News: "Alien" message tests human decoders 1/11/02
LyndaNP
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991757
"Alien" message tests human decoders
15:34 08 January 02
Will Knight
A message that will be broadcast into space later in 2002 has been
released to scientists worldwide, to test that it can be decoded easily.
The researchers who devised the message eventually hope to design a
system that could automatically decode an alien reply.
Unlike previous interstellar broadcasts, the new message is designed to
withstand significant interference and interruption during transmission.
"People have tried sending messages in the past, but have not accounted
for noise," says Yvan Dutil, who currently works for a Canadian
telecommunications company, but developed the message as a private
project with Stephane Dumas, who works at the Defence Research
Establishment Atlantic in Canada.
This fragment of the mystery message has been released. The strange
symbols are defined in the message and represent fundamental
mathematical and scientific concepts
If new message had been based on language, it would be impossible for an
alien intelligence to decode it. So, instead, a two-dimensional image
was converted into a binary string of ones and zeros. These can then
easily be transmitted as a radio or laser signal.
"Currently, most resources are focused on signal detection, and not
message composition or decoding," says Brian McConnel, author of Beyond
Contact: A Guide to SETI and Communicating with Alien Civilisations. "I
think it is important to research the latter because the worst-case
scenario would be positive confirmation of an ET signal that nobody can
comprehend."
Alien code
The image has not been revealed to those playing the role of alien
decoders and about 10 per cent meaningless noise has been added to the
data. Some parts have even been deleted. This degradation of the message
is intended to simulate the interference that might be experienced
during transmission to distant planets.
Dutil says that the binary string is designed to provide clues that
should make it decipherable even with such significant disruption.
The sensitivity of interplanetary communications was demonstrated in
1999 when a previous message written by Dutil and Dumas was found to
contain an error that could have seriously confused an alien recipient
if it had not been corrected in the nick of time.
Automatic decoding
The pair have an even grander plan for the future - to develop a
software system that can automatically decode alien messages, regardless
of excess noise.
A number of telescopes around the world are used to search for patterns
in the radio waves that reach Earth. Dutil says that if a message were
identified, it might be possible to decode it using an automated system
based on well-developed techniques used in cryptanalysis, as well as
principles of linguistic and statistical analysis.
However, Douglas Vakoch, head of the Interstellar Message Group at the
SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in California,
says that deciphering a reply may prove very tricky.
"Our biggest challenge will be to keep open to new types of messages
that we had not previously considered," he says. "That's why the SETI
Institute is sponsoring a series of workshops on interstellar message
composition, aimed at identifying radically new ways of constructing
messages."
The new message can be downloaded from the project homepage. Dutil and
Dumas hope that it will be transmitted by laser as early as February
2002, by Celestis, a US company specialising in space projects.
15:34 08 January 02
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LyndaNP
Reality isn't the way you wish things to be, nor the way
they appear to be, but the way they actually are.
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