Father-Daughter Duo Deciphers Simulated Alien Message

Father-Daughter Duo Deciphers Simulated Alien Message

  • In May of 2023, as part of a science-art project, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter sent a signal to Earth as a simulated “alien message.”
  • Although citizen scientists retrieved the signal from the raw data in only 10 days, it took longer than a year to actually decode the message.
  • The father-daughter team of Ken and Keli Chaffin successfully decoded the message in July of 2024 by running simulations of the signal for days, according the ESA.

In a universe teeming with hundreds of billions of galaxies—each containing countless stars—the likelihood that humanity is the sole intelligent civilization seems vanishingly small. But if extraterrestrials ever reached out to us, would we even recognize their message?

That’s the premise behind A Sign in Space, an interdisciplinary art project led by media artist and former dancer Daniela de Paulis. Partnering with SETI, the Green Bank Observatory, and the European Space Agency (ESA), de Paulis designed a simulation of an alien transmission.

In May 2023, the ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter “sent” the mysterious signal toward Earth, challenging scientists and citizen researchers to decode it.

Cracking the Code

Extracting the signal from raw data took just 10 days, but unraveling its meaning proved far more difficult. After months of analysis, the breakthrough came in July 2024 when a father-daughter duo, Ken and Keli Chaffin, successfully decoded the message.

According to an ESA press release, the Chaffins spent hours running simulations, gradually uncovering a biological pattern within the data. They ultimately identified structures representing five amino acids—the fundamental building blocks of proteins and, consequently, life itself.

“Now that the cryptic signal has been deciphered, the quest for meaning begins,” the ESA stated, as a dedicated group of researchers continues to discuss the message’s implications on the project’s Discord server. “Like any work of art, its interpretation remains open.”

The Challenge of First Contact

Since we have no idea what form a genuine extraterrestrial message might take, first-contact scenarios have long been a staple of science fiction. The 1997 film Contact, for example, imagines aliens responding by bouncing Earth’s own radio signals back to us.

Meanwhile, humanity has taken a scattershot approach to interstellar communication—sending everything from the Voyager Golden Record, which contains music, images, and mathematical concepts, to decades of stray radio broadcasts.

While SETI primarily listens for signals rather than transmitting them, any confirmed extraterrestrial message would follow a strict verification process. An independent observatory would first confirm the signal before notifying the United Nations and, eventually, the public.

If a real alien signal ever arrives, this project suggests that humanity might just be capable of deciphering it. But whether we’re truly ready to share the universe with another intelligent species? That’s a question still waiting to be answered.

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