Could this man be the first to communicate with ALIENS? Seti astronomer reveals how maths will translate extra-terrestrial language



Dr Elliott has revealed to MailOnline a system for decoding alien language



The Leeds-based professor says we are closer than ever to finding life



Using his method he claims we will be able to translate a complex message

This means we could reply to a simple 'hello' or receive information



But he warns the more intelligent the message the more wary we should be



By day, Dr John Elliott is a professor in Computing and Creative Technologies at Leeds Metropolitan University.



But by night, his work takes on a more out-of-this-world nature – he’s devising the methods we'll need to talk to aliens.

Creating algorithms that can break down and understand languages on Earth, he says we could one day use his system to decode an extraterrestrial message



Making first contact with extraterrestrial life by detecting a signal would be one of the defining moments in the history of humanity, but what if we don't know what they're saying? That's where Dr John Elliott comes in - he's been devising methods to decode an alien language for the day he believes we'll receive a message

Dr Elliot has been working on decoding languages for two decades.



THE HISTORY OF SETI

In 1959, Cornell physicists Gieuseppi Cocconi and Philip Morrison published an article discussing the potential to use microwave radio to communicate between stars.

A year later in 1960, astronomer Frank Drake conducted the first hunt for alien life with an 85-foot (25 metres) antenna in West Virgina, but after two months concedes defeat.

In the 1960s, Soviet Union performs extensive searches for ET, again with no success.

In the 1970s Nasa began to take an interest in Seti, with the chances of success seemingly growing as technology advanced.

In 1988, Nasa began sweeping surveys of the night sky for signals, but Congress terminated funding a few years later.

The independent Seti Institute, established in 1984, took over the job.

In 1992 the first planet outside the solar system is confirmed, an almost certainly uninhabitable world orbiting a pulsar.

In 2009 Nasa’s Kepler telescope launches and, over the next few years, finds hundreds of planets. And just last month, the first planet of a similar size to Earth and at the correct distance from its parent star to host water, called Kepler 186-f, was found. It is the most likely place that has been found that could host life as we know it.

If we do one day make first contact, he says his system of breaking down language will be vital in understanding a message, and perhaps even allow us to respond.

He’s used his system to break down languages on Earth into simple structure, and he says he could use the same method to communicate with alien life.

In the 1990s, Dr Elliott finished a degree in artificial intelligence before taking a PhD in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti).



‘My speciality was natural language processing,’ he tells MailOnline, ‘Understanding how language is structured so a computer can understand it.’



And so he began to detect and categorise languages on Earth, with the goal of being able to understand even unknown languages automatically.



His work, the first of its kind, piqued the interest of the Seti Institute.



‘It was such a fresh angle that when Seti first saw what I was doing, they contacted me and asked to publish the paper in their area in 1999,’ he continues.



‘No one had done this before. '

And, he says, it could be vital in the search for alien signals.



‘What happens if you get a message? You’re eavesdropping, but how can you tell it was language?



‘If it does pass the initial test of being language, how would you tackle it, decipher it?



‘So I immediately made a niche for myself.’



Here on Earth we’ve made our own attempts to communicate with extraterrestrial life by sending out our own encoded messages like the Arecibo Message (left) in 1974. Dr Elliott (right) says his methods could be used to decode a similar message, if we receive one, from an alien race by breaking down their language



To first approach the topic, Dr Elliott began studying about 60 different languages on Earth.



Looking at structure and the frequency of certain words he created a set of algorithms that, when applied to different languages, revealed their similarities.



For example ‘ifs', 'buts' and 'thes’ were the break between contact words that described the world around us.



‘Looking at things like that, we were able to build a picture of common structure of the human language condition,’ he says.



Our words and symbols across different cultures are, according to Dr Elliott, simply a cover for the underlying structure.



‘The sounds we make and the symbols we use are just the veneer on top,’ he explains.



‘Underneath, the structure of the language is very, very similar across them all.



‘When I compared Chinese and English, and parts of speech for communication, they were almost identical.’



Even dolphin language has the same structure, albeit at a much higher frequency, when compared to humanity.



