A think tank of SETI and NASA scientists, together with artists, dancers and other experts, is gathering to expand our ability to communicate with non-humans here on earth and out in the cosmos, using art and science and language. After our think tank, we will open out our research to the public so people with all kinds of intelligence can understand and can in turn help us learn even more.
“If you push novelty of language and metaphor far enough, you can end up with a new way of seeing. And a new way of seeing, can in its own right make an original contribution to science.” – Richard Dawkins
Our plan is to start learning from our resident experts, the extremophiles. Why? Because extremophile microbes have been thriving on this planet for about 3.5 billion years. They thrive in conditions we humans call extreme: inside rock, lava, ice, without oxygen, in a vacuum—in environments far more prevalent than our own, both here on earth and out in the cosmos. And astrobiologists agree that microorganisms similar to our extremophiles are the most likely form of life we will encounter out in the cosmos. Many microorganisms, including extremophiles, use chemical phrases to communicate and to vote democratically. They can even dialogue with other species this way. How can we learn from the highly successful adaptive behaviors and communication methods they employ here on earth? We want to study and distill in future artistic and scientific presentations the logics shaping these ancient yet evolving languages.
“I don’t say [bacteria] have the intelligence of human beings… They are smarter than humans—they don’t exhaust all their resources” – Eshel Ben-Jacob
All life evolved from the first extremophiles. So movements and communication in plants and animals are determined, at some fundamental level, by the basic movement and chemical dialogues of the extremophiles. Might this explain some of the overlapping logics we see across the plant and animal kingdoms?
“The central generation of movement and the generation of mindness are deeply related; they are in fact different parts of the same process. In my view, from its very evolutionary inception, mindness is the internalization of movement.” – Rodolfo Llinas
We have a lot to gain—practically, politically, and aesthetically—from approaching intelligence with a less anthropocentric view. Our hope is to learn what the highly evolved and adaptive extremophile cultures can tell us about the intelligences we find here on earth, and those we will find out in space.
“Our sophisticated linguistic abilities have allowed human cultures to become extremely complex. But the fact that cultural transmission is shared with many other species on this planet, means that we might expect the same in social extraterrestrial intelligences.” – Lori Marino
All photos by Nina Waisman
left to right:
1. Hangar One at NASA Ames Research Center
2. Algae on the move, in Principal Investigator Oana Marcu’s Lab at NASA Ames Research Center
3. The SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory