For as long as we’ve been exploring space, the search for alien intelligence has followed a familiar script. We point antennas at the sky. We listen for radio signals. We scan for massive structures that look like something humans would build if we had unlimited resources and no zoning laws.
A new paper suggests that approach might be missing something obvious.
Researchers say advanced alien civilizations could be communicating in plain sight. Their idea involves rhythmic flashes of light, similar to how fireflies signal on Earth. These wouldn’t be messages meant to decode line by line. They’d work more like a long-term signal that says, “we’re here.”
The proposal comes from a study uploaded to the preprint server arXiv. It hasn’t been peer reviewed yet and is under consideration for publication in PNAS.
The problem, according to the researchers, is that most alien-hunting strategies are deeply human. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, has historically focused on radio signals or excess heat from hypothetical megastructures like Dyson spheres. That logic assumes other civilizations communicate the way we once did. It leaves little room for intelligence that evolved along a different path.
Scientists call this an anthropocentric bias. In plain terms, we keep looking for versions of ourselves.
On Earth, fireflies rely on repeating flashes to communicate. Those flashes come from internal chemical reactions. They look simple, but they’re specific enough for different species to recognize one another. The researchers think an advanced civilization could take a similar approach. Instead of conversations, they’d send patterned light signals meant to persist across space.
To explore what that might resemble, the team analyzed light patterns from more than 150 pulsars. Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars that emit highly regular beams of electromagnetic radiation. The researchers found no evidence of artificial signals, but they did notice similarities between pulsar rhythms and biological signaling patterns like those seen in fireflies. They also proposed methods future searches could use to better distinguish natural pulses from potential artificial ones.
Another reason these signals might be easy to miss comes down to technological evolution. The paper points out that advanced civilizations may move away from loud, widespread radio communication over time. Earth is already doing this. As our technology becomes more targeted and efficient, our planet appears less noisy from a distance.
Estelle Janin, a doctoral candidate at Arizona State University and co-author of the study, framed the idea as an invitation rather than a claim. “Communication is a fundamental feature of life across lineages and manifests in a wonderful diversity of forms and strategies,” she told Universe Today. Janin described the work as “a provoking thought-experiment” meant to encourage SETI researchers to draw from animal communication science.
No one is saying aliens are blinking at us from deep space. The point is simpler. If intelligence doesn’t look human, there’s no reason its signals would either. We might not be missing alien civilizations because they’re hiding. We might be missing them because we’ve been listening for the wrong thing.
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