Astrophysicists suggest searching for those aliens who have already found us.

Astrophysics from the University. Max Planck offered a way to narrow down the search for alien life, carried out through the analysis of various signals from space. Based on the assumption that the methods of searching for other civilizations of our brothers in mind will be similar to ours, they offer to look for signals from those areas of the Universe where our planet could be detected.



The most common and effective method of searching for exoplanets is transit. If the planetary system of another star is oriented relative to us in such a way that its planets pass through the star's disk and periodically overshadow it, our instruments, such as the Kepler telescope, are able to track this change in brightness. Based on the data obtained, conclusions are drawn about the size of the planet and even about the presence of its atmosphere.

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In the same way, representatives of other intelligent civilizations can also search for life on other planets . This means that it is worth trying not to scan the entire cosmos, but to concentrate efforts on those areas in which our planet could be detected by the transit method.



The authors of the work, René Heller and Ralph Pudritz, decided that it was possible that astrophysicists there already sent greeting signals in our direction. They thus called the designated search zone "Earth transit zone" [Earth transit zone, ETZ].



“Those who can see the transit of our planet across the solar disk are more likely to discover the fact of the habitability of our planet,” explained Heller. “And if the distribution of extraterrestrial civilizations is random, in the field of ETZ, the chances of finding us and trying to contact us are much higher.”



The SETI project, which has been working since the early 1960s, is trying to search for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations, analyzing radio signals from space and looking for signs of artificial origin in them. Naturally, the capabilities of radio telescopes and computers are limited, and project managers have to choose the parts of the sky that will be scanned. Job Heller and Pudritsa gives informed advice on the selection of areas of the sky.



In the summer of 2015, Yuri Milner, a Russian millionaire and co-founder of Mail.ru Group, decided to invest his personal funds in the SETI project to help his development. “The scope of our research will be unprecedented,” said Milner. According to him, when the system starts to operate, more information will be collected in one day of research than in a whole year with past approaches.