Japanese scientists hoping for a message from alien life imminently

It is 40 years since message was sent from Stanford University into the cosmos

Data from the James Webb Space Telescope has confirmed four galaxies dating to when the universe was around 300–500 million years old (PA) (PA Archive)

Scientists are hoping to receive a message from aliens imminently, after waiting for 30 years.

But the chances are slim: the message was sent to a star that does not appear to have any planets, and there will only be an hour to hear the message.

It is 40 years since Japanese astronomers Masaki Morimoto and Hisashi Hirabayashi composed a message intended to show what humans are like and how life works on Earth, and send it into the cosmos. They did so using a telescope at Stanford University and sent a message to Altair, a star 16.7 light years away that could potentially have life around it.

Decades on, a team led by Shinya Narusawa at the University of Hyogo will use a large Japanese telescope to try and see if anything is sending back a reply to our message. Astronomers believe that it is conceivable a reply would come around now, given the distance to the star and the time that has elapsed.

They will listen for messages coming from the star on 22 August. That date was chosen because of its significance in Japan’s Tanabata star festival, which symbolically celebrates the meeting of two deities Orihime and Hikoboshi, the latter of which is represented by Altair.

Narusawa is hopeful that aliens are out there somewhere and that the message could have really been sent towards alien life around the distant star.

“A large number of exoplanets have been detected since the 1990s,” he told Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun. “Altair may have a planet whose environment can sustain life.”

The original message was sent on 15 August, 1983, as part of a collaboration with a Japanese weekly comic anthology.

But the attempt to contact aliens never seemed entirely serious, and so any scientists involved are unlikely to be disappointed. In 2008, when the email was unearthed, Hirabayashi admitted that the pair had been drunk when they came up with the idea of sending the message, according to Gizmodo at the time.

“I believe in aliens, but they are very difficult to find,” he said then. He also noted that he had received an array of messages from schoolchildren about the message, which had made sending it worth it.