Hello! Anyone There?

"[The Beacon in the Galaxy is not the first message created to be sent into space; it] contains more information about basic mathematics and science [than its predecessor, Arecibo]."

"The main part of this BITG Message contains a new set of graphical information in the form of images and special 'alphabets' to represent numbers, elements, DNA, land, ocean, and human, etc., starting by an artificial header and footer that consists of prime numbers."

Matthew Chong, physics/math student, Cambridge University

A sample from a new message intended to be sent toward potential intelligent extraterrestrials in the galaxy. Credit: “A Beacon in the Galaxy: Updated Arecibo Message for Potential FAST and SETI Projects,” by Jonathan H. Jiang et al. Preprint posted online March 4, 2022 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."

"[Even if a signal is received from Gliese 832c, an exoplanet that may possibly be habitable], we should be wary of answering back."

Stephen Hawking, British physicist extaordinaire (deceased)

Humanity reaches out to whatever/whoever elevated life form may exist on a planet somewhere in the universe. Science refuses to believe that in the vastness of the universe, and the uncountable array of galaxies, stars and planets only the Milky Way's Planet Earth brought forth the organic life that developed the animals that inhabit the planet, including homo sapiens. Radio telescopes have been attempting for decades to pick up even the faintest signals of life elsewhere in the universe, to no avail.

Now a new initiative, the latest in a long series of outreaches to any intelligent beings assumed to have the capacity to receive and analyze and interpret a message from Earth, has been updated, the radio message to be sent into the cosmos, essentially pinpointing Earth's location to aid an interested intelligence in understanding precisely where this planet is located in the geography of the universe. 

The BITG message is comprised of 13 portions consisting of approximately 204,000 effective binary digits; 25,500 bytes in total. The goal of the scientists involved is to start a dialogue with ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) "no matter how far in the future that might occur". Should intelligent life exist elsewhere in the universe as astrophysicists believe, it could potentially receive a radio message as a guide to finding Earth.

Jonathan Jiang, the lead on the project, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, elaborated that a group of cosmic landmarks are meant to be conveyed as an assist to indicate Earth's position within the Milky Way Galaxy. The intention is for the Five-hundred meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope in China and the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array in northern California to transmit the message.

 

 General view of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in Pingtang County, Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province of China. The 500-meter aperture spherical radio telescope (FAST), also known as China's 'Sky Eye', will open to global scientific community from March 31. (Photo by Li Jin/VCG via Getty Images)