Can You Decode an 'Alien' Transmission From Mars?
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute needs your help decoding potential alien signals.
At 3 p.m. ET today, the European Space Agency's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) Mars probe should transmit an encoded message to Earth to simulate receiving a signal from an extraterrestrial intelligence.
The secret message, expected to reach our planet 16 minutes later, will be detected by three global radio astronomy observatories—SETI's Allen Telescope Array (ATA) in California, Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) at West Virginia's Green Bank Observatory, and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics' Medicina Radio Astronomical Station near Bologna. Scientists will then process the signal and make it available to the public for decoding.
"Throughout history, humanity has searched for meaning in powerful and transformative phenomena," Daniela de Paulis, the artist behind the A Sign in Space project(Opens in a new window), said in a statement(Opens in a new window). "Receiving a message from an extraterrestrial civilization would be a profoundly transformational experience for all humankind."
An interdisciplinary artist and licensed radio operator currently serving as Artist in Residence at the SETI Institute and Green Bank Observatory, de Paulis assembled a team of international experts to stage her campaign.
"This experiment is an opportunity for the world to learn how the SETI community, in all its diversity, will work together to receive, process, analyze, and understand the meaning of a potential extraterrestrial signal," says ATA project scientist Dr. Wael Farah. "More than astronomy, communicating with ET will require a breadth of knowledge. With A Sign in Space, we hope to make the
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