How would we react if we received a message from outer space? In a few hours we will be able to verify it.
At 9:00 p.m. (Spanish peninsular time) today, May 24, it is expected the arrival of an alien intelligent signal. And you can help decode it.
Three radio observatories around the world are already prepared to capture the alien message. They are the Allen Telescope Array of the SETI Institute, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope of the Green Bank Observatory and the observatory of the Radio Astronomical Station of Medicine, of the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics.
Does this mean that we have finally made contact with intelligent aliens? Fortunately or unfortunately, no. The signal is extraterrestrial, and it contains a messagebut it has not been sent by another civilization or planet.
This signal comes from Mars, and will be sent by the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) spacecraft of the European Space Agency.. It will take 16 minutes to travel 289 million kilometers, to be captured by the three radio telescopes. What is the OBJETIVE?
What to do if we receive an alien signal?
The experiment is called A Sing in Space and has been devised by the artist Daniela de Paulis. The idea is to try to check how Humanity would react to the reception of an alien intelligent signal. Not just astronomers. Also citizens and ordinary people.
As we say, the ExoMars of Mars will send the signal with the coded message today at 9:00 p.m., and will arrive on Earth around 9:16 p.m..
The three telescopes will capture the signal and upload it as it is, to the web A Sing in Space. Anyone can sign up to try to decode itand share what they manage to interpret, through a Discord channel: the real message, drawings, music, or whatever each one feels that the message contains:
will also be offered hints to decode it correctly. All content created by users will be shared on social networks.
“Receiving a message from an alien civilization would be a profoundly transformative experience for all of humanity. A Sign in Space offers the opportunity to rehearse this scenario through global collaboration, fostering an open search for meaning across all cultures and disciplines.“, explains Daniela de Paulis on the web SETI.
This website, pioneer in the search for extraterrestrial life for decades, will offer a live streaming with astronomers and other expertswhich will explain the entire signal reception process, and its subsequent decoding.
Today we received an intelligent extraterrestrial signal, although it comes from one of the ships of the European Space Agency that orbit Mars. It will be interesting to know what to do when receiving such a signal.
