Imagine this e.t phoned home and they called us back unfortunately we missed the call because we
thought it was spam what if extraterrestrials have been trying to reach us for years
and we have been sitting on it for we don't know what the message looks or sounds like
welcome to Factnomenal and today let's find out what an extraterrestrial message would look like
extraterrestrial intelligence hunters have been listening to the great expense of space since the
60s and now have an example of what a reply would look like by testing their artificial intelligence
with their synthetic data the SETI institute is preparing itself for a huge influx of possible
messages from extraterrestrials the first attempt at contacting extraterrestrials was project asma
it was named so after the queen of oz from l Frank Baum's 1907 book osma abbas
we all are so well familiar and famously sing about the Wizard of Oz being somewhere over
the rainbow interestingly by its description Oz can be compared to an alien civilization
a place very far away difficult to reach and populated by strange and exotic beings
such was the foundational spirit of this first exploration radio astronomer frank drake developer
of the drake equation was the first to tackle a listening project directed towards space with
project osma Drake worked on a very small scale and was utilizing only existing materials drake
didn't want to appear to be wasteful by spending too much money on something that wasn't fully
recognized yet he completed the first project with a budget of approximately two thousand dollars
in modern times that would be close to twenty thousand us dollars pennies in the grand scheme of
space exploration right for three months six hours a day and using one 85 foot or 26 meter antenna at
the hailing frequency of 1420 megahertz scientists tuned the receiver starting at 100 hertz to cover
400 kilohertz a small project in comparison to the vastly larger projects happening today
though nothing was found project asma helped to establish the seti as a scientific form of study
the groundbreaking study is taking place and it is a mouthful but for your convenience
let's call it by its cool acronym cosmic cosmic is working in collaboration with the seti institute
and the nrao utilizing the very large array telescope for 24 7 cosmic city observations
now you might be wondering what exactly they're looking for remember that lost message from
e.t we mentioned earlier now imagine if there were thousands of missed calls from our cosmic
neighbors but we didn't have the technology to receive them well we now have an artificial
intelligence system working relentlessly to scroll through possibly millions of cryptic signals we
have received from outer space located on the plains of san agustin in new mexico the carl g
jansky vla is the largest group of radio telescopes in the world attached on rails and
mobile the array is able to move from two-thirds of a mile to 23 miles over a span of 16 months
throughout the year they are set up in various positions such as their iconic y-shape in various
figurations they are being used to collectively sweep the sky while continually receiving data
depending on their configuration on earth the satellites help to triangulate information from
space to a very fine level of spatial resolution this means that they will be able to visualize
very detailed images that can be further analyzed back at the base this dousing stick of satellites
has been hooked up with amplifiers and is said to receive 3.7 terabytes of raw data per second
artificial intelligence will do the first stage of filtering taking the raw information and sorting
out what's valuable and what is spam because this huge influx of data will be transmitted 24 7
the scientists are working on developing and implementing a real-time pipeline to processing
currently that involves a tremendous amount of computer programming and machine learning
interestingly scientists are considering introducing the sorted data to the public
to listen to and analyze if they were to see or find anything they can flag it for the scientists
to examine further this is an opportunity for our armchair astronomers to step in and see if
they can find anything as well it is a one in a million chance at gold panning through the vast
data that has been collected when asked about the validity of radio signals as a tool for
space study in today's day and age dr cherry ing the project scientist for cosmic city responded
i think radio is still a prime target to look for eti signal just look at our
own civilization we are heavily using radio transmission to for for communication purpose
so it's by no means an outdated technology radio is also relatively cheap to produce
and can travel through large distance and easily detectable from earth because of the prevalence of
this scientific perspective on radio waves the seti institute continues to invest in
modifying and improving the satellites that are currently pointed into space
on april 28 2020 an intense pulse of radio waves were detected by two highly sensitive telescopes
at the canadian hydrogen intensity mapping experiment and the survey for transient
astronomical radio emission 2 scientists were shocked at the number of fast radio bursts that
were coming back from within our own galaxy though a lot of analysis has gone into the production of
these frbs even utilizing other telescopes that were monitoring the same space of sky
it cannot be said with certainty what is causing the unique signal
comparatively on january 26 2022 in an article published by nature scientists
