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| This diagram shows the transit zone our planet will sweep through when it passes in front of the sun; any intelligent extraterrestrials looking at our sun living in a star system that falls within this zone will detect us. |
| What if an advanced alien civilization saw our planet across the interstellar expanse and switched on their powerful radio transmitters to send a “hello neighbor!” message... but all of our radio antennae were staring at KIC 8462852 when we really should be paying attention to Omicron Persei. | Ian O'Neill news.discovery.com 3-1-16 |
Space is big and there’s billions of stars in our galaxy where hypothetical transmitting extraterrestrials could be orbiting; we may be missing out on a flood of alien phone calls every day just because we can’t monitor them all.
ANALYSIS: Kepler’s ‘Bizarre’ Signal Sparks Alien Intelligence Speculation
Enter René Heller and Ralph Pudritz of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen, Germany, and McMaster University in Canada, respectively, who pondered this very question and arrived at a wonderfully elegant solution. Granted, their strategy, which has been published in the journal Astrobiology, doesn’t tell us exactly where intelligent aliens are holed up, but it may better the odds of us tapping into the galactic switchboard. [...]
