The universe is large and old. It seems likely that there was a spark of intelligence that flared into existence. If there are intelligent beings out there, how would we connect with them and how would we give them directions to our planet?
Researchers would have to figure out a way to send a readable map to our guests if they were to use several techniques to send directions to aliens.
You need to have some common references if you want to tell someone where you are. The Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands is a Spanish archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean. There is nothing fixed in the universe. The stars and planets are moving in a slow motion. Scientists have come up with a number of ways to relay our location to other people.
What messages have we sent to aliens?
Martin Rees, the U.K.'s royal astronomer, told Live Science that most people would say to send a strong radio wave transmission.
The number one choice for broadcasting information about Earth into the universe has historically been the use of Electromagnetic Radiation. Scientists can use simple code to read complex messages. Any intelligent aliens that intercept the signal could simply trace it back to Earth.
Radio waves are the most common type of communication. The "water hole" is a gap in the electromagnetic spectrum that is filled by the frequencies of radio waves. The two components of water act as a kind of soundproof, absorbing lower and higher vibrations and leaving the channel relatively free of background noise. The noise above and below the water hole is not as loud as it could be.
Radio waves have been used to try to communicate with aliens. The M13 star cluster is approximately 21,000 light years away from the Arecibo telescope. According to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), the message was a simple pictograph with a representation of a DNA molecule, our solar system and a stick figure human. NASA's "Across the Universe" signal in 2008 was the only Beatles song in the signal.
Radio waves can be diffract, or broaden, as they travel, like a ripple expanding in water. They may become too diffuse to carry a message by the time they reach a distant galaxy, according to MIT's Lincoln Laboratory. We should use visible laser light for a more directed message, according to an astronomer with the Leibniz Institute for Solar Physics in Germany.
A message made of laser light that vibrates on a single plane has the potential to travel much farther than a radio signal. Because optical waves are more tightly packed, they are very narrow. Scientists would need to send them with great precision. We would need to know where our aliens were before we could send them directions.
Could a spaceship fly through a gas giant?
Socas-Navarro said that some scientists have taken a different approach to communication in the universe. The Pioneer 10 probe was attached to a golden "Pioneer plaque" by Frank Drake and Carl Sagan in 1972, according to the Planetary Society. A plaque was mounted on Pioneer 11 the following year. The plaques are engraved with two human figures, a man and a woman, as well as a "map" pointing the way to our solar system using a series of 14 odd Cosmic landmarks.
There are images from the Pioneer plaque. The lines converge at the center. The image is from Shutterstock.
The dead stars that make up the pulsas emit beams of radiation from their poles. The beams appear to "pulse" or blink, like a lighthouse beacon. Berdyugina said that pulsars are useful for navigation because they are a rare point in the universe. Nature reports that NASA plans to use pulsars as a kind of CosmicGPS in future missions. By measuring the arrival of each pulse from three or more pulsars, a spacecraft can triangulate its position. Each pulsar is marked on the Pioneer plaque with a line and hatch marks to show how fast it spins.
The flashes of pulsars aren't visible from every angle. Berdygina told Live Science that an alien civilization would have to figure out what they see if they read the Pioneer plaque like a map. When they designed the plaque, they were confident that any civilization that was able to find and capture the Pioneer probe would have a deep understanding of pulsars.
The Pioneer plaque is a time capsule and not just a message in a bottle. The hatch marks on the map show the rate of rotation from a 1972 Earthling point of view. The fast-spinning pulsars are slowing down. Some may no longer be spinning in a hundred million years. It could take far longer than that for an intelligent civilization to find the probe and not travel to Earth.
There are many ways humans could give aliens directions to our planet, but another key ingredient in the search is patience.
Live Science published the original article.
