Space & Astronomy

Father and daughter decode mock 'alien signal' sent from Mars

By T.K. Randall
November 4, 2024 ·  12 comments

Is there anyone out there ? Image Credit: CC BY 3.0 Stewart Duff, CSIRO Sent by ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter back in May 2023, the message was put together by a group of 'simulated extraterrestrials' which included scientists, astronomers, a poet, a radio engineer, a physicist and even a lawyer.

The message was picked up by three observatories on Earth and the data made available to the public to see how long it would take someone to decipher its meaning.

The first step, which involved extracting the message itself from the raw data, was achieved after just ten days, but it would take a lot longer for anyone to figure out what it actually contained.

The first team to work it out was father and daughter Ken and Keli Chaffin from the US who, in June of this year, determined that the message was an image depicting the structure of five amino acids - the building blocks of proteins.The goal of the exercise was to see how our civilization might fare if tasked with interpreting a real alien signal and the fact that anyone managed to decode it at all is certainly encouraging.

That said, it's impossible to say how things might have gone if the signal had been genuine.

Also, there is still one mystery to solve - what exactly were the 'simulated extraterrestrials' trying to convey by sending an image of five amino acids ?

Could we ever to hope to decipher the meaning and intention of a real alien signal ?

Perhaps one day we will find out.

Source: Live Science | Comments (12)

Tags: Alien, Mars