It seems that aliens are trying to contact us… or not? In reality, no one expected that it would be so difficult to decode and understand the message. That’s what father and daughter Ken Chaffin and Keli Chaffin did for a whole year until they were surprised by the answer they found, and it has to do with DNA.
It all started in 2023 when a message from Mars was received
In May 2023, the SETI Institute in California, whose main goal is to search for life beyond Earth, launched the A Signal from Space Project. In May of the same year, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (ESA) probe transmitted a coded signal from the orbit of Mars (a planet that has long been targeted by humans).
It took just 16 minutes of space travel for three observatories on Earth to pick up the signal. The three observatories were:
- Allen Telescope Array in California;
- Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia;
- Medical Radio Astronomical Station near Bologna, Italy.
From that moment on, the data was made available to the public, and thousands of scientists from all over the world joined together via Discord in an attempt to decode it.
How did the decoding happen and who managed to do it?
After a whole year of experiments and mathematical simulations on a computer, Ken and Kelly Chaffin, father and daughter, were able to decode the signal.
When talking about his experience, Ken highlighted that as soon as he came across the image, he suspected that a cellular automata algorithm (grids of units mathematically coded to move or follow certain sets of rules) had produced it.
“I had no idea what the message would show or say (…) I suspected that it might have something to do with life. (…) The original image that looks like a starmap has always given me the appearance of biological lifeforms”, explicou Ken.
The decoded message was not static; it showed five amino acids in motion, which can be interpreted as an allusion to the process of constructing life itself.
We can say that this reading makes sense if we consider that, in cells, amino acids are organized based on instructions from the genetic material, which is where proteins that perform vital functions in the organism emerge.
Message from Mars decoded, but what does it mean?
It’s been two years since the signal was transmitted by the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, and so fa,r no one has come to a conclusion about what it means, even though it has already been decoded.
According to Daniela de Paulis, creator of the A Signal in Space Project, everything is going as planned:
“The idea is that if we ever received a message from an alien civilization, we would not have feedback. There were basically thousands of interpretations, because … everybody was really moving in the dark. They didn’t know where to go. They just have this image of a ‘starmap’ that everyone interpreted in many possible ways”.
So far, several hypotheses have been raised, including:
- A simple greeting, such as “Hello!”;
- A representation of the emergence of life in the universe (representation of panspermia);
- A demonstration of the universality of organic chemistry as a form of communication.
Even though the final result has not yet come, this type of experiment, such as the A Signal from Space Project, is essential to prepare us when the moment really comes, because now at least we have a starting point to start from.
In addition, many already consider the project a success, since thousands of scientists from all over the world have come together to decode this alien message, a collaboration that will be essential when that time finally comes and we prove that there is life, other than our own, in the Universe.
