E. T. Talk:How Will We Communicate With Intelligent Life on Other Worlds?

Will it be possible to communicate with intelligent extraterrestrial life forms if we find them? How could we establish this communication, where would we begin? What does it mean to say that mathematics is a universal language? How could math be used to communicate with ETs? This book summarizes the work of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and other search programs and considers the implications of, and concerns about, their possible success. Surely the next step after finding life elsewhere would be to try to communicate with it. The author of this book will suggest concrete ways to approach this problem.This book, published in Spanish first, tells us what scientists currently know about the origin of life and its possible presence in the rest of the universe. It also describes the various methods used today to search for life in the universe. But the major focus of the book is on communicating with ET and, using animals on Earth as an example, why we should feel encouraged that we will be able to do just that. The author even provides step by step instructions in a kind of language that could be used to converse with intelligent alien beings.

Fernando J. Ballesteros earned his Ph. D. in physics from the University of Valencia, Spain, where he is now a practicing researcher and astronomer. He is a long-time popularizer of science in Spain, including acting as coauthor of the radio program "The Sound of Science," in Radio Nacional de Espana (Spain's national public radio service). He is also the author of the book Astrobiology, A Bridge Between the Big Bang and Life (Akal, 2008). He was a member of ESA's space telescope INTEGRAL team and researcher at the Spanish Astrobiology Center (CAB). The present volume is a translation of the Spanish version from Bromera, which was the winner of the European Award "Estudi General" given for popular science.