Scientists have set up an “alien telescope” that focuses purely on sounds coming to Earth from outer space.
Researchers at the National Radio Quiet Zone in West Virginia – one of the quietest places on the planet, where mobile phones don’t work and WiFi is scarce – are hoping to pick up messages from extra-terrestrial beings.
A huge receiver that is 100 metres wide and fully steerable turns radio waves from space into electric signals that boffins then analyse.
Dr Ethan Siegel, a theoretical astrophysicist working on the project, said aliens could be trying to send us messages from deep space.
He told FreeThink: “If someone is actively speaking to us from across the universe, if we didn’t listen because we didn’t find it easily the first time, how much would we be short-changing ourselves through our own short sightedness?
“If we discover we're not alone in the universe it will change forever how we view life on earth… (but) the way we’re going to find it is not through grainy footage or pixels we can’t make out.”
Although there have been plenty of supposed UFOs caught on camera, researchers can’t find out much from the footage as it is often blurry and could have easily been edited.
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But the new project to listen to outer space could prove the key to having definitive proof of life outside of planet Earth.
Ryan Lynch, a scientist at the Green Bank Observatory, added: “The radio signals we’re trying to pick up from space are extremely weak.
“It’s like casting a net – the bigger the receiver dish, the bigger the net and the weaker the signals we can pick up.”
It comes as governments around the world start to take UFO sightings more seriously, with the US Congress set to grill Pentagon intelligence officials at a summit to find out more about alien life.
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