2023-05-06 00:02:37
We may not have to wait as long for the first message from ET anymore. In fact, it could reach Earth as soon as 2029. That’s the remarkable conclusion of Reilly Derrick and Howard Isaacson of the Universities of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, who in a paper just published in the ‘Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’ have determined to which stars our most powerful radio emissions have already been able to reach and when, if heard, we could receive the first responses on our planet.
In their article, the researchers explain that a system of powerful radio antennas, called the ‘Deep Space Network’, has been used since 1972 to track and communicate with our most distant ships. “Having left the heliosphere,” write Derrick and Isaacson, “Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 continue to travel through interstellar space. The Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11 and New Horizons spacecraft are also on their way to passing the heliopause. These spacecraft have communicated with the Deep Space Network radio antennas to download telemetry and scientific data. Outward transmissions from the Grid’s antennas travel to the spacecraft and beyond, into interstellar space.”
According to the authors, these transmissions have already found, and will find in the future, other stars, so some intelligent life could have heard them.
To find out who could have heard us and from where, the researchers traced the paths followed by those five spacecraft, the most distant ever sent into space, as well as the signals that were sent to them through the Deep Space Network during their journeys. They then used the Gaia catalog in our stellar neighborhood and determined which of those systems our signals could reach, and when.
arrival at four stars
In this way, they discovered that the radio signals of the Network have already reached four stars in our surroundings. And that from one of them, which is right in the path of the signals sent to Pioneer 10, they would have even had time to send a response, which would eventually reach Earth in 2029. Two more possible alien responses, coming from two solar systems hit by Voyager 2 signals, could reach us somewhat later, in 2031 and 2033.
The truth is that we don’t know if these four stars have planets in orbit, or if they could harbor life, since they are much fainter than our own Sun, which makes any possible exoplanets more difficult to detect. However, says Isaacson, statistics teach us that planets seem to be very common around stars, and most of them have yet to be discovered.
Among the many strategies devised so far to try to discover if we are not alone, it is difficult to know which one will finally allow us to detect an intelligence outside of Earth. The tool provided by Derrick and Isaacson may be the one that finally breaks us out of our cosmic isolation. Or maybe not, who knows. For now, the most important thing is not to stop trying.
#alien #message #reach #Earth