METI Aims to Message Aliens

Image credit: Paul Duffield/G. Hüdepohl/ESO

The San Francisco-based organization METI, or Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has unveiled a plan to contact extraterrestrial life.  This plan entails sending messages via radio or laser signals to a rocky planet circling Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Earth other than our own sun.  Their aim is to expand from there, and send similar messages to even more distant destinations.

"If we want to start an exchange over the course of many generations, we want to learn and share information," said Douglas Vakoch, president of METI and former director of Interstellar Message Composition at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, or SETI.  

METI, founded in 2015, will host two upcoming workshops in Paris and St Louis, and hopes to soon raise the $1 million needed annually to staff and build or borrow a powerful transmitter in a remote location.

Source: Phys.org