When the SETI Institute announced a new phase of its search for intelligent life in space, its researchers were faced with a question they’ve never had to answer: What would they say if they actually made contact with an extraterrestrial civilization?
The institute’s search of 10 billion frequencies with radio telescopes at the Allen Telescope Array, located about 300 miles north of San Francisco, is much more powerful than previous searches, said Douglas A. Vakoch, director of interstellar-message composition at the SETI Institute and a professor of clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies.
SETI researchers at the institute now have the ability to search millions of stars, Mr. Vakoch said. Since that increases the probability of scientists finding another civilization, the stakes are higher for figuring out how to communicate.
Now, the institute, whose acronym stands for “search for extraterrestrial intelligence,” has started the Web tool Earth Speaks, which allows people from around the world to submit messages, pictures, and sounds they would want to send to other worlds. It’s also linked to a Twitter account, @SETIEarthSpeaks.
“We’re exploring a new territory in engaging the public because we want to know whatever people think is most important to communicate,” Mr. Vakoch said. “ We’re trying to grapple in a serious way with how should we go about conducting a conversation that would last generations.”
Scientists related to SETI have been searching space for signs of life for about 50 years. The SETI@home online project, which began in 1999 through the University of California at Berkeley, allowed people across the country to install a screensaver that used the Internet to scan radio frequencies and send data back to SETI researchers.
Since the Earth Speaks site opened to the public on May 15, more than 300 messages have been submitted from 33 countries, reflecting a broad array of topics and emotions. Recent suggestions from users include “It’s about time!,” “No Vacancy,” and “Hello! Please come pick me up, I’m a librarian, artist, and I prepare great Earth dishes.”
The site is also a study, tracking the age, gender, and nationality of those who submit messages, and identifying the major themes of those messages through a tagging system, which allows users to place their messages into categories. At a later stage of the project, users will be surveyed about their attitudes toward extraterrestrial life and interstellar communication.
Traditional scientists as well as social scientists, like anthropologists, linguists, sociologists, and psychologists, will analyze the messages. In the future, Mr. Vakoch said, users of the site will also be able to help analyze the data by adding category tags to messages they find interesting.
Mr. Vakoch said the Earth Speaks project would continue to broaden the discussion about extraterrestrial life.
“We want to represent a full range of ideologies and views,” Mr. Vakoch said. “The question about what we should do is too important to be decided by a handful of scientists.” —Erica R. Hendry