When a 32-metre radio dish north of the Arctic Circle in Norway began a series of transmissions last month, it marked the first attempt to directly signal our existence to aliens on a known Earth-like exoplanet.
The target was GJ 273b, the closest known potentially habitable planet visible from that site. It orbits Luyten’s star, a red dwarf 12.4 light years from Earth. GJ 273b is one of dozens of planets that could host life found in the past two decades, thanks to advances in astronomy.
The transmissions, sent from the European Incoherent Scatter Scientific Association site near Tromsø in Norway, were overseen by METI, the San Francisco-based research organisation, dedicated to messaging extraterrestrial intelligence, which I head. The messages included a mathematical and scientific tutorial created by METI, as well as samples of music from Spain’s Sónar festival, which initiated the project.
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