Why read Extraterrestrial Languages?

Book cover of Extraterrestrial Languages

Book description

If we send a message into space, will extraterrestrial beings receive it? Will they understand?

The endlessly fascinating question of whether we are alone in the universe has always been accompanied by another, more complicated one: if there is extraterrestrial life, how would we communicate with it? In this book,…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Extraterrestrial Languages as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Wil McCarthy

Author

This nonfiction book takes a hard look at humanity’s various attempts to craft a universal language that might, just might, let us one day communicate with extraterrestrials.

What symbols could we use? What encoding? How would we start, and once we’ve started, what would we talk about?

These aren’t easy questions, and we probably still don’t have all the right answers, but I loved the way Oberhaus walked us through the work that has already been done and the directions that future work might take.

From Wil's list on The best books about peaceful alien contact.