A Message to the Stars

For more than 50 years, we’ve been unsuccessfully searching for any evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. Nevertheless, the discovery of thousands of exoplanets where life could have arisen has been a real game-changer and the hope of finding them is much higher than ever before. As first contact with an alien intelligence might become a reality in a not distant future, it’s urgent to solve a tricky dilemma never faced before for humankind: how could we communicate with them? Considering that is hardly to imagine what sort of form of life and intelligence they could be like, it’s really difficult to compose a message and many questions arise immediately: What kind of universal language could we use to be understood? What should be the content of the message? How could we introduce ourselves to an unknown civilization? Couldn’t it be risky to send messages to them in case they were hostile? On behalf of whom we should speak in that message? Among all, the biggest difficulty is to create a common language that could be understood by any form of intelligent life.