Bees Could Teach Humans a Universal Language to Talk to Aliens
Australian researchers say the key to talking to extraterrestrials may lie in something very terrestrial: honeybees. If we make contact, messages must travel across vast interstellar distances. The question for astronomers seeking distant civilizations is how this communication would even be possible if we do not share a language. Now scientists propose a universal language inspired by the humble honeybee. With six legs, five eyes, and a radically different social structure, bees are among the closest things we have to aliens here on Earth. Although humans and bees have wildly different brains, we have both evolved complex methods of communication and cooperation. More importantly, new research shows that bees also share something crucial with humans: the ability to do maths. Based on this surprising discovery, scientists believe mathematics could be the basis of a universal language. Scientists say we might learn how to communicate with aliens by studying the concepts that we share with honey bees. Co-author Dr Adrian Dyer, of Monash University, told the Daily Mail: 'Because bees and humans are separated by about 600 million years in evolutionary time, we developed very different physiology, brain size, culture.'
Bees Can Learn Math: Add, Subtract, and Even Understand Zero
One of the big problems for communicating with aliens is the enormous distances involved. Given that the nearest star to the sun is 4.4 light-years away, it would take an absolute minimum of 10 years to send a message and get a reply. This makes it impractical to try to learn an alien's language from scratch, like in the sci-fi movie Arrival. Instead, scientists want to develop a universal language that can be understood by any species, regardless of how they communicate. To find a solution to this puzzle, the researchers asked how we might communicate with one of the most alien-like species on Earth. Co-author Dr Adrian Dyer, of Monash University, told the Daily Mail: 'Because bees and humans are separated by about 600 million years in evolutionary time, we developed very different physiology, brain size, culture.' However, despite these enormous differences, both humans and bees seem to have a similar basic understanding of mathematics. In previous studies, Dr Dyer and his co-authors found that bees have the ability to learn mathematical concepts. Scientists have found that bees can learn to add and subtract in specialised tests, giving credence to the idea that mathematics might be a universal language. Do YOU believe in the existence of aliens? The researchers set up experiments in which bees could participate in maths tests to receive a reward of sugar water. During these trials, bees showed the ability to add and subtract, categorise quantities as odd or even, and even demonstrated an understanding of 'zero'. Incredibly, bees even demonstrated an ability to link abstract symbols with numbers, in a very simple version of how humans learn the Arabic numerals. The fact that such a different organism shares mathematical concepts with humans lends evidence to the theory that mathematics could be a universal language. The idea that mathematics could be the basis of alien communication is not a new theory. In fact, the covers of the Golden Records, which accompanied the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes launched into deep space in 1977, were carved with mathematical and physical quantities. Likewise, when researchers broadcast the Arecibo radio message into space in 1974, it contained 1,679 zeros and ones, ordered to communicate the numbers 1 to ten and the atomic numbers of the elements that make up DNA. However, scientists weren't sure whether aliens would have similar enough mathematical concepts to understand these messages. If bees can understand maths, then aliens might share those same universal concepts. That means attempts to communicate with mathematics, such as the cover of the golden disks on Voyager One and Two, could be successful In their new paper, the researchers argue that their evidence from bees suggests that maths really is universal. Dr Dyer says: 'When we tested bees on mathematical type problems, and they could build an understanding to solve the questions we posed, it was very interesting, and convincing that an alien species could share similar capabilities.' 'Now we know maths can be solved by bees, we have a solid basis to think about how to try to communicate with alien intelligence.' As to what that language might look like, Dr Dyer says it may be very similar to the mathematics most of us use every day. 'Mathematics, which was first developed by philosophers to communicate complex problems more efficiently, is already a language we humans use every day. 'At a simple level, binary coded information would be a start, then, like we humans learn language through many "baby steps", we learn with another species to build a commonly understood language framework.'
Math as the Bridge to Alien Communication and the Drake Equation
The Drake Equation is a seven-variable way of finding the chance of active civilizations existing beyond Earth. It takes into account factors like the rate of star formation, the number of stars that could form planetary systems, the number of potentially habitable planets in those systems. The equation includes recent data from NASA's Kepler satellite on the number of exoplanets that could harbor life. Researchers also adapted the equation from being about the number of civilizations that exist now, to being about the probability of civilization being the only one that has ever existed. Researchers found the odds of an advanced civilization developing need to be less than one in 10 billion trillion for humans to be the only intelligent life in the universe. Unless the odds of advanced life evolving on a habitable planet are astonishingly low, then humankind is not the only advanced civilization to have lived. But Kepler data places those odds much higher, which means technologically advanced aliens are likely to have existed at some point.
