It seemed an unlikely place to discuss how to communicate with aliens -- a grey house off a nondescript alley in a none-too-interesting suburb of Paris. But as rain poured from the heavens outdoors, scientists, astronomers, artists and musicians hunkered down in the warm sitting room of the private home to swap ideas on how to chat with E.T. -- if he ever calls. And what, if anything, to say. Seemingly fulfilling every possible cliche -- from a young computer whiz, to a softly-spoken NASA scientist, a professor with a shock of white hair and an excitable Russian -- the group of respectable professionals were earnest in their arcane endeavours. Mathematical equations filled overhead projection slides, exotic Indonesian gong music rang out and the talk was of complex scientific phenomena and deeply philosophical questions about the nature of human beings and their relationships. "We are not trying to find the best message or even the most intelligible," said Douglas Vakoch, who led the Paris workshop. In his other incarnation, Vakoch runs the interstellar message group at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) institute in the United States. "I think we should construct thousands of messages in the hope one of them could be understood...I think there is a reasonable chance we can overcome the barriers between human and extraterrestrial worlds, but maybe we can't." "Maybe, even if we get a signal from them, their way of conceptualising will be so alien to us that we just can't."
Bureau Report