Over at the SciFi Scanner blog, John Brownlee posted an interesting article that has facinated and bothered me equally for years. Science fiction tv shows and movies have, to varying degrees, show that aliens may well not look like us, but for the most part, they all seem to sound like us. In John's words:The problem of communicating with extraterrestrials has been a fascinating intellectual exercise for scientists and philosophers for most of the 20th century. Although Star Trek and Star Wars are rather optimistic that aliens will speak English with a perfectly recognizable American accent, it's possible that they will, in fact, communicate in an unintelligible cacophony of blurps and farting noises.
And there's the rub: We may communicate visually and aurally, but what if aliens communicate chemically? How do you convince them you are an intelligent life form when your body can only squirt out the smell of methane from time to time?
With that in mind, I might come across as verbose and loud.....but that's another subject....Well, John came across a really fascinating article in the December 1947 Popular Mechanix which he calls clear and charming, Called "How will we talk to Martians, dealing with just such a problem. Check it out.
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