Question

As dumb as earthlings are, how could we translate a message from other beings received by SETI? Also, what do you think they would try and tell us?

This is an excellent question, and one to which there is no clear technical answer. Please remember, however, that the sensitivity of current SETI searches is probably insufficient to pick up leakage — that is, to eavesdrop on the internal communications of another world. Such overheard conversations would probably not be interpretable by Earthlings. Rather, we are looking for beacons — signals sent out in the hopes that some other civilization will receive them. In this case, we hope that the civilization transmitting such a beacon will keep the message simple and will include enough clues that another civilization, even one no more advanced than ours, can decode it. This strategy is described in some detail in the fictional film “Contact” and Carl Sagan’s novel of the same name. The success of SETI in detecting alien transmissions and translating them is largely dependent on the existence of other civilizations that want to be found and will try to make it easy for us to join the galactic conversation.

David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist
August 5, 2009