to work like our own at least in that it seeks out patterns in stimuli.

Even if you communicate ultrasonically, heck even if you see that way you still exist in the same N-dimensional universe we do. So if you are looking at a TV signal that you have notices does not fit the normal background pattern of EM and start trying to make sense of it. Eventually you might be able to work out hey this is a series of half resolution projections from three dimensions onto two over a range of spectrum. Would it be one hell of puzzle, you bet but I think a solvable one for the sufficiently intelligent, interested, advanced extra terrestrial species even if they are quite different from us.

4/3(pi)r^3 describes the volume of a sphere, pi is still the relevant constant. pi describes both circles and spheres nicely with multiplication. 4(pi)r^2 gives you the area of a sphere. Ah but area of a circle (pi)r^2, you think that is more natural and apparent that ((1/2)tau)r^2. Whole number multiplication is a more natural operation than division. I have studied the matter of tau greatly but the equations I can think of off the top of my head let me do more with pi being the only non integer coefficients. Which I think makes it clearer what the 'special' relation is.

Re: ...uhh

[Culture20]

Will they assume we worshiped little sphere gods?

His name is A Sphere and he has the same spacial dimensions as us.

morse code

[invictusvoyd]

of course

Umm, ok

[wonkey_monkey]

These devices interface extremely well with humans but might not be very good modes of communication for an Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.

I never thought they would be.

In other news, cars are useless for exploring the oceans.

LINCOS

[aaaaaaargh!]

Read LINCOS: Design of a Language for Cosmic Intercourse, Part 1 by Hans Freudenthal, North Holland Publ. 1960. Unfortunately, he never got to publish the second volume covering more advanced concepts, but the language was further developed by NASA and by various enthusiasts later. It's still the most systematic treatment for communicating with aliens.

not a very good article

[binarstu]

TFA (not the linked wikipedia article) basically just asks the question, "what if an alien's sensory systems (vision and hearing) were far more acute than ours?", and then gives a rather superficial answer to that question. TFA seems to be trying to make the argument that if an alien's vision or hearing were better than ours, the alien would not be able to comprehend our electronic visual displays or sound reproductions. The argument is not convincing at all, though. After all, we have color vision, but black and white media still works quite well for us.

TFA also makes some rather silly statements, such as, "With its advanced hearing, perhaps the Oculako [TFA's name for the alien] even transmits complex data by sound." Yeah, humans already do that, every day. Human speech is pretty good tool for transmitting "complex data by sound." Or, for a technological example, how does the author think fax machines and telephone-line data modems work?

Finally, the title of the Slashdot summary is "How To Make Messages Easy For an Alien Race To Understand", but TFA doesn't even attempt to answer that question. In fact, the article ends with this: "...it’s a very difficult problem to come up with an interspecies communication mechanism. ... Given the technological advances since the 1970s how would you design this era’s golden record?" And that's it. The closest TFA comes to the question is asking the reader how he or she would solve it.

Re:not a very good article

[drinkypoo]

TFA (not the linked wikipedia article) basically just asks the question, "what if an alien's sensory systems (vision and hearing) were far more acute than ours?", and then gives a rather superficial answer to that question.

I knew it would do that when I started running into grammatical errors. I was right.

TFA seems to be trying to make the argument that if an alien's vision or hearing were better than ours, the alien would not be able to comprehend our electronic visual displays or sound reproductions. The argument is not convincing at all, though. After all, we have color vision, but black and white media still works quite well for us.

They were arguing that our displays depend on persistence of vision, and that this creature won't have any. A preposterous notion, because persistence of vision is in the brain, not the eye, and we've known this for over a hundred years. But this argument pales next to the stupidity of the argument that a creature with a higher hearing range wouldn't be able to perceive our audible communications. Really? That's so stupid, I can't even stupid how stupid it's stupid. We have pets with higher hearing ranges, and they can literally understand what we are saying in some cases as their brains are sufficiently developed. They're claiming a smarter entity with more advanced senses won't be able to understand us? That's nothing short of idiotic.

