HUMANS WITH THE SETI INSTITUTE JUST HAD A REAL TALK WITH A REAL WHALE USING THEIR OWN LANGUAGE
When Star Trek IV hit theaters, I was one of the eager Trekkies who attended, probably on opening day. While there remains a lot to say about that movie, one of the more interesting -if novel- things I loved about it was when Spock’s character spoke to a humpback whale with telepathy. Why did I love that? Well, mostly because we all know beyond a doubt that whales are incredibly intelligent. But we still don’t really know just how intelligent, because we don’t understand whale song. Or, rather, whale language. But for the first time ever, humans may just have had a real talk with a whale.
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SETI RESEARCHERS ARE PRACTICING TALKING TO WHALES TO PREPARE FOR TALKING TO ALIENS
It was researchers from the SETI Institute who reported this human/whale convo, using the whale’s own language. The scientists at SETI are figuring out how to approach interspecies communication to have some idea how to proceed whenever it is that we officially come across extraterrestrial, intelligent beings. So how does one prepare for that? Why, by trying to have a conversation with other, terrestrial intelligences right here at home on Earth. And that’s where the conversation between humans and a humpback whale became an idea, then a reality, off the coast of Alaska.
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THE RESEARCHERS’ TALK WITH A HUMPBACK WHALE LASTED AN AMAZING 20 MINUTES
The researchers played a recording of a humpback “contact” call from an underwater speaker attached to their boat. And a humpback whale with the name of Twain approached and circled the boat, all the while responding to them in what researchers called a conversational style. This talk or conversation lasted an amazing 20 minutes. And similar to what we saw in another sci-fi movie, Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, the researchers repeated their message and found that Twain responded to each call and matched the interval variations.
So it’s an amazing and unprecedented start, though our whale vocabulary is still surely extremely lacking. But with more interactions and the potentials of AI tools, the sky is literally (not) the limit. You can read more about their success here.
