SHOULD WE BE SIGNALLING OUR EXISTENCE TO ALIEN LIFE?

Astrobiologist and extraterrestrial researcher Dr Douglas Vakoch speaks to Sara Rigby about transmitting messages into the cosmos in the hope of finding intelligent extraterrestrial life

We talk to METI president Dr Douglas Vakoch.

PEOPLE MIGHT BE FAMILIAR WITH SETI – THE SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE. YOU’RE THE PRESIDENT OF METI (MESSAGING EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE). TELL US ABOUT WHAT YOU DO.

METI reverses the process of SETI. SETI, searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, listens for radio or laser signals from space. At METI, we flip it around and instead of listening, we transmit powerful, intentional messages to nearby stars in the hope of eliciting a response.

WHY DO YOU WANT TO SEND OUT A SIGNAL? AND HOW WOULD THAT HELP US FIND ALIEN LIFE?

My big concern is that there are, in fact, a lot of other civilisations out there, but they’re doing exactly what we are. They have these robust SETI programmes and everyone is listening, but no one is saying hello. And so this is our effort to join the galactic conversation.

HAVE MESSAGES OF THIS SORT BEEN SENT BEFORE?

Yeah, there have been sporadic messages sent out. The most famous message was transmitted from what was the world’s largest radio telescope at the time in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. To demonstrate to extraterrestrials, and ourselves, that we could do it, a brief threeminute message was sent out into the Universe.

The message itself was the numbers from 1 to 10 in the binary format, then a description of chemical elements important to life on Earth in terms of their atomic numbers. And there was a description of our DNA, what we look like, how tall we are, how many of us there are on Earth, what our Solar System is like, what the telescope is like. So it was pretty ambitious to cram a lot of information in three minutes.

At METI, we take a different approach. Instead of trying to send everything, we send something that will be succinct and intelligible. My concern of sending everything is that maybe nothing will be understandable. So we take the opposite strategy and – instead of an encyclopedia – we send a primer that is really targeted to alien scientists.

IS THE ARECIBO SIGNAL LIKELY TO BE HEARD? THREE MINUTES IS QUITE A SHORT BURST OF INFORMATION.

It’s quite a short burst. And it doesn’t follow the protocols that SETI scientists use here on Earth. A one-off transmission is not enough. The other huge problem of the Arecibo message is if it’s detected by the target recipients and they send a reply, we’re not going to get that reply for