Both in-animate and animate objects communicate.
This information is communicated to earth within eight minutes. Earth may respond in ways that cause interference in radio communications and/or the appearance of a visual display in the sky, called the Aurora Borealis or (Northern Lights).
When we go to our favorite antique shop to look at objects nearly 100 years old, we may pass on the way, hillside rocks that are over a million years old.
If we had the technology to listen to them, we could hear them telling us their age.
In the animate domain, plants find communication essential for survival. Plants respond to communications from both the non living (e.g., water, and sunlight, etc.), and the living worlds (e.g., other plants and insects).
In regards to the communications of insects and other higher phylogenetic species, psycholinguists have classified their messages along two parameters: the type of signal and the type of message.