First contact: Global team to simulate message from extraterrestrial intelligence to Earth

What would occur if we acquired a message from an extraterrestrial civilization? Daniela de Paulis, a longtime interdisciplinary artist and licensed radio operator who presently serves as Artist in Residence on the SETI Institute and the Inexperienced Financial institution Observatory, has introduced collectively a crew of worldwide specialists, together with SETI researchers, space scientists, and artists, to stage her newest undertaking, A Sign in Space.

This revolutionary presentation of worldwide theater goals to discover the method of decoding and deciphering an extraterrestrial message by participating the worldwide SETI neighborhood, professionals from totally different fields and the broader public. This course of requires international cooperation, bridging a dialog round SETI, space research and society throughout a number of cultures and areas of experience.

As a part of the undertaking, on Could 24, 2023, the European House Company’s ExoMars Hint Fuel Orbiter (TGO) in orbit round Mars will transmit an encoded message to Earth to simulate receiving a sign from an extraterrestrial intelligence.

“All through historical past, humanity has looked for that means in highly effective and transformative phenomena,” mentioned Daniela de Paulis, the visionary artist behind the A Sign up House undertaking. “Receiving a message from an extraterrestrial civilization could be a profoundly transformational expertise for all humankind. A Sign up House provides the unprecedented alternative to tangibly rehearse and put together for this state of affairs via international collaboration, fostering an open-ended seek for that means throughout all cultures and disciplines.”

Three world-class radio astronomy observatories positioned throughout the globe will detect the encoded message. These embody the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array (ATA), the Robert C. Byrd Inexperienced Financial institution Telescope (GBT) on the Inexperienced Financial institution Observatory (GBO), and the Medicina Radio Astronomical Station observatory managed by Italian Nationwide Institute for Astrophysics (INAF).

The particular content material of the encoded message, developed by de Paulis and her crew, is presently undisclosed, permitting the general public to contribute to decoding and deciphering the content material.

The ESA ExoMars Orbiter will transmit the encoded message on Could 24 at 19:00 UTC / 12:00 pm PDT, with receipt on Earth 16 minutes later. To have interaction the general public, the SETI Institute will host a social media dwell stream occasion that includes interviews with key crew members, together with scientists, engineers, artists and extra, becoming a member of the dwell stream from world wide, together with management rooms from the ATA, the GBT, and Medicina.

Hosted by the SETI Institute’s Dr. Franck Marchis and GBO’s Victoria Catlett, the dwell stream occasion will start at 11:15 am PDT right here.

“This experiment is a chance for the world to find out how the SETI neighborhood, in all its variety, will work collectively to obtain, course of, analyze, and perceive the that means of a possible extraterrestrial sign,” mentioned ATA Mission Scientist Dr. Wael Farah. “Greater than astronomy, speaking with ET would require a breadth of information.”

With “A Sign up House,” we hope to make the preliminary steps in the direction of bringing a neighborhood collectively to fulfill this problem.”

Following the transmission, ATA, GBT, and Medicina groups will course of the sign after which make it accessible to the general public for decoding.

The SETI Institute will securely retailer the processed knowledge in collaboration with Breakthrough Hear Open Information Archive and Filecoin, the world’s largest decentralized storage community. This collaborative effort ensures the preservation and accessibility of the processed knowledge, safeguarding its availability for additional evaluation and decoding endeavors.

“We’re thrilled to accomplice with SETI on this groundbreaking undertaking,” mentioned Stefaan Verveat, Head of Community Development at Protocol Labs, the corporate behind Filecoin. “Our decentralized knowledge storage options are ideally suited to the safe and dependable storage of the huge quantities of information generated by this undertaking.”