Scientists recently sent a complex message to a planet about 12 light years away from Earth. According to calculations, if the aliens respond to the message, humanity will receive the answer in 2042.
Messages sent from earth include information about musical calculations, mathematics, science, across the distance between stars and reach the destination planet. And if there is life on that planet and aliens decide to answer back, the answer is expected to be in 2042. Of course everything stops at the word “If”. According to the President of Mᴀssaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI), the message content is quite simple and easy to understand, encoded in the radio wave system. Researchers want to know whether inhabitants of neighboring planets can understand simple concepts like us.
METI is an organization specializing in research on intelligent communication methods with extraterrestrials. The organization’s goals were inspired by Barcelona’s Sonar Festival. The star chosen to send the message has the international name GJ273b and if everything goes according to plan, the earth could receive an answer in 25 years.
Sonar’s directors, including Mr. Enric, Sergio, and Ricard, all said: “When the Earth is suffering from negative influences from humanity, this is the best time to approach other planets with hope.” hope to receive advice and help to change the situation. Sonar Calling is an effort to awaken humanity’s ideology leading to positive changes in the future. Sonar officially announced the time to send the message last Wednesday and the target to receive the message was star GJ 237, also known as Luyten star, about 12 light years from earth. The new message, broadcast over eight hours intermittently over three days in October, contained mathematical and scientific calculations, descriptions of radio waves, and instructions on timing.
Each signal transmission includes 6 short music segments of about 10 seconds. And according to Mr. Vakoch, in his response, he hopes aliens can understand those messages. “We send them 1 + 1 = 2 which I hope they will send back a similar message such as 10 + 10 = 20.”
The message was broadcast repeatedly for three consecutive days to ensure that any astronomers on or around the GJ237 star system knew that this message was intentionally sent. Because the signal transmission time between Earth and the star GJ237 is up to 12 years, to receive an answer, scientists on Earth will have to wait about 25 years. One of the reasons Luyten’s star was chosen to send the signal is because astronomers can easily see it from the Northern Hemisphere, where the transmitter is located, rather than because it is a star near Earth. The star Proxima b is only 4 light years away from Earth. In fact, if we get an answer from Luyten, this means our galaxy is truly teeming with life. We hope that not only Luyten, but perhaps hundreds, thousands, millions of other planets will send us answers.
In the past, there have been a few signals sent into space, such as the Arecibo message. Vakoch said this was also the first signal he knew when astronomers suspected the existence of life on some neighboring planets. Scientists said they will continue to send messages into space next April. However, the idea of sending intentional messages into space has always been controversial. Many scholars have expressed concern about the potential dangers of trying to reach aliens. Physicist Stephen Hawking once warned about the consequences if humans encounter alien civilizations. They will certainly last longer and have much more advanced technology than humans. “98% of astronomers and scientists at the Insтιтute for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), including myself, believe that sending messages to other worlds can be very dangerous and not a good idea. It’s like screaming into the jungle before you even know whether there are tigers, lions, bears and other dangerous animals there,” said Dan Werthimer, a researcher at the SETI Insтιтute at the University of California, Berkeley.
