An alien-like signal from 2023 has been decoded

If Earth’s astronomical observatories were to pick up a signal from space, an all-out effort would be required to untangle and decipher the extraterrestrial message.

Its meaning, however, remains a mystery.

This required thousands of hours of experimenting with various ideas and running mathematical simulations on a computer, Chaffini told CNN.

In what looks like clusters of white pixels on a black background, the visualized message consists of five configurations representing amino acids, the building blocks of life.

The message is not static, but is in motion and displays the schedule for only about one-tenth of a second.

The project’s designers have confirmed that amino acids are the intended message, but leave the interpretation open.

Now citizen scientists are grappling with the meaning behind the mysterious cosmic puzzle.

The community involved in the project has so far been unable to determine and agree on what amino acids represent.

Decoding the cosmic puzzle

The signal was sent from Mars to Earth — traveling 16 minutes through space before being picked up by the Allen Telescope Array in northern California, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope and the Medicina Radio Astronomical Station near Bologna, Italy.

It took about 10 days to extract and visualize the data, but deciphering the message required even more persistence.

When Ken Chaffin came across the original image from the encrypted raw data, dubbed a “star map” by the Discord community of citizen scientists, he said he suspected it was produced by a cellular automaton algorithm.

Cellular automata are networks of units that are mathematically coded to move or follow specific sets of rules.

“I knew I had the skills to decode the message,” he said in an email, explaining that he has decades of amateur experience working with cellular automata.

By running simulations of cellular automata on a “star map,” the Chaffins were eventually able to generate a picture of amino acids.

“I had no idea what the message would show or say,” he added. “I suspected it might have something to do with life.”

When the image of the cluster was revealed, Chaffin said he immediately recognized it as the amino acids from high school chemistry classes.

Keli Chaffin, his grown daughter, initially had no plans to join her dad in the arduous endeavor, but said she was quickly mesmerized by the enormity of the project.

“The original image that looks like a star chart has always given me the appearance of biological life forms,” ​​she said in an email.

“(A) many members have seen a mouse, a starfish or an elephant.

“Maybe it’s just us as humans looking for what’s recognizable within random dots, a sort of Rorschach test.”

The goal of the project was to keep the simulation as close as possible to how it might happen in real life, de Paulis said, so the project’s developers did not provide any assistance, including confirmation or denial, until they received a solution from the Chaffins.

“The idea is that if we ever receive a message from an extraterrestrial civilization, we would have no feedback. So we will have to come up with the meaning ourselves,” said de Paulis, who is also a licensed radio operator.

“There were actually thousands of interpretations, because … everyone was really moving in the dark. They didn’t know where to go. They just had this ‘star map’ image that everyone interpreted in many possible ways.”

The signal is a representation of what it would be like to receive an extraterrestrial message under ideal circumstances, because it came from relatively nearby Mars and was therefore a stronger transmission than one that might come from deep space, de Paulis said.

Multiple telescopes picked up the signal, while only one could detect the actual alien, she added.

The project team intentionally created a complex message, and some team members predict that decoding could take weeks or even years. Someone said, ‘Maybe they’ll never interpret it,'” de Paulis said.

“So we had no idea how long it was going to take. We really took this big risk.”

Now that the message is unlocked, the next step is to figure out what it means and why another civilization would send it, she said.

Interpreting an extraterrestrial message

The designers behind the project do not plan to confirm or deny possible interpretations any time soon, but are inviting the public to submit ideas while de Paulis works on a book summarizing the project and interpretations of the message.

Globally, it is difficult to agree on meaning with so many people from different backgrounds and cultures involved, she added.

The father-daughter team threw out hundreds of possible interpretations, Ken Chaffin said.

If the moving message starts with the configuration of amino acids, then it seems as if the five clusters are deconstructed and move around the universe.

If the message starts with a coded “star map” and ends with a string of amino acids, it could represent various compounds like hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen that are carried through space and then assembled into life, he said.

“In the end it’s up to each viewer to interpret it as a Rorschach test, we may never know what the ‘aliens’ were trying to tell us,” said Keli Chaffin. “Maybe only they say ‘Hello!’

“I think the most exciting part for me was the opportunity to work with my father on such a once-in-a-lifetime project,” she added.

“We do not give up on the project even if it is considered almost impossible.”