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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596000375
• ISBN13: 9780596000370
• Release Date: March 2001
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Awesome!

This is the kind of book you need to understand the details of SETI, how does it work, what its limitations would be, and what technology is behind. It is an excellent addition to your personal library if you are a tech-savy and enjoy learning about science and technology.

Get's down to the skinny when it comes to communicating with aliens

This is a very all-encompassing book about extraterrestrial communication, and goes to considerable length explaining how it would be done through binary language. It is a very intelligent book about life on other planets, The Drake Equation, etc. People need to know what they're getting into if they buy this book - it really is for those who have a more technical/scientific bent towards the whole SETI process. If you think Speilberg's ET or Sagan's Contact are the bees knees when it comes to intellectual sci-fi, then this book is definitely not for you.

Essential SETI Reading

Easy to understand and yet almost exhaustive in it's survey of SETI past, present and future.This book's presentation is exemplary.The extensive discussion of both potential methods and the desired content of wireless communication between civilisations is especially valuable.

Excellent

Along with 'Are We Alone In The Cosmos' (edited: Ben Bova), this book is the most comprehensive and up to date summary of SETI. It features extensive discussion of the format and content of interstellar radio and laser communication. Highly recommended!

We Are Not Alone..or Are We?

This question has confounded people for generations. Are we the only intelligent lifeform capable of space travel and communicating with others, or are there other similar races of intelligent beings in the cosmos? With the increasingly popularity of the SETI@home project, which lets PC users use a downloadable screen saver to help in analyzing radio transmissions from space it would seem numerous folk want to help in discovering if others are "out there."This book describes in detail the "history" of SETI (Search for Extraterrestial Intelligence), its motivations for desiring contact with extraterrestials, theories on how likely extraterrestials do exist and if they indeed do exist, how likely they would be able to communicate back to "earthlings." There are also chapters devoted to how our technology would enable us to communicate, starting with radio and laser communication, signal processing, teleporting computer bits, using symbols, pictures, and abstract language as a form of communication, and how to go about translating any form of communication we would receive from an extraterrestial.A fascinating book about a fascinating idea and while I don't expect "ET" to show up on my doorstep any time soon, at least now I know enough that if he does, I'll have some idea of how best to communicate with him.