Dirk Schulze-Makuch - A Radio Message Will Be Sent To An Alien Solar System This Year. What Should It Say?

There are pros and cons to sending interstellar messages to aliens that may or may not exist.

Key Takeaways

• A research team plans to beam a message to an alien solar system, called TRAPPIST-1, later this year.
• The message will contain information about Earth's environmental crisis, along with selected pieces of music.
• Scientists debate whether initiating contact with aliens is a good idea.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
A radio message will be sent toan alien solar system this year. Big
Think Meti International, a California organizationset up in twenty sixteen to pursue what
sometimes called active SETI, has announcedit will send a radio message from the
world's first commercial deep space network,located in Goonhilly, England, to the

(00:23):
Trappist One exoplanet system later this year. Located thirty nine light years from Earth,
the Trappist One system was chosen becauseits central star may host several habitable
planets, so there's a chance,all be it a slim one, that
this transmission could be humanity's first contactwith an alien civilization. While that would

(00:44):
be an amazing feat to pull off, a nagging question remains, is it
wise to send out such a message? Many scientists, including the late Stephen
Hawking, answered with an emphatic no. They suggest that we stay in listen
only mode less we invite trouble.Readers of Loose six and science fiction trilogy
the three Body problem will understand.While the aliens alerted to our presence wouldn't

(01:10):
necessarily have to be as vicious asthose in the movie Independence Day, potential
conflicts could easily arise from misunderstandings.The proponents of active messaging counter this argument
by saying that we have already beensending out radio signals for nearly one hundred
years. If aliens have the technologyto invade and intend to, they already

(01:30):
know where to find us. Personally, I find both viewpoints reasonable. However,
since Earth is currently our only lifeboatin the interstellar ocean, I think
it is prudent to air on theside of caution. It is disconcerting that
there are no rules in place regardingwho can transmit messages that could lead to
our first contact with an alien civilization. One would think the United Nations might

(01:55):
have something to say about it,but as things stand, anyone with a
large enough transmitter can send whatever heor she wants into space alien text messages.
The plan by many international raises anotherbig question. If we agree in
principle that it's okay to send atransmission, what should the message be For
a project it calls Stihia Beyond.The group and its partners are designing a

(02:21):
message to explain humanity's environmental crisis interms of universal chemical principles, which will
be beamed into space along with selectedpieces of music on October fourth of this
year. I am eager to seethe detailed message and how they intend to
convey it to an alien civilization.I wonder what the residence of Trappist one
E, if there are any,would make of it. Could it be

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that the message is really targeted towardEarth's population. If we aren't able to
fix the climate crisis ourselves, wemay not be ready for contact with an
alien civilization. I am also wonderinghow the music would be received. Alien
reactions may range from annoyance to pleasure, or they may try desperately to decode

(03:05):
a deeper meaning from it. Ofcourse, this is not the first group
to design an interstellar message, themost famous of which was the Golden Record
attached to the Voyager spacecraft nearly fiftyyears ago. In nineteen seventy four,
a message beamed from the Arecibo radiotelescope in Porto Rico was the very first
attempt to send out a transmission meantto be understood by aliens. So far,

(03:30):
there's been no reply. Recently,a science team led by Jonathan Jong
from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory proposed anew message, which they call Beacon in
the Galaxy, that essentially updates theArecibo message by maximizing its information content about
humanity while using as few data bitsas possible. Like the Arecibo message,

(03:53):
Jang's message is binary coded and includespixelated images. It begins with basic mathematics
and physical concepts to establish they hopea universal lexicon, followed by a description
of the biochemical composition of life onEarth. The aliens are given a way
to determine our location, a timestamped position of our solar system in the

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Milky Way relative to certain easy toidentify globular clusters. The message also includes
digitized depictions of the Solar System andEarth's surface, as well as digitized images
of a female and a male human. It ends with an invitation to any
receiving intelligent species to respond will theyget the message. While the METY team

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will send their message to a starthat is relatively close to Earth, Jong
and his colleagues propose targeting a starcluster thousands of light years away, near
the center of our galaxy. Thisseems nonsensical to me. The message would
take many thousands of years to reachan extraterrestrial civilization, and by the time
it arrived, the signal would surelybe degraded to radio noise. Understanding in

(05:02):
alien culture's message is hard enough,this degradation might make it impossible. Even
Metti's transmission to the trappist One systemmight have a lot of static by the
time it arrives thirty nine years later. That might be a comfort to those
worried about the perils of interstellar messaging. However, time and the incredible distances

(05:26):
between the stars are on your side.