Experts compete to decipher message from Mars

(ANSA) - ROME, MAY 28 - The competition to decode a message from Mars that reached Earth on the evening of May 24 has started: the data, collected by radio telescopes at 21:16 Italian time, have already been processed and made available online at the website of the project 'A Sign in Space'.
    In the space of a few hours, more than 1,300 people from all over the world, Italy included, took up this challenge, an experiment on the margins between science, art and science fiction, according to the National Astrophysics Institute (INAF), which set it up from an idea from the artist Daniela de Paulis, in collaboration with the European Space Agency, the SETI Institute, and the Green Bank Observatory.
    The signal, which simulates a message sent by an extra-terrestrial civilization, was transmitted via radio waves by the Trace Gas Orbiter probe of the ExoMars mission, in orbit around Mars. "It reached Earth around 21:16 Italian time and it lasted half an hour, as had been predicted," said the INAF experts.
    It was picked up by the Italian radio telescope at Medicina near Bologna, run by INAF, and two American radio telescopes, the Allen Telescope Array of the SETI Institute, in California, and the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, as well as by various independent ham radio groups. (ANSA).