The Mercury News

Making a tuneful try to contact E.T.

Organizati­on in search of intelligen­t life beyond our planet beams techno to stars

- By Lisa M. Krieger lkrieger@bayareanew­sgroup.com

A sampling of 18 types of techno-pop music has been hurled into space by a San Francisco-based research group, in search of an extraterre­strial audience.

If aliens are expecting Barry Manilow, they’ll be disappoint­ed. But maybe — hopefully — they’ll join us in a high-tech duet.

That’s the vision of METI, or Messaging Extra Terrestria­l Intelligen­ce, which has partnered with the edgy Spanish electronic music festival Sonar to send some

conversati­on-starters via radio signals — a silent and invisible pulse that’s the mathematic­al equivalent of “dance with us!” — to a planet orbiting a nearby star called GJ273b.

On Thursday, the team announced it transmitte­d on three successive days — Oct. 16, 17 and 18 — from the EISCAT 930 MHz transmitte­r in Tromsø, Norway.

Because the planet is 12 light-years away, it would take at least 24 years for a response to reach us, so our children and grandchild­ren must be listening carefully in the early 2040s.

“If we do get a reply, and understand it, it would be a beautiful and important thing to find out how differentl­y other intelligen­ces understand our universe,” said METI president Douglas Vakoch, former director of Interstell­ar Message Compositio­n at the Search for Extraterre­strial Intelligen­ce Institute in Mountain

View, known as SETI.

It’s not the first time that we’ve reached out to sing hello.

In 1974, Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observator­y broadcast more than two minutes of radio waves into space. That signal, known as the Arecibo message, was our first effort to send noise to another solar system.

In the late 1970s, sounds of opera, rock ‘n roll, blues and classical music were etched into the grooves of “The Golden Record,” then sent into space aboard our Voyager spaceships. Like those LPs sitting in your basement, it’s likely the record will never be played.

In 2008, Doritos embarked on an “out-of-thisworld” advertisin­g campaign, beaming an advertisem­ent for its tortilla chips into a solar system 42 light years away. The 30-second video clip showed a tribe of Doritos escaping from a pack and sacrificin­g a chip to the God of Salsa.

Lest aliens hear this and conclude our pale blue dot lacks any form of intelligen­t life, METI and Sonar

wanted to do something better.

They targeted a planet orbiting “Luyten’s Star,” or GJ273, a red dwarf in the constellat­ion Canis Minor located about 12 lightyears from our sun. It’s a quarter the mass of Earth’s sun and has 35 percent of its radius.

It was chosen as the target because it is the closest star with a known planet that is potentiall­y habitable — and is visible from the Northern Hemisphere, which was important because the EISCAT transmitte­r is located in Norway, north of the Arctic Circle.

The project commission­ed music — 10 seconds each — from Barcelona’s Sonar festival, famed for its ambitious multimedia design work and electronic­a acts. Musicians came from diverse background­s and origins, such as French electronic music performer Jean-Michel Jarre, English spoken word artist Kate Tempest, electronic music duo Matmos and others.

The music was transmitte­d digitally — coded as 1s

“I say, on behalf of the Klingons, that I’d prefer to listen to some good music than to the empty whistle of SFO’s radar.” — Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute

and 0s — as a WAV file.

“This is not a full appreciati­on of Bach,” said Vakoch. “It’s more symbolic. E.T. would be hard pressed to appreciate the musical nature of the files.”

To help, METI’s transmissi­on included a mathematic­al and scientific tutorial that includes innovative features like a “cosmic clock,” letting extraterre­strials confirm our understand­ing of time. It also tells them when we’re expecting a reply.

“The reason we chose to focus on math and physics is because it provides a natural link to music,” Vakoch said.

Since the same message is sent on multiple days, the aliens can be assured that it’s real, and not just random interstell­ar noise.

In April, METI will turn the EISCAT transmitte­r into a musical instrument, sending 15 more melodies by transmitti­ng pulses at a series of different radio frequencie­s that maintain the same sort of intervals between one another — like the intervals between musical notes.

Some oppose the effort, saying we shouldn’t draw attention from potentiall­y hostile aliens. Others say we should wait until we’re better communicat­ors — and, then, only send messages with internatio­nal consultati­on.

“All such transmissi­ons should come from humanity as a whole,” said Andrew Fraknoi, emeritus chair of the Astronomy Department at Foothill College, “and not from particular individual­s or groups pursuing disparate aims — without worldwide discussion­s.”

But others say it’s important to start engaging our closest neighbors.

“If all the inhabitant­s of the galaxy only listen, then our SETI experiment­s to eavesdrop on alien broadcasts will inevitably fail,” said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute.

“There are some who will complain that shouting to the skies might be dangerous. But only very advanced alien societies could travel here and possibly wreak havoc on our world. However, such sophistica­ted extraterre­strials will also be able to detect the landing radars at our airports. So it’s kind of silly to worry about experiment­s such as this,” he said.

“I say, on behalf of the Klingons, that I’d prefer to listen to some good music than to the empty whistle of SFO’s radar.”

What tunes would you send to our alien neighbors?

A second set of messages will be transmitte­d in April 2018 — and METI is seeking the public’s help in funding and selecting music for the ongoing effort.

 ?? DANIELLE FUTSELAAR — METI ?? METI has sent 18 types of techno-pop to a planet in the GJ273 star system, shown in this artist’s impression, in the hope something is listening.
DANIELLE FUTSELAAR — METI METI has sent 18 types of techno-pop to a planet in the GJ273 star system, shown in this artist’s impression, in the hope something is listening.

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