A new book made for Nasa called Archaeology,
Anthropology and Interstellar Communication details the methods through
which we might communicate with aliens. Although this artist's
illustration is a bit fanciful, the authors suggest that Earth may
already have been visited
Some of the most interesting chapters tackle the issue of alien communication in the past, present and future.
In
one section, for example, William Edmondson from the University of
Birmingham considers the possibility that rock art on Earth is of
extraterrestrial origin.
‘We
can say little, if anything, about what these patterns signify, why
they were cut into rocks, or who created them,’ he writes.
‘For all intents and purposes, they might have been made by aliens.’
THE HISTORY OF SETI
In 1959,
Cornell physicists Gieuseppi Cocconi and Philip Morrison published an
article discussing the potential to use microwave radio to communicate
between stars.
A year later in 1960, astronomer Frank Drake conducted the first hunt for alien life with an 85-foot (25 metres) antenna in West Virgina, but after two months concedes defeat.
In the 1960s, Soviet Union performs extensive searches for ET, again with no success.
In the 1970s Nasa began to take an interest in Seti, with the chances of success seemingly growing as technology advanced.
In 1988, Nasa began sweeping surveys of the night sky for signals, but Congress terminated funding a few years later.
The independent Seti Institute, established in 1984, took over the job.
In 1992 the first planet outside the solar system is confirmed, an almost certainly uninhabitable world orbiting a pulsar.
In 2009 Nasa’s Kepler telescope launches and, over the next few years, finds hundreds of planets.
And just last month, the first planet of a similar size to Earth and at the correct distance from its parent star to host water, called Kepler 186-f, was found.
It is the most likely place that has been found that could host life as we know it.
A year later in 1960, astronomer Frank Drake conducted the first hunt for alien life with an 85-foot (25 metres) antenna in West Virgina, but after two months concedes defeat.
In the 1960s, Soviet Union performs extensive searches for ET, again with no success.
In the 1970s Nasa began to take an interest in Seti, with the chances of success seemingly growing as technology advanced.
In 1988, Nasa began sweeping surveys of the night sky for signals, but Congress terminated funding a few years later.
The independent Seti Institute, established in 1984, took over the job.
In 1992 the first planet outside the solar system is confirmed, an almost certainly uninhabitable world orbiting a pulsar.
In 2009 Nasa’s Kepler telescope launches and, over the next few years, finds hundreds of planets.
And just last month, the first planet of a similar size to Earth and at the correct distance from its parent star to host water, called Kepler 186-f, was found.
It is the most likely place that has been found that could host life as we know it.
It was edited for Nasa by Douglas Vakoch, Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the Seti Institute.
With
the help of other experts he tackles a number of topics including the
prospect of life on other planets and the means through which we might
send or receive a message.
Vakoch begins the 330-page book by postulating how difficult it might be to make first contact.
‘If
a radio signal is detected in a modern Seti experiment, we could well
know that another intelligence exists, but not know what they are
saying,’ he writes in the book’s introduction.
He
goes on to add: ‘Even if we detect a civilisation circling one of our
nearest stellar neighbours, its signals will have traversed trillions of
miles, reaching Earth after travelling for years.’
But,
all hope is not lost – throughout the book Vakoch and his colleagues
tackle these very problems, and provide solutions that may prove
invaluable in the future.
‘To
move beyond the mere detection of such intelligence, and to have any
realistic chance of comprehending it, we can gain much from the lessons
learned by researchers facing similar challenges on Earth,’ he
continues.
‘Like
archaeologists who reconstruct temporally distant civilisations from
fragmentary evidence, Seti researchers will be expected to reconstruct
distant civilisations separated from us by vast expanses of space as
well as time.
‘As
we attempt to decode and interpret extraterrestrial messages, we will
be required to comprehend the mindset of a species that is radically
Other.’
Rock art, an example in Niger pictured, is cited
as one possible example of aliens visiting Earth before. Ultimately,
however, the authors detail some of the methods we might employ to
search for alien life including scouring exoplanets for signs of
civilisation
Elsewhere in the compendium the authors tackle the question of the possible biology, evolution and physics of an extraterrestrial race.
Vakoch explains how the methods via which aliens communicate might be vastly different from our own, making contact difficult.
He says that messaging through sound, as we are used to on Earth, might not be possible.
‘On the other hand, vision and the use of images would appear to be at least plausible,’ he writes.
The authors also detail way we could send
messages of our own through methods such as Active Seti, using giant
radio dishes like the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico (pictured).
They say their are immense challenges in making first contact, but we
can learn lessons from the history of civilisations on Earth
And,
he adds, imaging the surface of habitable planets in the future might
reveal ‘the physical arrangement of objects’ that suggests the presence
of alien life.
Edmondson
suggests, for example, that ‘an optical telescope of diameter 620 miles
(1,000 miles) could resolve an object of diameter one kilometre (0.62
miles) at a distance of 100 light-years.’
Vakoch
concludes his introduction with the monumental task awaiting scientists
and scholars across the world, but highlights the importance of these
studies and research.
‘These
scholars are grappling with some of the enormous challenges that will
face humanity if an information-rich signal emanating from another world
is detected,’ he writes.
‘By
drawing on issues at the core of contemporary archaeology and
anthropology, we can be much better prepared for contact with an
extraterrestrial civilisation, should that day ever come.’
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