Super-intelligent aliens could be trying to contact Earth, but humans may not be able to pick up the signals yet, says Seti’s top scientist

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Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3239085/Super-intelligent-aliens-trying-contact-Earth-humans-stupid-hear-says-Seti-s-scientist.html

Super-intelligent aliens could be trying to contact Earth, but humans may not be able to pick up the signals yet, says Seti’s top scientist

• Comment made by Dr Nathalie Cabrol, who is leading Seti's hunt for aliens
• Currently, we are hoping to find ET through radio and optical technologies
• But aliens may be more advanced and use a different method of contact
• Cabrol believes we will be able to find a replica of Earth within our lifetime

By Ellie Zolfagharifard For Dailymail.com

Published: 23:05 GMT, 17 September 2015 | Updated: 21:28 GMT, 18 September 2015

At this very moment, an advanced alien civilisation may be trying contact Earth.

But despite our best efforts, we could be oblivious to their messages because humanity do not yet have the means to pick up the signals.

This is according to Dr Nathalie Cabrol, who is leading the hunt for alien life at the Seti Institute in California.

Speaking to DailyMail.com, Dr Cabrol said we are getting closer to finding both microbial life in our solar system and intelligent life elsewhere.

Scroll down for video

We could be oblivious to their messages from aliens, because humanity is not yet able to pick up the signals. This is according to Dr Nathalie Cabro (right), who is leading the hunt for alien life at the Seti Institute. Pictured on the left is the Parkes Radio Telescope that has picked up strange radio bursts from space

She believes, in our lifetime, we'll find simple alien organisms close to Earth and a replica of our planet in another galaxy.

Finding intelligent life, however, may not be as easy - largely because of our own limited view of the universe.

'See how much progress we have made in the past 100 years,' said Dr Cabrol.

'If there is a civilisation out there that is only 1,000 years older than we are, who knows what type of technology, or what type of process, they’ve put into communicating with others.

'We’re just scratching the surface here. We’re looking at the universe from our own standpoint

'We tend to ask questions in the way we do. But what kind of thought process an alien civilisation may have, we really don’t know.'

Currently, the search for ET is based on picking up optical and radio signals.

For instance, earlier this year, scientists picked up a series of mysterious pulsing signals coming from outside our solar system.

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Dr Nathalie Cabrol was recently appointed as the lead for the SETI Institute multidisciplinary research programs into the search for life beyond Earth. She currently heads the Institute’s Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe

Known as Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), just 10 of these signals have been discovered to date.

A study earlier this year found that all 10 bursts' dispersion measures are multiples of a single number: 187.5.

The results imply five sources for the bursts are all at regularly spaced distances from Earth, billions of light-years away.

'This will either be new physics, like a new kind of pulsar, or, in the end, if we can exclude everything else, an ET,' said researcher Michael Hippke of the Institute for Data Analysis in Neukirchen-Vluyn, Germany.

But Dr Cabrol says searching for radio signals such is just one of the ways we may be able to pick up alien life.

'We are hoping that ET has done the same thing as us, but there are other ways,' she said.

'Some people have talked about ET technology, sending vessels or robots in space.

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Former astronaut, John Grunsfeld (right), says that aliens may spot humans from afar from the changes we've made to Earth's environment. 'We put atmospheric signatures that guarantee someone with a large telescope 20 light years away could detect us,' he claims

BILLIONS OF EXOPLANETS ARE MORE EARTH-LIKE THAN THOUGHT

In their hunt for alien life, astronomers have so far focused on looking for Earth-like planets around smaller, cooler suns.

But these exoplanets - despite having a chance of holding water - are believed to be locked in a rotation around their sun which causes only one side of their surface face the star.

Now astronomers claim that such exoplanets actually rotate around their stars, and spin at such a speed that they exhibit a day-night cycle similar to Earth – increasing the chance of finding alien life.

Planets with potential oceans could have a climate that is much more similar to Earth's than previously expected,' said Jérémy Leconte, a postdoctoral fellow at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) at the University of Toronto.

'If we are correct, there is no permanent, cold night side on exoplanets causing water to remain trapped in a gigantic ice sheet,' he said.

