Decryption of Messages from Extraterrestrial Intelligence Using the Power of Social Media - The SETI Decrypt Challenge

摘要

With the advent of modern astronomy, humans might now have acquired thetechnological and intellectual requirements to communicate with otherintelligent beings beyond the solar system, if they exist. Radio signals havebeen identified as a means for interstellar communication about 60 years ago.And the Square Kilometer Array will be capable of detecting extrasolar radiosources analogous to terrestrial high-power radars out to several tens of lightyears. The ultimate question is: will we be able to understand the message, or,vice versa, if we submit a message to extraterrestrial intelligence first, howcan we make sure that they understand us? Here I report on the largest blindexperiment of a pretend radio message received on Earth from beyond the solarsystem. I posted a sequence of about two million binary digits ("0" and "1") tothe social media that encoded a configuration frame, two slides withmathematical content, and four images along with spatial and temporalinformation about their contents. Six questions were asked that would need tobe answered to document the successful decryption of the message. Within amonth after the posting, over 300 replies were received in total, includingcomments and requests for hints, 66 of which contained the correct solutions.About half of the solutions were derived fully independently, the other halfprofited from public online discussions and spoilers. This experimentdemonstrates the power of the world wide web to help interpreting possiblefuture messages from extraterrestrial intelligence and to test decryptabilityof our own deliberate interstellar messages.