Aliens Could Be Talking To One Another Like Fireflies, With A Series Of Flashing Lights

In the search for extraterrestrial life, researchers have hinted at the idea that advanced alien civilizations may be communicating with each other using a series of flashing lights, similar to the way fireflies do. If this is true, then our current observation techniques would have trouble spotting extraterrestrial civilizations.

This new "thought experiment" has helped reframe how we view alien intelligence. However, it does not provide any actual evidence that these light signals exist.

"Our study is meant as a provoking thought-experiment and an invitation for SETI and animal communication research to engage more directly and to draw more systematically on each other's insights," said Estelle Janin, a co-author of the study and a doctoral candidate at the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University.

So far, astronomers have been attempting to detect aliens by looking for odd radio signals and heat signatures from distant planets.

But scientists believe that this approach may have an "anthropocentric bias," meaning that they've been trying to understand nonhuman entities through a human lens.

Such a bias may be causing us to overlook signs of life just because they are different from ours.

Researchers proposed the new theory of alien civilization communication in a new study uploaded to the preprint server arXiv. Alien civilizations could be flashing light signals at each other, much like fireflies.

Fireflies use repetitive flashes to find mates. The light signals are simple but effective, allowing firefly species to tell the difference between one another.

The researchers think that alien civilizations could be utilizing similar flashes to show that they exist. Space is so vast and filled with random, repetitive bursts of light. It's all just a matter of identifying which ones are modes of communication.

arcyto - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purposes only

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In the new study, the research team analyzed the flashes of over 150 pulsars, which are highly magnetized neutron stars that spin rapidly and emit regular beams of electromagnetic radiation. They compared the signals from both pulsars and fireflies and noted that they shared some similarities.

The team argues that these signals would likely evolve over time in established alien civilizations, making the use of radio waves obsolete.

On Earth, something similar is already happening. Our planet appears more "radio quiet" from afar due to communications satellites with more concentrated radio signals.

"Communication is a fundamental feature of life across lineages and manifests in a wonderful diversity of forms and strategies," Janin said.

"Taking nonhuman communication into account is essential if we want to broaden our intuition and understanding about what alien communication could look like and what a theory of life ought to explain."

Overall, alien signals don't have to be complicated, and it's not necessary to decipher their meaning exactly in order to identify them. The study can be found on the preprint server arXiv.