Article by Jerry Lawton November 26, 2020 (dailystar.co.uk)
• Dr. Douglas Vakoch is president of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI). He believes it is important to send signals into the galaxy because aliens know we exist but are reluctant to communicate with us.
• In an interview in BBC Science Focus magazine, Vakoch said, “My big concern is that there are, in fact, a lot of other civilizations out there, but they’re doing exactly what we are (i.e.: not communicating). “[E]veryone is listening but no one is saying hello. And so this is our effort to join the galactic conversation.”
• “I think the point that people miss when they think it’s risky is that the aliens we’re worried about already know we’re here,” says Vakoch. [T]hey’ve had two billion years to know that there’s complex life on our planet by the changes in our atmosphere. “We don’t currently have the ability to detect the twin of Earth giving off our level of natural radiation or leakage radiation, TV and radio. We also don’t have warp drive. We don’t have a way of getting to another star. So we’re not a threat (to them).”
• The most famous message sent out to the galaxy was transmitted from a radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, which included details on numbers, chemical elements, a description of life on Earth and our DNA. But Vakoch’s organization tries to send out “succinct and intelligible” transmissions targeted to alien scientists. And since his messages are to be heard, it is not dependent on an alien’s ability to see. “One of the things you’ll see in the Arecibo messages are a lot of pictures,” says Vakoch. “Well what happens if the alien is blind?” “When we sent our message to Luyten’s Star we designed it specifically for a blind alien.”
• Dr. Vakoch is still listening for a reply to the message sent to Luyten’s Star in 2017.
• [Editor’s Note] People like Douglas Vakoch at METI and Seth Shostak at SETI are happy to continue this ridiculous ruse. They pretend to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life because they can sit around and wait for a distant signal (that never comes) while collecting a nice paycheck. They are not working for the people, but for the Deep State. Their job isn’t to find ETs, but to NOT find ETs, while giving the public the illusion that they are doing everything they can to locate intelligent extraterrestrial life.
In reality, intelligent extraterrestrial life is everywhere. It permeates the galaxy and the universe. According to secret space program insiders, every star system in our 52 star cluster holds an advanced humanoid civilization. Extraterrestrial beings can even be found throughout our solar system and right here on Earth, working covertly within Deep State military and government programs. They simply don’t want people to know this. But we on this planet will soon “wake up” and experience a leap in consciousness that will allow us to rise to the fourth density. This spiritual ascension and the imminent defeat of the Deep State that has enslaved our planet, which is occurring right now, will open the door for Earth humans to join with our cosmic cousins to become members of a vast and wondrous Galactic Community.
Aliens exist across the galaxy but they are listening to us instead of saying hello, according to one of the world’s leading extra terrestrial hunters.
Dr Douglas Vakoch, 59, is worried humans are not connecting with alien life forms because no-one dare break the ice.
The astrobiologist has set up his own research organisation dedicated to transmitting signals to extraterrestrials.
Douglas Vakoch
Dr Vakoch, who is president of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence, believes it is important to send signals into the galaxy because aliens know with exist but are not communicating.
He also believes we should not be worried about being invaded by aliens because we’re not a threat’ as we have not mastered space travel.
In an interview in BBC Science Focus magazine he said: “My big concern is that there are, in fact, a lot of other civilisations out there, but they’re doing exactly what we are.
“They have these robust Searching for Extraterrestrial intelligence programmes and everyone is listening but no-one is saying hello.
“And so this is our effort to join the galactic conversation.”
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Article by Daniel Oberhaus January 2, 2020 (slate.com)
• Any musician will tell you, there is a deep logic inherent to music: There are equal distances between notes in a scale, notes can be combined in certain ways called harmonics, rhythm can be expressed in numerical ratios called time signatures, and so on. Music is a hybrid of logic and emotion, the yin and yang of the human experience.
• In this respect, music is an ideal medium for interstellar communication, but it must be tailored for transmission across billions of miles of empty space. The music must first be encoded into the radio wave in either an analog or digital format. Music’s inherent formalism suggests that even an ET that lacks the ability to hear could gainfully analyze various elements of music—its rhythm, pitch, and so on—by studying the way these elements are encoded in radio waves.
• The founder of the METI Institute (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligences) Douglas Vakoch, music composer Andrew Kaiser, and Dutch computer scientist Alexander Ollongren have all proposed unique ways for encoding musical concepts in interstellar messages. Vakoch believes that musical messages can teach ET quite a bit about human physiology. The number of notes in a scale can be used to establish how sensitive we are to differences between notes. Musical and rhythmic concepts can be readily taught to extraterrestrials.
• If the goal of METI is to convey information about Earth and the people who inhabit it, neglecting to include music would be a major oversight. Music has long played a fundamental role in the human experience. So how do we select which songs to send to ET? We’ve already sent into space Mexican folk music, early rock and roll, a Peruvian wedding song, Gershwin, and of course Beethoven and Vivaldi. Many Beatles songs have found their way to space. Until now, a small committee of Caucasian scientists have leaned toward classical music. It is simply impossible to create a corpus of music that represents every cultural group on Earth or every genre of music.
