Research

Pythagorean right-triangle proposal, attributed to C. F. Gauss: a figure in forest and wheat on the Siberian tundra, visible from Mars.

A wildly impractical proposal that might have actually worked if a Martian civilization existed (which was a common belief at the time).

Tesla, N. Talking with the Planets. Collier's Weekly, 9 February 1901.

Now believed to be from natural causes, although exactly which is still debated.

Cocconi, G. & Morrison, P. Searching for Interstellar Communications. Nature 184, 844–846.

The first high quality paper in the field. This is the origin of the 1420MHz Schelling point.

The Wow! signal. Big Ear radio telescope, Ohio State University, 15 August 1977.

72 seconds that have fascinated us for 50 years. Now believed to be caused by a hydrogen gas cloud maser. See below.

Méndez, A. et al. Arecibo Wow! I: An Astrophysical Explanation for the Wow! Signal. arXiv:2408.08513.

Read here for a deeper dive into the most likely explanation.

Hogben, L. Astraglossa, or first steps in celestial syntax. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 11(6).

Early work in how to make a clear and decipherable symbol scheme with ET.

Freudenthal, H. Lincos: Design of a Language for Cosmic Intercourse, Part 1. North-Holland.

Foundational work on how to structure a more complex language foundation. 1420MHz draws inspiration from Lincos.

Minsky, M. Why intelligent aliens will be intelligible. In Extraterrestrials: Science and Alien Intelligence.

1420MHz is inspired by Minsky's approach, although not the same foundations.

DeVito, C. L. & Oehrle, R. T. A language based on the fundamental facts of science. JBIS 43(12), 561–568.

Another foundational work on how to structure a message from scratch, with a subtly different approach than Lincos.

Vakoch, D. A. (ed.) Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CETI). SUNY Press.

A comprehensive primer on the history and science of SETI.

Vakoch, D. A. (ed.) Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication. NASA SP-2013-4413.

A wide-ranging collection of essays on various aspects of SETI.

Vakoch, D. A. & Punske, J. (eds.) Xenolinguistics: Towards a Science of Extraterrestrial Language. Routledge.

A collection of essays reviewing the fundamental challenges of interstellar communication.

Pioneer plaques. Sagan, C., Drake, F. & Salzman Sagan, L. Pioneer 10 (1972) and Pioneer 11 (1973).

The first physical messages that we sent out to the stars.

The Arecibo message. Drake, F. et al. Transmitted 16 November 1974 toward M13.

The first and most famous radio message that we transmitted.

Voyager Golden Records. Sagan, C. et al. Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record (1978).

An upgraded version of the Pioneer plaques, and also included audio/visual data encoded on the record in addition to pictograms.

Cosmic Call 1 and 2 (1999, 2003). Dutil, Y. & Dumas, S. The Interstellar Rosetta Stone.

A more modern version of the approach that the Arecibo Message took.

Sónar Calling GJ 273b. METI International, IEEC and Sónar. Transmitted 16–18 October 2017.

A musical message from a range of artists.

Heller, R. Decryption of messages from extraterrestrial intelligence using the power of social media: The SETI Decrypt Challenge. International Journal of Astrobiology 18(4), 296–303.

The first larger-scale message decoding outreach. Hundreds of replies and 66 correct.

de Paulis, D. et al. A sign in space: An interdisciplinary exploration of the potential reception of an extraterrestrial signal. Acta Astronautica 212, 436–440.

An art project where a cryptic radio message was sent from Mars to Earth.

Matessa, M., Vakoch, D. A., Lower, T. A., Barkow, J. H. & DeVito, C. L. How to decode interstellar messages. Acta Astronautica 192, 77–81.

A short paper, but an excellent primer on how to decipher a received message from ET. 1420MHz follows a very similar pattern.

McCowan, B., Hanser, S. F. & Doyle, L. R. Quantitative tools for comparing animal communication systems: information theory applied to bottlenose dolphin whistle repertoires. Animal Behaviour.

Pioneering work on how to tell if a message is meaningful without yet understanding its meaning, with dolphins. This is the reason the game features whale communication.

Andreas, J. et al. Toward understanding the communication in sperm whales. iScience.

Project CETI directly inspired the backstory of Dr. Delmar in the game.

Sharma, P. et al. Contextual and combinatorial structure in sperm whale vocalisations. Nature Communications.

Very recent research revealing the beginnings of an "alphabet" for sperm whales.