November 12th 2024.
Imagine if Earth's powerful observatories were to receive a mysterious signal from beyond our planet. The mere thought of it is enough to send shivers down our spines. And not just any signal - an extraterrestrial one. It would be a moment that would require the entire world's attention and effort to unravel and decipher this otherworldly message.
Well, believe it or not, this scenario actually happened over a year ago. The SETI Institute, a non-profit organization in Mountain View, California dedicated to searching for life beyond Earth, simulated this exact situation. And recently, a father-daughter duo of citizen scientists were able to crack the code and decipher the message. But the meaning behind it still remains a mystery.
Let's go back to the beginning. It all started in May 2023, when the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, a spacecraft orbiting Mars, transmitted a signal containing a strange alien-like message. Three observatories on Earth picked up the signal and released the raw data on the internet, giving citizen scientists all over the world a chance to decode it.
After nearly a year of intense work, Ken Chaffin and his daughter Keli were able to uncover the answer in June. The European Space Agency announced their discovery on October 22nd. It took thousands of hours of experimentation and mathematical simulations on a computer, but the Chaffins were able to reveal the message hidden in clusters of white pixels on a black background. The message was made up of five configurations that represented amino acids - the building blocks of life. But what did it all mean? That was the big question.
The project's designers confirmed that the message was, in fact, made up of amino acids. But they intentionally left the interpretation open. And now, the global community of citizen scientists is left grappling with the meaning behind this cryptic cosmic puzzle. So far, they have not been able to come to a consensus on what the amino acids represent.
But let's take a step back and dive into the story behind this fascinating discovery. The project, called "A Sign in Space," was designed by Daniela de Paulis, an artist in residence at the SETI Institute. She worked alongside a team of international scientists and artists to explore what a signal from an extraterrestrial might look like.
The signal was sent from Mars to Earth, traveling 16 minutes through space before being picked up by three telescopes - the Allen Telescope Array in Northern California, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, and the Medicina Radio Astronomical Station near Bologna, Italy. Then, citizen scientists from all over the world joined forces on a global Discord chat to extract the raw data and untangle it from other data collected by the Mars spacecraft.
It took around 10 days to extract and visualize the data, but deciphering the message itself took even longer. When Ken Chaffin first came across the original image from the scrambled raw data, which the citizen scientists referred to as the "starmap," he suspected that a cellular automata algorithm had produced it. These are grids of units that follow certain mathematical rules and can produce complex patterns.
With his decades of amateur experience working with cellular automata, Chaffin was confident that he could decode the message. And after running simulations on the "starmap," he and his daughter were able to generate the image of the amino acids. But what did it all mean?
According to Chaffin, there are many possible interpretations. Depending on how you view the message, it could represent the movement of the amino acids through space or the assembly of life. The project's goal was to keep the simulation as close to real life as possible, which is why the designers intentionally didn't give any hints or confirmations until the Chaffins discovered the solution.
But now that the message has been unlocked, the big question is: what does it mean? And why would another civilization send it? The project's designers are asking the public to send in their ideas, while de Paulis works on a book that will explore the project and different interpretations of the message.
But with so many people from different backgrounds and cultures involved, it's difficult to come to a consensus on the meaning behind this complex extraterrestrial puzzle. As de Paulis puts it, "The chances are that in this extreme scenario, when we have to give a meaning to a message from an alien civilization, we might never be able to really agree on an exact meaning." But that won't stop the father-daughter team from exploring hundreds of possible interpretations and seeking the truth behind this cosmic mystery.
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[Generative AI is experimental.]
