JAKARTA – The search for aliens is no longer just living in science fiction films. A number of Japanese astronomers are now forming a special organization to search for signs of intelligent life outside Earth.
According to a Kyodo News report quoted on Monday, May 4, the group is said to be the first organization in Japan dedicated to the search for aliens. They are preparing radio observations next summer.
The character is Shinya Narusawa, an astrophysicist from the University of Hyogo. He heads the Japanese Society for SETI, an organization focused on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
For your information, SETI is an abbreviation for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which is the search for signs of intelligence or extraterrestrial civilizations, usually through radio signals from space.
“They must be somewhere in the universe. I’m excited to be able to realize this in action,” said Narusawa.
Narusawa, 61, is known as one of the main experts on SETI in Japan. He founded the group with about 10 people, including astronomers and observatory researchers.
Their first plan is quite interesting. In August next year, this group will direct observations to the constellation Sagittarius from the Misato Observatory in Wakayama Prefecture, western Japan.
The time was not chosen arbitrarily. The observation was held to mark the 50th anniversary of the discovery of a strong radio signal detected by the Ohio State University telescope in the United States in 1977.
The signal was later known as “Wow! Signal”. It came from near the constellation of Sagittarius and is now called the strongest candidate for a radio transmission from aliens ever caught by humans.
The problem is, after almost half a century, the signal is still a mystery. It is being studied continuously in the United States, but there is still no definitive answer. The universe apparently still knows how to keep secrets.
“We will call on the world to conduct a concentrated observation towards the source of the radio wave,” the group, launched in April, wrote on its website.
In the future, this group wants to build an antenna network in Japan so that observations can be carried out continuously. They hope that longer monitoring will make the search more reliable.
“We want to eventually build a research network in Japan that is comparable to the network in the United States,” Narusawa said, quoted by Kyodo News.
Narusawa hopes that the search for extraterrestrial civilizations will make the public more familiar with the scientific work of SETI. He also wants the effort to be a mirror to look back at Earth, where human-to-human warfare is still ongoing.
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