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Assumptions: After Contact

  • Chapter
Contact with Alien Civilizations

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Abstract

Contact optimists have tended to assume that alien messages would be relatively easy to understand. The communication of quite complicated information is not very difficult, claimed Sagan, even for civilizations with very different biologies and social conventions. Once pictures are transmitted, it will be extremely simple to develop language—by show and tell.3

Ere long all human beings on this globe, as one, will turn their eyes to the firmament above, with feelings of love and reverence, thrilled by the glad news: Brethren! We have a message from another world, unknown and remote. It reads: one... two... three... —Nikola Tesla, in a prediction written in 19001

Once we have the message... the rest is easy. —Frank Drake, 19742

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Authors
  1. Michael A. G. Michaud
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© 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Michaud, M.A.G. (2007). Assumptions: After Contact. In: Contact with Alien Civilizations. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-68618-9_28

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