What if Extraterrestrials Spoke in Music?

Might interstellar communication not be messages but music--perhaps a 600 part invention, each part on an adjacent frequency channel? If there were more conventional representation of frequencies for example, the full frequency range corresponding to the range between 1420 and 1667 megahertz would we have the wit to distinguish this music from noise. Other forms of such many-part interstellar musical inventions might exist which each A civilization provides one part. Might we be able to recog...

 The Pioneer 10 Plaque

On the title page of this chapter is shown the message. It is etched on a 6-inch by 9-inch gold-anodized aluminum plate, attached to the antenna support struts of Pioneer 10. The expected erosion rate in interstellar space is sufficiently small that this message should remain intact for hundreds of millions of years, and probably for a much longer period of time. It is, thus, the artifact of mankind with the longest expected lifetime. The message itself intends to communicate the locale, ep...

 How Culture Influences Scientific Metaphors

If you believe the cosmos is made up of omelette, you build instruments specifically designed to find traces of intergalactic yolk. In that paradigm you reject phenomena like pulsars and black holes as paranormal garbage. In an omelette cosmos, the beginning of the universe becomes a chicken and egg problem, doesn’t it? Now, this definition of terms (like omelette universe) happens all the time. The reason that we today refer to electricity in terms of current is because in the eighteenth ...