Extraterrestrial Life Forms Might Be Waiting for the Right Time to Contact Earth, New Study Suggests

Mankind has not yet made contact with extraterrestrial life, unlike those in science fiction stories. But the recent research, titled "A Green Bank Telescope search for narrowband technosignatures between 1.1-1.9 GHz during 12 Kepler planetary transits" available in arXiv, suggests that extraterrestrial beings on other worlds are just waiting for the ideal moment to ring us here on Earth.

According to recent research led by Sofia Sheikh of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, the spin and orbit of the individual planets may have an impact on whether life exists in other solar systems. Scientists have directed their focus on planetary transits, when exoplanets pass directly in front of their stars, in the new hunt for communicating with extraterrestrial life.

Extraterrestrial Beings Might Use Exoplanetary Transits

Sheikh, a postdoctoral researcher in radio astronomy at SETI Institute and the study leader, told Live Science via an email that extraterrestrial life forms might use exoplanetary transits in communicating with Earth because they are special and can be calculated by both humans as observers and any potential technological species in other exoplanets as transmitters.

These exoplanetary transits are a predictable and repetitive time when extraterrestrial life forms might think to send messages to humans on Earth. She added that this strategy will help scientists narrow down the huge question of where and when to look for a message in the cast reaches of the universe.

The paper, which is scheduled for peer-reviewed publication in The Astronomical Journal did not find any evidence of extraterrestrial beings in any exoplanet. Rather, the paper discussed its search for a dozen distant exoplanets where scientists could look for signs of life using a variety of telescopes.

Earth, for instance, has been leaking transmissions in space since radio technology was invented in the late 19th century. The famed Arecibo Message of 1974 alone has deliberately sent out signals in hopes of contacting any intelligent extraterrestrial life forms that might be listening.

Detecting Radio Signals from Space

Scientists scan the galaxy for radio waves that might detect signals from other life forms in hopes of contacting extraterrestrial civilizations, which might also leak technological signals.

Knowing where to search is important because the galaxy is a vast area. In a "Schelling point," a solution to a problem that two people usually fall back on if they aren't talking with one another, Sheikh and her colleagues decided to listen in on distant exoplanets as they pass in front of their suns and insisted on the planetary transit as the most sensible time to communicate.

Sheikh and her colleagues searched for radio signals from 12 exoplanets whose transits were visible during a brief window in March 2018 using West Virginia's Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, Live Science reported.

They found nearly 34,000 radio signals, but 99.6% of them could be immediately discounted as interference from communications on Earth. The two brief bursts from possibly rocky planets bigger than Earth, Kepler-1332b and Kepler-842b were judged as worthy of further investigation. Although they said that the two could definitely be due to interference as well.

Despite that, Sheikh insisted that the study offered evidence that the search strategy may be effective. The SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array in California will be the site of other observations the researchers want to conduct in the future.

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