REVIEWS, EXCERPTS,
INTERVIEWS & COMMENTARY

LETRAS LIBRES: Wax and gold through the cosmos (Spanish)

 

"Imagining a message directed at a possible interstellar civilization of which absolutely nothing is known posed its challenges. How to encode a message for an unknown intelligence? What should the message contain? It's clear that whatever is sent had to be coded in such a way that it is easy to decipher: the intention to be heard and reciprocated by the issuer must be evident." ​

NPR: Does interstellar messaging even work?

 

"Daniel Oberhaus, in his book “Extraterrestrial Languages,” leads readers on a quest for extraterrestrial communication and considers how philosophy, linguistics, mathematics, science and art have informed the design, or maybe limited the effectiveness of our interstellar messaging." ​​

4COLUMNS: Extraterrstrial Languages

 

"Extraterrestrial Languages is fascinating...a mostly sober study of real—scientific, mathematical, artistic, and philosophical—efforts to enact this linguistic rendezvous. The linguistic challenges are technically complex—but also introduce more profound philosophical questions."​​

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: Researchers Made a New Message for Extraterrestrials

 

"Messaging extraterrestrials has always occupied a controversial position in the broader SETI community, which is mostly focused on listening for alien transmissions rather than sending out our own. To detractors of “active SETI,” the practice is a waste of time at best and an existentially dangerous gamble at worst. There are billions of targets to choose from, and the odds that we send a message to the right planet at the right time are dismally low. Plus, we have no idea who may be listening. What if we give our address to an alien species that lives on a diet of bipedal hominins?" ​​

SUPERCLUSTER: The Rise and Fall of UFO Communism

 

"J. Posadas had no doubt UFOs existed, and if we found them, they'd be communists. It was a far-out theory, but Posadas was the head of a far-out communist organization known for unorthodox thinking. Over the past few years, Posadas had become increasingly interested in the connection between science and revolution. So during a break between sessions of the global congress, the aging Argentine revolutionary, his balding head wreathed in a lock of flowing gray hair, decided to put the extraterrestrial issue to rest once and for all." ​​

SUPERCLUSTER: Would We Recognize an Extraterrestrial Message If We Received One?

 

"The psychologist Jack Baird raised the possibility that the reason we haven’t heard from aliens yet is due to fundamental limits of the human mind. It may very well be the case that extraterrestrials are sending messages and we simply are incapable of perceiving them, much like we are incapable of hearing beyond a narrow range of frequencies. If true, this raises the important question of whether we can overcome the natural cognitive limits that prevent us from tapping into the cosmic discourse and if so, how we go about doing it." ​​

SUPERCLUSTER: NASA is Supporting the Search for Alien Megastructures

 

"There is something strange happening around Boyajian’s star. Something very strange. The Sun-sized star is located nearly 1,500 light years from Earth in the Cygnus constellation and in 2015, a team of astronomers and citizen scientists discovered irregular dimming in the light from the star. But the light profiles from Boyajian's star didn't look like an exoplanet at all. In fact, it didn't look like anything they'd ever seen."​​

SUPERCLUSTER: It Might Be Aliens

 

"While many astronomers may concede that intelligent life exists somewhere in the universe, fewer are willing to speculate on whether we can—or should—make contact with it. Nevertheless, the scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, has counted legions of eminent scientists among its ranks since the very beginning and many have spent their entire career doing everything they could to hasten first contact. These people aren’t crazy, but they do share a conviction that one day it will be aliens. Maybe someday soon.

But even among these extraterrestrial evangelists you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks we've already had our first brush with ET. The notable exception is the Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb."  ​​

PRINCIPIUM: Extraterrestrial Languages

 

"A fine introduction to the subject, particularly for a comparative newcomer to the subject."​​

SUPERCLUSTER: The Case for Building a SETI Observatory on the Moon​

 

"Our planet has become so “loud” in the part of the radio spectrum observed by SETI that it threatens to drown out any signal sent from an intelligent civilization. Not only would a lunar radio telescope not have to deal with terrestrial radio interference, it could also significantly increase our chances of hearing from ET by opening up parts of the radio spectrum that are blocked by Earth's atmosphere. While the idea of using the moon for radio astronomy is decades old, technological advancements have finally made a lunar SETI observatory truly feasible."​​

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: We're not talking to you, we're talking to Saturn

 

"A dense and wide-ranging book...The more we learn about ourselves and the universe, the more we appreciate that aliens probably won’t just be humans with longer limbs and waving antennae. How do you communicate with a planet-sized slime with ESP that eats electricity?" ​​

MANY MINDS: Message to the Stars

 

"The history of interstellar communication is packed full of colorful episodes, charismatic characters, and quirky passion projects. But it’s also full of deep questions—questions about the very nature of communication, about the essence of human language, about why minds think in the ways they do, about the origins of mathematics, about what can and should be said on behalf of our species—or our planet." ​​

LEONARDO: EXTRATERRESTRIAL LANGUAGES

 

"Extraterrestrial Languages constitutes a concise introduction to the topic, condensing historical accounts and scientific thought on astrolinguistics into a clear and readable primer."​​

THE INDIAN EXPRESS: How to Communicate With Aliens

 

"In an age when more and more attention is being given to the search for alien life, the obvious next question is: if we do come across aliens, how do we communicate with them? This is the subject Daniel Oberhaus explores in Extraterrestrial Languages."​​

SLATE: Why We Keep Sending Music to Extraterrestrials

 

