The New Science of Space Speech

Part 1

THE NEW SCIENCE OF SPACE SPEECH

By Vincent H. Gaddis

How to talk to Martians, dolphins and creatures from the farthest stars--not tomorrow, but now!

A giant ear to listen to the whispers from infinity is being built at Sugar Grove, W. Va. This 600-foot radio telescope, largest ever designed, will cost $100 million. When completed, its massive antenna, covering 6½ acres, will be trained on the mighty stellar mainland far beyond our solar system.

Astronomers believe that it will pick up cosmic impulses originating in stars from 60 to 80 light-years distant--seven times farther than America’s largest existing radio telescope.

Meanwhile, a scientist in the Virgin Islands talks to a frisky dolphin. And the aquatic mammal replies, imitating the man’s words with uncanny accuracy.

And at centers of learning in the United States and abroad scholars patiently work over mathematical charts and word lists, seeking formulas that will solve the problem of space speech.

These diverse activities are unified by a common purpose--to intercept and to interpret a possible message from outer space.

This signal across the vast void of the spaceways from intelligent but alien beings will be, perhaps, the most momentous event in human history. It could come tomorrow, or it may not be received for a century or more.

When it does come, man should be prepared to reply. This means we must devise some new method of communication that will transmit thoughts to non-human alien minds.

In awarding a contract for a space speech project, Dr. Dale W. Jenkins, chief of the National Space Administration’s environment biology programs, stressed the great need for this knowledge.

“We have not yet determined whether there are any communications directed at earth from outer space,” he said. “If we do make contact, we will have to work out systems of understanding.”

This understanding is an all-important requisite as man reaches out toward the stars.

Understanding, however, will also have to be applied by man to himself when he joins the community of civilizations beyond.

Once interstellar intercourse is established, it will herald a new era in which man will have to recognize another species or form of life as intellectually his equal or more likely his superior. A recent psychological study of the possible effects of outer space contacts indicates that it will deflate human egoism with far-reaching consequences to his culture.

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The problem of space speech is two-fold.

First, there are the techniques to be used in actual physical contact with other world inhabitants; second, the far more complex problem of exchanging concepts through the medium of radio communication.

Suppose you are a space explorer. You have landed on Mars or Venus and for the first time you are meeting intelligent creatures that are the products of a completely different line of evolution.

You possess five relatively well-developed senses. If the beings are not hostile, you must first determine if they have the same senses, only some part of them, or additional senses that man does not have.

For example, they may have a sense similar to extra-sensory perception and communicate with each other through telepathy. If you can exchange thoughts with them, that is fine. If you cannot tune in on their mental wavelengths, you’re in trouble.

The sense of smell is practically limited to attractive perfumes and repulsive odors. Taste has the same limitations. Touch has been used for communication between humans, as in teaching the blind and deaf, but it requires physical contact (certainly a risky act when meeting strangers) and is limited to elementary concepts at best.

The only practical senses--of those which we humans possess, at any rate--for direct communication are sight and hearing.

If our Martians or Venusians have these senses--and if their reasoning processes are similar to those of humans--then communication could probably be established in the same manner with which we teach our children.

You could use “sign language.” You could point to your mouth and move your jaws to indicate you thought refreshments should be served. You could point to their head or heads (if they had them) and then at your own head and say “head.” With time and patience, a basis for communication could be established.

But suppose their methods of communication are entirely different. Suppose they use antennae, like ants, or gyrations, like bees.

Dr. Karl von Frisch, the German zoologist, discovered that when a bee locates a rich source of nectar, she returns to the hive and performs a dance. The number of times she turns reveals the distance, and her position in relation to the sun and the hive gives the direction.

This “breakthrough” into subhuman communication required controlled and sustained observation. It will have to be the necessary procedure if man encounters creatures with similar characteristics with his present knowledge.

Part 2

Von Frisch’s discovery was a one-way avenue of understanding. But if the ants and the bees were much larger and more intelligent, we can assume that a demonstrative style of language could be devised for mutual communication.

To our scientists it is obvious that before our spacemen confront alien beings on a distant planet, we must learn the fundamentals of developing communication with a non-human but intelligent species right here on earth. And this is now in progress with “Project Dolphin.”

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Bottle-nosed dolphins are not fish, but aquatic mammals. Often, but inaccurately, called porpoises, they are well known as clever, frolicsome entertainers at marineland exhibits.

Dolphins are by far the most intelligent animals other than man, and their brain power in some respects may even be superior to man’s. The dolphin brain is 40 per cent larger than the human, although smaller in proportion to body weight, and the cerebral cortex--the layer of gray matter that originates rational thought--is just as complicated.

Dr. John C. Lilly, a neurophysiologist and a noted authority on the mammal, is in charge of the project. The research is principally being conducted at the Communications Research Institute of Charlotte Amalie, located at the U.S. Navy base on St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.

Dr. Lilly is working under a contract awarded in 1962 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The contract is for basic scientific research “on the feasibility and methodology for establishing communications between man and other species.”

Dolphins have a complex vocal language. They talk to each other with sharp, high-pitched whistles and they talk almost continuously. Dr. Lilly has determined that the dolphin distress call is “an undulating sound,” with a rasping noise made periodically for range-finding.

Interpreting the dolphin vocabulary will not be easy since the creature emits heavy breathing sounds and there are other masking noises.

In experiments with ESB (electric stimulation of the brain), Dr. Lilly located the portion of the dolphin brain that created a feeling of pleasure. The dolphin almost immediately learned how to turn on a switch producing the current. For comparison, in similar tests it was found that monkeys required 300 or more tries before they attained their ability.

One day the electrical device broke down. The dolphin, annoyed at losing his pleasurable sensation, began making a series of sounds in imitation of the laboratory equipment. Dr. Lilly made a tape recording of these sounds.

Later the doctor played back the recording and in order to more distinctly hear the sounds he decided to run the tape at one quarter its normal speed.

It was then that Dr. Lilly made an astonishing discovery.

With exaggerated slowness, he listened to his own voice on the tape announcing the footage--“three, two, three”--and the dolphin immediately and clearly repeated the words in high-pitched whistles. Other tape recordings of what had seemed to be an unintelligible series of squawks and quacks, when played at half or quarter speed with the sound volume lowered, confirmed the discovery.

The dolphins were not only distinctly imitating the human words they heard, but were compressing their mimicry as to time. They were talking at a rate eight times faster than humans.

One dolphin, Dr. Lilly recalls, “mimicked my speaking voice so well that my wife laughed out loud, and he copied her laughter.”

When one of the doctor’s assistants who had a southern drawl talked to one dolphin, the animal’s voice came back in clear imitation ... complete with the southern accent.

The next step--and it’s a big one--is to learn the dolphin language. The high-pitched, high-speed chatter must be broken down into definite meanings.

Dr. Frank D. Drake, director of Project Ozma (the recent attempt to receive possible messages by radio telescope), considers the dolphin language study to be of great importance.

He says the project “needs the skills of the radio astronomer in extracting signals from noise, and then the work of the linguist, and, perhaps, the cryptographer. It could well be, if the dolphin studies are correct, that we have right here on earth another intelligent race that is even more alien than some we might encounter in space.”

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