Blogs / Discoblog

The thought of deciphering alien gossip might sound straight out of sci-fi, but at least one scientist sees it as a reality—that is, if a computer program can translate alien chatter into something we can understand. Researchers know how to tell whether an interstellar message picked up from space was coming from a language, image or music, and now John Elliott of Leeds Metropolitan University is taking the interpretation a bit further: He says he has the tools to start deciphering alien languages into words and sentences.

Elliott, the academic leader for Artificial Intelligence in the School of Computing, is hoping to use the power of the computer to decode unknown languages (from Earth or beyond) so he can “aid the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.” Elliot developed a computer program that analyzes 60 languages around the world, pulled from raw text samples available on the web. He hopes that finding a trend in human expression will help us understand language structure better. There’s a distinct pattern in the way people talk, determined by how much information our minds can understand at a time.

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What would you tell an extra-terrestrial about life on Earth?

Last week, the social networking site, Bebo, beamed 501 images and text messages into space via the National Space Agency of Ukraine’s RT-70 radar telescope. Where are they going? An Earth-like planet named Gliese 581C that some think may harbor extraterrestrial life. Discovered last year, Gliese 581C orbits the red dwarf star Gliese 581 and has a climate that could support liquid water.

The messages were submitted by Bebo users, who are mostly teens and early twenty-somethings. Aside from the practical (the number pi, the average human height measured in hydrogen atomic radii) and the diplomatic (calls for peace, love, and recycling), they include pictures of Britney Spears, George Sampson, Heath Ledger, and kittens. You can browse through all the messages here.

Gliese 581C is 20.5 light years (120 trillion miles) away, so the digital missives won’t reach their destination until early 2029. That also means we won’t hear back from any alien correspondents for another four decades.

Of course, this isn’t the first time earthlings have reached out to the great beyond.

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