SETI Institute’s Global Project Yields Breakthrough
In a groundbreaking achievement, a father and daughter have successfully decoded an ‘alien’ signal from Mars, a year after it was released by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute.
Governments worldwide are undoubtedly prepared for potential extraterrestrial communications, but this project, known as ‘A Sign In Space,’ invited the global public to participate in deciphering a simulated alien message. This initiative, spearheaded by artist Daniela de Paulis, aims to simulate the transformative experience of receiving an extraterrestrial message.
The encoded message was transmitted from the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter back to Earth in May 2023
“Throughout history, humanity has searched for meaning in powerful and transformative phenomena,” said de Paulis. “Receiving a message from an extraterrestrial civilization would be a profoundly transformational experience for all humankind. ‘A Sign in Space’ offers the unprecedented opportunity to tangibly rehearse and prepare for this scenario through global collaboration, fostering an open-ended search for meaning across all cultures and disciplines.”
The encoded message was transmitted from the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter back to Earth in May 2023. On June 7, over a year later, the correct solution was finally presented to de Paulis by John and Sarah (pseudonyms, as they requested anonymity).
The duo approached the message with the hypothesis that it related to the cellular automaton computation model. They remarkably transformed a seemingly meaningless sequence of ones and zeros into a meaningful image using the Unity video game engine. The process involved 6,625 transformations to reveal an image of five amino acids, each represented by blocks of varying pixel numbers, such as one for hydrogen, six for carbon, seven for nitrogen, and eight for oxygen.
Before the breakthrough, the message had been intercepted by three radio astronomy observatories: the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array in California, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, and the Medicina Radio Astronomical Station Observatory in Italy. Despite initial efforts, it took an unexpectedly long time to crack the code.
“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,” said Dr. Wael Farah, ATA Project Scientist.
This remarkable decoding feat by a dedicated father-daughter team not only highlights the power of global collaboration but also underscores the potential for unexpected contributors to make significant scientific breakthroughs.