"We Are Here"... Sending Signals to Aliens with Massive Earth Structures

"Signals Must Be Designed for Universal Understanding"
U.S. Government: "No Evidence of Alien Technology"

There has been a claim that massive man-made structures on Earth could be recognized by extraterrestrial life forms as signals indicating the presence of humanity.

Topaz Solar Farm located in California, covering an area of 25.6㎢. Landsat data from the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

On April 23 (local time), the space science media outlet Space.com introduced various attempts humanity has devised to make contact with alien civilizations, through an interview with Douglas Vakoch, director of the nonprofit organization METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) based in San Francisco, USA.

Director Vakoch discussed the idea of using the Earth's surface to engrave geometric shapes, as conceived in the past. He specifically cited the visual representation of the Pythagorean theorem, which involves attaching squares to each side of a right triangle. Such structures would be designed on a super-large scale, identifiable not only from the Moon but also from Mars.

Since the 19th century, there have been proposals to use gigantic structures to send the message to extraterrestrial intelligent beings that "we are here." The idea is to create significant, large-scale shapes on Earth's surface to encourage alien civilizations to observe them.

This concept has often been mentioned alongside the 1826 proposal by German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, who suggested creating geometric figures in the Siberian forest to potentially communicate with life forms that might exist on the Moon. However, Director Vakoch added that it is unclear whether this proposal was actually made by Gauss or if it was exaggerated by later generations.

In particular, Director Vakoch introduced Francis Galton, a British scientist and founder of eugenics, as a representative early figure in the conception of extraterrestrial intelligence communication. In a paper published in 1896, Galton argued that "signals must essentially be designed in a way that anyone can understand" and claimed that "if an entity is sufficiently advanced intellectually, whether human or another life form, it should be able to decode the message."

A scene from the unidentified flying object (UFO) footage released by The New York Times (NYT). Photo by AP Yonhap News

Meanwhile, on April 17, President Trump announced at the conservative organization 'Turning Point USA' held in Arizona that he had "found some interesting material related to unidentified flying objects (UFOs)" and that "it will be released soon."

In addition, in 2017, former Department of Defense intelligence officer Luis Elizondo claimed that he operated a secret program tracking UFOs and had obtained evidence that UFOs flew around military bases in ways that defied the laws of physics. In 2023, former intelligence officer David Grusch caused a stir by testifying at a U.S. congressional hearing that the government was hiding crashed spacecraft and 'non-human entities.'

However, since World War II, U.S. government investigations have not found any evidence proving the existence of alien technology, concluding that most sightings were cases of misidentifying ordinary objects or natural phenomena. The scientific community also believes that the arrival of extraterrestrial life on Earth is practically impossible. For example, the distance to Proxima b, the closest exoplanet to Earth, is 4.2 light years, and it would take thousands of years to reach it even with the fastest spacecraft humanity has ever built.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.