Could we eavesdrop on aliens by detecting signals relayed around the sun?

There may be a new way to detect alien signals.

Einstein's theory of general relativity shows that light can be affected by the pull of large objects. The light is focused and magnifies like a telescope when it does so. It is possible that other things are affected by this process.

Communication signals may be amplified through lensing, as suggested by graduate students in a course at Penn State. We might be able to eavesdrop on extraterrestrial communications if that is possible.

Sun's lens could be used to find life on planets.

Similar to how cellphone networks operate here on Earth, the group theorizes that vast interstellar communication networks could use gravitational lensing.

Nick Tusay said in a statement that humans use networks to communicate all the time. When using a cellphone, the waves are sent to the nearest tower, which connects to the next tower and so on.

If probes are set up near a star, they could be used as relay points for the network. If an advanced alien species discovers this process and uses the sun as a relay point, we can pick up the signals.

They collected data from the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and searched for radio transmissions that could come from our nearest stellar neighbors.

"There have been a few previous searches using optical wavelength, but we chose to use radio wavelength, because radio is a great way to communicate information across space," said one of the students in the course.

The students did not find any alien transmissions, but they still have hope. Tusay said that anything that wasn't broadcasting while they were observing was not going to be picked up. This was a good test to see if this kind of search is possible if probes aren't always broadcasting at these frequencies.

The group hopes that future students in the course will continue to listen for extraterrestrial transmissions, but they can also use gravitational lensing to look for alien life.

The Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center said in a statement that "Astronomers have considered taking advantage of gravitational lensing as a way to basically build a giant telescope to look at planets around other stars." If we ever sent our probes to another star, it was thought that we could communicate with them.

A paper about the technique has been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal, and a preprint version can be found in the arXiv database.

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