Blasting Out Earth's Location Good Way To Communicate With Aliens?

Two teams of scientists are said to be blasting out Earth’s location with the hope of contacting aliens.

In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, called SETI, astronomers have been scanning for radio or optical signals from other civilizations for more than seven decades. Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona, wrote for The Conversation that most scientists are confident that life exists on many of the 300 million potentially habitable worlds.

According to astronomers, there is a decent chance some life forms have developed technology and intelligence. But signals from another civilization have never been detected, which is a mystery called "The Great Silence."

SETI has long been a part of mainstream science, but messaging extraterrestrial intelligence (METI) has been less common. Impey is serving on the advisory council for a nonprofit research organization that's designing messages to send to civilizations in other worlds. He said that two teams of astronomers are going to send messages into space in the coming months. This will be done in an attempt to communicate with any intelligent aliens who may be out there listening.

While one team of astronomers is using a big radio telescope, the other is choosing a compelling new target. Sometime in 2023, one of these new messages will be sent from the world's largest radio telescope, which is in China, reported Science Alert. A series of radio pulses will be beamed by the telescope, with a 1,640-foot diameter, over a broad swath of sky.

The message, called "The Beacon in the Galaxy," includes not only the Earth's location, but also prime numbers and mathematical operators, the biochemistry of life and human forms. The message will be sent toward a group of millions of stars near the center of the Milky Way galaxy. It is about 10,000 to 20,000 light-years from Earth. It means it will be tens of thousands of years before Earth might get a reply.

A team from the Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station in England has picked Oct. 4 as the day to beam a message toward TRAPPIST-1, which is a star. It is 39 light-years away, so it could take about 78 years for intelligent life to get the message and Earth to receive the reply.