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Lone Signal Is Turning the Hunt for Aliens into a Social Network

Will aliens' first contact with humans be a goddamn YOLO hashtag?

Aliens are out there somewhere, but scouring the universe for them has so far been inconclusive. So why not flip the script? What if, instead of searching for signals, we packaged up humanity's thoughts and beamed them at nearby planets in 144 character bursts?

That's the idea behind Lone Signal, a startup that's trying to commercialize METI (Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence). Having signed a lease for the Jamesburg Earth Station, a Cold War-era transmission dish in California, Lone Signal will unveil its new website and service on Monday.

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The premise is like an interplanetary Twitter: users can compose short messages that will eventually get broadcasted towards Goldilocks planets, the first being Gliese 526, which is just 17.6 lightyears away. A user's first message is free; after that, Lone Signal offers bulk packages of messages (4 for $0.99, 4000 for $99.99) that, as of now, will be its main revenue stream.

The idea of humans blasting their thoughts at unsuspecting aliens is a fascinating one, especially in the internet age. Given the type of inane thoughts people tweet and share everyday, what happens when all those thoughts get sent into the galaxy? Now we'll find out: Aside from the ability to tag posts as NSFW, Lone Signal's platform currently has no filters or moderation. If you pay to send a message, it gets sent, no matter how eloquent or dumb it may be. Will aliens' first contact with humans be a goddamn YOLO hashtag?

At a press junket introducing Lone Signal, the conversation naturally turned to trolls sending out messages nasty enough to start an alien war, a possibility that Lone Signal head scientist Dr. Jacob Haqq Misra, who researches planet habitability at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, wasn't overly concerned about. He gave one main reason: Any aliens that have the technology to start a war with us have surely heard our incoherent ramblings already.

That doesn't mean that others aren't worried. Some extraterrestrial intelligence researchers argue that because we really have no idea how alien civilizations may react to our presence, and thus we shouldn't be farting around by bombarding them with random mindspray. They've got a point, because just look in the mirror: if your first introduction to an alien life form read like your Facebook timeline, there are good odds you'd lose your skull.

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Will aliens' first contact with humans be a goddamn YOLO hashtag?

But Misra's point resonates. If there are aliens in nearby space, we have the technology to hear from them, but there's no hope of us visiting them right now. Conversely, if aliens that far away have the capability to get to Earth, they've probably already heard some of our myriad transmissions. In other words, if aliens attack us, odds are against it being because some joker on Lone Signal told them to fuck off. Plus, will 4chan really want to spend money just to send trollish messages into the ether?

According to Lone Signal CEO Jamie King, figuring out what humans decide is worthy enough to text to aliens is the whole point. He referred to Lone Signal as a project to get more people involved in space and SETI experiments, especially as we enter the private space era. As he put it, Lone Signal is the poor man's vehicle into space, allowing our thoughts to go where SpaceX's and Virgin Galactic's rich folk will.

The science behind the project is fascinating. Lone Signal's overhauling of a Cold War-era transmission equipment is downright awesome, as I can't imagine restoring old science relics is currently a high priority for many. The Jamesburg dish with broadcast a pair of messages: One is a continuous message carrier that will either transmit numbers or the hailing message designed by Dr. Michael Busch, and the other will carry user messages in small data packets.

While the broadcasting tech itself is proven, trying to send messages to aliens is a far more difficult proposition. Just think: Those messages are going to take 17 years to get to Gliese 526. If on the very off chance that Gliese 526 is inhabited by intelligent life that can receive radio messages, they'd also have to be able to understand both our encoding system and our language, which are both even bigger ifs. And if they do, a response won't come for 34 years.

While that means that it's exceedingly unlikely for aliens to receive and understand a message that pisses them off, it also means that Lone Signal needs users to be willing to spend money on messages that have an infinitesimal chance of actually being read by aliens. (Lone Signal did suggest that it's developing opportunities for advertising partnerships. Yes, the prospect of Pepsi sponsoring the search for aliens was discussed in the press preview.) For King, however, it's more about broadening the conversation about the alien hunt in general.

"We feel that there are a lot of people who would like to participate in messaging and look at some of the historical cosmic calls," King said. "We wanted a forum where one could come and share multiple thoughts. Ideally, by bringing everyone together that had feelings about [METI], we could actually start encouraging a wider conversation."