Scientists plan to broadcast Earth's position and human body shapes into space to communicate with alien life

In a bid to connect with alien life – A team of scientists is planning to broadcast a radio message containing Earth's location deep into space, hoping it may one day be received and understood by an alien civilisation.

Called the Beacon in the Galaxy (BITG) message, it is essentially an updated version of the famous Arecibo message, which was first transmitted in 1974 for the same purpose. The Arecibo message was broadcasted from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

That was sent in binary code — ones and zeroes — which, once decoded, formed a visual graphic showing a figure of a human, our DNA, and a depiction of our solar system.

BITG will also include a drawing of DNA, the solar system, and a diagram of the male and female forms, but it also contains a lot more information about basic mathematics and science than the Arecibo message did.

BITG’s website, details: "The proposed message includes basic mathematical and physical concepts to establish a universal means of communication followed by information on the biochemical composition of life on Earth, the Solar System’s time-stamped position in the Milky Way relative to known globular clusters, as well as digitized depictions of the Solar System, and Earth’s surface.”

The message concludes with digitized images of the human form, along with an invitation for any receiving bits of intelligence to respond. The message will be sent in binary code that is believed to be simple and easy to understand. “Though the concept of mathematics in human terms is potentially unrecognizable to ETI, binary is likely universal across all intelligence. Binary is the simplest form of mathematics as it involves only two opposing states: zero and one, yes or no, black or white, mass or empty space. Hence, the transmission of the code as binary would very likely be understandable to all ETI and is the basis of the BITG message,”

To make a proper introduction of humans and, hopefully, entice a response from any Extraterrestrial life form receivers, the BITG message balances interesting content with a scientific basis. In contrast to the Arecibo Message, which was intended as a technological demonstration of what radio astronomy can do, the BITG message literally targets the Milky Way region most likely to contain intelligent life. “By choosing a star cluster between 2 kpc and 6 kpc from the center of the galaxy as the intended destination, we maximize the chances of the message being received by an ETI; thus, we maximize the probability of receiving a response in the distant future,” said the research team.

The team of scientists suggested that future messages could contain music 'such as the symphonies of Beethoven, Mozart or Bach,' or scientific discussions.

In 2015, Professor Hawking at a breakthrough listen event had favored listening to signals from ETI but advised against actively reaching out to them. At the time he had said, "We know little about aliens, but we know about humans. If you look at history, contact between humans and less intelligent organisms has often been disastrous from their point of view, and encounters between civilizations with advanced versus primitive technologies have gone badly for the less advanced. A civilization reading one of our messages could be billions of years ahead of us. If so, they will be vastly more powerful, and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria."

Despite the warning from Professor Hawking, the BITG team remains positive and said “Humanity has, we contend, a compelling story to share and the desire to know of others – and now has the means to do so.”