share another unique find this time on the low frequency band using current and archival data
they were able to study a source that pulses every 18 minutes which is a notably high rate
though scientists are listening hard they are unsure of what it is that they are receiving back
and are continuing to invest in the technological advancement of the search for extraterrestrial
intelligence or seti equipment to better decipher the noise they are hearing in 2016 there was an
anomaly that looked promising it unfortunately turned out to be a russian military satellite
seti institute senior astronomer dr seth shawstak shares in response to this news so no detection
yet but look you know you can't always be cynical if a signal is looking promising we are going to
check it out the reality of listening to space has left us with a few mysteries that have baffled the
scientific community they are left to imagine what is causing the anomalies without a firm answer
these days seti is utilizing synthetic signals to test and program their artificial machine
intelligence they have created a program that produces synthetic steady signals
and tests artificial intelligence called setigen seti has simulated what a return call from an
et would look like in order to teach the algorithms what they should be looking for
the desire is to train them to be able to find signals within the static noise of space
instead of looking for intelligence only in the form of direct radio waves and transmission
communication today scientists are also looking for technological intelligence signatures
jill tarter a founder of the seti institute explains that intelligent technological signatures
can be seen when non-natural signals are found within the data for example scientists could find
a planet that has no variation in its temperature from pole to pole this could be because there is
a type of technology that is keeping the climate of the planet regulated to a desired temperature
according to tartar this example is considered a techno signature and could be
what a civilization with a lot of energy and technology could be doing with their planet
looking for these techno signatures could identify technologically advanced
civilizations to scientists without having to hear something broadcasted from them
could earth eventually manage this kind of technological evolution
where is everybody this was a valid question that was put forth by an inquisitive enrico fermi in
1950. this italian-american physicist was pointing out what is now known as the fermi paradox
the paradox is laid out as such if there is such a high possibility for the existence of
extraterrestrial intelligence why is there no proof of it has seti branched from just general
scientific practice and established itself as an institute the scale of the projects grew as
well within a decade of that question being posed seti stepped onto the world stage and
launched modern humankind's first attempt at radio signals on an interstellar level
the institute has now grown to include previous board members
that are nobel prize winners such as barrick bloomberg and charles towns
in an interview with wired jill tarter director at the seti institute puts into perspective the
amount of exploration that has been done by seti the total volume that we need to explore set that
equal to the volume of all the earth's oceans well since 1960 we've actually searched maybe a
hot tubs worth of the ocean dr savin shiny vargasi a postdoctoral research fellow on the cosmic seti
project expands on this idea he states that with a new system of amplifiers on the vla we will be
able to observe 40 million stars which is far more than has been observed before seti's space
headphones are upgrading yearly and the ability to focus and listen to new planet locations is
only getting better in response to the fact that we have actually explored so little some people
would ask if it is worth it to continue to listen tarter states that finding extraterrestrial life
places a mirror back on our civilization and tells us that we are all the same working on seti is a
really good way to unify people because when you think about what we're talking about life beyond
earth something is totally different from us it has the effect of holding up a mirror to all of us
and emphasizing the fact that when compared to something else we're all the same
the reality of extraterrestrials is one thing that is always up for debate in scientific society
for jill tarter the discovery of extremophiles animals that live in perceived uninhabitable
places as well as the truly vast amount of exoplanets discovered in recent years
are complete game changers the reality of organisms surviving and thriving in such terrains
explodes the amount of potentially habitable real estate in the universe the possibility of finding
extraterrestrial life is multiplied because of the before mentioned fermi paradox it is sometimes
thought that we should be transmitting our own broadcasts and not just listening for others
jill tarter shares in her opinion that we are too young of a technological society right now
to broadcast to the deep recesses of space ourselves in an effort to make contact with
others by too young tartar stresses that we don't have the means to look at long-term
broadcasting plans with the thousands of years required for effective broadcasting
as we are too young tarter feels that we should listen first for an older or more advanced society
so what do you think extraterrestrials would have to say to us tell us in the comments below
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