• The most promising path forward is designing music specifically for interstellar transmission. It would effectively be to create an entirely new genre of music. Not only would it avoid selection bias, but it opens the possibility of creating music that carries a maximum amount of information about the species that created it.
• Sónar is an annual three-day festival in Barcelona, Spain dedicated to electronic music, art, and design. To celebrate Sónar’s 25th anniversary in 2018, the festival partnered with the Catalonia Institute for Space Studies and the nonprofit METI International to send a series of interstellar messages directly to Luyten’s star, a red dwarf about 12 light-years from Earth. The closest potentially habitable exoplanet orbits this red dwarf.
• In late 2017 and early 2018, over the course of several nights, a radar system in Tromsø, Norway, blasted a custom message from the Sónar festival toward Luyten’s exoplanet, GJ237b. It consisted of 33 prime numbers repeated on two alternating radio frequencies. This was followed by a brief tutorial intended to teach ET to extract the music written by Sónar-affiliated musicians and embedded in the message.
• The Sónar music might only be called music in the loosest sense of the word. They are basically seconds-long noises based on a computer algorithm or random frequencies. The thinking is that even random screeches reveal our basic technology and physiology – topics that would presumably be of interest to an extraterrestrial recipient.
• An artificial language for interstellar communication called the ‘lingua cosmica’ based on logic, mathematics, and natural language syntax was actually developed in the 1960s. Dutch computer scientist Ollongren proposes to upgrade the lingua cosmica based on lambda calculus.
• When Carl Sagan set about designing the Voyager Golden Record, he recognized that “launching this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” The same holds true for musical interstellar messages, even if our terrestrial melodies never grace an extraterrestrial ear.
Each summer for the past 25 years, tens of thousands of people have flocked to Barcelona, Spain, to witness Sónar, a three-day festival dedicated to
Douglas Vakoch
electronic music, art, and design. Something of a cross between a TED talk, Burning Man, and Coachella, Sónar has evolved from a small experiment into an event that the New York Times described as a “European institution” in 2017. It’s also the closest thing we have to an extraterrestrial envoy.
To celebrate Sónar’s 25th anniversary in 2018, the festival partnered with the Catalonia Institute for Space Studies and
Andrew Kaiser
the nonprofit METI International to send a series of interstellar messages to Luyten’s star, a red dwarf about 12 light-years from Earth. Although red dwarfs are the most common stellar objects in our galaxy, Luyten’s star is remarkable for hosting GJ237b, the closest potentially habitable planet outside of our own solar system. No one knows for sure whether GJ237b hosts life, intelligent or otherwise, but if ET does call the planet home, Sónar wants to rock its socks off.
Over the course of several nights in late 2017 and early 2018, a radar system in Tromsø, Norway, blasted a custom message from Sónar toward GJ237b. Like any good correspondence, the message began with a greeting: In this case, the first 33 prime numbers repeated on two alternating radio frequencies functioned as a stand-in for “hello.” This was followed by a brief tutorial that the message designers hoped would teach ET to extract the music written by Sónar-affiliated musicians and embedded in the message.
Each song in the Sónar messages is only a few seconds long and might only be called music in the loosest sense of the word. One track was created by feeding an algorithm music and letting it remix the notes as it saw fit, which resulted in something that sounds like a horror movie sound effect. Another
Alexander Ollongren
uses the atomic numbers of a handful of oxygen, silicon, and other elements as the frequencies for pure tones. These arrangements don’t make for easy listening, but that’s not the point. Instead, the artists use music as a way of conveying information, whether it’s about our aesthetic sensibilities, our technology, or our physiology—all topics that would presumably be of interest to an extraterrestrial recipient.
In many respects, the Sónar messages are on well-trodden ground. The first human-made object to make it to interstellar space, the Voyager 1 spacecraft, carries a gold-plated phonographic record that includes Mexican folk music, early rock and roll, a Peruvian wedding song, and more. In 2001, a message sent from the Evpatoria radar in Ukraine included theremin renditions of Beethoven, Vivaldi, and Gershwin; a few years later, NASA blasted a Beatles song at a star 400 light-years away.
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Article by Leonard David November 26, 2019 (space.com)
• So far, astronomers have found more than 4,000 exoplanets and more are being discovered, suggesting that every star in the Milky Way galaxy hosts more than one planet. Space.com asked top SETI experts whether they will detect life elsewhere in the galaxy or even intelligent extraterrestrials?
• In searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, senior SETI astronomer Seth Shostak relies on detecting narrow-band radio signals or brief flashes of laser light from nearby star systems. If there are 10,000 extraterrestrial societies broadcasting radio signals in the galaxy, then he estimates that SETI will need to examine 10 million star systems to find one. That will take at least two more decades.
• But with the new receivers for the Allen Telescope Array in northern California that is scheduled for 2020, SETI will be able to search for laser technosignatures, which may improve their chances. Says Shostak, “[O]ne can always hope to be taken by surprise.”
• Michael Michaud, author of the book: Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears about Encountering Extraterrestrials, says that improvements to search technologies could boost the odds of success. But there are still vast areas of the galaxy that we are not looking at. In searching for chemical technosignatures, we’ll most likely find simple life forms before finding a technological civilization.
