Aliens 'tried to contact us'

Two American physicists believe that creatures in the universe may have sent messages to the earth, but our devices do not catch the signal.

Illustration of extraterrestrial creatures.Photo: Telegraph .

For 50 years scientists have been constantly searching for signs of extraterrestrial civilizations. They think that if a civilization wants to communicate with another civilization, they will signal all directions. Many hope that machines will one day catch sounds or messages from stars near the globe. However, until now, no one has detected the signal of an alien creature.

In an article in Astrobiology magazine, Dr. James Benford, PhD, chairman of Microwave Sciences, judged that an extraterrestrial organism does not signal continuously in all directions. Instead they only play short pulses in a certain direction.

"Signaling across the light-years gap requires a lot of resources," said Gregory Benford, James Benford's twin brother. Gregory is an astrophysicist at the University of California USA.

The Benford brothers claimed that, by signaling in one direction, extraterrestrial organisms would reduce costs and improve the efficiency of their communications technology. According to calculations by two scientists, the signal from another civilization lies in the frequency range of 1 to 10 gigahertz. But experts looking for extraterrestrial beings look for other types of signals.

Another problem is that the receivers on the earth are pointing towards the stars at the edge of the Milky Way. Scientists believe that strange signals can be transmitted from those stars. However, Greyry said we should look for signals from stars in the center of the Milky Way.

"The stars in the middle of the Milky Way are billions of years older than the sun. The greater the age of the celestial body, the higher the viability of advanced civilization there is," explains Gregory.

In contrast, according to Gregory, near-Earth stars have a small age, so the viability of high-class organisms will be lower.