

If you were a hyper advanced alien civilization, rather then mucking about with noisy electromagnetic waves, perhaps you would try to make contact with other intelligent life forms by sending your messages via neutrinos.

First detected in 1953, neutrinos pass easily through most matter making it possible for your signal to pass through the Milky Way without being blocked by stars and interstellar dust. They are also not subject to the "noise" of optical and radio waves traveling alongside them through space.

Aliens with access to abundant power (one neutrino production technique requires 3% the output of our sun, another is within range of earthly thermonuclear power plants) could send pulsed and directional neutrino messages to us. Luckily we are building elaborate neutrino detectors already (they must be very large and built deep underground or water to shielded from cosmic rays and other background radiation).

The United States is building a neutrino detector called IceCube in Antarctica (seen above) to detect naturally occurring neutrinos for scientific research. If they were to detect neutrinos at 6.3 petaelectron-volts (PeV) it could be a tell-tale sign of an artificially constructed signal, since there is no known natural process that would create neutrinos of that energy level. Researchers on earth however have identified two ways that such neutrinos could be created in the lab. Maybe we will soon be smart enough to be able to hear from more advanced civilizations.

Looking for ETs neutrino beam [physicsworld]

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Image courtesy of NSF