In Dr Elliott's research he explains the various levels of complexity of language (pictured). This ranges from things at the bottom of the scale, like ambient noise, to extremely complex language. However, he explains that it actually becomes easier to decode a message as it increases in complexity

If an extraterrestrial signal is one day detected, which Dr Elliott is certain will happen eventually, ‘it’s a matter of putting it through programmes to analyse structure.’



The interpreters will need to decide if they’ve got a stream of data, or just random audio sounds.



‘If it’s carrying information then it’s got a way of structuring itself for efficiency, and once you pick that up you’re away – the game’s on,’ he says.



If the message is designed to convey information then we can decode it, and we should even be able to get a ‘measure of how intelligent the author is.’

But on that note, he says we should be wary of how intelligent the alien race is. The more intelligent the message, the more advanced they are likely to be .



‘We know the limits of our language structure, so if the limits of theirs is greater, then their brain size and cognition is greater, which usually implies their intelligence is more,’ he explains.

'From that you can almost say how advanced their technology is likely to be.'

THE TEN STEPS TO DECODE AN ALIEN LANGUAGE

1. Physical characteristics of signal: if the content is random (lacks any discernible structure), then it must be determined if it is a message or just a technological signature.

2. If it is a message, the constituent components must be identified and analysed .

3. Internal structural characteristics can then be studied.

4. The type of phenomena can then be categorised into the most probable type: identify if it is a language-like or non-language-like phenomena:

5. Analyse interaction of component patterns to confirm phenomena and core components of communication system.

6. Disclose whether a crib or primer is present within the signal; if present, a classic decryption scenario is then likely to unfold .

7. Analyse upper syntactic levels of the communication’s hierarchy to categorise descriptive and non-descriptive elements as precursors to bootstrapping information for further decipherment and identifying cognition .

8. Identification (clustering) of syntactic categories, using a range of identified methods

9. Probable assignment of semantic values, including an affinity matrix

10. Full semantic assignment of message content, with probabilistic prioritisation to alternative interpretations.

Was this our first contact with alien life? In 1977 astronomer Jerry Ehman, working at the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University, saw a signal from outside of the solar system that seemed to be artificially created. However, after 72 seconds the signal was gone and it has not been detected again

But, if we do make first contact, what might that message say? Dr Elliott isn’t sure.



‘This is an interesting thought experiment. A few years ago Seti had a workshop on this I was very much a part of,’ he continues.



It’s likely that any initial message will be ‘something short, a quick hello,’ just to elicit a response from an intelligent race like our own.



‘Within that first short message would be a brief indicator, a primer, of the way they communicate.



‘It could be a crib, a bit like the Rosetta Stone.



‘And then the body after that would have enough information that would aid the person at the other end decrypting it.’

Dr Elliott is fairly certain that we will one day receive a signal.



‘We’ve been searching 50 years or so, but much of this time has been fighting with poor technology,’ he says.



‘We’ve just come out of the stone age in that respect. The power of computers is only just getting fast enough to do anything meaningful.’



He describes our methods of looking into the universe through telescopes so far as ‘looking at the night sky through a straw.



‘They have been targeted searches, a small fraction of the night sky.



‘But our capabilities to finally scan the night sky, huge areas simultaneously are coming soon.



‘It’s a bit like looking at our own planet; if you landed in the wrong area you’d think it’s teaming with life, but actually places like the Atacama Desert are lifeless!



‘If you sent a probe there you’d find nothing.



‘So you’ve got to hit the right place.’



And thus, says Dr Elliott, the failure to find life elsewhere in the universe so far has not come as a surprise.

Dr Elliott likens our search for alien life so far as 'looking at the night sky through a straw.' As our technology advances, however, our chances of finding a message from an extraterrestrial race become more and more likely, he says. Pictured is the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the largest single radio dish in the world

‘The irony is the more advanced you get the quieter you become, because all that stuff from the 1930s, blasting our first big broadcasts and everything, they would be noisy.



‘But as we get to now the digital age and other types of communication, less noise is being emitted from the planet.



‘So we need bigger and better equipment to find more technology – unless it’s intended communication.



‘We could hear something tomorrow if we were at the right place or right time.



‘It could be around the corner, or it could be decades away.



‘Us researchers doing all this have to be optimistic.’



But if, or when, that first contact is made, Dr Elliott hopes his research will be useful.

