Beyond Contact: A Guide to SETI and Communicating with Alien Civilizations

by Brian S. McConnell

"What do we need to know about to discover life in space?" --Frank Drake, 1961 In the early 1960s, Frank Drake, a young astronomer with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia, developed what is now known as the "Drake Equation" in an effort to determine how many intelligent, communicative civilizations our galaxy could harbor. For forty years, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has combed the skies in search of signals from star systems within the galaxy. In Beyond Contact: A Guide to SETI and Communicating with Alien Civilizations, author Brian McConnell goes behind the scenes and examines what goes into the search for intelligent life. SETI is a four-step process. First we have to know where to look; then we must be able to send and receive signals to that star system. Once signals arrive, scientists then need to be able to interpret those signals into something that can be understood. And although we haven't yet received any signals (except for our own Earth-based transmissions), we'll eventually have to figure out a protocol for responding. Beyond Contact introduces you to: The author also shows how SETI research--though often thought to be a mere flight of fancy--has spawned technological improvements in astronomy, computers, and wireless communications. Beyond Contact: A Guide to SETI and Communicating with Alien Civilizations sidesteps the "little green men" approach to take a hard, realistic look at the technologies behind the search for intelligent life in our universe.

Genres: Science

432 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 2001

Reviews

[Mark Yashar · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author describes in quite a bit of detail the means by which we might
communicate with an extraterrestrial civilization via radio and laser wave communication
techniques. He describes methods by which we could send computer programs and computer simulations
that would allow the aliens to learn how to decipher our signals and understand the contents of
our messages. In this way, we could ultimately send them an entire 'Earth Encyclopedia'.

Of course, we hope that any aliens who receive and decipher our messages will be benevolent. Otherwise, they could use such an 'Earth Encyclopedia' as a piece of 'intelligence' that they could
utilize to plan the invasion and conquest of our planet, the enslavement and destruction of humankind,
and the acquisition of all of our resources (!)

[Ogi Ogas · Rating 4 out of 5]

My ratings of books on Goodreads are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.