• If SETI did find evidence of life in the galaxy, Michaud thinks the news will leak quickly. How should they announce the discovery? “[G]overnmental authorities won’t have much time for developing a public-affairs strategy,” says Michaud. Premade plans for such an announcement are unlikely because agency personnel won’t be able to get past the “giggle factor”, thinking that it is all just too absurd.
• Pete Worden, executive director of the Breakthrough Initiatives, which is affiliated with SETI, said, “I think this is going to be a long-term project. I estimate a very small probability of success (of finding extraterrestrial life) in any given year.” Nevertheless, “The Breakthrough Initiatives is committed to full and immediate disclosure of any and all results,” said Worden.
• Steven Dick, an astrobiology scholar and author of the book: Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact, says despite the work by Breakthrough Listen and NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), there’s no reason to think 2020 would be the year for discovery. “[A]ll these things combine to increase the chances over the next decade of finding extraterrestrial intelligence. I would caution, though, that any discovery will be an extended process, consisting of detection and interpretation before any understanding is achieved,” said Dick. “I see the search advancing incrementally next year, but with an accelerating possibility that life will be discovered in the near future.” “One thing that is certain is that we are getting a better handle on the issues of societal impact, should such a discovery be made.”
• Douglas Vakoch, president of the SETI-affiliated nonprofit Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI), notes that “We are right now on the verge of finding out whether there is life elsewhere in the universe.” We scan with available technologies: Earth-based observatories, space-based telescopes, and even craft that travel to other planets and moons in our solar system. “It all depends on how plentiful intelligent extraterrestrials are. If one in 10,000 star systems is home to an advanced civilization trying to make contact, then …the news we’re not alone in the universe could well come in 2020,” Vakoch says.
• “As the next generation of space telescopes is launched, we will increase our chances of detecting signs of life through changes to the atmospheres of planets that orbit other stars, giving us millions of targets in our search for even simple life in the cosmos,” says Vakoch. But we probably won’t have “definitive proof” until after 2020 when NASA launches the James Webb Space Telescope, or 2028 when the European Space Agency starts its Atmospheric Remote-Sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey, or ARIEL, to study the atmospheres of exoplanets for potential signs of life.
• “[D]on’t hold your breath for discovery by 2020,” says Vakoch. Humans cannot control whether or not there is life elsewhere in the universe. “Either it’s there or it’s not.” “To be human is to live with uncertainty.” “If we demand guarantees before we begin searching, then we are guaranteed to find nothing. But if we are willing to commit to the search in the coming year and long afterwards, even without knowing we will succeed, then we are sure to discover that there is at least one civilization in the universe that has the passion and the determination to understand its place in the cosmos — and that civilization is us.”
• [Editor’s Note] Seth Shostak and his band of idiots at SETI make their living by covering up the widespread existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life all around us, on behalf of their puppet masters, the Deep State elite. Are they liars or are they being fooled themselves? If they are half the scientists they claim to be, they must know the truth. Therefore, they are the very face of the Deep State lying to the public. They are reprehensible. They talk in scientific terms about the new technologies that they employ in their phony search to find a needle in a haystack. But they insist that it will take years, and probably lifetimes before they find a microbe on a distant exoplanet. Then they add platitudes of what a grand discovery it will be if they ever find life in the universe besides humanity. But make no mistake. Their job is to never find life beyond the Earth, and they have gotten very good at it.
In the past three decades, scientists have found more than 4,000 exoplanets. And the discoveries will keep rolling in; observations suggest that every star in the Milky Way galaxy hosts more than one planet on average.
Seth Shostak
Given a convergence of ground- and space-based capability, artificial intelligence/machine learning research and other tools, are we on the verge of identifying what is universally possible for life — or perhaps even confirming the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence?
Is 2020 the celestial payoff year, in which objects of interest are found to offer “technosignatures,” indicators of technology developed by advanced civilizations?
Space.com asked top SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) experts about what next year may signal regarding detecting other starfolk.
Michael Michaud
Gaining speed
“Well, despite being the widely celebrated 100-year anniversary of the election of Warren G. Harding, 2020 will not likely gain fame as the year we first discover extraterrestrial life,” said Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.
The search for intelligent beings elsewhere, Shostak said, is largely conducted by checking out nearby star systems for either narrow-band radio signals or brief flashes of laser light. And those might succeed at any time, he told Space.com.
“But one should remember that this type of search is gaining speed in an exponential fashion, and that particular technical fact allows a crude estimate of when SETI might pay off. If we take — for lack of a better estimate — Frank Drake’s opinion that there might be 10,000 broadcasting societies in the Milky Way, then we clearly have to examine at least one [million] – 10 million stellar systems to have a reasonable chance of tripping across one. That goal will be reached in the next two decades, but certainly not in 2020,” Shostak said.
Pete Worden
Improved searches
But there are still reasons for intelligent-alien hunters to be excited and optimistic about the coming year. Multiple existing projects will either be expanded or improved in 2020, Shostak said. For example, the SETI Institute will get new receivers for the Allen Telescope Array in northern California, and both the SETI Institute and the University of California, Berkeley, will conduct new searches for possible laser technosignatures.
“And, of course, there’s always the unexpected,” Shostak said. “In 1996, the biggest science story of the year was the claim that fossilized Martian microbes had been found in a meteorite. No one really saw that coming. So one can always hope to be taken by surprise.”
