As extraterrestrial search is going on in full swing, an MIT student has recently submitted a research paper which proposes a new method to contact alien life that may be thriving in the far nooks of the space. James Clarke, the study's lead author believes that beaming hot and bright lasers at exoplanets will certainly attract the attention of potential advanced alien civilizations, and it may sometimes bring these extraterrestrial beings to the earth.
The study report published in The Astrophysical Journal reveals that this new method to attract aliens would be undoubtedly a challenging project, but can be materialized.
"This would be a challenging project but not an impossible one. The kinds of lasers and telescopes that are being built today can produce a detectable signal, so that an astronomer could take one look at our star and immediately see something unusual about its spectrum. I don't know if intelligent creatures around the sun would be their first guess, but it would certainly attract further attention," said James Clarke in a recent statement.
As per the research report, a laser which has a strength of one to two megawatts, and beamed from a telescope at least 100 meters in width may capture the attention of advanced civilizations as far as 20,000 light years from the earth.
"If we were to successfully close a handshake and start to communicate, we could flash a message, at a data rate of about a few hundred bits per second, which would get there in just a few years. I wanted to see if I could take the kinds of telescopes and lasers that we're building today, and make a detectable beacon out of them," added Clarke.
However, Clarke admitted that beaming these lasers from the earth could create vision problems to people who look at them directly. As per Clarke, it will be great if space agencies succeed in building laser beaming telescopes on the dark side of the moon, and send the lasers from there where no living beings exist.
A month ago, NASA has suggested that searching for techno-signatures is one of the best ways by which alien civilizations can be located. As per experts, techno-signatures are signature left by artificial technology and the most noted example are radio waves. Laser emissions, Dyson spheres and heat anomalies are other examples of techno-signatures.
