It's a moment that's been depicted countless times in science fiction -- but what would actually happen when extraterrestrials make contact via a signal picked up on Earth? The moment could come as early as the end of this decade: if aliens receive signals sent by NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) to the Pioneer 10 satellite in the 70s, for example. When the moment comes, the signal is most likely to be received by large ground-based telescopes such as FAST in China, the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico and the Parkes Telescope in Australia, says former NASA expert Sylvester Kaczmarek. There is no universally agreed rule on how scientists or governments would respond - or on questions such as whether aliens would have rights. But extraterrestrial-focused organisations including the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) drew up a framework in 2010.

This paper considers the possibility that abstract thinking and advanced synthesis skills might encourage extraterrestrial civilizations to accept communication with mankind on Earth. For this purpose, a notation not relying upon the use of alphabet and numbers is proposed, in order to denote just some basic geometric structures of current physical theories: vector fields, one-form fields, and tensor fields of arbitrary order. An advanced civilization might appreciate the way here proposed to achieve a concise description of electromagnetism and general relativity, and hence it might accept the challenge of responding to our signals. The abstract symbols introduced in this paper to describe the basic structures of physical theories are encoded into black and white bitmap images that can be easily converted into short bit sequences and modulated on a carrier wave for radio transmission.

Are we alone in the universe? Scientists may have just moved us closer to answering this question. The team – led by researchers from the University of Toronto – has streamlined the search for extraterrestrial life by using a new algorithm to organize the data from their telescopes into categories, in order to distinguish between real signals and interference. This has allowed them to quickly sort through the information and find patterns, through an artificial intelligence process known as machine learning. They discovered eight extraterrestrial signals that seem to have the hallmarks of technology.

Some 540 million years ago, diverse life forms suddenly began to emerge from the muddy ocean floors of planet Earth. This period is known as the Cambrian Explosion, and these aquatic critters are our ancient ancestors. All complex life on Earth evolved from these underwater creatures. Scientists believe all it took was an ever-so-slight increase in ocean oxygen levels above a certain threshold. We may now be in the midst of a Cambrian Explosion for artificial intelligence (AI). In the past few years, a burst of incredibly capable AI programs like Midjourney, DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT have showcased the rapid progress we've made in machine learning.

When pondering the probability of discovering technologically advanced extraterrestrial life, the question that often arises is, "if they're out there, why haven't we found them yet?" And often, the response is that we have only searched a tiny portion of the galaxy. Further, algorithms developed decades ago for the earliest digital computers can be outdated and inefficient when applied to modern petabyte-scale datasets. Now, research published in Nature Astronomy and led by an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, Peter Ma, along with researchers from the SETI Institute, Breakthrough Listen and scientific research institutions around the world, has applied a deep learning technique to a previously studied dataset of nearby stars and uncovered eight previously unidentified signals of interest. "In total, we had searched through 150 TB of data of 820 nearby stars, on a dataset that had previously been searched through in 2017 by classical techniques but labeled as devoid of interesting signals," said Peter Ma, lead author.

New footage of Arecibo Observatory collapsing in the jungle of Puerto Rico shows the moment its main cables snapped and sent a massive platform hurling to the ground - triggering a reaction that led to its destruction. Drones were investigating cables around the telescope when the restraints failed and dropped the 900-ton platform onto to the reflector dish 400 feet below. In one of the videos, the platform begins swaying in the air before letting out a loud roar as it dislodged from the supporting cable and snapping into pieces as it dropped. The second part of the clip is a view of the cables at the top of a support tower, which shows a group of frayed wires and an empty spot where cables were that had previously failed this year. One of the cables begins to strain and then violently flies out of its support, creating a cloud of smoke and debris.

Scientists may need to think twice when using artificial intelligence to help in the search for extraterrestrial life, a new study suggests. A Spanish team used an AI system that interpreted the shape of a triangle outside a square from a NASA image of a crater on the dwarf planet Ceres. Researchers then brought together 163 volunteers with no training in astronomy to describe what the saw on the image of the crater. While the AI detected a both a square and a triangle, the majority of humans only interpreted a square. But once the triangle was pointed out to the humans, the amount of people who said they could see it rose from 7 per cent to 56 per cent. This suggests the influence of AI could be strong on the human brain when interpreting alien characteristics on other planets, even when it's questionable they even exist.

The primary difficulty of interstellar communication is finding common ground between ourselves and other intelligent entities about which we can know nothing with absolute certainty. This common ground would be the basis for a universal language that could be understood by any intelligence, whether in the Milky Way, Andromeda, or beyond the cosmic horizon. To the best of our knowledge, the laws of physics are the same throughout the universe, which suggests that the facts of science may serve as a basis for mutual understanding between humans and an extraterrestrial intelligence. One key set of scientific facts presents an intriguing question. If aliens were to visit Earth and learn about its inhabitants, would they be surprised that such a wide variety of species all share a common genetic code?

Researchers at Breakthrough Listen, a SETI project led by the University of California, Berkeley, have now used machine learning to discover 72 new fast radio bursts from a mysterious source some 3 billion light years from Earth. Fast radio bursts are bright pulses of radio emission mere milliseconds in duration, thought to originate from distant galaxies. The source of these emissions is still unclear, however. Theories range from highly magnetized neutron stars blasted by gas streams from a nearby supermassive black hole, to suggestions that the burst properties are consistent with signatures of technology developed by an advanced civilization. "This work is exciting not just because it helps us understand the dynamic behavior of fast radio bursts in more detail, but also because of the promise it shows for using machine learning to detect signals missed by classical algorithms," said Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center and principal investigator for Breakthrough Listen, the initiative to find signs of intelligent life in the universe.

If aliens are trying to talk to us (or even if they are not), Jill Tarter will be the one to find them. She cofounded the SETI institute in 1984 and ran its research center for many years. She was also the inspiration for Jodie Foster's character in the 1997 movie Contact. Astrophysicist Maggie Turnbull, who is currently running for governor of Wisconsin, began working with Tarter in the late '90s and is now affiliated with the SETI Institute. She's currently working on a NASA telescope called WFIRST, set for space launch in 2025. The two scientists take slightly different approaches to their search for extraterrestrial life.