Previous predictions
“I am skeptical about picking a specific year for the first discovery. Previous predictions of success have been wrong,” said Michael Michaud, author of the thought-provoking book “Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears about Encountering Extraterrestrials” (Copernicus, 2007).
“I and others have observed that the continued improvement of our search technologies and strategies could boost the odds for success,” Michaud said, noting that the primary focus of SETI remains on radio signals. “However, we still don’t cover all frequencies, all skies, all of the time. Other types of searches have failed, too, such as looking for laser signals or Dyson spheres [ET mega-engineering projects]. Those campaigns usually have limited funding and often don’t last long.”
Steven Dick
A new possibility has arisen because of exoplanet discoveries, Michaud said: “In some cases, astronomers now can look for chemical evidence of life in planetary atmospheres. It is conceivable that we will find simple forms of life before we find signals from a technological civilization.”
Douglas Vakoch
Prevailing opinion
If astronomers do someday confirm a SETI detection, how should they announce the discovery? It is an old question that has been answered in several ways.
“The prevailing opinion among radio astronomers has been that the news will leak quickly. If that is correct, scientific and governmental authorities won’t have much time for developing a public-affairs strategy,” Michaud said.
“It remains possible that the sophisticated monitoring capabilities of intelligence agencies might be the first to detect hard evidence,” Michaud said. “One might think that the government would have a plan to deal with such an event.”
But, Michaud said that his own experience suggests that such plans are unlikely to be drawn up due to a “giggle factor” and would be forgotten as officials rotated out of their positions. He previously represented the U.S. Department of State in interagency discussions of national space policy.
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• Jesuit philosopher and astronomer, Father Jose Funes, has been appointed to the advisory council of METI International. Father Funes will join over 80 experts that make up the advisory council. METI’s president and founder, Douglas Vakoch, said, “It’s natural for METI to be in dialogue with Jesuit astronomers because they understand the science behind our search, giving us common ground, while also having expertise in theology, providing a new perspective for our scientists.”
• METI, or “Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence”, is an offshoot of SETI, “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” which began its search for ET in 1959 by scanning the sky for unusual radio and laser signals from sources that may indicate signs of alien technology. METI looks at what and how to communicate in a vast and mysterious universe.
• The Vatican has also been active in discussions about extraterrestrial life, the ethics of space exploration and the religious significance of a universe that could be teeming with life. Father Funes is the former director of the Vatican Observatory and an expert in galaxies and extragalactic astronomy.
• Father Funes, who holds the chair in science, religion and education at the Catholic University of Cordoba, Argentina, and also chairs a think tank initiative called “OTHER”, says that these Catholic organizations help us to understand alien life “in order to understand better who human beings are”. This is instrumental in educating the general public, teachers and students about the dialogue between science and religion.
• Vakoch is an astrobiologist and psychologist who spent 16 years at the SETI Institute, where he was director of Interstellar Message Composition. Vakoch says that if METI/SETI does find life out there someday, “many people will look to their religious leaders to help understand what it means to all of us down here on planet Earth.” “One of the great misconceptions of the general public is that discovering life beyond Earth will threaten people’s religious beliefs,” Vakoch says. “But time and again, across the centuries, we have seen that religions adapt to scientific discoveries. The same will be true if someday we discover we’re not alone in the universe.”
• Father Funes has introduced “something new or at least original” for SETI research to consider: the search for spiritual signs or signatures in the universe. Is spirituality a part of our evolutionary process? Vakoch said that “Hollywood portrayals of marauding aliens, coming to Earth to annihilate us” serve to generate fear or negative reactions to potential alien life. But there are “hopeful depictions of first contact,” says Vakoch, such as Steven Spielberg’s ‘E.T. the Extraterrestrial’ where a visitor comes to Earth, transforming lives and overcoming death through love. The same for ‘Starman,’ starring Jeff Bridges in the title role that was a thinly veiled reference to Christ.”
• Father Funes said the Catholic Church is optimistic in its faith because “we trust in God” when it comes to space exploration and messaging potential intelligent life. Vakoch says, “Some worry that learning about the existence of extraterrestrials will make humanity less unique. I suspect just the opposite will happen.” “[T]here will never be a duplicate of Homo Sapiens. There may be beings out there who are more wise or powerful than we are, but they will never be more human.”
• [Editor’s Note] It is no surprise that METI/SETI would team up with the Vatican in trying to dominate the limited soft disclosure dialog of the massive extraterrestrial presence, and the government’s long standing cover-up. They are both dedicated to doing the Deep State’s bidding. They see that the public’s revelation about the true existence of extraterrestrials is imminent, so who better than the combination of scientific and religious “experts” to guide the public through this transition. But the primary agenda of these institutions is to maintain control over the populace once the extraterrestrial presence is finally revealed. They want to position the Catholic religion as the savior of the people, thereby assuring its continuance after the extraterrestrial disclosure. While at the same time, METI/SETI will continue to deny any extraterrestrial presence until the very last minute.
More than 2 million people RSVP’d to a recent social media invitation to “storm” Area 51 in Nevada, in the hope of discovering whether alien life or spacecraft may be secretly stored at this U.S. Air Force base.
