The signal came from outer space.
It beamed to Earth in May 2023. It looked like a message from intelligent life. In fact, it did come from intelligent life—life right here on Earth. Humans designed a puzzle to simulate a message that could come from extraterrestrials (space aliens). Now a father-daughter team has cracked the message code.
Daniela de Paulis designed the puzzle with a group of scientists. The artist worked with the SETI Institute. (SETI means “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.”) Most people think of aliens as fake or silly—at best, a far-distant possibility. But SETI scientists take that possibility seriously. If Earth receives an alien message, they want to be prepared.
What sort of message would aliens send? They probably wouldn’t know human languages. So the SETI Institute created a visual puzzle.
The SETI scientists thought if aliens are really out there somewhere, they might communicate through scientific concepts. Scientific facts don’t change, no matter where you live in the universe. Intelligent aliens would probably recognize the structure of atoms and molecules.
So the puzzle contained an image of five amino acids—molecules considered the “building blocks of life.” Scientists beamed the puzzle from the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. (Try saying that five times fast!) The message took about 16 minutes to travel from Mars to three astronomy observatories on Earth.
Space enthusiasts everywhere got to work. About 5,000 citizen scientists spent 10 days just extracting data from the radio signal. Now they could see the puzzle—but they still had to solve it!
The puzzle showed a moving image. Some people called it a “star map.” Five clusters of white dots blinked on a black background. It baffled observers. Back at SETI, scientists started to wonder if anyone would solve it.
But Ken Chaffin recognized something in those white dots. He didn’t see stars. He saw a mathematical model.
He and his adult daughter, Keli, ran simulations for almost a year. Finally, on June 7, 2024, they sent SETI their solution: an image of five amino acids. They had solved the puzzle.
“The most exciting part was having the opportunity to work with my father on such a once-in-a-lifetime project,” Keli Chaffin told CNN Science. “We don’t give up on a project even if it is deemed near impossible.”
Could aliens really exist? Some Christians think so (like C.S. Lewis, who wrote his own series of science fiction books). Others believe that if aliens existed, God would have said so in the Bible. What do you think?
Why? Even if space aliens don’t exist, experiments like the SETI Institute’s puzzle can help people learn and connect.
