August 25, 2005
Laurance R. Doyle
Principal Investigator, SETI Institute
We had just landed in the Juneau, Alaska airport?our last sign of what is called ?civilization? for a while. Juneau is the only state capital that one cannot get to by road; one either flies or boats in. Along with colleagues Dr. Brenda McCowan of UC Davis, and Jeremy Crandell of PlanetQuest, we walked toward one end of the airport and outside to encounter what might best be described as an ?Indiana Jones? ? type airplane. It was a biplane on pontoons below which were retractable wheels. We were flying to the small Native American Tlinket village called ?Angoon?, there to meet up with colleagues from the Alaska Whale Foundation and Sean Hanser of UC Davis on their research vessel, the ?Evolution?. I actually got to sit in the co-pilot?s seat as the pilot needed someone with a strong arm to retract the wheels by hand soon after we took off.
...
I, of course, was interested in the generalized communication complexity of the whole animal kingdom for the purpose of formulating general rules for application to any possible SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) signals that may someday be received. However, being in the presence of working humpbacks certainly helped give me a sobering notion about any possible other species on another planet. When a couple of dozen humpback whales surface one is inexorably led to consider how really alien their world is compared to our own daily lives.
...
Full Story
http://www.seti.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ktJ2J9MMIsE&b=194993&ct=1351071
Sir Ulli
Laurance R. Doyle
Principal Investigator, SETI Institute
We had just landed in the Juneau, Alaska airport?our last sign of what is called ?civilization? for a while. Juneau is the only state capital that one cannot get to by road; one either flies or boats in. Along with colleagues Dr. Brenda McCowan of UC Davis, and Jeremy Crandell of PlanetQuest, we walked toward one end of the airport and outside to encounter what might best be described as an ?Indiana Jones? ? type airplane. It was a biplane on pontoons below which were retractable wheels. We were flying to the small Native American Tlinket village called ?Angoon?, there to meet up with colleagues from the Alaska Whale Foundation and Sean Hanser of UC Davis on their research vessel, the ?Evolution?. I actually got to sit in the co-pilot?s seat as the pilot needed someone with a strong arm to retract the wheels by hand soon after we took off.
...
I, of course, was interested in the generalized communication complexity of the whole animal kingdom for the purpose of formulating general rules for application to any possible SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) signals that may someday be received. However, being in the presence of working humpbacks certainly helped give me a sobering notion about any possible other species on another planet. When a couple of dozen humpback whales surface one is inexorably led to consider how really alien their world is compared to our own daily lives.
...
Full Story
http://www.seti.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ktJ2J9MMIsE&b=194993&ct=1351071
Sir Ulli
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