{"id":775628,"date":"2023-12-15T00:28:55","date_gmt":"2023-12-15T05:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=775628"},"modified":"2023-12-15T00:28:55","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T05:28:55","slug":"trying-to-communicate-with-whales-is-like-talking-to-extraterrestrials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=775628","title":{"rendered":"Trying to Communicate with Whales is Like Talking to Extraterrestrials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Communicating between species isn\u2019t something that only has to take place between space-faring civilizations. There are plenty of species here on our home planet that communicate using a variety of sights, sounds, and smells. We\u2019re only starting to unlock the secrets of how to understand and respond to these types of foreign languages. Researchers at the SETI Institute think that doing so might be a good test for whether we\u2019ll be able to communicate with extraterrestrials if we ever get the chance to.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-164832\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Luckily, there are plenty of opportunities to practice. One of the most fascinating creatures with clearly discernible communication is the humpback whale. They\u2019re a favorite of both sight-seers and scientists alike due to their relative affinity for humans as well as their songs that can travel up to 10,000 miles through the ocean depths.<\/p>\n<p>Studying them has been a focal point of the Whale-SETI team from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, UC Davis, and the Alaska Whale Foundation. Recently, they published a paper detailing an encounter with one particular whale, known as \u201cTwain.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<p>\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"SETI Talks: Whales, their song, their culture: another intelligence on Earth\" width=\"1110\" height=\"833\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3QO_UWxglm0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/p><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">SETI Institute video on talking to whales.<br \/>Credit \u2013 SETI Institute YouTube Channel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In a flurry of exchanged messages, the scientists sent a \u201ccontact\u201d call that drew Twain\u2019s attention and had him circling their boat for around 20 minutes. He responded to every burst of sound from the scientists and matched the intervals of delay between sounds in what they called in a press release a \u201cconversational style.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>While the scientists understood they were saying some equivalent of \u201chello\u201d to Twain when he arrived, that\u2019s about as far as their understanding went. Luckily, there\u2019s a theory for that \u2013 in this case, a mathematical one called \u201cinformation theory.<\/p>\n<p>The discipline was initially developed in the 1940s by electrical engineer Claude Shannon. In information theory, signals are analyzed for the amount of information they contain, and that information can be correlated across multiple signals. When combined with real-world events, language theorists think they might be able to tease out information contained within the signals and correlate them to those events. In essence, they could figure out what the whales are talking about.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<p>\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Whale SETI Acoustics Research Alaska 2023\" width=\"1110\" height=\"624\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/E94w9h6uGuM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/p><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">SeaKeepers interviews some of the Whale SETI that performed the research.<br \/>Credit \u2013 SeaKeepers YouTube Channel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>One whale circling a boat for 20 minutes and having what seemed like an enjoyable conversation is just a very brief step down that path. Like many technologies, building a translation engine would require lots of data, which might still be wrong. Unfortunately, whales aren\u2019t likely to be able to correct us if we somehow translate their word for \u201cfish\u201d for that of \u201cseal.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That might not be the case for otherworldly intelligences, though. Humans would undoubtedly try to provide feedback in any dialog with an alien species to ensure they aren\u2019t misunderstood. So it\u2019s like they would want to correct us as well. But, until we find a dialog partner, plenty of species here on Earth might want to talk to us. We just don\u2019t know how to yet.<\/p>\n<p>Learn More:<br \/>SETI Institute \u2013 Whale-SETI: Groundbreaking Encounter with Humpback Whales Reveals Potential for Non-Human Intelligence Communication<br \/>B. McCowan et al. \u2013 Interactive Bioacoustic Playback as a Tool for Detecting and Exploring Nonhuman Intelligence: Conversing with an Alaskan Humpback Whale<br \/>UT \u2013 Communicating Across the Cosmos, Part 1: Shouting into the Darkness<br \/>UT \u2013 Astronomers Come up With a New Message to let the Aliens Know we\u2019re Here<\/p>\n<p>Lead Image:<br \/>Humpback Whale<\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-block sd-like jetpack-likes-widget-wrapper jetpack-likes-widget-unloaded\" id=\"like-post-wrapper-24000880-164832-657be2a498220\" data-src=\"https:\/\/widgets.wp.com\/likes\/#blog_id=24000880&amp;post_id=164832&amp;origin=www.universetoday.com&amp;obj_id=24000880-164832-657be2a498220\" data-name=\"like-post-frame-24000880-164832-657be2a498220\" data-title=\"Like or Reblog\">\n<h3 class=\"sd-title\">Like this:<\/h3>\n<p><span class=\"button\"><span>Like<\/span><\/span> <span class=\"loading\">Loading&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"sd-text-color\"\/><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/164832\/trying-to-communicate-with-whales-is-like-talking-to-extraterrestrials\/?rand=772204\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Communicating between species isn\u2019t something that only has to take place between space-faring civilizations. There are plenty of species here on our home planet that communicate using a variety of&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":775629,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-775628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genaero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=775628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/775629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=775628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=775628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=775628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}