Divers can talk to dolphins, perhaps aliens, with new device
The iPhone-sized device, which decodes dolphin language in real time and allows humans to reply, has drawn interest from the SETI Institute.
Photo: ZUMA Press 
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Aw Come on! How can all of you be negitive? To be able to comunicate with another creature other that Human on This Planet, Is a Real Break Through! I think we can learn as much from them as they can about us. And Change for the better has to Start Someware!
I'm ambivalent about this discovery. Humans have a bad history of destroying the things they don't understand. Dolphin perceptions HAVE to be different from human perceptions. They live in a totally different world and therefore their basic learning building blocks are very different from ours. Besides, there are many humans who are amoral and less than ethical in their dealings with "underlings" -- no doubt to the detriment of the dolphins. And, really, how many humans do you know that.... More
Dr. Shostack's comments are ridiculous. There are so many things that we have in common with dolphins, (love, hate, fear, hunger) that their world view would most certainly overlap ours. Since he is the "Chief Astronomer" of SETI, I am guessing that his narrow-mindedness is the reason there has been no contact with ET's yet. He is looking in all the wrong places.
"As dolphins are likely to be the second smartest creature on the planet..."
Which species is destroying their own habitat for personal gain again?
I find the idea intriguing and I remember some previous research in California that translated speech into clicks (but not the reverse). However, one potentially unfortunate side effect may be that it leads us to discover that the dolphins really aren't all that interested in us!
As Anne Dillard wrote in "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek": "What if I were to fall in the forest? Would the trees hear? Or even stop to listen?" (more or less - from memory).
Mike.
The article not the dolphins.
If we can translate the speech of a completely different species, then why do we not have any significant improvements in real time human language translations?
