Communicating With Aliens For decades, researchers involved in
the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have scanned
the skies for evidence that aliens are trying to contact us. But
so far, except for the so-called “Wow signal,” a tantalizingly
brief, thus far unexplained narrowband radio burst picked up by
an Ohio State University radio telescope in 1977, they’ve yet to
find any evidence of a message sent by a faraway civilization.
But imagine that tomorrow, researchers’ wildest dreams are
realized, and they pick up a clear, unmistakable communication
from deep space. That raises another intriguing dilemma. How
would we respond to an alien species in a manner that they would
understand? And what should we say to them? After all, it’s a
bit much to expect that extraterrestrials—assuming that they
possess sensory organs and brains reasonably compatible with
ours—would comprehend English or another human language. “The
problem invites us to think about language, communication and
intelligence at the