The “A Sign in Space” project, led by artist Daniela de Paulis, simulates receiving and decoding an extraterrestrial message. An encoded message was transmitted from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and detected by three global observatories.
A Sign in Space imagines how Earth might respond to a signal from aliens and invites the public to help decode an ET message.
What would happen if we received a message from an extraterrestrial civilization? Daniela de Paulis, an established interdisciplinary artist and licensed radio operator who currently serves as Artist in Residence at the SETI Institute and the Green Bank Observatory, has brought together a team of international experts, including SETI researchers, space scientists, and artists, to stage her latest project, A Sign in Space.
This revolutionary presentation of global theater aims to explore the process of decoding and interpreting an extraterrestrial message by engaging the worldwide SETI community, professionals from different fields, and the broader public. This process requires global cooperation, bridging a conversation around SETI, space research, and society across multiple cultures and areas of expertise.
As part of the project, on May 24, 2023, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) in orbit around Mars transmitted an encoded message to Earth to simulate receiving a signal from an extraterrestrial intelligence.
“Throughout history, humanity has searched for meaning in powerful and transformative phenomena,” said Daniela de Paulis, the visionary artist behind the A Sign in Space project. “Receiving a message from an extraterrestrial civilization would be a profoundly transformational experience for all humankind. A Sign in Space offers the unprecedented opportunity to tangibly rehearse and prepare for this scenario through global collaboration, fostering an open-ended search for meaning across all cultures and disciplines.”
Three world-class radio astronomy observatories located across the globe detected the encoded message. These include the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array (ATA), the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) at the Green Bank Observatory (GBO), and the Medicina Radio Astronomical Station observatory managed by Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF). The specific content of the encoded message, developed by de Paulis and her team, is currently undisclosed, allowing the public to contribute to decoding and interpreting the content.
“This experiment is an opportunity for the world to learn how the SETI community, in all its diversity, will work together to receive, process, analyze, and understand the meaning of a potential extraterrestrial signal,” said ATA Project Scientist Dr. Wael Farah. “More than astronomy, communicating with ET will require a breadth of knowledge. With “A Sign in Space,” we hope to make the initial steps towards bringing a community together to meet this challenge.”
The SETI Institute securely stored the processed data in collaboration with Filecoin, the world’s largest decentralized storage network. This collaborative effort ensures the preservation and accessibility of the processed data, safeguarding its availability for further analysis and decoding endeavors.
“We’re thrilled to partner with SETI on this groundbreaking project,” said Stefaan Verveat, Head of Network Growth at Protocol Labs, the company behind Filecoin. “Our decentralized data storage solutions are ideally suited for the secure and reliable storage of the vast amounts of data generated by this project.”
Anyone working to decode and interpret the message can discuss the process in the A Sign in Space Discord server. Submissions of findings, thoughts, and artistic and scientific inputs may be made through the dedicated submission form on the project’s website: https://asignin.space/decode-the-message/
You forgot to state the obvious; they have always been here.
No, they do not have radios and waiting for your “CQ DX” call. They are intersted in people, not THINGS. Humans like things to the point they want to replace people with them.
Talking into the wind, I know. Just keep all possibilities open.