Though the proposed raid was a spoof, it has morphed into a real, more peaceful encounter. Now dubbed, “Alienstock,” the Sept. 20-22 festival aims to be a place “where believers gather” to discuss and celebrate confidence in the existence of alien life and the wonders of the unknown, according to its website, alienstockfestival.com.
Father Jose Funes
But another brand of believers — a “Men in Black” of a spiritual kind — are the pope’s own Jesuit astronomers; they have long been active in discussions about extraterrestrial life, the ethics of space exploration and the religious significance of a universe that could be teeming with life.
The huge amount of interest the general public has shown in life existing elsewhere in the universe is part of the age-old question, “Are we alone?” said Jesuit Father Jose Funes, former director of the Vatican Observatory and an expert in galaxies and extragalactic astronomy.
The fascination with seeking extraterrestrial life or intelligence “reflects very deep human issues that are important for us” and makes people think about “who we are,” he told Catholic News Service in late August.
Douglas Vakoch
“We have to become alien somehow” and step outside oneself “in order to understand better who human beings are,” said the priest, who holds the chair in science, religion and education at the Catholic University of Cordoba, Argentina. The chair and the think tank initiative, “OTHER,” he directs are instrumental for educating the general public, teachers and students about the dialogue between science and religion, he said.
Father Funes’ multidisciplinary expertise in astronomy, philosophy and theology has now earned him a unique place in ET research — serving on the advisory council of METI International.
METI, or Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence, takes the next step in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI.
The SETI project, which started in 1959, represents a major coordinated effort in scanning the sky for unusual radio and laser signals from sources that may indicate signs of alien technology. METI looks at what and how to communicate in a vast mysterious universe.
Part of the METI mission, according to its website, METI.org, is to conduct high-level scientific and multidisciplinary research, discuss the importance of searching for life beyond Earth and study the impact searching for, detecting or messaging ETI would have on the world.
More than 80 experts from a huge array of fields — including ethics, linguistics and theology — make up METI’s advisory council, and it was just last year that the group’s president and founder, Douglas Vakoch, asked Father Funes to join the team.
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• The vast majority of asteroids orbit the sun in a wide belt between Jupiter and Mars. Some wander farther into the inner solar system near Earth’s orbit. There’s a rarer type of object called a “quasi-satellite” that may spend centuries or longer making oddly shaped orbits around our planet. One example is asteroid 2016 HO3, also known as “Earth’s Constant Companion” (pictured above). These ‘co-orbital objects’ have only come to our attention in the past decade, for the most part. (watch 1:14 minute video on asteroid 2016 HO3 below)
• James Benford, a SETI enthusiast (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has authored a paper that postulates that these “co-orbital objects [are] an attractive location for extraterrestrial intelligence to locate a probe to observe Earth while not being easily seen.” Benford refers to alien spies the sky as “lurkers.” We may not have noticed anything because any sort of ancient automated alien spy system could be dead or lie dormant for long periods of time.
• James Benford’s twin brother Gregory, an astrophysicist, also weighs in saying, “Lurkers from the far past may have done their duty and slowly failed … the ruins of Lurker installations, including mining for resources on nearby orbiting sites, may be visible, even though their animating intelligences are long gone.” “This means we should consider searches over decades-long time scales.”
• SETI focuses on looking beyond our solar system and essentially listening to distant stars for signs of life. James Benford argues that it’s much easier to prove or disprove some alien construction is in a near-Earth orbit. “We can observe them, ping them with radar, transmit messages to them, send robotic probes to them and visit them with human spacecraft missions,” writes Benford.
• Douglas Vakoch, formerly of the SETI Institute and currently president of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence), which is funded in part by NASA, says, “The notion of searching for lurkers by transmitting to likely locations in our solar system provides an intriguing possibility for finding common ground in Active SETI.” “Some of the same individuals who have been cautious about Active SETI transmissions to other stars are advocates of pinging nearby aliens — on the grounds that the extraterrestrials would already know we are here.”
• The idea that an extraterrestrial spy satellite might be hidden near our planet isn’t new. The late Stanford professor Ronald Bracewell proposed in a 1960 paper that advanced alien civilizations might place artificial intelligence near inhabited planets to monitor the progress of less advanced worlds and perhaps make contact at some point.
• “What have we to lose by checking out these objects?” Benford writes. “Nobody has really looked at these co-orbitals, other than orbital calculations and faint images. We know almost nothing about them.” Benford plans to submit his paper to the Astrophysical Journal.
Plans are in the works to send a tiny spacecraft to another star system in search of alien life. But what if another civilization has already launched a similar mission to observe Earth without our knowledge?
James Benford, who authored the definitive book on high-power microwaves and has written about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, says in a draft paper that a “recently discovered group of nearby co-orbital objects is an attractive location for extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) to locate a probe to observe Earth while not being easily seen.”
James Benford
In the paper, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, Benford refers to alien eyes in (or above) the sky as “lurkers.” He goes on to give several examples of co-orbital objects (all of which are probably asteroids) that could be worth checking for them.
Benford runs a company called Microwave Sciences that designs and consults on high-power microwave systems. He often collaborates on his SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) work with his twin brother Gregory Benford, a noted science-fiction author, and his son Dominic Benford, a scientist at NASA.
