EXOLINGUISTICS
SPEAKING IN COSMIC TONGUES
MONOLOGUE WRITTEN BY CLYDE LEWIS
In past Ground Zero shows this year, we have discussed the fact that we here on Earth have inadvertently been sending out signals out into the cosmos for the past few decades, through our use of radio and television and of radar.
If we make contact, the other beings we assume must be as scientifically advanced as we are. The prevailing attitude is that they may be far more advanced than we are.
The detection of other intelligent beings in our universe will prove to be of invaluable advantage even before the decoding of their messages.
As Carl Sagan points out: it will strengthen the bonds between all humans and other terrestrial beings because all differences between them will become insignificant compared to the differences between terrestrials and extra-terrestrials, and the existence of a far superior technology will prove that it is possible to reach this stage of evolution without self-destruction during the period of technological adolescence.
The detection of extraterrestrials allows us to view our civilization from the outside, thus offering a cosmic context for the human species. Furthermore, the feeling of being lonely in the universe which tends to emerge in a post-religious worldview will cease.
No matter what critical bias you may hear about extraterrestrials, no matter what snickers may be had from talking about such things – it is becoming evident that many scientists believe that alien civilizations exist.
In fact, 2017 has been the year of confirmation as the universe is active with all sorts of unknown messages being sent to earth from extraterrestrial sources. One of the major problems with these so called alien signals is their inability to repeat.
However, Breakthrough Listen, the 100 million dollar project that is looking for alien signals has now officially reported that they have now detected 15 powerful radio pulses that have been repeating coming from a galaxy 3 billion light years away.
The radio activity was first detected by Breakthrough Listen postdoctoral researcher Vishal Gajjar with the Green Bank telescope in West Virginia.
Fast radio bursts from across the universe have been detected before, but this marks the first time they have been repetitious, suggesting theyundefinedre not random but rather a planned disbursement from an advanced civilization used to power space aircraft.
Researchers do not know at this time what the radio bursts mean for sure. There could be many non-extraterrestrial explanations, including the possibility theyundefinedre just coming from rotating neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields.
There is yet another interesting twist in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and that is various complementary strategies that go beyond just searching the heavens for signals.
Outside this scientific context, a considerable number of persons are scanning the skies looking for proof of space ships or perhaps picking up a signal from a space craft. Another complimentary science is the exploration of various historical ruins or buildings that my contain forgotten or ancient languages that could very well be a key to what is called exolinguistics, or the languages of ancient aliens.
Thanks to new scientific techniques, ancient languages that have not been seen in thousands of years are now being deciphered after a collection of manuscripts was found in an Egyptian monastery that was set up in 527 by Roman Emperor St. Justinian the Great.
Saint Catherine’s Monastery on the Sinai Peninsula contains what is now the oldest running library on the planet, and monks that once lived there would routinely take old bits of parchment that they or others had written on and do their best to erase them by sprinkling lemon juice liberally over the parchment and then scraping off the letters.
It is believed that the monks did this to conserve parchment. Others speculate that the monks were trying to hide secret languages and texts that may have their origins from ancient gods from the heavens.
When we were talking about Mount Adams and the strange extra-terrestrial activity at ECETI, we also spoke of how prophets like Moses would go up into the mountains to receive revelation from God. God allegedly wrote in stone the Decalogue or the higher law that Moses was told to deliver to the Hebrews.
It is quite compelling to realize that the Saint Catherine Monastery is located in what is considered a holy place at the base of Mount Sinai, where God is alleged to have given Moses the Ten Commandments.
In that monastery are manuscripts which contain lost languages; some believe that these are the languages of the gods meaning that they may be the languages of extraterrestrials or ancient aliens.
In order to read what is beneath the ancient manuscripts, scientists used photographs that had been taken from many different angles as well as various areas along the light spectrum, and were able to discover ink traces that had been left behind by the earliest writers of the manuscripts before the text had been obliterated.
After following this method, scientists took parchment images and used those in a process with computer algorithms so that the ancient text beneath popped up and could be read.
One of the lost languages discovered at the Egyptian monastery of St. Catherine’s is known as Caucasian Albanian, a language that would have once been commonplace in the old Christian world of what is now Azerbaijan. Nearly every record from this area was destroyed in the 8th and 9th century with the loss of their churches.
Another language that scientists have discovered written on the parchment found at St. Catherine’s monastery is known as Christian Palestinian Aramaic, which is a fusion of Greek and Syriac languages that came to an end in the 13th century. Some of the earliest known versions of the New Testament were composed in this now forgotten language.
Besides these ancient languages, researchers also discovered many pages of Greek poetry buried under Georgian and Arabic writing, as well as manuscripts on Greek medicine. One of these manuscripts contains the oldest writing attributed to Hippocrates, the spiritual father of medicine.
