Do aliens and fireflies communicate similarly?

What’s Happening

Okay so Advanced aliens and fireflies on Earth might communicate in similar ways, by using signals of flashing light, a new theoretical study suggests.

The post Do aliens and fireflies communicate similarly? Science news, solid photos, sky alerts. (yes, really)

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The Details

If advanced alien civilizations exist on multiple planets in our home galaxy, the Milky Way, how would they communicate? A new paper suggests they might do so in a manner similar to the way fireflies signal each other.

That is, they might use subtle flashes of light, in this case visible across vast distances of interstellar space. Thats the new idea of a research team from Arizona State University.

Why This Matters

The team dropped this month that as we on Earth pursue more traditional SETI, searching for radio signals or alien megastructures, this flashing from alien beings might be happening around us. As of now, the hypothesis is a thought experiment, but its a fascinating one. Harry Baker wrote about the intriguing concept for Live Science on .

This could have implications for future research in this area.

Key Takeaways

• And the researchers published the preprint version of their new paper, not yet peer-reviewed, on arXiv on .
• It is now awaiting publication in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
• To date, the search for alien intelligence, collectively known as SETI, has focused on more human-esque types of searches.
• These include radio signals, laser pulses or even physical megastructures such as Dyson spheres.

The Bottom Line

And if they wanted to communicate over vast interstellar distances, ordinary radio signals, for example, might not be the most efficient choice. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is, historically, a search for aliens like us, inspired by human-centric ideas of intelligence and technology.

What’s your take on this whole situation?