TELEGRAM TO A PLANET 24_25 IS READY TO GO!!
This year the telegram will be sent towards Luyten b.
JOIN THE CONTEST
Good morning from the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Valencia 🔭🥘, the Earth 🌍,
I wonder how the day will be going for the students and teachers of Teegarden b👽, or those of Proxima Centauri b👾, or those of any of the four worlds that Trappist-1 puts its light on ⭐. In fact, I wonder if there will even be schools there or perhaps they might have found another way to educate their young people. I wonder if there will be young people. I wonder if there will be life and, if there is, if they will spend their time lapses (no need to call them hours, minutes and seconds) wondering the same things as me 🤔.
When thinking about the number of potentially habitable worlds only within our galaxy, it’s inevitable that lots of questions pop up.
That’s precisely what we want our students to do: ask themselves and try to answer themselves.
So we promised it and now we are back in the saddle again. After the success of this pioneering initiative last year, we ask ourselves again:
Why not start the 24/25 school year communicating with extraterrestrials?
Communication with possible extraterrestrial civilizations has been part of the collective imagination for
generations and there are many examples that attest to it both in literature and in cinema.
But also in science. Galileo already wondered if there were living beings on the Moon and the other planets, and researchers from all times and cultures have reflected on the plurality of inhabited worlds and if there is anyone out there with whom we can dialogue. This concern led to the beginning of the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) program back in the sixties of the last century, which since then actively searches for signs of other civilizations in the universe.
However, listening to the Universe while being silent is not an optimal way to communicate. If on the other side the alien civilizations do the same, it will be impossible to establish any type of communication. So we go one step beyond and set ourselves the challenge of sending a message into space.
The fruit of the collaboration between OAUV, CESAR (ESA/INTA/ISDEFE) and CAB,
this competition comes once again to make the SETI programme known to the educational community: what are its foundations, its methods, the protagonists and most noteworthy milestones and, naturally, how we will manage to establish a potential contact with an extraterrestrial civilisation. What would be our intention in this first communicative act? What would we say to an extraterrestrial civilization of which we know nothing and that, most likely, knows nothing about us? What would we say to them and… in which language?
The contest is aimed at students from schools throughout Spain from 3rd year of ESO to 2nd year of Baccalaureate and FP (FPB and CCFF GM) and aims to compose a graphic message or pictogram to be sent as a first contact with a possible alien civilization on a potentially habitable planet of a star in the solar neighborhood.
From among all the pictograms that we receive from the participating centers, a selection will be made and sent by radio through INTA 📡‘s antennas at ESA’s European Space Astronomy Center (ESAC) in Villanueva de la Cañada (Madrid).