While the vast majority of asteroids orbit the sun in a wide belt between Jupiter and Mars, some wander farther into the inner solar system near Earth’s orbit.
There’s an even rarer type of object called a “quasi-satellite” that may spend centuries or longer making often oddly shaped orbits around our planet. One example is asteroid 2016 HO3, also known as “Earth’s Constant Companion,” which is detailed in the below video from NASA.
The idea that an extraterrestrial spy satellite might be hidden near our planet isn’t new. The late Stanford electrical engineering professor Ronald Bracewell proposed in an oft-referenced 1960 paper that advanced alien civilizations might place artificial intelligence near inhabited planets to monitor the progress of less advanced worlds and perhaps make contact at some point.
Of course, we have observatories keeping watch on the thousands of known near-Earth objects and discovering new ones almost daily. A handful of asteroids has been visited by spacecraft, including NASA’s Osiris-Rex and Japan’s Hayabusa-2 that are currently orbiting space rocks. So far, such observations have yielded no evidence of anything alien or artificial.
But the co-orbital objects that Benford said deserve more attention are relatively new discoveries, having come to our attention in the past decade for the most part. And we may not have noticed anything because any sort of automated alien spy system placed long ago could be dead or lie dormant for long periods of time, making it difficult to detect.
1:14 minute NASA video on Asteroid 2016 Ho3 – Earth’s Constant Companion
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by Peter Fimrite February 25, 2019 (sfchronicle.com)
• A faction of the San Francisco-based SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has split off to form METI, or Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence. While SETI traditionalists believe humans should only look and listen for extraterrestrials to avoid tipping off evil aliens, the METI group intends to broadcast messages to space aliens. The clash is the first major division in the tight-knit community of astronomers, astrophysicists, philosophers, psychologists and science fiction writers who are convinced intelligent beings are out there somewhere.
• SETI has been searching in vain for radio signals or some other sign of life beyond Earth from its Bay Area Mountain View headquarters for 35 years. Astrobiologist Douglas Vakoch, who split with the METI group, says, “What if [the ET’s] position is, ‘No, you are the ones who are new to this game. You send us a signal first.’” METI will employ radar and laser technology to beam more powerful multi-directional messages into space.
• SETI astronomers are worried that less-then-friendly extraterrestrials might be more inclined to enslave Earthlings and mercilessly plunder and destroy Earth. “We wonder whether the galaxy that we are in is maybe a dark forest, where it is dangerous to scream because there are creatures out there unhappy with new life forms,” said astronomer Andrew Fraknoi. “You don’t want to advertise your presence in a dark forest.” Stephen Hawking was among those who warned that aliens “may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria.”
• Vakoch formed METI after a vote in 2014 by the SETI Institute board rejecting his plans to broadcast messages. Vakoch and his supporters reason that any predatory civilization would probably have detected us by now, since our radar, radio and television signals would long ago have signaled our presence. They began sending active signals into space in 2017. “We may have to target hundreds and thousands and maybe millions of stars before we find anything.” Says Vakoch. “I view this as a reflection of the natural growth of SETI.”
• Using Earth’s current technology, it would take 80,000 years for an astronaut to reach the closest star, Alpha Centauri. Fraknoi speculates that self-replicating civilizations could travel through space for thousands of years and still be alive to tell about it when the trip is over.
• Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute who supports Vakoch’s work, says that given the enormous distances, we may never find intelligent life if we don’t get out there and look for it. “No transmissions into the sky because there might be nasty aliens out there.’ That’s just paranoia. Paranoia is not a good long-term policy.”
• The issue moved to the forefront in 1989 when SETI scientists published a declaration of principles on how international leaders should be consulted before anyone replies to an ET signal. A committee of the International Academy of Astronautics took it a step further in the 1990’s, urging consultations with world leaders before anyone attempts to broadcast a powerful message into space that is likely to be detectable by alien life.
• “Human history is littered with examples of societies disrupted by direct contact with others, even when it was led by idealistic missionaries,” Says Michael Michaud, former director of the State Department’s Office of Space and Advanced Technology. “Ignore the Hollywood scenario of reptilian aliens landing on Earth’s surface to conquer our planet. They would not need to use futuristic weapons; the correct pesticide would do.”
• [Editor’s Note] Could the real purpose for these “scientists” to labor in vain for decades be to simply to create a disinformation campaign to make people believe that ‘smart people’ are actively looking for alien beings, and since they haven’t officially found any, then we can presume that there are no aliens out there? Mainstream science willfully denies the ample proof that dozens of different extraterrestrial species have visited the Earth over the past seventy years. Some alien species are positive and some are negative. The positive ones abide by a galactic law of non-interference with a low-level developing species such as we humans on Earth. The negative ones however, which do include the Draco Reptilians, couldn’t give a hoot about galactic law. But their M.O. is not to wipe us out and take over the planet. They prefer to keep us mind-controlled, determining what we are allowed to know, and using us as slave workers to generate an economic and industrial resource that they can exploit to continue to build out their own secret space program, off-world bases and colonies. Also, the system is set up so that humans must perpetually endure emotional fear, confusion, hardship, conflict and war, in order to create a form of energetic sustenance called ‘loosh’, which the higher negative Archon beings require. If we all woke up, turned to the loving Creator, and denied these negative beings all of this negative energy, this perverted system would collapse virtually overnight.
