OT true - Phoning E.T.: Message Sent to Nearby Planet That Could HostLife

Phoning E.T.: Message Sent to Nearby Planet That Could Host Life
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | November 16, 2017 06:01am ET

Phoning E.T.: Message Sent to Nearby Planet That Could Host Life
Artist’s illustration of the GJ 273 system, which consists of a red
dwarf star and two known planets, one of which may be capable of
supporting life.
Credit: Danielle Futselaar/METI

If there are any intelligent aliens in the GJ 273 system, they can
expect to hear from us about a dozen years from now.

Last month, scientists and artists beamed a message to GJ 273, a red
dwarf also known as Luyten's star that lies 12.36 light-years from
Earth, project team members revealed today (Nov. 16). Luyten's star
hosts two known planets, one of which, GJ 273b, may be capable of
supporting life as we know it.

Though the message was designed to provoke a response from the
hypothetical denizens of GJ 273b, the main goal in sending the
communication involved laying a foundation for the future, said team
member Douglas Vakoch, president of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial
Intelligence) International, a San Francisco-based nonprofit. [13 Ways
to Hunt Intelligent Aliens]

"It is a prototype for what I think we would most likely need to do 100
times, or 1,000 times, or 1 million times," Vakoch told Space.com. "To
me, the big success of the project will come if, 25 years from now,
there's someone who remembers to look [for a response]. If we could
accomplish that, that would be a radical shift of perspective."

Indeed, humanity's demonstrable penchant for short-term thinking has
prompted some skepticism within the SETI (search for extraterrestrial
intelligence) community about METI as a viable strategy, Vakoch said.
(METI is also known as "active SETI." "Traditional" SETI involves
listening and looking for signals that could be from E.T.)

METI is controversial for another reason as well. Some critics — most
famously, physicist Stephen Hawking — have suggested that the strategy
could betray our existence to super-advanced hostile or resource-hungry
aliens, with potentially dire consequences for humanity and the rest of
the planet.

But beaming a message to Luyten's star doesn't increase the risk of an
alien attack, Vakoch said.

"It's really hard to imagine a scenario in which a civilization around
Luyten's star could have the capacity to come to Earth and threaten us,
and yet they're not able to pick up our leakage radiation," he said,
referring to the TV and radio signals that have been slipping out into
the cosmos from Earth for more than half a century.

The Luyten's star project, known as "Sónar Calling GJ 273b," is a
collaboration involving METI International; the Institute of Space
Studies of Catalonia in Spain; and Sónar, a music, creativity and
technology festival in Barcelona, Spain.

"Doing it in partnership with the Sónar festival is a way that we can
respect the necessity of incorporating a scientific perspective but also
to recognize that doesn't capture the fullness of the human spirit,"
Vakoch said.

Do you believe alien life exists elsewhere in the universe?

Yes - We may not have found them yet, but they're out there.
No - Aliens are just part of science fiction.
I'm not sure
Get Results Share This

Team members crafted a message that includes a scientific and
mathematical "tutorial," as well as 33 short musical compositions by
artists in the Sónar community. The team beamed this message out in
binary code at two different radio frequencies on Oct. 16, Oct. 17 and
Oct. 18, using the 105-foot-wide (32 meters) European Incoherent Scatter
Scientific Association (EISCAT) radio antenna in Tromsø, Norway.

Luyten's star was chosen primarily for its proximity to Earth, which
could theoretically lead to a relatively rapid response. The red dwarf
is the nearest star visible from the Northern Hemisphere that's known to
host a potentially habitable planet, Vakoch said. (That planet, by the
way is a "super-Earth" about three times more massive than our own."

The ease of conversation has not always factored in to METI campaigns.
In 1974, for example, Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory beamed a message
devised by Frank Drake, Carl Sagan and other researchers toward the
globular cluster M13, which lies 25,000 light-years away from Earth.
(This "Arecibo message" began its long space journey 43 years ago today,
in fact.)

The October transmissions represented the first phase of "Sónar Calling
GJ 273b." The group also plans to send an "expanded tutorial" to
Luyten's star in April 2018 at several different radio frequencies,
turning the EISCAT antenna into something like a musical instrument,
team members said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us
@Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

EDITOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS

10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life
SETI: All About the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Infographic)
5 Bold Claims of Alien Life

https://www.space.com/38803-meti-sig...en-planet.html