If ET Wanted to Communicate, How Would We Say Hello? Part 1

"We are not alone in the universe."

That's a dramatic opening statement for an NSA research article. It was written in 1971 by Lambros D. Callimahos and it provides some early thoughts as to the best ways to chat with aliens if we happened to discover extraterrestrial intelligence.

Why would the NSA even consider this topic?

You might have noticed that Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) and government disclosure are all the rage recently. However, it is lesser-known that since the 1960s, the National Security Agency (NSA) has been operating a clandestine program dedicated to the study of UFOs (also referred to as UAPs). The Debrief reveals that the NSA seriously investigated this subject, contemplating the long-term consequences of potential UFO existence. Furthermore, the agency deliberated on how to optimally prepare the nation for the ramifications of such encounters.

The NSA paper does the math. Given the likely amount of planets in the universe with the right chemistry to support life - over 1 billion civilizations likely exist or have existed somewhere. Best to be prepared and ready to communicate when our alien brethren makes their presence known.

But think about how difficult this would be. The article states that we would have to assume that the "others" would likely be a far more advanced civilization than ours. It would be a challenge communicating with our own species if there was a gap of 500 years. Imagine attempting communication with an unknown intelligence 5000 years more advanced?

Some early thoughts on communication methods are discussed in the article, and the first one proposed is honestly kind of funny. A researcher, Bernard M. Oliver came up with the idea in 1961 that information could be be embedded and transmitted in a "raster". He was essentially describing a bitmap image that could be transmitted in a binary sequence.

Likely revolutionary at the time, but the proposed payload below doesn't exactly speak to our intellectual prowess.

What I find particularly amusing is the anatomically correct depictions of us as mammals. The assumption is that alien life would even know what a mammal is. We have no idea what other lifeforms might look like - think about the diversity of life on our own planet. (I did, however, think this would look great on a coffee mug. Get yours today!)

The second method discussed is based on numbers as symbols and has much more merit. Physical constants are universal and can be conveyed as mathematical expressions. This provides a common frame of reference that can be understood by any sufficiently advanced civilization.

The trick is how to convey that we're speaking "math"?

The paper describes the use of "inverse cryptography" for this purpose. I'm not sure I like the term but I do like the concept. The idea is that when constructing the message you shouldn't have to rely on how clever the receiver is to decode it. Instead, the ingenuity on the sender side is most important. Making the meaning clear without the need for a Rosetta Stone.

The system proposed uses a set of arbitrary symbols that can be transmitted in terms of duration or frequency. Start with a basic sequence that has an easy to guess meaning - think "this symbol means a number" and then add additional patterns with more complex or abstract concepts, like 1 + 1 = 2, until ultimately getting to mathematical theorems that represent universal constants.

Here's a snippet of what this might look like.

Each starting number represents a single transmission. The NSA example includes 30 unique sequences with the later ones introducing the concept of word groups. This would be the beginning of how to teach a language.

The letters are just arbitrary symbols. For this to work, you just need a way of differentiating each symbol in the transmission.

The article suggests that each of the 32 arbitrary symbols can be represented by different types of signals - using a combination of beeps or pulse shapes. The punctuation marks in the message just represent pauses of different lengths. The whole payload would then be transmitted at a frequency of 1420.4 megacycles.

Why this frequency? This represents the radiation frequency of free hydrogen which is able to pass through the earth's atmosphere. (In case you're wondering, megacycle is essentially an older term for what we now call megahertz.) This is a typical frequency used for radio astronomy today.

While reading about using pulses or beeps for the symbols it occurred to me that they could be represented in other creative ways. How about colors? Perhaps it's possible to create a better image than the bitmapped naked mammal example above that has an encoded message in it. How about musical notes? What would that sequence sound like if encoded as a song?

Well, I decided to try it out.

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