A cosmic rift has opened between Bay Area astronomers and a splinter group of San Francisco stargazers who are hell-bent on contacting space aliens, hang the consequences.
Douglas Vakoch
The schism pits the traditionalists, who believe humans should only look and listen for extraterrestrials to avoid tipping off evil aliens, against a rebel faction that wants to broadcast messages to intelligent beings, assuming they are altruistic.
The battle is so heated that one prominent scientist quit the Mountain View group known as SETI, or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, to form METI, or Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Andrew Fraknoi
“We’ve always assumed the extraterrestrials were looking for us,” Vakoch said. But “what if their position is, ‘No, you are the ones who are new to this game. You send us a signal first.’”
SETI has been searching for radio signals or some other sign of life beyond Earth from its Mountain View headquarters for 35 years, but with nothing to show for its effort, Vakoch and other restless alien hunters are insisting on a more active search, including employing radar and laser technology to beam more powerful multidirectional messages into space.
The problem, many SETI astronomers warn, is that, instead of an intergalactic kumbaya, intelligent extraterrestrials might very well be more inclined to enslave Earthlings and mercilessly plunder and destroy Earth.
Those who adhere to this dark theory imagine humanity as a childlike form of life lost in an Amazonian jungle crawling with skulking predators, said Andrew Fraknoi, a SETI Institute board member.
Seth Shostak
“We wonder whether the galaxy that we are in is maybe a dark forest, where it is dangerous to scream because there are creatures out there unhappy with new life forms,” said Fraknoi, an astronomer who will be teaching a course in April called Aliens in Science and Science Fiction at the University of San Francisco’s Fromm Institute. “With every strong signal we send out, we advertise our presence, and you don’t want to advertise your presence in a dark forest.”
The clash represents the first major division in the traditionally tight-knit community of astronomers, astrophysicists, philosophers, psychologists and science fiction writers who are convinced intelligent beings are out there somewhere.
Vakoch and his supporters, including some astronomers at SETI, call the dark forest analogy silly. Any predatory civilization would probably have detected us by now simply by analyzing our atmosphere, they reason. Humans, Vakoch said, have been using radar, which can purportedly be detected 70 light-years away, since World War II. Television and radio signals would long ago have signaled our presence to malevolent space ruffians, he said.
Michael Michaud
Unconcerned about an invasion of intergalactic invertebrates who are out for our heads, Vakoch adapted a transmitter and used a Norwegian observatory in late 2017 to send a message 12.4 light-years away to Luyten’s Star, a red dwarf with a large planet in the constellation Canis Minor.
He spent years developing the message, combining mathematics and the fundamentals of language that he believes even a blind alien could understand. It was the first of what Vakoch hopes will be many signals sent by his group.
“Our goal is to say we are interested in making contact,” Vakoch said. “We may have to target hundreds and thousands and maybe millions of stars before we find anything. I view this as a reflection of the natural growth of SETI.”
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• In 1974, scientists at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico used the 1,000-foot-wide radio telescope to send a carefully crafted radio broadcast into outer space – a message of zeros and ones meant to alert aliens to our existence for the first time. In honor of the 45th anniversary of that transmission, researchers at the observatory are pondering how to design a follow-up dispatch. Rather than asking their fellow experts, they’ve launched a global contest inviting youth, from kindergarteners to 16-year-olds, to create the New Arecibo Message.
• Says Abe Pacini, a researcher at Arecibo, “Sometimes the scientists are so focused on their topics and they can see stuff very deep but they cannot see very broad… Students know a little bit about everything, so they can see the big picture better. For sure they can design a message that is actually much more important.” Teams composed of up to ten students plus one mentor must register by March 20th. The more diverse the team is, the more points it gets. The contest guidelines recommend using social media to find possible teammates in other countries or regions. The Arecibo scientists will determine which, if any, message will be selected to represent Earth.
• The 1974 Arecibo message was authored by Frank Drake and Carl Sagan and provided basic information about us, like the position of Earth in our solar system, the size of the human population, the shape of the human body, and the double helix structure of DNA. (The information about the nucleotides in DNA has since been shown to be false.) The message was beamed at M13, a globular star cluster 25,000 light years away. (But these primitive radio waves would take 25,000 years for the message to get there.)
• Another determination that the scientists will make is the “risks of exposure” inherent in messaging alien civilizations. Scientists like the late Stephen Hawking and technologists like Elon Musk have warned that communicating with extraterrestrials could pose an existential threat to the Earth if the message is received by hostile aliens. In 2015, SETI researchers, Elon Musk, and others released a statement saying, “We strongly encourage vigorous international debate by a broadly representative body prior to engaging further in this activity.”
• Astronomer and science fiction author David Brin, one of the most vocal critics of an Arecibo Message, says that, “[M]ost of us are much more concerned about the arrogance these zealots are displaying by presuming to speak for a civilization of 8 billion people without ever exposing their assumptions to normal debate and risk assessment.” Brin also noted, “Their instrument (the Arecibo Telescope) is funded by the taxpayers.”
