Friday, February 08, 2013

Psychology of interstellar communication

Welcome! "Alien Life" tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. Here's today's news:
g Abodes - The chemosynthetic life that thrives at hydrothermal vents might give us clues to how life arose in the first place. They also might be the same sort of life that could possibly exist on Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa. See article.
g Intelligence - Dolphins are known for being highly intelligent mammals. So intelligent, in fact, that they can communicate with humans even when they have not been trained to do so. That's what happened to a group of divers on an observation trip off the coast of Hawaii, known as the Big Island. See article.
g Aftermath - If we establish communication with a civilization even as close as 100 light years from Earth, the round-trip time for a message and its reply is 200 years. What will be the psychology of a civilization that can engage in a meaningful conversation with this sort of delay? How is such a conversation to be established? What should the content of such a conversation be? These are the questions which motivate our title: "Minds and Millennia: The Psychology of Interstellar Communication." See article.

Get your SF book manuscript edited