Astronomers in Japan just launched the country’s first official organization dedicated to finding alien life. The new group plans to start scanning the deep sky with radio telescopes in August of next year. They want to find solid evidence that intelligent beings live elsewhere in our vast universe.
Shinya Narusawa, a 61-year-old astrophysics expert at the University of Hyogo, leads the ambitious project. Narusawa created the Japanese Society for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. He gathered a core team of exactly 10 people to kick off the new program. This small group includes professional astronomers and veteran observatory researchers who want to explore the unknown.
Narusawa feels very confident about the mission ahead. He stated clearly that aliens must exist somewhere out there in the dark universe. The astronomer told reporters he feels incredibly excited to put these long-held theories into practice in Japan finally.
The team scheduled their first major observation event for August of next year. They will aim their listening equipment directly at the Sagittarius constellation. The astronomers will run these tests from the Misato Observatory, which sits in Wakayama Prefecture in western Japan. The group chose this timeline to mark exactly 50 years since an Ohio State University telescope detected a massive radio pulse from deep space in 1977.
Scientists all over the world refer to that famous 1977 event as the Wow Signal. It earned that funny name because the astronomer reviewing the computer data wrote the word Wow in red ink right on the paper printout. The signal lasted exactly 72 seconds and then disappeared completely. The powerful blast of radio waves came from the exact direction of Sagittarius. Nearly 50 years later, astronomers still consider it the best candidate for a real alien radio transmission ever recorded.
Researchers in the United States continue to study that old 1977 data, hoping to solve the mystery finally. Now, the Japanese group wants to help crack the case. The new organization, which officially launched in April, posted a message on its website asking scientists worldwide to join their effort. They want astronomers across the globe to conduct a massive, concentrated search toward the source of those strange radio waves.
Looking beyond next summer, Japanese society has much bigger plans. The group wants to build a large, domestic network of radio antennas across Japan. They need multiple listening stations to monitor the stars 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The team knows that continuous observation will greatly improve their chances of actually finding a reliable signal from an alien world.
Narusawa explained that Japan currently lacks the proper equipment to search the skies full-time. He wants to eventually build a local research network that matches the massive systems already operating in the United States. By upgrading their technology, Japanese scientists can contribute millions of new data points to the global search effort.
Beyond just discovering aliens, the founder hopes the project will change how normal people view our own planet. Narusawa wants citizens to learn about the search for extraterrestrial civilizations and then think deeply about human behavior. He hopes that looking out at the vast, quiet stars will prompt people to rethink life on Earth, especially since humans continue to fight endless wars with one another.
