Messages sent into space directed at extraterrestrials may have been too boring to earn a reply, say two astrophysicists trying to improve on their previous alien chat lines.
Humans have so far sent four messages into space intended for alien listeners. But they have largely been made up of mathematically coded descriptions of some physics and chemistry, with some basic biology and descriptions of humans thrown in.
Those topics will not prove gripping reading to other civilisations, says Canadian astrophysicist . If a civilisation is advanced enough to understand the message, they will already know most of its contents, he says: 鈥淎fter reading it, they will be none the wiser about us humans and our achievements. In some ways, we may have been wasting our telescope time.鈥�
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In 1999 and 2003, Dutil and fellow researcher Stephane Dumas beamed messages in a language of their own design into space. Now, they are working to compose more interesting messages.
鈥淭he question is, what is interesting to an extraterrestrial?鈥� Dutil told 快猫短视频. 鈥淲e think the answer is using some common ground to communicate things about humanity that will be new or different to them 鈥� like social features of our society.鈥� Fortunately those subjects are already being described mathematically by economists, physicists and sociologists, he adds.
Vexing problems
One topic the two researchers are already composing messages about is the so-called 鈥�cake cutting problem鈥�. 鈥淗ow do you share out resources is a classical problem for all civilisations,鈥� he says.
Democracy is also a potentially eye- or antenna- catching subject. 鈥淭he maths shows that with more than two choices, there is no perfect electoral procedure,鈥� says Dutil. He has started work on encoding this into a message in which 鈥渨e can explain our methods and ask, 鈥榃hat do you use on your planet?'鈥�
Social physics 鈥� the application of mathematical techniques to societies 鈥� also provides good material potentially interesting to the alien. 鈥淲e know that every human social network behaves as a gas, what we don鈥檛 know is how universal that is beyond Earth.鈥� Aliens may be asking themselves similar questions, he adds.
Another fundamental challenge for very old civilisations is using resources sustainably to avoid dying out, says Dutil. 鈥淎ny good examples out there could help a lot on Earth.鈥�
Human nature
Dumas has designed software that is like a word processor for composing messages in the pair鈥檚 symbolic language. There is also a separate automatic decoder, which should help avoid slip-ups like the missing factor of 10 in the duo鈥檚 1999 message.
Douglas Vakoch, director of interstellar message composition at the search for extraterrestrial intelligence at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, US, agrees that we humans need to make our interstellar chat more compelling. 鈥淚f we only communicate something the receiver already knows, it is not going to be very interesting.鈥�
Vakoch has recently been holding workshops at sociology and anthropology conferences to try and widen participation in messaging extraterrestrials beyond astrophysicists. 鈥淚 think perhaps the most important question is: how do we represent what being a human is? And those disciplines can really help,鈥� says Vakoch.
鈥榃e鈥檒l get back to you鈥�
But Vakoch points out that email-like messages may not be the best approach. One alternative is to send software code for an avatar that could answer basic alien questions. That would get around the problem of the delays produced by large distances across space.
鈥淚f someone replies to your message saying, 鈥業 don鈥檛 understand. Can you repeat that?鈥� it will take decades, centuries or millennia to know,鈥� says Vakoch.
鈥淎nother approach is to send a lot of stuff and hope there is enough redundancy for them to spot patterns,鈥� he adds. 鈥淲e could just send the encyclopaedia.鈥�
Dutil agrees other options are worth exploring, but points out that sometimes only a message will do. 鈥淚t would make sense to have an 鈥榓nswer phone鈥� message ready in case we are contacted,鈥� he explains, 鈥渏ust to say, 鈥榳e鈥檒l get back to you,鈥� while we figure out what to do.鈥�
Tell us who you think should be in charge of composing messages to ET in our blog.
Astrobiology 鈥� Learn more in our out-of-this-world .
