A collaborative project called “Space Signs” won the 2024 Gizmodo Science Fair title for simulating messages sent by intelligent aliens to Earth. The project involves transmitting a coded message from a Martian satellite and inviting the public to decrypt it, providing a unique look at how humans have met the challenge of deciphering messages from a completely unknown civilization.
question
If an alien message reaches Earth, can we decipher it?
result
On May 24, 2023, a Martian satellite transmitted radio signals to Earth. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, a mission launched in 2016 to study the Martian atmosphere, sent out an unusual message that was picked up 16 minutes later by three observatories on Earth. While the signal didn’t actually come from aliens, it highlights how challenging communication between two distant worlds would be, suggesting that detecting alien signals may not be the most difficult part of first contact.
The SETI Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to finding the electromagnetic signatures of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, organized the event (SETI itself stands for “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence”). ESA’s mission control center transmits secret messages to the spacecraft and stores them in memory. The ExoMars orbiter then converts the information into telemetry, or digital data, and transmits it back to Earth in the form of radio waves.
The signal itself is a coded message developed by artist Daniela de Paulis, founder of the interplanetary art project Signs in Space.
“When I was developing this project, I was thinking about how early humans must have felt when faced with natural phenomena they couldn’t explain,” DePaulis said. “They must have come together to come up with an explanation for these events…so I’m fascinated by this process, how society tries to give meaning to reality.”
Astronomers at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, the Allen Telescope Array in California, and the Medisina Radio Observatory in Italy received the signal, deleted the telemetry data, and posted the news on the project’s website. Available for anyone to download. Thousands of people are trying to decipher the alien code and exchanging opinions online about its meaning.
The message itself was only a few thousand bytes in size and had to be extracted from the rest of the raw data received during transmission, but the content of the message remains unknown except for de Paulis and two others. “The message writing was the hardest part. I literally lost sleep over it,” DePaulis said. “Nothing seems appropriate for a message to be sent by another civilization.”
Radio astronomer Wael Farah, who helped capture the signal from the Allen Telescope Array, was unsuccessful in deciphering the coded message, but he has some theories. “I think it reflects who we are as humans,” Farah said. “At least that’s what I think it will be, or what I hope it will be, that it reflects or projects who we are as human beings.”
This experiment highlights how challenging it is to understand unknown signals. It also highlights the collaborative effort required, much like we might face during our first real contact with an alien civilization. The team wanted to show that contact with aliens would not happen like in the movies. Months of testing are required to ensure the integrity of the message. The first thing scientists have to do is make sure that the transmission does not come from a human spacecraft and that different telescopes can receive it in exactly the same form, which is why the test involves three observatories.
why do they do this
Space icons blend art and science to prepare humanity for the possibility that alien civilizations may contact Earth, while also allowing us to reflect on our own world in terms of how information is interpreted.
“As an artist, I’m interested in exploring this process of meaning creation, so my question is: What if we took this really radical theatrical form and showed humans a scenario that simulated receiving an alien message? “I’m fascinated by the possibility that we have to make sense of something that’s completely beyond the overall nature of our own culture…how we can make something make sense without having parameters,” DePaulis said. ? “
The program also sheds light on the ongoing search for life beyond Earth. “We’re drawing attention to it because there have been projects over the past five to 10 years that have changed people’s minds that SETI is not just a bunch of guys in tin hats,” Farah said. “It is a true scientific, astrophysical field in its own right and deserves academic respect.”
why they are winners
About 400,000 people downloaded the signal a week after it was intercepted on Earth. “We could see interest from the beginning,” said Frankk Marchis, senior planetary astronomer at the SETI Institute, who coordinates the Space Marks promotion.
Markis was given the opportunity to learn the contents of the message, but he declined for fear of spoiling the message. “To me, the signal is aliens telling us they know we’re here,” Markakis said. “They just want to tell us that they know we’re here, and that’s all they know about us.” The project sparked discussion, even within the team, about the exact purpose of the Space Marker.
“We have a lot of different ideas… and some of them are more interesting than anything we’ve considered or uploaded,” DePaolis said. “We gave the information this fluidity, allowing for multiple stages, to emphasize the idea that knowledge is always a process—it never fully crystallizes.”
what’s next
The team behind the project is still monitoring online discussions about “alien” signals. DePaolis hopes that the public’s attention will not be focused solely on the content of the message, but will remain open to various interpretations.
In search of real signals from extraterrestrial life, the SETI Institute team is still scanning the universe. “My bet is that we will find life in the solar system within the next 10 to 15 years,” Markakis said. “In terms of exoplanets, this will be the next generation of instruments that will potentially image exoplanets like Earth. Image of the planet, with its oceans and perhaps signatures of biological life, which will happen when we launch the new telescope. Then we’ll get another image of a light blue dot.
team
Daniela de Paulis, artist-in-residence, SETI Institute and Green Bank Observatory; Wael Farah, radio astronomer, SETI Institute; Franck Marchis, senior planetary astronomer, SETI Institute; Gregory Bates, experimental poet; Mukesh Bhatt , physicist; Germano Bianchi, IRA-INAF researcher; Clara Anna Capova, anthropologist; Victoria Catlett, software engineer; Pamela Conrad, astrobiologist.
Click here to see all the 2024 Gizmodo Science Fair winners.