'Whether this new understanding of exoplanets' climate increases the ability of these planets to develop life remains an open question.'

'We have to rely a bit on our imagination right now to figure out what ET will be doing, and not being afraid to develop new research avenues as well.'

One of the ways we may be able to spot alien civilisations is through the destruction of their own planet, she says.

'Seti is, at this moment in time, about radio astronomy, and optical. But it’s also about what a civilisation does to its environment as it grows older.

'We are somewhat advanced, but we are a teenage civilisation. We are playing with toys and technologies but we don’t know the rules very well yet.

'We are not in equilibrium in our environment, and this is the problem with climate change.

'Here you have, a direct link between ET and climate change. There is a window in time when you can expect a civilisation to get to this disequilibrium as we are in now.

'During this time, you will find signatures in the atmosphere of a planet that shouldn’t be there. So we can look for that as well. And this is just an example.

Her views echo that of former astronaut, John Grunsfeld, who earlier this year said if aliens are out there, they already know we exist.

He said an advanced alien civilisation may spot humans from afar from the changes we've made to Earth's environment.

'We put atmospheric signatures that guarantee someone with a large telescope 20 light years away could detect us,' said Grunsfeld at the Astrobiology Science Conference in Chicago.

'If there is life out there, intelligent life, they'll know we're here.'

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Scientists using the Hubble recently provided powerful evidence that Jupiter's moon Ganymede (pictured) has a saltwater, sub-surface ocean, likely sandwiched between two layers of ice

In April, Nasa's chief scientist Ellen Stofan said we could find evidence of extraterrestrial life in 20 to 30 years.

'We know where to look, we know how to look, and in most cases we have the technology.'

Jeffery Newmark, interim director of heliophysics at the agency, added: 'It's definitely not an if, it's a when.'

'We are not talking about little green men,' Stofan said. 'We are talking about little microbes.'

The announcement was prompted by the recent discovery of water by Nasa in surprising places.

Jim Green, director of planetary science at Nasa, noted that a recent study of the Martian atmosphere found 50 per cent of the planet's northern hemisphere once had oceans a mile deep.

The same study found that water had been present on the red planet for up to 1.2 billion years.

'We think that long period of time is necessary for life to get more complex,' Stofan said.

Grunsfeld said at the time he was excited about seeing what form life beyond Earth may take.

'Once we get beyond Mars, which formed from the same stuff as Earth, the likelihood that life is similar to what we find on this planet is very low,' he said.

'I think we're one generation away in our solar system, whether it's on an icy moon or on Mars, and one generation [away] on a planet around a nearby star.

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Within our lifetime, Dr Cabrol believes we will find microbial alien life in our solar system. Pluto, pictured here in an image from New Horizons, may harbour such life in its icy landscape

Scientists using the Hubble recently provided powerful evidence that Jupiter's moon Ganymede has a saltwater, sub-surface ocean, likely sandwiched between two layers of ice.

Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's satellite Enceladus are also thought to have an ocean of liquid water beneath their surface in contact with mineral-rich rock.

This, according to Nasa, means they may have the three ingredients needed for life as we know it.

'The science community is making enormous progress,' said Green.

'And I've told my team I'm planning to be the director of planetary science when we discover life in the solar system.

At the same conference last year, Nasa Administrator Charles Bolden made a more conservative estimate.

He claimed that we will find life within the next 20 years - with a high chance it will be outside our solar system.

Nasa next Mars rover, scheduled to launch in 2020, will search for signs of past life and bring samples for a possible return to Earth for analysis.

Nasa also hopes to land astronauts on Mars in the 2030s, which Stofan says is crucial key to the search for Mars life.

The space agency is also planning a mission to Europa, which may launch as early as 2022. It hopes to find out whether the icy moon is habitable.

Meanwhile, the agency's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), will launch in 2018 to scope out the atmospheres of nearby 'super-Earth' alien planets.

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New Horizons took this image of the icy moon Europa rising above Jupiter's cloud tops. The space agency is planning a mission to Europa, which may launch as early as 2022, to find out whether the moon is habitable.