2020-04-02_Science_Illustrated

MESSENGER

Twitter messages reach

dwarf star in 2031

In 2013, private individuals were

able to send tweets from the US

Jamesburg Earth Station aimed at the

GJ 526 star 17.6 light years from Earth.

Norwegian satellite dish sends music to aliens

In 2017, the EISCAT radar near Tromsø sent forth a signal which

included 33 specially-commissioned 10-second music pieces towards

the GJ 273 b planet. Contributors include sound artist Holly Herndon, French

composer Jean-Michel Jarre and experimental electronic-music duo Matmos.

An expected reply date in 2043 was included in the signal.

Huge Caribbean telescope

sent pioneer message

The Arecibo telescope in Puerto

Rico lent its name to a famous

signal, though it will miss its target.

Now it might send a new message.

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cluster, because it will have moved before
the signal reaches it in 22155. Nevertheless,
the signal was mankind’s first targeted
attempt to tell intelligent life-forms outside
the Solar System that we exist. The message
was designed by Frank Drake with iconic
NASA astronomer Carl Sagan and others, as a
binary-coded illustration of knowledge about
Earth, such as our numeric system, a human
body, and the molecules that make up DNA.
According to Douglas Vakoch, president
of METI International, the Arecibo Message
contains too much information, and aliens
will not understand the man-made symbol-
ism. So METI’s group of scientists includes
psychologists and language researchers,
whose first task is to author messages that
any intelligent creature can understand.
Internet of the ocean
Since we don’t know how aliens communi-
cate, METI scientists are studying creatures
closer to home, such as humpback whales,
which also communicate in a way that we
do not understand.
The whales are interesting because their
singing involves the use of special methods
and specific patterns. They employ the
oceans as their own ‘internet’, using the fact
that sound travels five times faster through
water than in air. Whales can send a call that
reaches the receiver perfectly well in spite of
thousands of kilometres between them.
Scientists are trying to determine how
the whales convert their
messages into sound waves.
The whales can appar-
ently also understand an
incomplete message, just
as people can understand
sentences though we
hear only some of the
words. That is probably
because whale singing
adheres to Zipf’s law,
named after language
researcher George
Zipf. According to
Zipf's law, the most
frequently used word
of a language (or whale
sound) occurs twice as
often as the second
most frequently used
world, three times as
often as the third most
widely used word, and so on.
Although Zipf’s law does not
translate whale singing, the
pattern reveals a factor common
to all languages, which METI can
use to author messages to aliens.
54 | SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED
SPACE ALIENS