Humans have wondered about life beyond our planet since ancient times, and researchers have worked hard for decades to find any definitive signs, to no avail. Now, researchers at the SETI Institute have turned to a rather interesting approach in their search for intelligent life beyond planet Earth (via: Phys.org).
The latest research involves something called game theory, which scientists believe could help them determine when an alien civilization might attempt to contact us. The problem here is that even if someone out there is deliberately sending radio signals towards Earth, there is no guarantee we’d be listening at the right time, or even looking in the right direction.
Researchers Isabel Gerrard and Sofia Sheikh believe there might be a way to narrow down those possibilities, and it involves trying to figure out how another intelligent civilization would approach the same problem.
What does game theory have to do with aliens?
For anyone unfamiliar with game theory, it’s a mathematical concept concerned with making decisions based on what another person might do. Let’s say you get separated from a friend at a crowded railway station, and neither of you has a working phone. Chances are you’d both try looking near the main entrance, assuming the other person might have thought of the same thing. There’s actually a name for such a situation, called a Schelling point, where two people arrive at the same decision without having any prior communication.
The researchers believe something similar could happen between two intelligent civilizations. However, instead of deciding where to meet at a railway station, both would have to identify an astronomical event that the other might consider important enough to send a signal.
The Sun might have something to do with it
The location researchers have settled on is called the antisolar point, which might sound a little complicated, but is basically the direction opposite the Sun when viewed from Earth. An alien civilization observing us from that direction would be able to see Earth passing in front of the Sun, something astronomers here already use to identify planets around distant stars. The researchers believe another civilization might use the same technique, and perhaps decide that Earth’s transit would be a suitable occasion to transmit a message.
Scientists have already been testing the approach using California’s Allen Telescope Array. The initial observations collected over 17 hours between 2024 and 2026 detected nearly 1.9 million radio signals, although none turned out to be extraterrestrial. Another 121 nights of data have since been collected, but those findings haven’t been released.
There are a few complications, however. The antisolar point changes as Earth orbits the Sun, and the entire survey requires years of observations. Also, there’s no guarantee an alien civilization would even use the same approach, but the concept still sounds better than searching in the vast void of space, hoping to get lucky.