The telescope, with a 1,640-foot (500-meter) diameter, will beam a series of radio pulses over a broad swath of sky. One of these new messages will be sent from the world’s largest radio telescope, in China, sometime in 2023. One is using a giant new radio telescope, and the other is choosing a compelling new target. Nearly half a century after the Arecibo message, two international teams of astronomers are planning new attempts at alien communication. But there is a big difference between a focused blast of radio waves from a giant telescope and diffuse leakage - the weak signal from a show like “I Love Lucy” fades below the hum of radiation left over from the Big Bang soon after it leaves the solar system. This ever-expanding bubble of earthly babble has already reached millions of stars.
In addition to these purposeful attempts at sending a message to aliens, wayward signals from television and radio broadcasts have been leaking into space for nearly a century.
Since M13 is 25,000 light-years away, you shouldn’t hold your breath for a reply. The series of 1s and 0s was designed to convey simple information about humanity and biology and was sent toward the globular cluster M13. But in the immensity of space, the odds that these or any other physical objects will be found are fantastically minuscule.Įlectromagnetic radiation is a much more effective beacon.Īstronomers beamed the first radio message designed for alien ears from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in 1974. These spacecraft - as well as their twins, Pioneer 11 and Voyager 2 - have now all left the solar system. (Carl Sagan, Frank Drake, Linda Salzman Sagan, NASA Ames Research Center via WikimediaCommons) The Pioneer 10 spacecraft carries this plaque, which describes some basic information about humans and the Earth.
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