Without a common language, a close encounter could be as aimless as an email chain in which everyone hits reply all but no one actually reads anyone else’s response. And whether or not you buy Stephen Hawking’s evil-alien-colonizer theory, the consequences of an intergalactic miscommunication would undoubtedly be worse than annoying a few colleagues.
“There are many sentient species on our own planet, and that would probably be a good model to start looking at how we might communicate with extra-terrestrial species,” says Denise Herzing, founder and Director of the Wild Dolphin Project. Herzing has worked for three decades documenting the daily exchanges of a community of free-ranging Spotted dolphins off the coast of the Bahamas in hopes of finding a dolphin version of the Rosetta Stone.
See full article and video: Big Think