Voices From The Cosmos

ASTRONOMERS have been pointing radio telescopes towards the heavens for years, hoping to hear any sounds or messages emanating from an alien life form. The question is, even if there are aliens broadcasting out into the cosmos, will our scientists be able to recognize those sounds as being an alien form of communication... or just more static?

For instance, the Greenbank radio telescope in West Virginia, USA has been searching the heavens for any sounds coming from an ET intelligence for many years, but what if ET has a completely different way of communicating than we have?

Scientists may say, ‘A sound is a sound is a sound.’ But they can only form this hypothesis by how sound waves are interpreted by us humans here on earth, which may be completely different to the way sounds are formed, communicated and transmitted by intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe.

What if the gold disc, containing music and greetings in 55 Earth languages that went into space with Voyager 2 in 1977 comes across an intelligence that is entirely different in its makeup to what we could ever imagine or understand at our present level, will they even recognize the space craft for what it is far less the little coloured disc with strange little scribbles and static on it?

All of the monsters that ever were and still are depicted in horror movies, all of the creatures of science fiction, not only resemble in some way, shape or form, life as we know it, they all communicate in ways that are somewhat similar to the ways we and all of life on earth communicate.

When we hear a sound that is completely alien to our ears - either it will not register, or it will be interpreted as nothing but static, or it will be ignored. Anything, whether audio or visual, can only be recognized by us when correlated against what we already know from the past.

The air waves could very well be chock-a-block full of aliens chattering merrily amongst themselves or attempting to communicate with us and we would be completely oblivious and none the wiser…

Dan’s Quote: “Sight and sound is interpreted by the senses of our human body.
____________An alien body may well interpret them very differently.”

Header Picture: Radio Telescope, Parkes, NSW, Australia.