where is everybody that is the question the famous Italian physicist Enrico Fermi asked one afternoon
during lunch this gave rise to the famous Fermi paradox a conflict between the lack of
clear obvious evidence for extraterrestrial life and various high estimates for their existence
there have been many attempts to explain the Fermi paradox primarily suggesting that intelligent
extraterrestrial beings are extremely rare that the lifetime of such civilizations is short or
that they exist but for various reasons humans see no evidence this suggests that at universe time
and space scales two intelligent civilizations would be unlikely ever to meet even if many
developed during the life of the universe life outside our solar system might be rare who knows
but if that is the case then intelligent life would be rarer or it could be that we are truly
alone in the vastness of space and i don't know about you but that makes me feel very
very lonely so far we have sent radio signals we have also sent the voyager space props into space
carrying a 12-inch gold-plated copper disc containing sounds and images selected to
portray the diversity of life and culture on earth and we have looked towards the direction of our
cosmic neighbors in an attempt to make the first contact but so far no one has reached out to us
but aliens far superior than us maybe even a type 3 civilization is hiding in plain sight
and watching our every move it only makes sense for advanced alien civilizations to not contact us
on purpose they might be waiting for us waiting for us to become able or at par with them
we cannot however be sure so the quest to find life outside of our planet must continue
and we just might have found the means to finally do that welcome to lab360 and today you and i
will explore this amazing new way to detect signals from advanced alien civilizations
let's start with a slice from history enter
the man who revolutionized theoretical physics and our perception of the cosmos albert einstein
when einstein published his general theory of relativity in full mathematical detail
it opened the window on a radically new framework for physics abolishing established
notions of space and time and replacing newton's formulation of the laws of gravity
which will be part of our pie
ah gravity never happened back then newton had a god-like stature in the world of physics and
astronomy and challenging his theories obviously did not go well with the scientific community and
as you can tell relativity got a lot of flack in its early days but the rest as we know is history
since then we have countless proofs of general relativity even the new images from the james webb
space telescope shows the bending of space-time around massive celestial objects and while doing
so it focuses and magnifies light like a telescope in an effect called gravitational lensing
but hold on visible light might not be the only thing that is affected by this process researchers
now believe that communication signals might also be amplified through gravitational lensing
and if that's possible we might even be able to eavesdrop on extraterrestrial communications
being relayed around the sun the idea becomes more interesting as we dive deeper into it
the study theorizes that vast interstellar communication networks could use gravitational
lensing to relay transmissions over great distances similar to how cell phone networks
operate here on earth we use networks to communicate with each other all the time
when we use a cell phone the electromagnetic waves are transmitted to the nearest cellular tower
which connects to the next tower and so on and so forth if probes are set up in specific
positions near a star to take advantage of its gravitational lensing they could be used as relay
points for this communications network and if an advanced alien species has discovered this process
and they happen to be using the sun as a relay point we'd be able to pick up those signals
before you dismiss this idea as outlandish hear me out we have started taking baby steps towards
making this theory a reality the researchers have tested this hypothesis by collecting
data from the green bank telescope in west virginia and searching for radio transmissions
that might be relayed from our nearest stellar neighbors located in the alpha centauri system
there have been a few previous searches using optical wavelengths but this time they chose to
use radio wavelengths because radio is a great way to communicate information across space
the search which was a test was limited to one night so anything that wasn't
broadcasting while we observed was not going to get picked up although our limited surge
could miss existing probes if they weren't constantly broadcasting at these frequencies
this was a good test to see if this kind of search is possible
and the group hopes that gravitational lensing can also be used beyond the search for alien life
we'd also be able to communicate with our own interstellar probes using the same method
yes our cosmic towers for humanity to become multi-planetary and a space-faring civilization
we would need methods to communicate back to earth the desire to know our place in
the universe is a core human yearning and people have pondered the question for thousands of years
we couldn't move beyond mere speculation for a very long time however until we invented
telescopes and developed a proper understanding of the scientific method humanity notched both
of those milestones centuries ago and science is now going great guns in the search for alien life
but some people including the late physicist stephen hawking have argued that it's unwise
to advertise our presence to aliens whose nature and intent are complete mysteries to us
these creatures may pillage our planet after picking up our ping after all
but other researchers think any creatures advanced enough to travel to earth to enslave or eat us
would already know we're here anyway and we might be of no use to these beings as
they would be way up in the kardashev scale we however have just begun and we should not stop
in search of life outside of our planet our technological youth is our biggest advantage
and if we are truly alone then it is up to us to spread humanity to the far reaches of the cosmos
and in doing so we may evolve into beings that look nothing like us but the essence of humanity
the species that started as apes will forever be etched into our DNA thousands and thousands of
years from now what do you guys think do you think we will ever be able to make the first contact
have they already tried to contact us but we couldn't understand
the famous wow signal may have been truly an alien civilization trying to reach out to us share your
thoughts with us we would like to hear from you let us know by dropping in your comments below
and don't forget to subscribe to lab 360 for all the news and videos from the world of astronomy