A pair of American father and son, Ken and Keli Chaffin, have successfully decoded a simulated extraterrestrial signal that was transmitted from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter of the European Space Agency (ESA) one year ago.
According to ESA, the Chaffins were the first to crack the code. The message sent from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter was part of a citizen science project in May 2023. Three radio observatories on Earth received this message, which was later made publicly available. The first step involved extracting the signal from the raw data, followed by decoding it.
The revealed message is an image depicting the structure of five amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. This message is part of “A Sign in Space” – a science/art project exploring how humanity might respond upon receiving a genuine message from extraterrestrial beings. The online community took only 10 days to extract the message from the original data, but decoding it proved more challenging: It wasn’t until June 7, 2024, that the Chaffins communicated their solution to Daniela de Paulis, the founder and artistic director of the project. ESA announced their success on October 22.
A radio signal transmitted to Earth last year contained an image depicting five types of amino acids decoded by Ken and Keli Chaffin. (Photo: Ken and Keli Chaffin).
According to “A Sign in Space,” this is the intellectual product of a group of “simulated extraterrestrial beings”, which includes de Paulis, a computer scientist, a poet, a radio engineer, a physicist, a space lawyer, along with several astronomers and astrobiologists.
This project also received support from the SETI Institute – a nonprofit organization dedicated to searching for extraterrestrial life – and the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. The decoding of the message required many hours of computer simulation. ESA reported that the father and son duo succeeded in recognizing the message contained certain biological characteristics.
But what do the extraterrestrials want to convey by sending a picture of five amino acids? That mystery still needs to be unraveled. Currently, scientists are gathering on a Discord server to discuss and interpret the significance of the message. Will the extraterrestrials arrive in peace? That question may be the toughest to answer.
