Aliens Might Be Chatting With the Planet Next Door. We Could Listen In.

[Buster's Uncle]

Aliens Might Be Chatting With the Planet Next Door. We Could Listen In.
Elizabeth Rayne
Popular Mechanics
Wed, August 27, 2025 at 8:30 AM EDT
4 min read



Scientists Could Eavesdrop on Alien Transmissions John Foxx - Getty Images


Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

*The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) focuses on finding technosignatures—potential signs of alien technology.

*If we look carefully, we might have a chance at detecting their communications with other planets, much like NASA’s Deep Space Network communicates with spacecraft.

*After comparing NASA logs, we now have a better idea of which planets to focus on if we want the best chance at detecting extraterrestrial messages.


Even the most sophisticated radio arrays have not yet detected any signals that could have possibly been beamed through space by aliens. But maybe we just need to approach the search for technosignatures differently. Maybe aliens have no interest in phoning Earth, and would rather transmit message to their own probes orbiting nearby planets.

Whether aliens have any desire to explore space like we do is unknown. They might be content kicking back on whatever passes for a hammock on their own planets. But it is hard to believe that (if anything remotely like us exists out in the cosmos) there wouldn’t be at least one form of intelligent life that would want to see what lies beyond their home turf. Whether they whiz through the void in flying saucers or starships is debatable, but they might be sending and receiving signals from their own contraptions launched into space to explore their cosmic neighborhoods—much like we do.

Astronomer and astrophysicist Pinchen Fan thinks that intelligent aliens might be doing the same thing we are and communicating with probes and spacecraft similar to NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN). It might be possible to pick up on their transmissions if we can compare them to incoming and outgoing messages on our planet, so we at least know what to look for. This is not the first time researchers have investigated this idea, but this team had a very particular focus.

Fan wanted to know what a hypothetical observer from a distant planet would see through their hypothetical telescope if they were tracking transmissions to and from Earth. Some planets or other objects might block transmissions. Others, like Mars, would not block them completely—and aliens should be able to catch that. Planetary conjunctions, when two planets directly align with one another in orbit, are ideal opportunities for this.

“In the case of Mars, we find a species that is able to observe the Solar System for radio emission during an Earth-Mars conjunction in the past twenty years would have had a 77% chance of observing during one of our transmissions,” Fan said in a study recently published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the Deep Space Network consists of three ground-based facilities in California, Spain and Australia that are capable of two-way communication with spacecraft, sending commands and receiving information. These sites were strategically chosen so there are no interruptions to communication as Earth rotates. If a spacecraft ventures too far for one site to pick up what it is doing, another site can easily receive the signal and continue communications.

By poring through DSN logs, Fan and his research team were able to connect their findings to the location of a spacecraft or space telescope at a specific time so they could figure out when and in what direction radio communications were beamed from Earth. Most radio signals were aimed at spacecraft on or near Mars (which should hardly be a surprise, with all the attention the planet has been awarded since Perseverance and Ingenuity landed in 2021). Transmissions to Mars—as opposed to other planets in the Solar System—also have the greatest chance of being detected by extraterrestrials.

If we switch around the point of view and position ourselves as observers, there should be some planets between which we have an especially high chance of intercepting transmissions. Fan is confident his research prioritizes which objects to look out for. The most powerful transmissions coming from humans (including those from the DSN) tend to be within a few degrees of the ecliptic plane, or the imaginary flat plane created by Earth’s orbit, and similar alien transmissions would likely also line up as such.

There may also be preferable times for transmission detection. DSN transmissions have peaked at certain times during Earth’s orbit—especially conjunctions between Earth and the Sun. Aliens using the same strategy might experience a peak in transmissions during their own planet’s conjunctions with their star.

“As humankind broadens its presence in the Solar System, sustained transmissions to other planets would further intensify the concentration of strong transmissions along the ecliptic plane,” said Fan. “Our analysis underscores the value of using humanity’s own DSN as a model for how an early-phase spacefaring civilization might transmit and how we might detect it.”

Whether the planets we end up focusing on for SETI investigations will be the planets with other creatures on them is unknown. But if we’re lucky, we just might end up eavesdropping on ET phoning... somewhere.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/aliens-might-chatting-planet-next-123000819.html