• Douglas Vakoch, an astrobiologist who worked at SETI before splitting off to found his own international organization, Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI), points out that “[A]ny civilization that could do us harm would already know we’re here from our accidental TV and radio leakage.” Vakoch says that the most important aspect of this communication may be our announcing to the galaxy that we are ready to make contact. Known as the ‘Zoo Hypothesis’, this is the idea that extraterrestrials may be keeping an eye on our planet but are waiting for us to indicate that we want to be in contact and that we’re sophisticated enough to merit attention.
• Neither a 1967 Outer Space Treaty ratified by dozens of countries and adopted by the United Nations which laid out an anti-weaponization framework for space, nor a SETI post-ET-detection protocol drafted in the 1980’s, addresses any protocol for actively sending out messages to other civilizations.
• For Brin, all this anxiety over interstellar communication seems like a reflection of our anxieties about communicating with one another. Underneath the question of how to talk to alien minds is a question that’s much closer to home: how to make ourselves understood to other minds right here on Earth.
• On a bulletin board at the Arecibo visitor center where kids were invited to post messages, one child’s misspelled missive was especially poignant: “Earth is destroying it self. Help us! Please help! Send better knowledg.”
• [Editor’s Note] Sending radio waves into space is like traveling across the American continent in horse-drawn covered wagons. This is just another example of mainstream scientists pretending to be on the cutting edge of space exploration when, in fact, our secret space programs are hundreds of years more advanced in space technology. Also, this speculation as to what kinds of extraterrestrials are out there, and the hand-wringing at what hostile ETs might do to our planet if we are “found”, is just more disinformation. We already know that many, many types of ET beings have already been here throughout our human development on Earth, and have been actively interacting with Earth humans since WWII. All of this drama about searching for intelligent life in the cosmos is simply theater to placate a mind-controlled Earth populace.
The scientists at Arecibo Observatory, a gigantic radio telescope in Puerto Rico, are some of the smartest astronomers and physicists in the world. But they need help with their next big project — and for that, they’re turning to kids.
In 1974, scientists used the 1,000-foot-wide telescope to send a carefully crafted radio broadcast into outer space, a message of zeros and ones meant to alert aliens to our existence.
It was humanity’s first interstellar message intended to be picked up by aliens. We haven’t heard back from E.T. yet. But in honor of the 45th anniversary of that transmission, the researchers at the observatory are pondering how to design a follow-up dispatch. Rather than asking their fellow experts, they’ve launched a global contest inviting youth — from kindergarteners to 16-year-olds — to create the New Arecibo Message.
The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico
The grand prize? A chance to have your message broadcast into the stars, and to potentially become the first human being ever to communicate with aliens.
I asked Alessandra Abe Pacini, a researcher at Arecibo who helped generate the idea for the contest, why kids are the best people for the job. “Sometimes the scientists are so focused on their topics and they can see stuff very deep but they cannot see very broad,” she said. “Students know a little bit about everything, so they can see the big picture better. For sure they can design a message that is actually much more important.”
But designing messages to aliens is a tricky business, on multiple levels. How do you write a missive that an alien intelligence will be able to understand? Should you avoid including sensitive information about humanity, in case that emboldens aliens to come to our planet and annihilate our species? Should you avoid transmitting messages into outer space altogether, because even just alerting aliens to our existence is too risky?
These questions are at the heart of a long-running, and sometimes very heated, debate among scientists. There’s no consensus about any of them, or even about the meta-question of who gets to decide on the answers.
One thing is clear, though: The stakes are extremely high. As scientists like the late Stephen Hawking and technologists like Elon Musk have warned, communicating with extraterrestrials could pose a catastrophic risk to humanity. In fact, if we send out a message and it’s received by less-than-friendly aliens, that could pose an existential threat not only to the human species but to every species on Earth.
The Original Arecibo Message
When space scientists wanted to celebrate a huge upgrade that had been made to the Arecibo Observatory in 1974, two of their greatest minds stepped up to draft a memo to aliens. It would be broadcast from the telescope during a public ceremony. Frank Drake, who came up with the famous “Drake Equation” for estimating the odds that intelligent life exists in our galaxy, crafted the message with help from Carl Sagan, the astronomer and popular science writer who penned Contact and popularized the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) organization.
Written in binary code — a series of ones and zeros — the message was designed with the hope of being intelligible to any aliens who might be listening. It sought to give them some basic information about us, like the position of Earth in our solar system, the size of the human population, the shape of the human body, and the double helix structure of DNA. When you look at the message in pictogram form, you can see all these components and more.
But this interstellar postcard was directed at M13, a globular star cluster 25,000 light years away, which may help explain why we haven’t heard back yet — it’ll take 25,000 years for the message to get there and the same amount of time for any reply to get back to us. The scientists chose that destination partly because the star cluster was big and relatively close, and partly just because it was within the telescope’s declination range (the part of the sky it can target) at the time of the ceremony.
In other words, the scientists weren’t really aiming to communicate with an alien civilization in their lifetimes so much as they were trying to publicly showcase the fact that their telescope could now do something incredible: For nearly three minutes, it sent a cosmic hello from humanity into the sky, as the audience assembled on site was moved to tears.
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