"When Carl Sagan set about designing the Voyager Golden Record, he understood humanity’s first musical interstellar message was unlikely to ever be intercepted by an extraterrestrial intelligence. Nevertheless, he recognized that “launching this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” The same holds true for all future musical interstellar messages, even if our terrestrial melodies never grace an extraterrestrial ear."​​

BBC: Alien contact: a brief history of extraterrestrial language

 

"Until we receive an extraterrestrial message on Earth, each system for interstellar communication must be designed based on educated guesswork. Perhaps ET will be more inclined to respond to the musical messages we’ve sent into space rather than the messages based on logic."​​

THE ECONOMIST: How to Talk to Aliens

 

"Is there any reason to think alien communication systems would share the two key design features of human language, words and grammar? A word like “book” is a symbol for all objects that exhibit bookish qualities; would aliens also employ symbols, rather than having separate names for every object in their world? Mr Oberhaus adduces arguments that they might."​​

ARE WE THERE YET?: Talking to Aliens

 

"Author and journalist Daniel Oberhaus delves into the efforts to talk with alien civilizations in his new book “Extraterrestrial Languages.” We talk with Oberhaus about the attempts to speak with other civilizations in the universe and why many scientists think it’s a bad idea to reach out to them first."​​

THE SPACE REVIEW: Extraterrestrial Languages

 

"Oberhaus dives deep into topics from linguistics to logic, challenging the reader to keep up. This book is really for those interested in METI or SETI, or those with backgrounds in related field curious about how it might be applied here."​​

THE SPECTATOR: How to message a Martian

 

"Extraterrestrial Languages is not light...but it is worth the effort, not least because it shows how many areas of thought the seemingly simple question ‘how do we communicate with aliens?’ touches on." ​​

SCIENCE: Seeking shared ground in space

 

"Oberhaus delivers an engaging read, striking a good balance between 'hard' and 'popular' science."​​

WIRED: Do We Need a Special Language to Talk to Aliens

 

"If extraterrestrials do have a language similar to ours, that might imply they also have a functionally equivalent neurobiology. To say aliens might think like us and have language is one thing, but to argue they have brains like ours pushes the limits of credulity. But it might not be as crazy as it sounds."​​

FUTURISM: To Chat With Aliens, We Should Beam an Encyclopedia to Space

 

"There's a chance that extraterrestrials may not connect the words they read to any sort of meaning, but as Oberhaus writes, 'the best way to start an interstellar conversation might simply be saying 'hello.'"​​

TANK MAGAZINE: EXTRATERRESTRIAL LANGUAGES

 

"In Extraterrestrial Languages, Daniel Oberhaus narrates humanity’s endeavours to communicate with extraterrestrial beings – from building a massive visual proof of the Pythagorean theorum in the Siberian tundra to lighting trenches filled with kerosene on fire in the Sahara Desert. If each technique is predicated upon a different assumption about the nature of language and knowledge, the galvanising question remains: how might we communicate with beings whose ontology is different from our own?"​​

FREETHINK: How to Talk to Aliens

 

"With clarity and wit, Oberhaus offers readers a historical view of humankind’s efforts to develop communications with extraterrestrial life, from 19th century mirrors to entire mathematical languages to modern radio telescopes."​​

SKEPTIC MAGAZINE: Science Salon #88​

 

"In his book Extraterrestrial Languages, Daniel Oberhaus leads readers on a quest for extraterrestrial communication. Exploring Earthlings’ various attempts to reach out to non-Earthlings over the centuries, he poses some not entirely answerable questions. If we send a message into space, will extraterrestrial beings receive it? Will they understand?"​​

ENGADGET: How to sling a cat through interstellar space​

 

"Seriously, how do you communicate with an extraterrestrial species with a taste for cats? We can't even communicate with octopuses, and they're quite possibly smarter than we are. But that doesn't mean humanity hasn't been hard at work trying to figure out how. Extraterrestrial Languages from author Daniel Oberhaus explores our efforts to speak with beings from beyond the stars."​​

SUPERCLUSTER: Can Intelligent Machines Find Intelligent Aliens?​

 

"There is a strange forest in an otherwise unremarkable stretch of empty land north of San Francisco, where 42 steel trees sweep their parabolic canopies across the skies. It’s quiet here, at the Allen Telescope Array, but the silence is deceiving. Just ask the trees, which are condemned to listen to a shrieking cosmos so that they might hear an extraterrestrial whisper—a whisper so faint that the sound of a snowflake falling to the earth is deafening by comparison. The astronomers who walk among these trees are preoccupied by the Big Question: What will the whisperer say? Will it be a greeting? A warning? "​​

SUPERCLUSTER: How Dolphins on LSD Shaped the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence​

 

"When Drake delivered the guestlist to the National Academy of Sciences space science board officer who had requested the conference, Drake joked that “all we need now is someone who has spoken to an extraterrestrial.” But Pearman, ignoring the humor, had a suggestion: John Lilly, a scientist known for spending his days injecting dolphins with acid and trying to talk to them. By the time the Green Bank conference was over, the group had adopted the “Order of the Dolphin” as its informal moniker, a testament to the new importance its members placed on interspecies communication as a SETI analog. For better or worse, this notion of dolphins as a prototypical extraterrestrial intelligence would shape the trajectory of interstellar communication for the next half century."​​

SUPERCLUSTER: The Strangest Ways We’ve Said Hello to the Universe​

 

"Perhaps the universe is awash in extraterrestrial communication that uses a technology we haven’t discovered yet. We’ll never learn how to pick up the phone, however, unless we challenge conventional modes of communication. And if the strange history of interstellar communication can teach us anything, it’s that even the most outlandish proposals for calling ET might contain the seed of a practical plan."​​