ALIEN MINDSCAPES- A PERSPECTIVE ON THE SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE

Advances in planetary and space sciences, astrobiology, and life and cognitive sciences, combined with developments in communication theory, bioneural computing, machine learning, and big data analysis, create new opportunities to explore the probabilistic nature of alien life. Brought together in a multidisciplinary approach, they have the potential to support an integrated and expanded search for extraterrestrial intelligence, a search that includes looking for life as we do not know it. This approach will augment the odds of detecting a signal by broadening our understanding of the evolutionary and systematic components in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, provide more targets for radio and optical search and identify new ways of decoding and coding messages using universal markers. To find extraterrestrial intelligence we will have to turn inward (evolution, perception and communicational) and outward (planetary environments) and challenge our anthropocentric assumptions. Through consilence, we can build a systematic and connective vision of intelligent life in the Universe. To be achieved, this vision requires the exploitation of multidisciplinary synergies and an intellectual framework with a clear agenda and milestones.