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Earth will receive its first “alien message” in a few hours.
The SETI Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to understanding life in space, is starting a program to send a signal from Mars to be decoded on Earth.
The idea is to prepare scientists for the “profoundly transformative experience for all of humanity” when aliens contact us – and this is an exercise in deciphering alien communications.
SETI is hosting a live-streamed event at 3 p.m. ET (7 p.m. GMT), where a Mars orbiter will transmit the encrypted broadcast that will travel 180 million miles to Earth in just 16 minutes.
Researchers work together to solve the message by giving the public access to the message and helping to decode what it says. It has generated an entry for anyone who takes the challenge.
The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (pictured) is one of three telescopes that will capture the “alien message” that will be decoded as an exercise for when aliens actually make contact with Earth
Humans crafted the alien message, so SETI notes that the actual communications for life in space would look very different from what humans might come up with.
And the team knows that any transmission from the final frontier would come from worlds much further away than Mars.
Earth has been picking up signals traveling through space.
“Much of the radio emissions coming from space are emitted by tiny electrically charged particles, called electrons, moving through magnetic fields,” said the European Space Agency (ESA).
“These electrons are usually accelerated away from the shock waves of exploding stars, known as supernovae.”
One problem was that astronomers have always had trouble distinguishing between potential alien signals and human-made ones.
This changed in February when a team of scientists led by the University of Toronto designed an algorithm capable of determining which signals are artificial and which may be extraterrestrial messages.
SETI’s project, called “A Sign in Space,” is a large portion of the Earth coming into contact with aliens.
Daniela dePaulis, the visionary artist behind the A Sign in Space project, said in a rack: ‘Throughout history, humanity has searched for meaning in powerful and transformative phenomena.
The Mars orbiter will beam the message at 3 p.m. ET, which will be received on Earth 16 minutes later
“Receiving a message from an alien civilization would be a profoundly transformative experience for all of humanity.
“A Sign in Space offers the unprecedented opportunity to tangibly rehearse and prepare for this scenario through global collaboration, fostering an open search for meaning across cultures and disciplines.”
The signal is sent from ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), which hovers over Mars and studies its atmosphere.
The transmission will be captured by three massive telescopes around the world: the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), Robert C. Byrd at the Green Bank Observatory (GBT) in West Virginia, and the Medicina Radio Astronomical Station in northern Italy.
Teams then collect the data and store it securely in partnership with Open Data Archive and Filecoin, a decentralized storage network.
To engage the public, the SETI Institute is hosting a livestreamed social media event featuring interviews with key team members, including scientists, engineers, artists, and more, participating in the livestream from around the world, including ATA control rooms, the GBT, and Medica.
“Anyone working on decoding and interpreting the message can discuss the process on the A Sign in Space Discord server,” SETI shared.
‘Submissions of findings, thoughts and artistic and scientific input can be made through the special submission form on the project’s website.’
Following the broadcast, the A Sign in Space team will host a series of Zoom-based discussions open to the public on topics considering the societal implications of detecting a signal from an alien civilization.
And discussions will take place over the next six to eight weeks after receiving the transmission.