Fifteen mysterious radio signals are believed to have originated from a small galaxy 3 billion light-years away.
Stephen Hawking, the astrophysical genius who took Isaac Newton's place at Cambridge University, may have discovered what he feared most in the universe: evidence of extraterrestrial life.
Hawking, who had long been cautious about contact with extraterrestrials, said, "Ignore them and don't reply to their messages. They will treat us no differently than bacteria. If we encounter them, they will treat us the same way Christopher Columbus treated the indigenous peoples he encountered in the New World." Nevertheless, contact is still possible.
In fact, radio signals travel at the speed of light, and the ones collected this time were transmitted 3 billion years ago, when only single-celled organisms existed on Earth 2 billion years ago.
"If the aliens sent that signal, they are already dead. And if we sent a reply, by the time it reaches them, our civilization will have already turned to ashes," Hawking says.
Scientists are using the computers of 9 million volunteers around the world, tuning into 10 trillion different frequencies, to study the 100 closest galaxies to us.
Where is the signal coming from?
In this case, the signal was first detected in 2012 by the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. In 2015 and 2016, the source of the signal was still active, and the possibility that it was "pulsations from an accidental supernova explosion" was ruled out.
The source of these signals could be the energy source that extraterrestrials are using to power their vehicles. However, these signals could also be coming from neutron stars, which are one of the strangest objects in the universe. Scientists are currently conducting detailed investigations to determine the exact origin of these signals.