Health, Science, Environment

If you think back to the 1997 film Contact, you’ll recall a scene where Jodie Foster, playing alien-hunting astronomer Ellie Arroway, lies on her car hood with huge headphones on her ears, in a field of towering white satellite dishes. She’s waiting for something. A signal. She lies still, her eyes closed. And suddenly, she hears something, the sounds of something – someone  – beyond the earth, communicating with her.

As you read this, a dead language is flying through the air all around you -- at least, it’s dead for most official uses. It’s the Morse code, a binary digital system that dates back to the 1850s. Among its primary users today are amateur radio operators, better known as hams. I am one of these and am proud to say I’m fluent in Morse. I was texting way, way before it was cool.

Ham radio is a pastime dating back more than a century. Hobbyists built transmitting and receiving equipment long before radio stations, such as KALW, went on the air.

What makes us want to be good?

“Compassion is complex,” says Emiliana Simon Thomas, the former associate director of CCARE, the Center for Compassion And Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University.

Brian Knutson, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Stanford University, adds: “It’s not quite an emotion, is it? It’s more sophisticated.”

Emerging science is exploring how our minds feel for others.

“Can we see it?” asks Knutson. “Does it help people to extend compassion? That would be very exciting.”