The findings of these languages may solve a problem in exolinguistics and that is if our alien counterparts speak any of these languages or if they speak something similar then perhaps we can shorten the decoding time if a message in an alien language is sent to us or if we come face to face with aliens and have to learn their complicated languages.
Sending a message to a solar system 100 light years away implies waiting at least 200 years for an answer plus time for mutual decoding. Such long-term projects without parallel in terrestrial history create additional semiotic problems. Symbols, numbers, tones, the forming of words all will have to be analyzed. It can even be that the dead languages that have been found at the monastery could be dead end but scientists are hopeful.
There is another place where the science of exolinguistics has not been lost on those who are eager to communicate with extra-terrestrials and that is at the large hadron collider at CERN.
The scientists at CERN have been studying the Higgs-Boson or the “god particle” and have allegedly been using the supercollider to open “portals” in space time. While a lot of this speculation has been minimized as myth by scientists, the act of pulverizing particles and opening wormholes can send out signals or frequencies. Theoretically, if a message could hitch a ride on a frequency it could communicate with beings or ultra terrestrials that may lurk in the outer dimensions.
Located at the CERN facility are special panels or tapestries that are like huge slides. On each slide there are special messages in several languages.
Each slide looks like it is made of stretched cloth with symbols, letters and geometric shapes printed on them. Other symbols include Mandarin Chinese symbols, Arabic symbols and another panel has Sanskrit characters. In India, the only people that read and write Sanskrit are scholars of Vedas and Upanishads, scriptures written in the “language of the gods.”
It makes you wonder if CERN is being used as a platform for communicating with dimensional beings and that the frequencies and the shapes used are being seen as attempts to communicate with alien beings?
Words have the power to create or destroy, and behind the veil of perception we can become blind by poor translation.
The words we use influence our perceptions and conceptions of the world. For example even in the same language, a book may be labeled erotic fiction by one reader and “pornographic” by another, and each will tend to perceive/conceive the book that way more and more automatically if they repeat their label over and over.
The truth is it may be neither.
The importance of restoring these languages that may be used for extraterrestrial communication is vital because of the generation gap between earlier attempts at communicating.
If sender and receiver belong to different generations, code and language changes between message and response are highly probable. A comparable terrestrial problem is the formulation of messages for future generations language is constantly evolving and definitions change making the task of meaningful voice communications more complicated.
Another problem that we must consider when we speak of exolinguistiocs is the problem of relatability.
How are we to communicate with an extraterrestrial civilization when we have no common heritage in this context how will they convey meaning to us how can we relate to them unless we share something in common?
We would want to learn about these beings, and they would be equally curious about us. Fortunately, our technology would permit transmission or reception of information once the initial discovery had been made. We would have language analysts immediately trying to decode the language that is being used.
The problem is not a technical one; it is a semantic/semiotic one.
In the journal, we read that, “Recently a series of radio messages was heard coming from outer space. The transmission was not continuous, but cut by pauses into pieces which could be taken as units, for they were repeated over and over again. The pauses show here as punctuation. The various combinations have been represented by letters of the alphabet, so that the messages can be written down. Each message except the first is given here only once. The serial number of the messages has been supplied for each reference.”
The matter was discussed at the first National Academy of Sciences meeting on interstellar communication, in 1962. It is a notable attempt at designing a “culture-free” linguistics code for use in communicating with extra-terrestrials.
Communication with aliens would not be easy. The concepts we and they truly understand and share should not be difficult to convey. But where we and they differ, communication would become difficult. Obviously, no unique route exists in building a vocabulary of concepts, perhaps the answer is in pictures and sounds like the ones used in the Voyager missions.
Of all the senses we possess, the one most likely to be shared with any beings capable of interstellar communication is eyesight. It is also important to have light or use light to communicate as well.
People have asked if aliens are so advanced why do they need light on their ships? Because the commonality has be that we have eyes and that they need light to not bump into things.
Eyes are seen on most higher life forms on Earth; it is found in many disparate primitive forms. Eyes of different sorts have evolved independently several times. Any species devoid of eyesight might not develop astronomy, much less radio astronomy. This suggests that the first information exchange should be images, light, symbols, and even mathematical sequences in the beginning.
The one thing we can be confident about exchanging with aliens is scientific information. If the laws of the universe are the same everywhere, then different descriptions of these laws should, in principle, be equivalent to them.
The sophistication of human technology has enabled us to transmit more complex messages that include digital imagery, digital sound, and analog sound. However, greater complexity probably makes it more difficult for an extraterrestrial listener to decode and decipher the message. Given that we know very little about the nature of extraterrestrial civilizations, if they exist, we are likely to increase the probability of us successfully communicating to them if we use a message that the recipient is likely to understand.
