It’s been 40 years since two Japanese astronomers, Masaki Morimoto and Hisashi Hirabayashi, sent a radio signal to a star called Altair, 16.7 light-years away.
Make use of one Stanford University’s telescope “while they were drunk,” the duo broadcast a message intended to show aliens orbiting the star what Earths look like.
Now a team of astronomers from the University of Hyogo are hopeful that they will finally get the answer they’ve been waiting for – and prove that extraterrestrial life exists.
They position a huge radio telescope in the city of Saku to get answers from all the planets orbiting Altair, one of the brightest stars in the night sky.
Today (August 22) is considered the most likely date for a reply, though it’s unclear how realistic the team’s expectations are about actually receiving a reply.
Do aliens exist? Japanese scientists hope to find out after sending radio signals into the cosmos 40 years ago (file photo)
Radio signals representing thirteen drawings were broadcast from the US on August 15, 1983, reports the Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun
The original radio signal was broadcast on August 15, 1983 by Morimoto and Hirabayashi from Stanford and represented 13 drawings, the Japanese newspaper reported. The Asahi Shimbun.
These thirteen drawings – decoded into signals and sent as information in an email – depict the evolution of life on Earth, from single-celled organisms to fish, a lizard, a monkey and a family of humans.
The rough sketches also show what appears to be a fish emerging from the water onto land – an early step in human evolution – one human waving, and, bizarrely, the word ‘toast’.
Four decades later, a team led by Shinya Narusawa of the University of Hyogo uses an antenna more than 64 meters in diameter called Usuda Deep Space Center in Saku.hoping to discover an answer.
According to The Asahi Shimbun, August 22 is considered the most likely date for an answer, as it is the seventh day of the seventh lunar month of the traditional Japanese lunisolar calendar.
Narusawa has pointed out that exoplanets – planets beyond our solar system – are being discovered all the time and that billions more may exist.
Pictured is the 60-meter antenna of the Usuda Deep Space Center, a facility of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
In 2007, scientists captured an image of the rapidly rotating hot star, described as “like a spinning ball of pizza dough.”
“Since the 1990s, a large number of exoplanets have been discovered,” Narusawa told The Asahi Shimbun.
“Altair may have a planet whose environment supports life.”
Located 16.7 light-years away in the constellation Aquila, Altaïr is one of the brightest stars in the night sky.
There are no known planets orbiting it, although it’s not clear whether Morimoto and Hirabayashi knew this when they broadcast their message from Stanford University.
That’s not to say that Altair has no planets for sure, though, and the researchers are hoping for an answer to their message that will be indicative of some form of world.
According to a 2008 report by GizmodoThe duo came up with the idea ‘when they were drunk’ and expected an answer as early as 2015, but it never came.
Hirabayashi was hopeful that the message would be received by aliens in the Altair star system in 1999 before sending a response back to Earth.
“I believe in aliens, but they are very hard to find,” he told Gizmodo at the time.
Alien life has never been discovered, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist (file photo)
Although it may seem like a joke from the astronomers, experts generally agree that life exists beyond Earth.
Citing some opponents the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations and several high estimates of their probability – commonly known as the Fermi paradox.
In other words, if extraterrestrial life exists, why haven’t we found any evidence for it?
Dr. Gordon Gallup, a biopsychologist at the University of Albany, has one possible answer.
He thinks extraterrestrial life may be too afraid of ‘dangerous’ and ‘violent’ humans to want to come here.
In an article published last year, he wrote: ‘If intelligent life exists elsewhere, they may view humans as extremely dangerous.
“Perhaps this is why there is no proof or conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence – we are too much of a risk and they don’t want to be discovered.”
Another likely answer to the Fermi paradox is that aliens, like us, have not developed the technology sufficient to contact worlds billions of light years away.