The truth is that aliens are not unlikely to look a lot like us, because you still have physics to deal with no matter where you go. A creature with four legs is still at a disadvantage when it comes to industrialization. You need some manipulators attached to your body, but not too many because more parts just means more to go wrong, it's actually a liability. Too much hair makes it hard for you to manipulate fire, which you need to advance as a tool maker. If you can't walk upright, you can't free your hands for masturbation.

Re:not a very good article

[Theaetetus]

But this argument pales next to the stupidity of the argument that a creature with a higher hearing range wouldn't be able to perceive our audible communications. Really? That's so stupid, I can't even stupid how stupid it's stupid. We have pets with higher hearing ranges, and they can literally understand what we are saying in some cases as their brains are sufficiently developed. They're claiming a smarter entity with more advanced senses won't be able to understand us? That's nothing short of idiotic.

Not to mention the fact that the article posited incredible hearing all the way up to 100kHz! Of course, that's really less than two and a half octaves higher than normal human hearing.

If you can't walk upright, you can't free your hands for masturbation.

Which is why the Tyrannosaurus Rex was always so sad.

Re:Humility

[Anonymous Coward]

This is 'sci-fi' optimism. You assume that warp drives and hyperspace will eventually trickle down into reality. Our current understanding of physics doesn't make FTL travel for matter look very promising, and we've yet to detect anything that does. Even before humans broke the sound barrier, we observed things that did so all the time. Just like we knew heavier-than-air flight was possible, because birds exist.

Re:Universal language of elements

[camperdave]

Oh no you don't. I've got Walking Dead, Doctor Who, ST-DS9 and ST-Voyager to finish binge watching first. I don't need to be adding Stargate and it's offspring to the list.

Don't contact aliens. Don't.

[X10]

Aliens that find us will probably be so much more advanced than we are, they'll put us in their zoo, or they'll eat us. There should be a law against contacting intelligent alien life forms.

Re:Don't contact aliens. Don't.

[unique_parrot]

Don't worry, until they have received the message we have already extincted ourselves.

Re:Animals

[jellomizer]

We can communicate with animals. We can learn there gestures, mannerisms, vocal noises, even analyse the smells they produce. We can often tell if they are happy, sad, angry at least for mammals and birds. However animals don't have the same level of communication that people do. Sure some animals makes complex sounds but it doesn't mean they are performing complex grammar. A Dolphin going Screech - Chirpity - click - click may just mean "Fish over here", and perhaps an identifier on who he is.
We can identify this stuff. We think we cannot communicate with animals because we don't get into these deep conversations with them but they don't think like that. They are not that deep.

Re:Humility

[Rei]

It's the same sort of thing that feeds religion and "The Secret"-type worldviews: if you want something to exist enough, if you really want something to occur with all your heart, then surely it will exist, surely it will occur.

Basically, "magical thinking".

Re:There are no "aliens"

[Rei]

If you understand the first thing about metaphysics,

I have a solid background in phrenology, is that good enough?

Tip

[Tablizer]

1. Don't use Perl

Re:core point

[Tom]

Once one has transmitted the means to convey information and technology, plans can be transmitted (ala Contact, but with technology for biological creation, not communication). One could send to another world every last step needed to create and nurture a human being in-situ,

You are assuming that life as we know it is meaningful to advanced species, and I challenge that assumption.

Life on earth made a leap forward when cells began working together and specializing. The same process is already going on in human societies - many of us are so specialised that we would have a hard time surviving outside the city and the logistics systems that provide us with water, food, electricity (for heat) and build our houses and roads. Imagine this goes on for another thousand years, with humans becoming the equivalent of cells. Highly specialised, completely linked into a larger system that becomes the new entity.

Life of such scale does not have restrictions that we have, the same way we are not impacted by the death of some individual cells in our body. Such a lifeform could easily engage in interstellar travel, even with the hundreds and thousands of years it takes. Its individual "cells" would die and reproduce, but it as a whole would continue.

You can even see nation states or cultures as a primitive version of such life. An identity above and beyond the individual. A frightening prospect for us westerners, who live in a culture that celebrates individualism. For asians, such ideas are much less frightening.